Parent Toolbox

Tips for Families: How to talk to your children about violence in the news

Supporting Youth Affected by the Violence in Israel and Gaza: Tips for Families and EducatorsInternational conflict has the potential to be upsetting and to cause concern for safety. Many people feel affected by the attack on Israel, the subsequent military response, and related loss of innoc...

How to talk to your children about conflict and war8 tips to support and comfort your children

Healthy Coping Skills for Uncomfortable EmotionsCoping skills are the strategies you use to manage stress. Whether you're anxious or angry, having positive coping skills can help you feel better in a healthy way.

What's Under Anger?

When we are uncomfortable or something doesn't go according to plan, we get angry. Anger is natural! Anger is necessary! Anger is useful! Just like us, children have reasons for their anger. These reasons may not be easily understood or even make any sense to the adult mind, but there is something under anger. The task of helping a child grow up is helping them understand themselves and then make good choices. We can't talk about making good choices or solving problems when we are in the middle of a big emotion like anger. So we have to wait until our brain is "back on line" (see emotional regulation tips below). Then we need to listen to the message anger is trying to bring us. Anger arises because we want to "protect" something. Some things we might want to protect include: our time, our interests, our worth, our family members. Look at these "Kidtherapist" videos from gozenonline to get ideas in a fun way:

Life Skills - ParentsSupport for Parents and Caregivers

This website has guidelines for parents on how to talk to kids about a variety of tough topics such as: depression, substance use, self injury, divorce, race, violence and more. There is a video on each subject that can be watched with your child.

Life Skills - Challenging TalksChallenging Talks

The 7 C’s: Building Blocks of Resilience in KidsPediatrician Kenneth Ginsburg identifies the qualities that help kids build strength and provides advice for parents to cultivate resilience.

Emotional Regulation

What is emotional regulation? Emotional regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience in a manner that is socially tolerable. In other words, to stay in control!

And this year, it has become more challenging! For adults and children both!

What are the steps?

Step 1: Identify what you are feeling. This puts words to experience and relaxes the brain

Step 2 Take care of your feelings. What helps you feel calm? Look at student self care page on this website for lots of ideas

Step 3 Make a plan for solving the problem that got you upset.( look below to use visuals to make a plan)

Step 4 Get support and praise yourself.

Tips: Many adults try to solve a problem when a child is upset. It is important to first help your student calm down before you think through a solution. Our brains can't work that way! (see Dr Dan Siegel's explanation in youtube below -2 min). Many times a student can't even talk when they are upset!

Most of the time children are going to need you! They will need you to be calm in order to become calm themselves. That is called co-regulation. It is your parenting superpower (check out the video below)

It helps to teach your children strategies to calm down. See the ideas below and practice and prepare your child for a future emotional upset.