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Zimmerman Elementary Counselor » Helping Children to Succeed

Helping Children to Succeed

Below you will find information and/or resources on the following topics:
Video Games

Nurtured Heart Approach

Sleep

Anxiety




Video Games

Video games can be a great learning tool and have a positive impact on your child's manual dexterity and computer literacy.  The amount of time spent playing video games as well as the level of violence are important for parent’s to monitor.  Here are some tips from Palo Alto medical foundation:

  • Know the rating of the video games your child plays.
  • Do not install video game equipment in your child's bedroom.
  • Set limits on how often and how long your child is allowed to play video games.
  • Monitor all of your child’s media usage-video games, television, movies, and the Internet.
  • Supervise your child's Internet use—there are now many "video games" available for playing online.
  • Take the time to discuss with your children the games they are playing or other media they are watching. Ask your children how they feel about what they observe in these video games, television programs or movies. This is an opportunity to share your feelings and grow closer with your child.

 

 

Nurtured Heart Approach

 

 

Wahpeton Public School holds sessions for parents to learn how to use this approach.  If you are interested or would like to learn more contact the school.

The Nurtured Heart Approach® is a set of core methodologies originally developed for working with the most difficult children. It has become a powerful way of bringing inner wealth to all children while facilitating parenting and classroom success. It has a proven, transformative impact on every child, including those with behavioral diagnosis such as ADHD, Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Reactive Attachment Disorder – almost always without the need for medications or long-term treatment.  NHA website

 

How much sleep do we really need?

 

 

According to the sleep foundation preschoolers need 10-13, school age children need 9-11 hours each night. 

 

Being a parent is hard work.  Don’t forget to take care of yourselves too!  Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep.

 

Sleep helps your brain remember, pay attention, learn and think of new ideas.  Sleep helps your body stay healthy and grow.

 

 

http://www.sleepforkids.org/html/why.html

https://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need

 

 

 

Anxiety

 

According to childmind.org:  There are many different kinds of anxiety, which is one of the reasons it can be hard to detect in the classroom. What they all have in common, says neurologist and former teacher Ken Schuster, PsyD, is that anxiety “tends to lock up the brain,” making school hard for anxious kids.

Children can struggle with:

  • Separation anxiety: When children are worried about being separated from caregivers. These kids can have a hard time at school drop-offs and throughout the day.
  • Social anxiety: When children are excessively self-conscious, making it difficult for them to participate in class and socialize with peers.
  • Selective mutism: When children have a hard time speaking in some settings, like at school around the teacher.
  • Generalized anxiety: When children worry about a wide variety of everyday things. Kids with generalized anxiety often worry particularly about school performance and can struggle with perfectionism.
  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder: When children’s minds are filled with unwanted and stressful thoughts. Kids with OCD try to alleviate their anxiety by performing compulsive rituals like counting or washing their hands.
  • Specific phobias: When children have an excessive and irrational fear of particular things, like being afraid of animals or storms.

 

When children are chronically anxious, even the most well-meaning parents can fall into a negative cycle and, not wanting a child to suffer, actually exacerbate the youngster’s anxiety. It happens when parents, anticipating a child’s fears, try to protect her from them. Here are pointers for helping children escape the cycle of anxiety.

1. The goal isn’t to eliminate anxiety, but to help a child manage it.

None of us wants to see a child unhappy, but the best way to help kids overcome anxiety isn’t to try to remove stressors that trigger it. It’s to help them learn to tolerate their anxiety and function as well as they can, even when they’re anxious. And as a byproduct of that, the anxiety will decrease or fall away over time.

2. Don’t avoid things just because they make a child anxious.

Helping children avoid the things they are afraid of will make them feel better in the short term, but it reinforces the anxiety over the long run. If a child in an uncomfortable situation gets upset, starts to cry—not to be manipulative, but just because that’s how she feels—and her parents whisk her out of there, or remove the thing she’s afraid of, she’s learned that coping mechanism, and that cycle has the potential to repeat itself.

3. Express positive—but realistic—expectations.

You can’t promise a child that her fears are unrealistic—that she won’t fail a test, that she’ll have fun ice skating, or that another child won’t laugh at her during show & tell. But you can express confidence that she’s going to be okay, she will be able to manage it, and that, as she faces her fears, the anxiety level will drop over time. This gives her confidence that your expectations are realistic, and that you’re not going to ask her to do something she can’t handle.

4. Respect her feelings, but don’t empower them.

It’s important to understand that validation doesn’t always mean agreement. So if a child is terrified about going to the doctor because she’s due for a shot, you don’t want to belittle her fears, but you also don’t want to amplify them.You want to listen and be empathetic, help her understand what she’s anxious about, and encourage her to feel that she can face her fears. The message you want to send is, “I know you’re scared, and that’s okay, and I’m here, and I’m going to help you get through this.”

5. Don’t ask leading questions.

Encourage your child to talk about her feelings, but try not to ask leading questions— “Are you anxious about the big test? Are you worried about the science fair?” To avoid feeding the cycle of anxiety, just ask open-ended questions: “How are you feeling about the science fair?”

6. Don’t reinforce the child’s fears.

What you don’t want to do is be saying, with your tone of voice or body language: “Maybe this is something that you should be afraid of.” Let’s say a child has had a negative experience with a dog. Next time she’s around a dog, you might be anxious about how she will respond, and you might unintentionally send a message that she should, indeed, be worried.