Thursday, December 15, 2011

A friend and fellow pre-schooler mom shared this article with me. It's about a practice called staylistening that is based in counseling. Although in our classrooms, we may not use this technique exactly as outlined in this article. There are still some really important takeaways.
  1. All of us, not just our children, have episodes of upset, during which our logical, reasonable and cooperative powers are totally sidelined by encompassing and confusing clouds of feelings.
  2. Children are built to let us know the instant their minds are derailed by feelings. They don’t hide their troubles.
  3. Staylistening is not for the faint of heart. It takes work to shed our own feelings of hurt so we can keep reaching for an angry child.

We must secure our own mask. We must prioritize sleep, healthy eating, and learn ways to manage our stress or our own hurt, trauma, stress will derail our logical thinking and derail our ability to support the children in our classroom.

1 comment:

  1. I have a close friend who practices this with her children. I don't know how I feel about it. I'm sometimes offended by how her child treats her and her response. I want to tell her daughter she is in timeout. On the other hand I find myself using some part of this with my foster daughter. She does not respond to reprimand; we have to discuss everything, but in her time. There are times I'll sit on the edge of her bed for 30-40 minutes before she can even began talking about what's bothering her ...

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