Hello families of Wheelock, I don't know if you were lucky enough to get the opportunity to see Jessica Minahan yesterday (author of the Behavior Code), hopefully you were, but if you were not as lucky I am going to share some helpful information here today. I have been looking forward to this professional development day all year. I was fortunate enough to see her a year and a half ago and I just knew this would be a presentation everyone could appreciate! I wrote a previous blog post on some of my favorite tips from that day (Rethinking Strategies for Anxiety and Opposition). She shared a lot of these strategies yesterday but I wanted to focus this blog post on helping kids to stop the negative thoughts.
We all know a lot about growth mindset, changing our thinking from "I can't" to "I just haven't done it YET". This type of coaching to re-frame their thinking is invaluable but Jessica also focused a lot on stopping the negative thoughts by intervening early on. Often times, we may leave kids to do independent tasks or homework for several minutes. Within this time frame of just minutes, our anxious kids can have a flood of negative thoughts. "I can't do this" "I'm so bad at math" "This is going to take all night". Anxiety can cause all kinds of incorrect or catastrophic thoughts. Jessica's advice is to help kids get started, set them up for success and then let them do things independently.
Another great tip Jessica encouraged us all to think about is what types of breaks we are giving our anxious kids. Often times we go for a walk or let kids color for a few minutes. Not to say these aren't great strategies for some kids, but it may not work for others, since negative thoughts can still occur during a walk or while coloring. Jessica encouraged us to think about 'cognitive' breaks, or a way to distract our mind in a positive way so that we can stop the obtrusive thoughts. For example, games like 'soduku' or cross words puzzles can help get our mind off negative thoughts. Or even singing a favorite song and reciting lines from their favorite movie. Jessica was also so kind to provide some great App to help as calming breaks or cognitive breaks. I have tried the 'Calm' app myself and loved it! Here is a list:
- Calm
- Headspace
- Moodnotes ($)
- Moodpath
- Pacifica
- Pixel Thoughts
- Happify
- Talkspace
- SugarBetter
- 7 cups
