Battles worth fighting
Welcome back to term 3 of 2020! While things are still not what we all imagined they would be, we have adjusted and shuffled and adjusted some more to ensure online school can be as beneficial for children and as manageable for parents as possible for as long as it needs to last.
I know how challenging many parents have found being so involved in schooling has been. School is not meant to be stressful for anyone, least of all parents and little ones. Teachers in a classroom know how to reduce stress and help children get through challenges. This is harder online for teachers to navigate and parents often bear the brunt in the form of unhappy, crying, children who refuse to join a Zoom class.
I would like to help reframe this for you so that managing your child's class time and more importantly their emotions feels easier to both understand and handle.
Behaviours are the result of a feeling and feelings are the result of needs. If we understand our children's feelings (we mostly know their needs), we can more confidently know when to be flexible in situations that could potentially become battlefields. This flexing keeps children calm and reduces some of the pressure parents feel. Stay with me.
Our teachers are creative and inventive and come up with incredible lessons and crafts. Not only are these fun for most children, they develop your child's physical skills, intellectual curiosity, thinking and problem solving abilities and provide opportunity for creativity and success - all children want that.
By being a part of Zoom lessons, doing crafts and talking through instructions and ideas, by sharing information and asking questions, children learn new things and develop competence.This is what we want!
What we also want is for children to express their feeling and needs and know that sometimes they have choices. Adults hearing their needs and feelings builds trust that they have a voice, they matter and are heard. This is empowering for them. It doesn't mean they always get their way, it means you hear their needs and as the adult work out if this is a time when flexibility would be more beneficial than a fight (it often is).
Letting your child lie on the floor while they listen to a Zoom is more beneficial than a fight about where and how they must sit that results in their refusal and your frustration. Children want to please the adults around them, this makes them feel competent and courageous and this is a fundamental learning tool.
A child who feels heard, held, competent and courageous can be creative. Creativity is not about drawing and colouring. Creativity is about being involved in a process for the value that in itself brings. Creativity means children ask questions, suggest solutions, implement ideas and make choices about how they want to do something. We don't want our children to believe they always have a choice, they don't. But we want them to be involved.
This is learning. Children learn to express themselves and understand that they sometimes have a choice. As they experience your flexibility they often relax and show flexibility of their own. Our children are resilient, strong and brave as are our parents!
“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”