Some ideas to help kids with perfectionist tendencies

Hello and Happy June!

It feels great to be back at work after having my first child, albeit a bit tough at times!  I missed the the smiling faces of the students, staff and families of Medfield.  I often try to pick relevant social/emotional topics or goings on at Wheelock to blog about.  Over the past couple of years, I have heard a lot about perfectionist tendencies in students.  I think this would be a great opportunity to share some tips and books I think are helpful.  It is certainly not an exhaustive list of strategies and books, but they are ones I like and think are relevant.

Try not to feed the perfectionism...

As hard as it can be sometimes, when a child cannot seem to move on when something isn't 'just right', it can be helpful for you to step aside and not try to 'over assist' with an issue.  Stepping aside can help show your child (although it is hard in the moment) that they can learn how to be flexible. For example, when their outfit or shoes, etc. are not 'perfect' and they feel they cannot leave.  Try to let them have their space and not immediately try to fix the situation by coming up with other solutions or strategies.

Try to be a role model...

Show your kids that it is okay to make mistakes in certain instances and that less than perfect can be perfectly acceptable.  Maybe share a story from your experience that a mistake actually helped you grow.  Try to use 'teachable' moments to show your kids that even though mom or dad made a mistake, life does go on and it's no big deal!  Which leads to my next suggestion:

Try to use a little humor...

Sometimes a little humor can help lighten the mood.  This may not always be the appropriate strategy depending on the intensity of the situation.  However, laughing and positive distraction are great ways to handle certain situations.  As mentioned above, it's not the end of the world and we sometimes needs to laugh at our own mistakes!

Try to help promote positive self talk...

One of my favorite strategies that can help with so many different issues is one that I teach all the kids here at Wheelock; Inner Coach.  This is the voice in our brains that helps us to think positively about a situation.  Help to challenge their thinking by asking how they can think positive about the situation.  Some examples include:  "I can do this"  "It's okay to make mistakes"  "All I can do is try my best".

Lastly, I know we've all seen these Memes all over the internet but they are so true!  Maybe help your child to pick out their favorite failure quote when times get tough.  Mistakes help us learn.

If you google 'quotes about failure', you will have plenty to choose from!



Here are some other resources:

* Helpful website with more in depth strategies & information

Some great books for kids:

1. Nobody's Perfect

2. Mistakes make you Quake - a great workbook from my favorite series

3. Ish - shout out to Mrs. Laliberte- thanks for the suggestion :)

4. The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes 

5. What to do when Good Enough isn't Good Enough 

Positive Mindset

We teach our kids so many great social/emotional strategies here at Wheelock Elementary and one of my favorite lessons teaches our students about the power of positive thinking.  We encounter so many small challenges and/or road blocks in a day and one of the best ways to handle a problem is to change our way of thinking to help us persevere.  I teach the kids to channel their "Inner Coaches", or the little voice that everyone has inside their heads, to brainstorm a more positive and proactive way to think about a situation.  Shown above is a poster that I have utilized in many classes and small sessions to help teach the kids, through example, how to change their thinking.  This poster happens to come from a time that I visited Miss Murphy's second grade class and they did a wonderful job coming up with positive thoughts!

I always like to end this lesson with a visual the students can each keep at their desk as a reminder. Below, I have displayed some examples of empowering positive 'mantras' that the students came up with on their own and have attached to their name tags.  They were so creative and several of the students wanted to use more than one statement!  I hope you found this blog post helpful and I hope you will challenge your children to change their thoughts to be more positive when they come across a problem or 'roadblock'.

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? 

What a wonderful time of year, the start of school is!  Full of new beginnings, fresh starts and of course the opportunity to make new friends by filling buckets!  At the start of the year I always read one of my absolutely favorite stories, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  This wonderful story helps kids to learn the importance of small kind acts by teaching kids that everyone has an imaginary bucket that needs to be filled.  Someone can fill a bucket by being kind and thoughtful to another person.  And when kids are kind and thoughtful to others not only do they fill someone else's bucket, their bucket gets full too!  This book also spends some time highlighting the negative impacts of teasing and bullying by calling this action, 'bucket dipping'.  A 'bucket dipper' has an empty bucket and cannot fill their own bucket by dipping into someone else's. 

Here at Wheelock, the students have the opportunity to share their examples of being 'bucket fillers' by filling out a slip and putting them into the 'Wheelock Bucket' (see above picture), so that their example can be shared on the bulletin board.  This lovely bulletin board is displayed on the first floor near the middle set of stairs.  Here are a couple great examples of students being 'bucket fillers' at Wheelock:

"Give a compliment to a friend"

"I shared a game by compromising" 

 Thank you so much for visiting my blog and I hope that your buckets get filled :)

Spring has Sprung :)

Ahhhhh, spring is here!  The warm weather has finally arrived and the students are so happy to be playing outside without all that snow equipment!  With the warm weather comes an increase of free space and playing new games (which is awesome-of course).  However, we usually see a bit of an increase in some social conflicts.  Through this post, I hope to provide some communication about the language we use here at Wheelock and also some tools you can use at home to support social problem solving.

Here at Wheelock we use both Open Circle and the Social Thinking curriculums to help teach our students how to navigate social conflicts and promote their emotional development.   There are different types of social problems and all the classes use a 1-5 point scale (tiny-huge) in conjunction with terms like ‘double d’ (destructive and dangerous) behaviors, to help educate students. 

We encourage our students to solve 1-3 point problems on their own using expected language (ex. teasing and/or 1x conflict) by using a calm & firm voice to stick up for yourself.  However, we put great importance on the fact that they should always tell a trusted adult right away if the issue is a ‘double d’ (destructive or dangerous-4 point problem) and/or the situation does not get resolved when they tried to use their words.   One way to stick up for yourself is by using “I statements”, for example- “I felt upset because the rules were not followed, next time I hope we can figure out the rules before we start the game”.   Here is a great visual to support this:

There are a lot of great books to support bullying that you could read with kids at home, here are some of my recommendations:

My Secret Bully by Trudy Ludwig:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1582461597/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1582461597&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Just Kidding by Trudy Ludwig

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Kidding-Trudy-Ludwig/dp/1582461635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429108158&sr=8-1&keywords=just+kidding

Confessions of a former bully by Trudy Ludwig:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307931137/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0307931137&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Speak up and Get Along:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1575421828/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1575421828&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Tease Monster by Julia Cook

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934490474/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1934490474&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog, I hope these resources are helpful! 

Interruption Strategies

My Mouth is A Volcano 

This week I had the pleasure of teaching one of my favorite social skills lessons to a lovely second grade class.  This story by Julia Cook uses kid friendly imagery with great perspective taking skills to teach kids why it's important not to interrupt.  The main character Louis thinks his words are so important they cannot wait ;but when it was his turn to be the star student, he did not like being interrupted (or erupted as the book would say).  Turns out other student's have volcanoes too!  We had some nice discussions about how it can make other people feel when they are interrupted. 

The book teaches a great way to take a deep breath in and we brainstormed some extra ideas too!

A few Interruption Strategies:

1. Raising your hand and wanting to be called on. 

2. Take a deep breath in, breathe the words out of your nose and imagine they are hanging out until it is your turns.  When it's your turn breathe in and imagine the words coming back to you!

3. Pushing your lips together and counting your teeth with your tongue. 

4. Using our "Inner Coaches"- to tell ourselves positive statements to help us like:  "it's okay to wait" and "You will get your turn soon"

5. Using a fidget or stress ball

We even had some real life practice when I asked them to tell me about a fun thing they did on vacation and they were all able to wait their turn!  Of course we all make mistakes, and this will get better with practice but we can always say "we're sorry" if we hurt someone's feelings!

Thanks for visiting my blog!  

Executive Function

Hello Family and Friends of Wheelock School, I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving break!  I am writing a blog post today inspired by Executive Functioning.  This is definitely a 'trending term' these days and I'd love to take this opportunity to share with you some brief information and a great local and FREE workshop!

The Medfield Public Library is hosting a workshop titled "Natural Solutions to Executive Function Struggles and ADHD" by Dr. Jolene Ross sponsored by The Foundation for Wellness Professionals on Thursday December 11th at 7pm.  I have not personally attended this workshop (nor am I necessarily endorsing this); however I am always a fan of 'free' development opportunities and the chance to learn something to help our students!

Executive Function is a set of mental processes that help us do such things as; plan, organize, remember details and sustain attention to name a few.  The National Center for Learning Disabilities has a more detailed explanation found here: What is executive Function?  Executive Function is associated with the prefontal cortex, a part of the brain that may still be developing up until an individual is 25 years old.

The good news is there are still things we can do at a young age to help Executive Function.  Here at Wheelock we use several strategies to help develop this skill set for our students such as providing graphic organizers, visual checklists and helping to get kids started by breaking multi-step tasks into smaller 'chunks' (just to name a few).

There are also ways you can work on Executive Function at home.  I saw an interesting article highlighting some games that kids not only enjoy playing but also promote these skills and you might even already have some of these games (chess is included); Five Games to help improve EF.  There are also some great affordable Apps out there to support executive functioning at home; such as the Time Timer to help with time management and another one called the Picture Scheduler.  I also have a couple good books listed in the resources section.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog and I hope I was able to shed some light on Executive Function. 

Spoon: cute book- IMPORTANT message

What a wonderful new discovery of a book I couldn't believe I did not own!  A wonderful parent lent me this book and I was thrilled to present it to a third grade classroom, thank you Mrs. Sheehan for a great opportunity! Thank you as well for sharing your images! Here is a short synopsis:

He's always been a happy little utensil. But lately, he feels like life as a spoon just isn't cutting it. He thinks Fork, Knife, and The Chopsticks all have it so much better than him. But do they? And what do they think about Spoon? A book for all ages, Spoon serves as a gentle reminder to celebrate what makes us each special."

We had some great discussions about the message of the story and all the students understood we all have special skills/traits that makes us unique!  I tied this message into a hands on activity where the kids each spent time coming up with 5 things they like about themselves and makes them unique.  I was amazed at the examples the students came up with.  Examples like such as: "I like my hair color" to "I like my enthusiasm", too cute!

I hope to reach many more classrooms with this story and would encourage that this book be added to your collection at home :)