Tag: parenting

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anxiety

Banking on Anxiety: Free eBook

With children having missed a significant portion of the year in school and coronavirus dominating the media and household conversations, there is a chance that children may be feeling anxious about returning to the classroom.

Valuable content is abundant out there for teacher, parents and children to support them in their return and I’ve written my own contribution to this cause.

My eBook Banking on Anxiety includes a lens through which to view anxiety alongside strategies that may help teachers and parents prevent minor anxieties from becoming bigger ones with early intervention.

Click the link below to download and please share far and wide or let me know what you think!

banking-on-anxietyDownload

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Behaviour Management parenting

Top Quality Reward Systems

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Top quality reward systems can be a great way to start the year and establish the standard of behaviour you want in your classroom. They can be fantastic for intervening if a class is particularly challenging to work with. They can be a wonderful way to motivate children or an individual child to apply themselves to a task. 

By committing to a reward system, you are taking a primarily positive approach that will objectively show you if the desired behaviour is increasing and if you are rewarding it regularly. 

This article explains what the key elements are, what the steps involve and common reasons that they may not work.

Four Keys to an Effective Reward System

Lock in these four keys before creating your system. All successful reward system have these four elements in common.

  1. The students must find the reward desirable. If they don’t, the system will be doomed to fail. Provide choice and pick suitable rewards that you both can agree on. Beware of “reinforcer satiation”. This is where a once desirable reward has lost its novelty. Keep it fresh and change it up.
  2. Ensure the behaviour is defined, explained and practised. Choosing between one and four behaviours for a whole class will keep it extremely clear what is expected. Instead of rewarding “being good”, reward “listening when another is speaking”. Reward the specific behaviour you want to increase. Spend time practising what it looks like as you introduce the system. Ensure the behaviour is within their ability.
  3. Decide how often the children will need to be rewarded. When you set up the system first, reward frequently and overtly. This makes it crystal clear what you are rewarding. Pair your rewards with very specific positive language. “Excellent Caleb, I noticed you were looking at Ellen when she was talking, I have to reward that”. Watch as that behaviour spreads through the room. As the days pass, gradually reduce the frequency at which you reward the behaviours but still intermittently reward and praise them. Wait until break time to reward them. Delay it until the end of the day when they are ready. Finally, the end of the week. If the standard of behaviour drops, increase the frequency you reward again. Find the sweet spot and gradually reduce.
  4. If the behaviour is not forthcoming, do not give them the rewards but equally, do not complain. The attention and rewards are solely for the students who are performing the behaviour. This provides consistency in your approach and will harness children who love any attention to your advantage. If they want your attention, they must play by the rules the teacher and students have agreed.

Five Steps to Implementing a Reward System

Whatever you do, spend time working through steps one to three. Think of it like building a house. Build solid foundations and your house will stand the test of time and stormy weather. If you skip the foundations and start by creating a lovely display, you are building on sand and it is sure to decrease the chances of success.

  1. Write and explain clear definitions of the behaviour you want to increase. Actions that can be seen and heard and cannot be argued.
  2. Establish how often the defined behaviour occurs before implementing the system. This helps you decide how often you need to reward it. Raise the standard and increase the time between behaviour and reward as they improve.
  3. List a menu of rewards that they can choose from. Let them have a say in this step to increase compliance.
  4. Create an attractive display. This will maximise buy-in from the kids.
  5. Explain the system clearly.  Taking the time to do this reduces ambiguity and creates excitement as the children can see clearly what they have to do to be rewarded.

Four Reasons It’s Not Working

There is no magic strategy that will solve all problems. Maybe a reward system is not suited to your context. However, there are four common reasons why reward systems fail. Consider these issues and how you might fix them if this ever applies to you.

  1. The students may not clearly understand the expectations or the behaviour may not be within their ability. Put more time into explaining and practising the behaviour you want to increase.
  2. You moved too fast from continuously rewarding the behaviour to infrequently rewarding it. Return to immediately rewarding the specific behaviour you want to increase.
  3. Reinforcer satiation has occurred. The once amazing reward that was on offer has lost its shine. Change the system and rewards to freshen things up.
  4. There are inconsistencies. The child knows that the reward will be given to them anyway. Maybe, they are getting negative attention which they find rewarding. Once the system is set, finetuned and explained, it needs to be executed consistently by all adults in the room to maximise its impact.

Giving children rewards for positive actions and behaviour creates a rapport between teacher and student. If the four keys are secure and the five steps have been taken in the correct order, you will slowly be able to reduce the reliance on your reward systems as the children habitually perform the behaviour. Reward systems are a valuable part of a teacher’s toolkit. Ensure that you use them correctly.

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Categories
Anger Management Behaviour Management parenting

7 Common Triggers for Meltdowns

For teachers and parents, supporting children when they are having a meltdown or tantrum is a stressful experience. As a teacher, when I am working with a child who has entered a full emotional outburst, I become very self-conscious of people watching me and how I handle it. I also enter an emotionally heightened state which impacts on my decision making. I strongly want to help the child calm down and as they are now in a fight-or-flight state, reasoning and logic have gone out the window. At this point, it is about ensuring the safety of the people and objects in the vicinity and waiting for the child to come down from their heightened state.

If meltdowns are a repetitive part of your day, it is time to become a detective and start to decipher why they are occurring. Bishop Desmond Tutu has a great quote that “there comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” This is what we are going to do. If we can find the trigger, we can intervene here and the urge to meltdown will naturally dissipate. There are seven common areas which we need to be curious about and consider.

1. Internal Issues

Are they melting down because they are tired, hungry or sick?

2. Sensory Issues

Is there an issue with noises, smells or something they’re in contact with? Are they becoming bored or over-stimulated?

3. Lack of Structure

Is there a clear structure and routine on the day? Are they aware of what it is and what is expected? (App Recommendation here)

4. Work

Do they hate new or challenging tasks and situations? Do they fear them?

5. Waiting

Do they meltdown when they do not get their desires met instantly? Are they incapable of dealing with disappointment or the word “No”?

6. Self-Esteem

Do they get triggered by threats to their self-esteem like making mistakes, losing a game or being criticised?

7. Attention

Are they reacting negatively to an unmet need for attention or approval? 

From reading through this list, it is evident that we would intervene differently according to the trigger. Treating a child who is sick and melting down the same way as a child who is incapable of dealing with no makes zero sense. Once we have the trigger figured out, we start to work on designing strategies to iron it out. Taking this approach will go upstream from the problem and prevent it before it starts.

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Categories
Behaviour Management

Why Michael Jordan Can Teach Us About Behaviour

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Michael Jordan won six NBA championship rings as part of the Chicago Bulls team. As good as he was, he couldn’t have achieved such a feat without the likes of Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, John Paxson and all the other quality players that played alongside him. There was another key that gets a little shine in The Last Dance documentary: The system.

The Triangle Offense

The Chicago Bulls used a system for playing the game called the Triangle Offense. Without boring you on the ins and outs of this intricate system, it involved the players working in groups of three to form a triangle and required constant movement, crisp passing and numerous options. What happened on the court through the system was a result of the player’s decisions as opposed to other teams who had pre-determined set plays and strategies. The system – although rigorous – moulds to the strengths of the players and the system works best with players who had a high game IQ. The players follow the framework of the system and fundamental principles, however, there is an infinite number of potential actions that can emerge as a result of what is happening at the moment and what the strengths of the situation are.

Michael won six rings playing this system and Phil Jackson – the coach – won even more using it. The system works. How can we use this system in schools?

Tie It Back To Behaviour Please

I’m not suggesting for a second that we start lining up children in triangles to start promoting positive behaviour. There are definite learnings, however, to take from this hugely successful system at guiding a group successfully to the desired goal.

If the system they had used was too rigid and inflexible, players would not have been able to abide by for all 82 NBA regular-season games. It just can’t be done. People have personalities and they need to shine through. They need to be allowed to express themselves from time to time.

If the Chicago Bulls system was set on pre-determined strategies, there would have been some success but this is always limited. Eventually, opposing teams start to work out your strategies and counteract them successfully. Alternatively, the strategies don’t suit the strengths of your players so never can be executed with precision.

The Classroom

Think of the classroom as your very own Chicago Bulls team. Think of the characters in the room that need to express themselves. I believe that if I use the predetermined teaching styles and behaviour strategies that I use every year, I will have the same level of success as a predetermined basketball system if I am not considering the class I have in front of: limited.

I wrote previously about the possibility of labelling our children with ADHD, ODD and ADD being counter-productive. Part of the reason is this kind of labelling leans teachers towards using predetermined strategies guided by a diagnosis as opposed to the child’s strengths and personality. If they are successful, great. If they are not, however, the teacher is left scratching their head or the child is being labelled as extremely difficult.

Now think of a classroom that utilises a triangle-offence style system. There is a clear framework for how the class functions. There are a minimal set of rules aimed at health and safety and basic respect. The children are clear on these rules but understand there is room for expression within them. They can shout out if they are super passionate about something. They can leave their seat without permission if they need to. They have a level of choice as to how they express themselves through their work. They can disagree with the teacher if they have a reason for doing so. Will there be children in some classes who still have social, emotional and behavioural difficulties? Absolutely. In these situations, they would need to be further supported with a more individual framework that has a process, yet is flexible.

A framework like this could be completed in eight steps:

  1. Define the problem behaviour clearly.
  2. Look at what solutions have been attempted.
  3. Look at the exceptional time when they don’t behave this way.
  4. Discuss how you would make the problem worse.
  5. Discuss how the child would be treated if the problem didn’t exist.
  6. Set a single SMART objective.
  7. Create an Action Plan.
  8. Review its success.

A model, such as this one from Winning without Fighting, offers that rigorous framework similar to the triangle offence of the Chicago Bulls. It has clear guidelines, clear rules and an infinite number of potential outcomes. Flexibility, adaptability and using what you see in the moment and the strengths of the individuals you are teaching are huge factors in successful behaviour management.

Don’t agree with me? Just look at how Phil Jackson managed Denis Rodman successfully!

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Categories
Homeschool Inclusion parenting Special Education

How Can We Help Children Missing Occupational Therapy?

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Perhaps we are concerned about children who made great progress over the year and are now missing their physical education with their class, their active time on yard and their one-to-one time with a teacher or occupational therapist. We may worry that they may not be progressing and could even be regressing. How can we help maintain this progress and extend them where possible? Enable Ireland can help.

Enable Ireland provide services to children with disabilities and have expert teams that support them and their families through each stage of life.

With the current restrictions, their clinical experts and therapists have made a playlist of 44 videos that can provide a focus for anyone looking to improve movement, balance, core strength, flexibility or motor skills. The full list is available here but here are some popular areas which you can use as a parent or recommend as a teacher:

Wiggly Warm-Up

Lower Limb Stretching: Range Of Motion

Core Exercises For Junior Age Children

Core Strength: Jigsaw Challenge

Squish the Duck Challenge for Balance

Lower Limbs: Strengthening

Balance at Home

Pilates

Movement Regulation

Fine Motor Therapy At Home

Gross Motor Skills: Animal Walks

Wheelchair Exercises

With the great range of resources here, parents and teachers can consider the priority needs, age and personality of the child to select suitable activities that will ensure any progress achieved to this point can be maintained. 

Anyone who finds these resources useful should look at the Enable Ireland website for further guidance around the area of speech and language, social stories and more.

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Categories
anxiety Behaviour Management Inclusion

How to build your child’s routine in 30 seconds

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In a time of so much unknown, controlling the controllable things can have a huge benefit on our young children. I discussed in a previous article how the deterioration of family functioning can lead to anxiety disorders in children and how parents can mitigate the potential damages of the coronavirus on their children’s mental health (article here). Establishing a stable routine is one strategy that we can use to maintain family functioning and reduce the air of uncertainty in the household. Visually representing this timetable and showing it to your child maximises the benefits but how can we do this if we have no time to sit at a computer or lack a printer and laminator to ensure its pretty?

This is where the app picturepath comes to the rescue. This is a predominantly free app and is extremely quick and easy-to-use. You simply set up an account and input your child’s first name and you start to build their routine with the pre-made most common activities and symbols. If you’re missing an activity, you can create your own and add images or icons from the icon library.

Once you have created the routine, you can switch the app to child mode where they can view the timetable in its totality or a “Now and next” mode. The child can then tick off activities as they are completed and start to work their way through the day.

Parent mode on the left, Child mode on right

I would highly recommend this for children with autism or younger children who are missing the structure of school. I am an advocate of the phrase that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and when it comes to behaviour, providing routine and structure is certainly a preventative measure.

For those interested, the links are provided below for both android and apple:

Android Version: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acorn.picapp&hl=en_IE

Apple Version: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/picturepath/id1339643269

Note: I have no relation to or knowledge of the app developers. I just love things that make life easier and promote positive behaviour. This does both so I’m pumped!

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Categories
anxiety parenting

4 Ways Parents Can Protect Anxious Children During Coronavirus

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Avigdor Klingman detailed how we can prevent children from developing anxiety to the point of post-traumatic stress disorder (PDST). Klingman had some interesting thoughts that have implications for the current coronavirus pandemic and how we can try and mitigate the dangers. He provided three variables that predict a child’s adjustment to trauma like the one we are experiencing and four ways that parents can help prevent the impact trauma has on a child.

Children are influenced far more by their environment than adults. Their adjustment and reaction to trauma will, therefore, be impacted by how parents and siblings respond to the coronavirus and the impact it is having. Children will take their stress-response cues from their parent’s and will interpret the traumatic event according to how their parents do.

Three parental variables predict a child’s adjustment – or maladjustment – to trauma:

  1. Separation from significant family members during a traumatic event.
  2. The parent’s traumatic stress reaction.
  3. Deterioration of family functioning.

Although the thoughts of contributing to their child’s development of anxiety could add to a parent’s stress, this could instead be viewed as a controllable factor when so many more factors are uncontrollable right now. The following actions are within your control and actionable right now:

Control your stress

Parents cannot pour from an empty cup and cannot reduce the stress levels of their child if they are stressed themselves. Implementing a self-care routine that will help you maintain a level head is paramount to helping your child. This can be as simple as an episode of your favourite Netflix show or as complex as a meditation/yoga/journaling routine.

Early Detection

Ensure you are available for your child throughout this crisis. If a parent is stressed, a child may lose adult support when they need it most. Keeping an eye out for early signs of traumatic stress can help prevent a small problem becoming a bigger one down the line. Communicate with your child openly, let them know that you are controlling everything you can, their reaction is normal and they are not alone in this.

Reframe the Event

It is easy to get stuck in a cycle of news that is negative and scary. Turn off the global news and start to reframe the event in the confines of your own home. Discuss it as an opportunity for more family time, a chance to practice hobbies they enjoy, gratitude that everyone in the family unit is safe and well under the roof. Reframing the event and communicating this to your child will impact how they view it. It might be challenging to change your mindset but this is important.

Portray Confidence

Communicating confidence to your child that you have the controllable factors under control is important to how they respond to the current stress. Keep as calm a routine as is viable. Demonstrate confidence that things will improve and this too, shall pass. Parents have a huge role in exacerbating or buffering the child’s response so conveying this confidence will help reduce feelings of anxiety that could grow as time passes.

Klingman’s research points to continuity and simplicity as successful traits of effective interventions when supporting children through traumatic events. Thankfully, simple strategies for anxiety are readily available even in the confines of our own home. I provide 6 ways to ease anxiety here along with a more fleshed out explanation of how to implement journaling with your child here.

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anxiety Behaviour Management Homeschool parenting

Homeschool and the 80/20 Rule

Teachers, parents and children have been thrust into remote teaching, homeschooling and remote learning in most countries around the world right now and we rush to make sense of it all. How can we teach, facilitate learning and learn in our roles while also navigating the unavoidable stress of a global pandemic?

The first thing all three groups have to do is ensure that the keystones of self-care are in place. This can be done by making self-care a priority. Nothing will be achieved if you burn yourself out with anxiety and stress and I suggest six ways to do this here. Journalling is a personal favourite. Exercise is also paramount for me. I like one strategy for the mind and one for the body to keep a balance.

Once self-care is being looked after, we have to look at educating and being educated. Thankfully, lots of teacher, parents and students are full of enthusiasm, creativity and drive to make sure that we make the most of what we can with the internet providing a wealth of support and advice.

Filter it.

Being wary of taking on too much whether, in the role of teaching, parenting or learning is something that needs to be considered. All the best practice being championed online is fantastic: as long as we don’t try to do it all. As Greg McKeown wrote in Essentialism, “you can do anything but not everything”. We must have a filter where we can adopt the most effective ideas and draw a line where we are satisfied that what we are doing is efficient and sustainable.

Pareto’s Principle.

This is where Pareto’s Principle can come into play. Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was a distinguished philosopher and economist who can help us ensure that we are prepared for a marathon and not a sprint.

Pareto’s principle is that 80% of results will come from 20% of actions.

This is relevant to teachers, parents and students therefore as the opposite of this statistic could be true. 80% of actions are only getting 20% of our results. So as we try to juggle managing our self-care, home life, professional life, relationships and children, we should question every initiative we are using or considering and pose the question:

“Is this a lot more work for very little benefit?”

It is easy to fall into the trap of being busy but not productive and Pareto’s principle and the question it poses to every action we take right now can help us maintain our equilibrium and the equilibrium of our loved ones over the long-term. Absorb what is necessary and discard what is not.

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Behaviour Management Homeschool parenting

Motivate Homeschool Children Without Rewards

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In a previous article, I described how a parent might go about setting up a reward system at home. The parents might decide to reward their child for behaving a certain way with something external like sweets, additional screen time, preferred activity or anything that would motivate them to cooperate. This is an effective way to increase desired behaviour but there are people out there that don’t enjoy the transactional concept of a reward system. They don’t like the mentality that their child will only learn if they get something they like in return. They want their child to want to learn. Well, if its ideas for this you are looking for, let me introduce you to a different kind of motivator.

Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation can be explained as an inner motivation which is driven by the reward or enjoyment they get from doing the activity itself. Think about the child who practices a sport for hours or practices a musical instrument incessantly without any pressure from parents. This child is intrinsically motivated to engage with the activity. They do it because they enjoy doing it, the sense of achievement from doing it well and the feeling that they are improving at it.

As children pass through the school system, the dream can be that they make the shift from external motivators like praise, jellies and extra play time to this intrinsic motivation where they engage in learning because they love it.

How Can Parents Intrinsically Motivate Their Children?

Parents who don’t want to offer external rewards to their children to behave and learn, thankfully, have numerous options to help develop this self-motivation in their children. There is no magic formula but there are plenty of options:

Choice

As your child is being homeschooled, there is more opportunity to allow them to direct their learning. Allowing them to have partial (or total) say in how they learn over the next few weeks could provide that inner motivation they need to truly engage with tasks. Let them choose the books they read, let them choose the songs they learn, let them choose what countries they want to research. You can even let them choose when they want to learn completely. Giving the child ownership over their learning can be empowering and you may be surprised at how immersed in topics and activities they become.

Variety

If your child is not ready to choose their topics and schedule, variety is said to be the spice of life! Your child may be bored by the repetitive nature of the daily compulsory task which is dropping their motivation through the floor. Creativity is all that is needed to introduce variety. Instead of just demanding they read a book to you daily which results in a row, why don’t you record them reading and pretend your making a youtube video for other children? As opposed to learning about a country from a book, why don’t you encourage them to create a project or design a quiz about the country to give an adult later on? Your imagination is the limit on this one and, graciously, we also have the internet for a wealth of ideas.

Resources

Some children can loathe the idea of writing sentences in a copy, but when you give them a whiteboard and a marker, it can seem like Christmas. Providing attractive resources to engage in a task can bring a wonderful sense of joy to an activity. Children, suddenly, can take enormous pride in presenting their work when using different ranges of pencils, markers, chalks, pens, crayons and twistables or through using coloured card. If the goal is to learn about a country, does it matter if they write sentences in pencil or with marker? Absolutely not. You could even let them type their sentences if the act of writing isn’t the goal. 

Pursuit of Passions

One of the best ways of motivating children to behave and learn is facilitating the pursuit of their passions. During their homeschooling, there could be huge scope for allowing them to focus and learn about areas they are passionate about.

For example, the child who loves football could engage in his P.E through football, his reading could be about his favourite team, his maths could be adding up points in the premier league, his geography could be exploring which football teams belong to which country and his history could be about football during the world war. 

Facilitating their passions in this way could turn a stressful daily struggle to engage them in meaningful learning into an enteraining and educational process where you develop a closer bond with your child.

Intrinsically motivating children can be a tricky process of trial-and-error. It is impossible to know what will provide true inner motivation to drive them to want to engage for the love of the task and its results, but if parents are willing to put in the time thinking, planning and providing options for their child, they might just crack their magic formula for learning. 

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Behaviour Management Homeschool parenting

How to Motivate Homeschoolers

Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

By now, a lot of parents have their children at home and have either started or contemplated starting homeschooling. There is a lot of information out there right now which can be overwhelming. I believe that the number one priority is to maintain a happy and calm environment. If your child is feeling anxious, this needs to be addressed as soon as possible and I have written about potential solutions for anxiety along with a more extensive explanation of how to use journaling for this purpose also.

However, your child may be calm and, as a parent or guardian, you may be eager to engage them with some academic learning. The question is how to do this successfully? There are general principles that teachers use to encourage positive behaviour such as providing routine and choice and using a specific language. These are key to preventing misbehaviour before it has a chance to start. The next thing that is needed is motivation.

Extrinsic motivation

You may have heard your child talking about “points” they receive in school for being good. Perhaps, they can cash in these points for some kind of reward at the end of the day or week. Maybe, your child talks about their table being crowned “The Table of the Day” and they get to have some reward for their troubles. These are examples of the teacher extrinsically motivating the children. They are offering an external reward in exchange for a behaviour.

Parents can use this concept also to motivate their child to complete tasks and behave a certain way. There are 3 key principles that are necessary to ensure successful use of extrinsic motivators:

The Reward

The child has to be motivated by the reward on offer. It is not a reward just because you think it is. Picking a true reward is a vital first step. Examples of rewards could be sweets, screen time, cooking their favourite dinner, getting to pick the movie, extra pocket money, going out with them to play their favourite game in the garden or anything that they love.

The Behaviour

Pick one or two very specific behaviours to reward and make sure the child knows what they are. Instead of rewarding “being good”, reward “sitting at the kitchen” and “answering five questions” or whatever you specifically want them to do. Once you have picked a desirable reward and one or two behaviours that the child is able to perform, you are setting yourself up for success.

The Frequency

Finally, you need to judge how often to reward your child. As a general rule of thumb, younger children need to be rewarded more frequently. If they write five sentences, they might need to get their reward straight away to maintain motivation. Older children are generally able to wait longer, so their reward could be additional time on a games console at the end of the day or even a special reward at the end of the week. The frequency of the reward needs to be decided by the parent based on their child’s ability.

Two Simple Examples of Successful Systems

Once you have decided on the three conditions above. You can decide how to package it to make it most attractive. Think of yourself as a salesperson and the more positive and excited you are about this new system, the more excited they will be! Presenting the new reward system so they can physically see their progress can be very motivating and can be very simply done with household items.

Using an empty jar, for example, you could mark a line on it with a pen or rubber band. Every time the child performs the behaviour, you could add pasta shells or lentils to the jar. Once they have filled the jar to the line, they can get their reward. The band can be made higher if you feel they can behave for longer or can be brought down lower if you feel they need to be rewarded quicker.

A jar and some lentils can help sell your system.

Here is an example of a visual way of presenting your reward system where the behaviour can be added and the reward. You may say they need to get 3-6 stars awarded depending on their age before they can get their reward.

A whiteboard or paper can be just as effective.

The opportunities are endless and you will find an abundance of options on how to “sell” your system. Make sure your three key principles are locked in first, however, as the success of your system will hinge on the quality of the reward, selection of the behaviour and the frequency of reward above all else.

Best of luck and please share any ideas you what you have found helpful so far or are thinking of trying!

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