President Biden’s proposal for universal preschool was great to hear this past week. Of course, now comes the challenge of getting the plan through Congress. Still, we’re hopeful that some progress will be made toward making preschool available to more children. After...
Not long after I’d begun work as a counselor in a high poverty, high trauma school, I played a social/emotional game with a group of students in which I’d ask questions to get them thinking. “What would you do if you found $10,000?” I asked the children. Having come...
Originally posted August 2, 2015 We’ve looked before at the relationship between physical activity and cognitive skills. The short version, as brain scientist John Medina has noted, is that our brains developed to work best while we’re moving in an outdoor...
Disappointment happens. It’s how life goes. But try telling that to a child. Actually, don’t. It’s dismissive. It says, “Your feelings don’t matter.” And when you’re a kid, those feelings can feel very big. End-of-the-worldish. Challenging. More often, we’re tempted...
When a child’s emotions get big, our own emotions can swell up, too. Our stress response kicks in, overriding our own “upstairs brain” – the logical, controlling part. When a child is upset, they rely on a parent or other caregiving adult to guide them through the...
When I first began working as a school counselor, I sometimes got frustrated with children who didn’t seem to apply the social/emotional lessons I taught them. “Why don’t they get it?” I asked my colleague Anne Bagwell, a counselor and an amazing mentor. “I explain...
