Teaching About Feelings in the Classroom
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is now seen as a critical component for school success. It is not just one more add-on to your curriculum. It turns out to be an important foundation for students’ ability to learn and apply their learning to their lives. Emotional intelligence is strongly linked to staying in school, avoiding risky…
Help your Child Understand Feelings
There are many kinds of knowing. Research over the past 20 years tells us that knowing and understanding our emotions, emotional intelligence, is just as important as our intellectual intelligence. It involves understanding and being able to name our emotions as well as being able to use them productively in problem solving. Want to encourage…
Building “Empathy Muscles” with your Child
Empathy is a skill and an awareness that we can build – in ourselves and our children. Empathy is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes and connect to their feelings or to take their perspective. It is also the ability to regulate our own emotions and be able to separate our own feelings…
Ghosts in our Closets
As we enter the time of year when the days get shorter and nights get longer one of the traditions that many of us share in the United States is Halloween. Ghosts, goblins, witches (and now zombies) are part of the ambience and excitement of the tradition. This is the night when goblins roam the…
Peaceful Parenting in a Fast-Paced World
Peace is a community affair. Sure we can create a semblance of peace by building big walls around ourselves– blocking the wind from our little corners of the lake, but it isn’t real peace. Peace is about the agreements we make with each other, about how we fasten ourselves together and become whole. It is…
What Kind of Bystander are You?
Imagine that your daughter and her friends are sitting hanging out in the family room – talking and texting and you hear, “Oh that is so gay!” Do you feel uncomfortable but remain silent because you don’t want to embarrass your daughter? Do you wait and talk about it in private afterwards? What do you…
