Discovering Mindfulness: Well Being and Creativity in the Classroom
GoingDeeperBrainparticipantLF2015.03.13
1. GOING DEEPER WITH
THE TEACHING
PYRAMID:
TEACHING WITH THE BRAIN IN
MINDLaura Fish M.S., L.M.F.T
WestEd Center for Child & Family
Studies
1
2. SETTING THE EXPECTATIONS
We Are Safe &
Healthy
Make a comfortable
space for yourself
Take breaks as
needed
We Are Respectful
Be an attentive listener
Resist side
conversations
Value everyone’s ideas
Cell phones off
We Are Friendly &
Kind
Step up/Step back
Stay on topic
3. Teaching Pyramid
High-Quality
Supportive Environments
Nurturing and Responsive
Relationships
Intensive
Individualized
Interventions
PREVENTION
Children at-risk
INTERVENTION
Children with
persistent challenges
High-Quality
Early Education
Targeted Social
Skills Curricula
Positive Behavior Support
Effective Work Force
PROMOTION
All children
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4. OUR PLAN FOR THE DAY
Go deeper with the understanding of the
Teaching Pyramid practices by connecting
them to brain development
Develop a working knowledge of the circuitry
of the brain and how to promote integration
Learn strategies taken from Daniel Siegel
and Tina Payne Bryson’s book The Whole
Brain Child to supplement Teaching Pyramid
practices
Highlight the importance of Executive
Function skills as tantamount to school 4
5. UPSTAIRS BRAIN
Self-understanding
Logic
Decision Making
Impulse Control
Body and Emotion regulation
(Executive function skills)
DOWNSTAIRS BRAIN
Fight flight or freeze
Attachment
Memory
Emotional Reactivity
“Gut” reactions
Motor Regulation
Balance
Heart Rate/Breathing
Motivation
Blood Pressure
Body Temperature
FOREBRAIN
Cortex
“Executive Center”
Limbic
BRAIN
“Emotional Center”
HINDBRAIN
Cerebellum &
Brainstem
“Alarm Center”
HIERARCHY OF BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
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6. BRAIN INTEGRATION
Adults can directly influence the
growth of children’s brains
Experience creates connections
Nature needs nurture: genetics
predicts maturity, experience impacts
development
Looking at challenging behavior as
dis-integration
Attuned, caring, and nurturing
relationships are the foundation for
brain development
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7. Young children’s close relationships with
preschool teachers and caregivers are also
important to their development of school
readiness. A number of studies have found
that the warmth and security of the
preschool child’s relationship with a
preschool teacher are predictive of the
child’s subsequent classroom performance,
attentional skills, and social competence in
the kindergarten and primary grade
classroom.
California Preschool Learning Foundations pg. 32 (2008) 7
8. ATTUNEMENT: STRATEGIES #1-5
“Tuning in” to the child’s thoughts, feelings and
behaviors and considering these from the child’s
perspective: verbal and non-verbal behavior
The child feels “felt”: belonging and significance
AND engaged in thinking more deeply about play
Try using a variety of attunement strategies to
engage :
1. Reflection
2. Narration
3. Open-ended questions
4. Emotional Literacy: validating feelings
5. Positive, descriptive, acknowledgement (PDA)
and PDA Plus
9. BUILDING THE INTERNAL NARRATIVE
Through nurturing and responsive interactions with
attuned adults, children start to build an “internal
narrative,” or story, about themselves
Thought is language turned inward (Vygotsky)
Conscious control of thoughts, actions, and emotions starts
with self-understanding
Believing is behaving: cognitive dissonance
Brain development and integration
Novelty, attention and emotional arousal (and aerobic
exercise!)
Casting the spotlight of attention onto children’s thoughts,
feelings, and experiences helps create neuronal
connections: acetylcholine strengthens, builds PFC
Neurons that fire together, wire together
When you tune in, you help children pay attention to their
thoughts, feelings, and actions which builds the upstairs
10. ENTER THE WORLD OF KNOWING THE MIND
Attunement helps the child
“enter the world of knowing
the mind”
When I “know” me (insight), it
helps me “know” you
(empathy)
Two types of attunement:
Intrapersonal: tuning in to your
own internal world
Interpersonal: tuning in to the
internal world of another
11. BEING “IN RELATIONSHIP” WITH THE CHILD
Attend to children in their
varied states throughout the
day, not just when emotions
or behavior are a challenge
To be communicating with
children in these ways you
need to:
Be paying close attention:
verbal and non-verbal
messages
Scan for what is going well
Accurately receive and make
meaning of the messages: be
integrated yourself 11
12. BEING “OUT OF RELATIONSHIP”
Adults tend to spend much of their day
giving directions and corrections to
children: need to spend more time with
“pro-social” or attuned, interactions
When there is an imbalance, the child has
less opportunity to learn about his
strengths, abilities, preferences, and
feelings i.e., self-understanding
Instead, they may begin to form unhealthy
mental models or schemas about the world
such as “I am not significant, I don’t
belong”
The brain is “primed” through repeated 12
13. I’M A CHILD AND I JUST WANT TO BELONG
Children’s behavior is influenced by what
they believe, or know, about themselves:
believing is behaving
These beliefs are formed, in part, by the
messages we give them both verbal and
non-verbal
Before we ask children to change, see first
what we can change in ourselves
One place to start is to “tune in” to the child’s
perspective
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15. PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTATION
Consider the concepts we have
discussed so far:
Brain Integration/Flipping your lid
Attunement/Developing the Internal
Narrative
Being “in” or “out” of relationship with the
child: self-integration, considering child’s
perspective
Capture some ideas of how you would
like to implement this work with your
children 15
16. LEFT AND RIGHT BRAIN
• Left Brain: logical, literal, linguistic,
and linear
– The letter of the law: detail
oriented. I didn’t shove her, I
pushed her.
– Linear cause and effect
relationships: Why?
• Right Brain: holistic, non-verbal,
experiential, images, emotions,
intuition, autobiographical memory
– The spirit of the law: the essence
of what happened. He doesn’t
want to be my friend.
– The meaning and feel of an
experience/context: influenced by
the body and lower brain
17. HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION
• Need left and right sides of
the brain to work together:
emotional flood vs. emotional
desert
• The left side helps bring
understanding, reasoning,
and order to the images,
memories and emotions of
the right side
• Horizontal integration: two
sides of the brain act in
harmony
18. CONNECT AND REDIRECT: STRATEGY #6
• Connect with the right: (seeing
the feeling behind the
behavior)
– Validating emotions
– Reassuring: tone of voice, listening
– Non verbal: touch, facial
expressions
– Tuning in: show empathy
• Redirect with the left:
– Explain
– Plan
– Negotiate
– Reason
19. PROBLEM-SOLVING STEPS
1. What is the problem?
How do I feel?
?
2. Think, think, think
of some solutions.
3. Give it a try!
4. Teacher follows up and gives PDA
20. RIGHT TO RIGHT CONNECTION: INTERVENTION
Tune in to the feeling behind the behavior:
from the child’s perspective it’s a flood
Too much talking can disregulate a child
further: drowning boy swimming lessons
The amount of time it takes to be able to
engage in “redirect” is correlated to
temperament and environmental
circumstances
Right brain dominant, so prevention and
promotion are key: Teaching Pyramid 20
21. NAME IT TO TAME IT: STRATEGY #7
Help children tell their stories
to calm big emotions: the right
provides the autobiographical
info, the meaning, the left the
details, order, reasoning
To tell a story that makes
sense, the left brain must put
things in order, using words
and logic and thus help the
strong sensations that come
from the right brain to lessen
In order to consciously control
our emotions, we must first
understand them 21
22. USING THE LEFT TO CALM THE RIGHT
Research shows that merely
assigning a name or label to
what we feel calms down the
activity of the emotional
circuitry in the right
hemisphere
The drive to make sense of
what happened in the brain
is so strong that children will
“act out” what hasn’t been
resolved
Behavior that comes “out of
nowhere”
Supporting inhibition and
cognitive flexibility
23. EMOTIONAL LITERACY: STRATEGIES #8-10
Use of Children’s
Literature
Indirect Teaching:
acknowledging
emotions
Direct Teaching: art,
music, feelings
faces, games,
check-in charts
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26. ROLE PLAY: HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION
A four year old in your classroom wants to play
in the block area, but he sees that there are
already four children’s pictures on the display for
entry into that area.
He comes to you, crying, shouting, “It’s not fair,
it’s not fair! I want to play there.”
Have one person be the teacher, one person
be the child, and a third be the observer: How
can you help this child “connect then
redirect” or “name it to tame it.”
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27. PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTATION
Consider the concepts and strategies
we have discussed so far:
Left and Right brain
Horizontal Integration
Connect then Redirect
Name it to Tame it
Problem Solving
Emotional Literacy: check in charts, books,
feelings wheel, acknowledging emotions
Capture some ideas of how you would
like to implement this work with your 27
28. UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS BRAIN
Downstairs brain:
Brain stem and limbic
region
Basic bodily functions,
emotional reactivity,
attachment,
fight/flight/freeze
Upstairs brain:
Cerebral cortex
Decision making, planning,
self-understanding, control
over emotions and body,
empathy, morality, executive
functioning
Analytical
Response
Emotional
Response
Reactive
Response
Reflexive
Response
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29. VERTICAL INTEGRATION
Building the staircase:
integrating the downstairs
and upstairs brain
Upstairs regulates actions
of the downstairs: helps
bring focus and calm the
impulses and emotional
reactivity
Downstairs brings depth
of experience to the
upstairs: emotions,
instincts, and physical 29
30. ENGAGE DON’T ENRAGE: STRATEGY #11
Lecturing, reminding or
dismissing can lead to
enraging
Engage the child instead:
Step one: validate their
emotions
Step two: help them tell
their story
Step three: encourage
them to come up with a
solution or partner with
them to do so
Negotiation, compromise,
reasoning, problem
32. TUCKING TECHNIQUE (CA CSEFEL)
Something
happens
Stop.
Think:
What Am
I Feeling?
Go into your shell. Take 3
belly breaths and think
calm thoughts
Come out of
shell, express
your feelings
and think of a
solution
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33. STEPS FOR RESOLVING CONFLICTS
2. What can we do? Think
of some solutions!
3. Give it a try!1. What happened? How
do I feel? & How do I
feel?
?
Stop! It looks like we have a problem…
4. Teacher follows up and gives PDA
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34. THE SOLUTION KIT
34
Using visuals helps integrate the brain during
times of strong emotional response: visual cortex
activated
35. PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTATION
Consider the concepts and strategies we
have discussed so far:
Upstairs brain/downstairs brain
Vertical Integration
Engage Don’t Enrage
Tucker, Conflict resolution
Capture some ideas of how you would
like to implement this work with your
children 35
36. EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Simply put, it is a set of cognitive processes that
support an individual’s capacity to engage in goal-
directed or problem solving behavior
EF skills include those abilities that control
behavior:
Attention, impulse control, motivation, and
emotion regulation
And those that guide behavior:
Planning, initiating, organizing, remembering,
monitoring, reasoning, problem solving and
responding flexibly
Scientists point to EF skills as the “how” of
37. LIFE READINESS
EF skills organized under three domains:
Working memory: keeping information in mind
long enough to plan, initiate, organize and
complete tasks
Inhibitory control (impulse control): pausing to
think before acting, filtering out distractions,
delaying gratification, breaking habitual
behaviors and regulating emotions
Cognitive or mental flexibility: evaluating
progress, shifting gears if necessary, and
scanning options for how to respond both
intellectually and emotionally
38. COMPREHENSIVE DEFINITION
Taken together, EF is the
ability to plan, initiate, organize
and carry out a task while
filtering out distractions,
controlling impulses, solving
problems/shifting gears, and
managing any strong emotions
that might arise
These skills help children
consciously control their
thoughts, behaviors and
emotions
39. NURTURING AND RESPONSIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Adults’ time and
attention are very
important
Every child needs one
person who is crazy
about them: attunement
Supportive, caring,
attuned relationships
with adults as well as a
climate of caring that
fosters peer
relationships
41. TEACH ME WHAT TO DO INSTEAD!
Social-Emotional
Strategies
Friendship Skills
Emotional Literacy
Emotion Regulation:
Managing Strong
Emotions
Problem Solving/
Conflict Resolution
42. PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTATION Consider the concepts and strategies
we have discussed so far:
Executive function skills in the
classroom: how, when, and where can
we teach them?
How will you know if children are
developing these skills?
Capture some ideas of how you would
like to implement this work with your
children
42
43. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
1. The experiences we provide children directly
impact brain development.
2. The brain can be viewed as having distinct
parts: left and right, upstairs and downstairs.
3. When different parts of the brain are
connected, they are said to be integrated.
4. Teaching with the brain in mind: Teaching
Pyramid strategies lead to brain integration
and support EF.
5. Integration supports the development of
executive functioning skills integral to school
and life readiness. 43
44. FOR MORE INFORMATION
From Daniel Siegel
http://wholebrainchild.com/
https://www.mindsightinstitute.com/
From Tina Bryson
http://tinabryson.com/
CA CSEFEL: Teaching Pyramid
www.cainclusion.org
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Findings in the field of neuroplasticity show that adults can directly shape the growth of children’s brains based on the type of experiences they offer them
So not only are you a teacher, you are a brain architect. Experiences help create connections between different parts of the brain. When these parts collaborate, they are integrated and the child is experiencing optimal functioning. We must exercise to strengthen the muscles. Same with brain: just b/c we are equipped to connect with others doesn’t mean we have relationships skills. We need to be taught and to have practice to be in healthy relationship. NATURE NEEDS NURTURE JUST B/C WE ARE BORN WITH MUSCLES DOESN’T MAKE US AN ATHLETE.
GENETICS GIVES US THE POTENTIAL/CAPACITY TO DEVELOP THE BRAIN, BUT IT IS EXPERIENCE THAT HELPS THE BRAIN REALIZE IT’S POTENTIAL: WE ALL HAVE MUSCLES, BUT IF WE DON’T EXERCISE THEM THEY DON’T DEVELOP THE SAME WAY AN ATHLETE’S WILL.
The Teaching Pyramid, provides you with some of the strategies that you can use with children to support this development. And the CLASS and ERS and DRDP help you assess whether you are providing these opps for kids
When children are having challenging behavior: hitting, punching, biting or extremely strong emotions are all a result of a lack of integration, also known as DIS-INTEGRATION (when something disintegrates, it falls apart)
Robin Karr Morse and meredith Wiley: Ghosts from the nursery: lack of relationships or toxic relationships and the link to violent criminal behavior. Jane Nelson: none of the school shooters felt belonging and significance
CDF: cradle to prison pipeline.
So when people say that Module 1 doesn’t have any “strategies’ or they are waiting for strategies, they are missing the boat. DEVELOPING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS with children and among children is the most important strategy
(…CLASS ENCOURAGES THIS IN CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT, Quality of feedback and language modeling MEASUREs)
Tuning in OR being in relationship with the child: adult recognizes the child’s thoughts, feelings, needs and behaviors from the child’s perspective.
We modulate our interactions: talk softer, say less, acknowledge more, slow down, speed up. We match their affect, their arousal state or we alter ours to try to alter theirs
EMOTIONAL SAFETY: we talk to children a lot about “being safe” in the classroom, but that is physical safety. As adults we also need to look out for their emotional safety/health. When children feel seen and heard, they feel belonging and significance. They feel they are a part of the “we” and they know how they impact those around them. SOMEONE HOLDS THEM IN THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS: HEART TO HEART CONNECTION
with We often have a hard time doing this when a child has challenging behavior. Our goal is to See the feeling behind the behavior.
PDA vs. directions and corrections
This builds that “warmth and security” that is talked about in previous quote. Nurturing and Responsive Relationships (foundation of Pyramid)
DO PDA VS. PRAISE STRIPS ACTIVITY?
WE COME TO KNOW OUR OWN MINDS THROUGH OUR INTERACTIONS WITH OTHERS
Give my own ex. Of childhood. This started with your early interactions with adults who helped you see yourself in relationship to others. A child can move through their day with very little active awareness or deep processing of what is going on. This is in part why at the end of the day when mom picks them up from preschool and says what did you do? They say Nothing or play. Being attuned helps draw children’s attention to their actions, help them think about their play, identify their feelings, and see their impact on their environment and other children. Understanding: Vygotsky said Thought is language turned inward. How we think about ourselves, impacts our behavior: Believing is behaving: cognitive dissonance. So how do children come up with ideas about their strengths, abilities, and how they impact the world? PDA builds the internal narrative of the child
If adults cast the spotlight of attention onto children’s experiences that show how capable, productive, caring, helpful, effective, etc. they are, children will develop this as the way they understand themselves and their relationship with the world. Acetylcholine is the neuromodulator that is released when we attend to something; it helps strengthen connections among neurons. So if we are helping children pay attention to their thoughts, feelings, and actions, we helping to build their self-awareness. When children are aware, they are better able to learn: whether it is to repeat a desired behavior, or change an undesired behavior, they first have to be AWARE. Tuning in to what they are doing, thinking and feeling is the first step to regulating what they are thinking, feeling and doing. The acetlycholine helps increase the child’s ability to do so in the future by strengthening the connections among the neurons: neurons that fire together wire together. Ex) Child hears a PDA, narration or expectations language for sharing the crayons, while experiencing this makes me feel good and the other child feel good (so they will be more likely to do so in the future); A teacher is giving PDA to children as they are cleaning up: Child realizes, “I am helping to clean up. Now we can all go outside. I am helpful to myself and others.” Teacher comforts child when he is crying and listens to him talk about his feelings, “When I am sad, my teacher asks me what is wrong and lets me talk about what happened. This makes me feel better.” The child learns my feelings are important to others, I can be comforted, and my feelings can change.
REMINDER: must have a nurturing, responsive relationship with child
Research shows that people who engage in a mindfulness practice have thicker PFC: more fibers. This is Intrapersonal attunement. These fibers help us resonate with others and regulate our emotional circuitry.
Helps children build the secure attachment important to all their future relationships and endeavors
When adults are not attuned, they are often misinterpreting children’s behavior, missing important messages from the child, and importantly, not reflecting back to the child an accurate image of who he or she it. The child then misses an oppty to develop self-understanding from the start
We want to make sure we aren’t just “tuning in” when children are having strong emotions that are leading to challenging behavior, but throughout the day to their various “states” Whether they are restless, lethargic, engaged, isolative, happy, shy, silent, talkative: we want to be reading them as they are and choosing how to engage with them as we reflect back what we see to them either in words or in actions i.e., if a child is super quiet, we might lower our tone of voice, approach them gently, kneel to their eye level before engaging them.
Talk about directions and corrections vs. prosocial interactions: ask them if they can give examples tHAT we do.
A child does not see himself reflected back in the adults eyes, and is left alone to navigate their internal world
If a child does not have early experiences of relationships as supportive, consistent, loving, helpful, the child does not develop a healthy internal narrative and their brain becomes “primed” to expect relationships to be this way. They haven’t had the experiences that lead to secure attachment and therefore the brain circuitry doesn’t develop or is weak. In turn, they don’t seek out relationships in healthy ways or they don’t approach them with openness and excitement, but trepidation and caution or confusion. This may be why some kids don’t connect with teachers or other children or why they don’t “listen” to you. They aren’t wired to tune in to adults (their attachment circuitry is underdeveloped) b/c it hasn’t worked out well for them in the past. OR you have children who are overly “needy” b/c their attachment circuitry is overly active based on ambivalent attachment to primary caregivers (an adult who is not consistent). This can also be due to in part to a genetic predisposition, and NOT b/c of experience alone with adults. THE BRAIN USES REPEATED EXPERIENCES OR ASSOCIATIONS TO PREDICT WHAT TO EXPECT: these “predictions” come from mental models that are formed from repeated experiences.
Do activity
We are not trying to be neuroscientists here today. We just want to have a working knowledge of the parts of the brain so that we can understand children’s behavior and learn how we can use TP and the Siegel strategies to engage with them in a way that best supports optimal brain development.
The right side of the brain is more directly influenced by the body and lower brain areas, which allow it to receive and interpret emotional information.
What side of the brain do you think children ages 0-5 use more dominantly?
1st 3 years we are right brain dominant; Left brain coming on line when they start to ask “Why?” We need to be the “logic” the “language” for kids as the left brain is coming online
What could be one possible “down side” to spending too much time in the right? (emotional flood may lead to poor choices, interrupts children’s play, increased cortisol, etc). This is when you see adults spending a lot of time trying to “stop” children’s emotions. Typically through logic and reasoning. Let’s find out why using logic and reasoning might not be the most effective way.
When we tell children not to cry or don’t be angry, we are telling them to not use parts of their brain (the right and lower brain). Because we are afraid of the behavior that comes with the feeling or because we want everything to “be ok”, we try to discourage feelings. This doesn’t help children learn what to do with emotions. We need to see the feeling behind the behavior:best thing to do is to acknowledge the right brain by validating children’s emotions from our right brain, then helping them start to regulate with the left brain on line.
It’s easy to see when our children’s brains aren’t integrated: tantrums, meltdowns, aggression: they are fully in their right brains; or you may have some children in your classroom who rarely show emotion, are sticklers for order and routine. They seem to live in the left. They might benefit from a bit more of a “break” from the logical, linear, and order by having learning how to feel the context of an experience, connect with feelings, and the sensory aspects
WORKS BEST TO CONNECT RIGHT BRAIN TO RIGHT BRAIN BEFORE WE ENGAGE THE LEFT: WE NATURALLY COME IN WITH LEFT WHEN WE SEE KIDS CAUGHT UP IN RIGHT
Versus COMMAND AND DEMAND
KEY HERE: Stay integrated yourself and see the feeling behind the behavior. We often lecture and scold b/b/c the behavior is unacceptable, but we miss the feeling. When children are experiencing an "emotional tsunami” they are mainly operating from the influence of their right brain and we tend to approach them with our left brains: we try to REASON with them, usually with a lot of talking. (Give example from Judith Baker: do you want a snack? Do you want to play with art? Do you want to paint?or Jaimie from Prairie in Elk grove girl crying b/c she missed mom and she sat in chair and cried while Jamie gave her options of what she could do until mom came)
Too much talking can actually disregulate the child further. We are approaching the child from our left brain, trying to ask them to think of a solution with us or to use language to explain what they need…but they might be so flooded from the right that they can’t access the left at that moment. We need to help them access the left. To do that, we need to first address the crisis that the right side is feeling.
Step 1:, connect from your right hemisphere to their right hemisphere: pull your child close, use non-verbal communication, use a soothing tone of voice, show empathy, use your facial expressions and empathetic talk to show you "get it". The talking we do should be to acknowledge/validate their feelings (not problem solve) and it is accompanied by non verbal (gestures, touch, facial expressions, listening). When we validate what they are saying and reflect back their words, they “feel felt.” This is attunement/contingent communication. When you are attuned, This helps regulate your child so they can calm down. Once you've done this then begin to help them engage their left brain to think of solutions, to plan what to do and to reason. When children “feel felt” and cared for, they’re right side has been soothed, they no longer are in a crises (F,F,F) and they can engage left brain functioning to move toward solutions/regulation. The amount of time it takes to soothe the right and engage the left is partly dependent upon the temperament of the child.
If you are an adult who works with or lives with children ages 0-5, you better have good rain boots, because you are going to experience a lot of emotional flooding b/c children are predominantly right brain dominant during these years. You often may not identify a situation as a flood: for instance, if a child Is crying profusely and can barely talk? You say, flood. If a child is screaming, “I hate him. He’s not my friend?” You say, flood. But if a child kicks another child, knocks over his block tower, or spits in another child’s face….do you connect the challenging behavior to EMOTIONAL flooding? SEE THE FEELING BEHIND THE BEHAVIOR!!!VNot always: I see a lot of lecturing and reasoning going on when this occurs. The exact opposite of what we need to do.
Give Tina’s example of her child coming downstairs from nap
Caveat: this is not to say that there aren’t boundaries and you are not always negotiating with the child. And they may be so far “gone” that you are doing all you can to keep child safe for a long time (connect) before you can redirect. TALK ABOUT NONVERBAL COMMUNICation and how it’s not valued : sometimes good to connect with nonverbal
WOULDN’T GIVE A DROWNING CHILD SWIMMING LESSONS
Talk about how TP is prevention and promotion. This is where you spend most of your focus for teaching. The intervention strategies from Siegel are used when the child is still learning the skills you are teaching.
We may need to spend some time with Right brain to right brain connection before child can bring on left brain to talk about emotions OR we can do the talking for them!
This is both an intervention and promotion strategy that can be used whenever a child has a strong emotional response to something that happens. Sometimes that means when they can’t get the red truck b/c another child is using it and they become flooded with their emotional response to not getting the truck. But other times, this is a strategy we can use when something out of the ordinary happens with a child: they are bitten by a dog, they got in a car accident (mild), their caregiver had to go to the hospital, etc. When a child gets hurt, either physically or emotionally, they both need and want to make sense of what happened to them, but they can't always access this information because they are in such an intense emotional state. And we, as adults, often try to “fix” the situation and “move on” as quickly as possible ESPECIALLY if the child has strong emotions. We try to distract them so they won’t think about it anymore. But the brain doesn’t forget. It stores the information even if we don’t acknowledge it and it can end up causing difficulties later. (implicit memory) If the child is having challenging behavior, We try to TAME the behavior we are seeing, but we don’t always acknowledge the emotion first. So with the example of the girl crying, Jamie wasn’t helping the child “name” what is happening to cause the strong emotion. She was just trying to distract the girl. Give example of Rachel and the car accident. At first the response was being very quiet, just staring, not saying much (freeze mode), but later I noticed she wasn’t sleeping well, she was a little more sensitive, clingy and emotional. When she started having her barbies get in car accidents, I finally caught on: oh, duh! She’s processing the car accident. So I helped her tell the story.
IN KIDS THIS MAY MANIFEST AS THEY keep going OVER A STORY OR AS ACTING OUT sTRONG EMOTIONS ATTACHED TO AN EVENT.
We often avoid revisiting scary or emotionally intense experiences with children because we don’t want to upset them, but if we don’t help them make sense of them, they may cause problems later on: BEHAVIOR COMES OUT OF THE BLUE. This is b/c when we have an experience that causes a strong emotional response (RB) and we don’t make sense of it (LB) it gets stored in implicit memory and later impacts how we behave. We aren’t aware of the connection ourselves b/c we don’t know that it’s the implicit memory that is leading to our behavior. We don’t experience it as a memory. When we talk about intense experiences, they are stored in explicit memory and we are able to identify when they impact us.
Updated January 2011
Prevention: children “play” with feelings wheel when they are NOT having strong emotions. Have them identify emotions and ask them to think about a time they have felt this way: what happens in their body? How do they act? What makes them feel this way? What is an appropriate thing to do if they feel this way? Helps the right brain, feeling the emotion, experiencing the emotion state, to connect with left brain that labels, and explains the emotions: what they are, why we have them, what we do when we have them. In this way, children are tuning in to their feeling states which will help them when they are feeling them strongly later on. They have rehearsed what to do with them. Neurons that fire together, wire together.
Intervention: if child is having strong emotion, CONNECT by having them show their feelings, validate them, ask them to describe, etc. Then redirect by offering ways to express and regulate
Updated January 2011
June 2012
The “downstairs brain,” which monitors threats and expresses emotions, is active at birth: it is the like the downstairs of the house where many of your basic needs are met: kitchen, dining room, bathroom. The upstairs brain is under construction until mid twenties it’s believed: it’s where the more intricate mental processes take place. Higher order cognitive functioning. Like an upstairs library where we think, reason, process and organize ourselves
This is what we are talking about when we show flip lid with hand example. When children have a strong emotional response to something, they are in the downstairs brain. It’s our job to help them feel safe, understood and support their upstairs brain to reconnect.
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The downstairs brain uses it’s connection to the body to help make important “bottom up” contributions to the upstairs brain so that the upstairs isn’t making decisions in a vacuum: the downstairs contributes the information about our emotions and physical state. With trauma in early childhood, we often see adults who are very “cut off” from their downstairs brain, live mostly in upstairs brain or left brain vs. right to avoid emotion. We can prevent this as teachers by providing children with regular opportunities to identify, express, and understand their emotions…then teach them to regulate them.
June 2012
Updated January 2011
Updated January 2011
Updated January 2011
June 2012
June 2012
EF is often considered the ability to consciously control ones thoughts, actions and emotions: to do this with have to use both our hearts and minds
IF YOU ARE SITTING HERE THINKING, “why hasn’t anyone told me about this before?” Guess What? They have: Ecers, F and F, CLASS and TP
