April 6 | 8:30 - 9:30 am in the school cafe
Chapters 6-7
What is your understanding of what it means to be mindful? What questions do you have about mindfulness?
Which of the activities for helping children work with their weaknesses seem the most helpful to you? (pp. 172-176)
Which of the bringing of mindfulness into daily life ring the most true for you? What are other strategies that you might apply? (pp. 187-195) Remember that we need to practice new skills for several weeks to eventually make them into habits. :)
What are your takeaways from the introduction to self-control? (pp. 201-214)
Which of the "Five Strength-Based Strategies for Building and Sustaining Self-Control" are you already doing? Which ones might you want to try? (pp. 215-224). See Extra Task below for action step.
Teaching your children to better understand themselves while helping them to grow their self-control is a big task of parenting. Look to sit down with your children to review the materials from pages 215-224. Choose one or two strategies that you agree would be helpful. Then get out paper and pen to write up a plan of action to apply those strategies into how your family operates. Remember to mark your calendar with reminders and progress report review dates.
Emotion Coaching handout
Mindfulness activities to share with your children.
Strength Coaching Plan - Use this plan to engage with strengths that your children want to "exercise".
Whole Group Share: What is a highlight of your effort to apply strength-based parenting in your home?
Next Meeting Date and Chapters to Read: April 20 | School Cafe | Chapters 8-10 This is our last meeting so please bring your books to return to them to the school.
Table Share: Go through the following questions>
What is your understanding of what it means to be mindful? What questions do you have about mindfulness?
Which of the activities for helping children work with their weaknesses seem the most helpful to you? (pp. 172-176)
Which of the bringing of mindfulness into daily life ring the most true for you? What are other strategies that you might apply? (pp. 187-195) Remember that we need to practice new skills for several weeks to eventually make them into habits. :)
What are your takeaways from the introduction to self-control? (pp. 201-214)
Which of the "Five Strength-Based Strategies for Building and Sustaining Self-Control" are you already doing? Which ones might you want to try? (pp. 215-224).
Table Share: Ideas to Action
How can you take your learning about mindfulness and self-control to apply it into the lives of your children?
The following are some takeaways from the reading along with some of my ideas. They are written in note form so the grammar might not be so terrific!
Using mindfulness to help your children work on weaknesses (pp. 172-176). This section provides many strategies that put you in the role of coach to teach and guide your children to develop their own approaches to overcoming weaknesses.
There are many helpful strategies to support your understanding of mindfulness and how to apply it in the lives of your family members. If mindfulness is a new topic for you do look to find additional resources to increase your understanding of how important it can be to the wellness of your family members.
P. 213- self-control is like a muscle that can become fatigued due to four main factors:
resisting impulses
making decisions
suppressing emotions
stress
P. 214- Self-control is a key strength for growing all the other strengths. Our children need it to be as developed and “practiced” as possible as they need it in their efforts to practice and grow all the other strengths.
Five Strength-based strategies for building and sustaining self-control (pp. 215-224)
Assess the structure of your child's day and work to include lots of downtime.
Have routines and to-do lists. For more on home strategies to build in routines, take a look at the Home Support Strategies listing which includes a section on Emotion Coaching (see below).
Practice mindfulness
Be an Emotion Coach
Experiment with habit change