For parents, families, and those of us who work with children like myself, I am sure you’ve noticed a stark change in our students’ social and emotional wellbeing these last six months. Some have become more withdrawn. Others rarely leave their rooms. For teachers, you spend hours talking to black screens, only to receive messages typed back in chat…occasionally.
Yet, for some students these new changes might actually be a blessing. For the child who struggles with anxiety, the student who was bullied last year at school, or even the more reserved student who now feels more willing to respond to chat discussions, I’m sure that learning from the comfort of your own home has been a welcome relief.
However, even for these students, I believe now is the time for a little more love and grace. Even before this global pandemic, our students have been increasingly required to navigate more complex challenges:
- increasingly competitive college admissions
- easier access and pressure to use illegal drugs and medications
- navigating an increasingly polarized political landscape
- a planet that is changing – for the worse – right before our eyes
Young children in this generation need and deserve more of our love, empathy, and patience.
I read the story of a young woman describing her experience both needing and fearing mental health support in high school. Her story takes place before the pandemic, and she describes the challenges of attending high school and the severe loneliness she often felt. However, despite her significant mental health struggles, it wasn’t until she broke down in tears in her counselor’s office that she was connected with appropriate supports. Later, only by acknowledging that she needed help and actively addressing her mental health needs, was she able to work through her experiences.
I’ve been fairly silent these last few months. Not only do I not know how to respond to all of the events going on around me, I’m frequently asking questions and reflecting on if it’s even my place to say anything. Add going through a divorce to the mix, and it’s a recipe for feeling more than a little overwhelmed… most of the time if we are being honest. It’s easy to feel lost right now. I often do.
However, I am working on re-prioritizing my own mental and social/emotional health and thought I might share some strategies that have been helpful not only for myself but in working with students.
So here it goes…
WE ARE MODELS FOR OUR CHILDREN WHETHER WE CHOOSE TO BE OR NOT.
1) Labeling our own emotions & Feelings
It starts with understanding our own emotions and feelings. Ask yourself:
Am I listening to myself? My body? My mind?
Only when we understand our own social/emotional state can we then accurately assess our own capacity and ability to help others.
Each day, I intentionally spend time checking in with my own needs and emotions to make sure I am managing them in constructive and healthy ways. Not only do I think this is essential for all of us as people to be doing daily, it’s especially important for those of us who work with children or raise them.
WE ARE MODELS FOR OUR CHILDREN WHETHER WE CHOOSE TO BE OR NOT.
Author Rachel Morris, in her article Listening to Yourself, offers some specific strategies and ways for both students and adults to become more in tune with their thoughts, feelings, and physical wellbeing. As Morris notes, “Being honest with ourselves without editing is a tough skill to master. However, don’t get frustrated; the more you own up to what is really going on, the better at listening to yourself you will become.”
This is one of our biggest challenges right now: Not only paying attention to the social/emotional and mental wellbeing of our children, but of ourselves. We all need to take some time each day and ask ourselves:
- How are we feeling?
- Why are we feeling that way?
- What is driving these emotions?
- Are we expressing our emotions in constructive and healthy ways?
Now, when we see our children and students in states of crises, most of us want to dive in headfirst, immediately, to help them solve their problems and avoid more pain. I understand that completely. We want to protect them. We want to reassure them. We want to tell them they are loved.
But, as soon as they start telling me their stories, does my own emotional baggage still impact me? Am I letting my own mood or expectations allow me judge or shame them rather than listen?
Let’s use a comparison here. If you were on a ship and your child fell overboard, would you immediately jump in to save them?
Or might it be better to take 30 seconds to look around, evaluate your surroundings, find a life saver or two before jumping?
Yet, when we are handing emotions, few of us take at least 30 seconds (yes, for most people an accurate reflection of your social and emotional state may take more than 30 seconds) to pause, evaluate, reflect, and then choose whether to wade in or not.
NOT EVERY SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL PROBLEM IS OURS TO SOLVE. SOME REQUIRE ONLY LISTENING.
Some require nothing but a hug. However, when we don’t take the time to reflect before acting, we often cause more hurt and pain than is necessary (if any is necessary at all). And I would argue that any extra hurt and pain during this time is especially damaging.
Instead when we pause, evaluate, and proceed, we are better able to wade into the conversation not wanting to act on instinct but instead ACTIVELY LISTEN. Only after we listen to ourselves, can we truly listen to others. I may be a pretty good active listener but when I’m pissed, I’m not listening to anyone. No matter what they say.
The next step is to practice actively listening to our children and students.
2) Active Listening
So we are in tune with our social/emotional wellbeing, now what?
The next step is to practice actively listening to our children and students.
Now more than ever, our children desperately need active listeners. Let’s take a minute to think about life from their perspectives. Not only have their lives been completely upended, but most of their social circles, clubs, and extracurricular social activities have been either restricted considerably or completely shut down.
What does this mean?
It means children have limited people they can confide in, few who empathize with their individual losses and changes, and few people they can discuss their unique changes and experiences with confidently.
Yes, parents and teachers, we want to help and sometimes the best way to do that is to listen. These are not our experiences to dictate. It is imperative we make these subjects approachable. We need to actively listen when students want to talk about subjects that may make us uncomfortable but that they have a human right to know.
Children have a right to explore their racial, gender, and biological identities. They will have questions about their socio-economic status, privilege, or lack thereof. With few friends to talk to and adults often correcting, shaming, avoiding, working, or feeling constantly overwhelmed like I often do, children are in desperate need of active listeners. They want to talk about their changing feelings, emotions, and experiences without being subjected to shame.
While I know that active listening is not a new concept, it can have a profound impact on our relationships with our children and students. Genevieve Simperingham, founder of Peaceful Parent Institute, has spent the last twenty years working with and studying parenting. She says,
“Active listening can deepen the bond, the trust, the mutual respect and mutual understanding in relationships… When a parent uses active listening, children generally feel more supported and less controlled.”
Shame corrodes that part of us that believes we can do better and be better.
3) Shame vs. Guilt
Not only do we need to practice actively listening more, we also need to stop using shame as a tool or weapon against our students and children. Shame is one of the most powerful emotions in the human repertoire, yet few people understand the complexities and the damage this emotion can cause.
There is a difference between shame and constructive support. Dr. Claire McCarthy, Senior Faculty Editor for Harvard Health Publishing, recently wrote an article helping parents understand the difference between shame and constructive criticism. She offers suggestions for reframing how we approach negative comments when we speak to our children.
Similarly Brene Brown, my personal shame guru, wrote an entire chapter of her book Daring Greatly about Wholehearted Parenting: Daring to Be the Adults We Want Our Children to Be. In this chapter, Brown focuses on what she deems as the most, and really only, important parenting question: “Are you the adult you want your child to grow up to be?” Brown goes on to explain strategies and approaches for parents to then raise their children to be such people:
“Knowing as we do that shame is positively correlated with addiction, depression, aggressive violence, eating disorders, and suicide, and that guilt is inversely correlated with these outcomes, we naturally would want to raise children who use more guilt self-talk than shame. This means we need to separate our children from their behaviors. As it turns out, there’s a significant difference between you are bad and you did something bad. And, no, it’s not just semantics. Shame corrodes that part of us that believes we can do better and be better. When we shame and label our children, we take away their opportunity to grow and try on new behaviors. If a child tells a lie, she can change that behavior, but if she is a liar – where’s the potential for change in that? Cultivating more guilt self-talk and less same self-talk requires rethinking how we discipline and talk to our children.”
– Brene Brown, Daring Greatly
Why is shame so important, especially in the early stages of development with our families? Brown explains, “childhood experiences of shame change who we are, how we think about ourselves, and our sense of self-worth… Our stories of worthiness -of being enough -begin in our first families. The narrative certainly doesn’t end there, but what we learn about ourselves and how we learn to engage with the world as children sets a course that either will require us to spend a significant part of our life fighting to reclaim our self-worth or will give us hope, courage, and resilience for our journey.”
How do you want your children to grow up? How do you want them to venture out into the world?
We have control to stop, pause, reflect, and act.
4) Validation
After actively listening to these small humans, then we need to validate not only them but also their emotions and experiences. This doesn’t mean absolute agreement, and it certainly doesn’t mean blind agreement. But it does mean we hear them and validate their feelings. What might this sound like?
Student: I hate that my team can’t go to the playoffs this year because of COVID. This sucks.
Validation: Yeah, that must feel like a huge loss right now. Do you want to talk more about it?
Again, it comes back to actively listening to yourselves and reflecting.
- What are your values?
- Do your children share your values?
- How do you talk to them when they don’t share your values?
Do you actively listen to them when they are explaining why they don’t share your values or are you figuring out ways to win the argument or shame them into submission?
Again, actively listening isn’t about shame or winning. It’s about empathy. How can we better understand our students and children’s experiences to support them? It has been awhile since most of us have been that young. Few of us likely remember all the hormones, thoughts, and feelings racing through their bodies and minds.
Our priorities have changed. What we value has likely changed. However, just because what we value and what our students and children value isn’t the same, does that mean we can’t connect? Can’t empathize? Can’t listen to what they are saying just to hear them and be there as a support? Our role isn’t to shape these children into what we want them to be. Our role is to support them. Be there when they make mistakes. Offer suggestions when needed. Allow them to explore, to learn, to be curious without the fear of shame following them around.
Students are experiencing loss right now. We are all experiencing significant loss right now. We don’t all need to agree that our losses are significant to others or prove they are more significant than others. Rather, we need to support each other as we work through our own losses.
Maybe your family is struggling with the loss of a loved one. The loss of a sporting event or practice feels incredibly insignificant to you. It isn’t for your child. Minimizing these emotions, making them feel shame for their feelings, and making them feel embarrassed for wanting to talk about it will cause damage. It will teach them that we have control over our feelings.
WE DON’T.
We have control over our actions. We have control to stop, pause, reflect, and act. How we feel is instinctive. Teaching children to shove their emotions down and pretend they don’t exist will cause long lasting, permanent damage.
Instead we need to be open and communicative with our emotions. We need to be open when we are feelings, angry, excited, anxious, depressed, even ashamed. And we need to validate our children’s emotions daily – multiple times a day. Right now, they are likely feeling angry. Sad. Lethargic. Apathetic.
How are you responding to their emotional states? How are you helping them to manage all of this loss?
Children’s Hospital of Richman created a helpful infographic to help parents understand how their student might be expressing their emotions through their reactions and responses.
Understanding our emotions is how we teach our children to empower themselves. Instead of being enslaved to their emotions, we regain control. When we recognize how we are feeling, then we can figure out why, and learn how to act in constructive, healthy ways. When we validate our children’s emotions, they learn that feelings themselves are not shameful, but when they act in a way that is misaligned with their values those actions cause guilt.
Seattle Children’s Hospital here in Washington has put together a helpful resource for parents looking for more specifics about how to validate their children’s feelings. Essentially, they help parents understand the purpose of validation and ways to approach this when responding to their child.
Ready to try. Fail. And try again.
Supported. Validated. Loved.
5) Modeling Appropriate Responses
Now that we’ve talked about:
- Actively Listened
- Empathized with you children and students
- Validated their emotions
What’s next?
The final step to a healthy mental and social/emotional wellbeing is to model appropriate behaviors for expressing these emotions.
We all say things we regret. No one is immune from this human flaw. Instead of pretending we are perfect and impervious to misspeaking, we need to own what we say and sincerely apologize for any pain or shame that we have caused.
After apologizing, we need to make a commitment to do better. We need to teach our children and students how to identify and label their feelings and develop ways to work through these emotions constructively. We need to model for our children and students how we would want them to act with their own children someday.
Children do not spontaneously learn good habits and behaviors. As Brown explains from her own experiences as a mom, “Even though the vulnerability of parenting is terrifying at times, we can’t afford to armor ourselves against it or push away – it is our richest, most fertile ground for teaching and cultivating connection, meaning, and love.”
As teachers and parents, we want our children to live wholeheartedly which as Brown explains means they “…carry a sense of authenticity and belonging with them, rather than searching for it in external places.” But this means that as teachers and parents, we need to “…recognize our own armor and model for our children how to take it off, be vulnerable, show up, and let ourselves be seen and known.”
Teaching is not easy. Parenting is not easy. Not if you are doing it or them right. But our children deserve to feel loved. Belong. Know that they will be supported even when they make a mistake. They need our constant support. They need to know that when they make a mistake, they won’t be confronted with shame, but rather understanding and suggestions on how to repair their situations.
Yes, this is a tall order. Imagine if all families had the ability to undo years of emotional training and quickly develop these relationships with their children and students. Perhaps that’s not a realistic goal but it’s never too late to adopt these skills and rebuild a healthy mental/social/emotional wellbeing.
Think of this as a process that both you and your students or children can explore together. Why do we spend years training our brains and mental capabilities with years of schooling and classes only to ignore our emotions? Why do we pretend they don’t need the same amount of time and energy to effectively regulate?
This process doesn’t have to be done alone and shouldn’t be. By teaching our students to understand, discuss, and appropriately express their feelings, they will be in a much better space to reflect and take care of their own personal needs. Shouldn’t that be how we want our children to enter the real world?
Ready to try. Fail. And try again, knowing we will support, validate, and love them along the way.