by Lynea Gillen | Aug 30, 2020 | Attention / Focus, Behavior, Families, K-12 Education, Mental Health, Social-Emotional Learning
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...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Jul 19, 2020 | Families, Health, Mental Health
If you followed the news at all over the 4th of July weekend, you likely saw beaches filled with an unsettling number of people, many ignoring the mask and social distancing guidelines for controlling the spread of COVID-19. Though plenty of folks were concerned about...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Jun 16, 2019 | Families, Health, Physical Fitness
Though things have improved a bit, inactivity continues to be as much of a problem today as it was in 2016 when we first posted the article below – which says something about the sheer scope of the problem. The last US Report Card on Physical Activity for...
by Lynea Gillen | Sep 16, 2018 | Families, Parenting
One day while sharing a lesson on work-play balance, I asked the group of sixth graders I was working with, “What happens if you were to play all the time?” They said that you’d live with your parents for the rest of your life. “So, what happens if you work too much?”...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Jul 8, 2018 | Families, Mindfulness
For many of us, summertime is travel time. Yet whether it’s a day at the beach, a weekend of camping, a week of sightseeing, or a longer journey abroad, it can be easy to get so wrapped up in the busy-ness of making trips happen or documenting every moment for...
by Jim & Lynea Gillen | Jun 10, 2017 | Families
Could there possibly be any benefit in overscheduling a child’s life? Here’s how one mother defended it in a recent essay for the Washington Post: Of course, there is value in sitting in a corner reading, playing board games, climbing a tree or just daydreaming. But...