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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2mi5pUM
star-anise:
lachesismeg:
star-anise:
After a year working in a women’s shelter I think my biggest issue with the anti-domestic violence movement as it stands is: All these models and programs are kind of built around the assumption that everyone involved knows how to have happy, healthy, respectful relationships, and resolve conflicts peacefully, and they just… choose not to, for some weird reason.
Whereas my lived experience was that healthy relationships, problem-solving, and conflict management are skills that a lot of people never learn during critical developmental periods in childhood, and if we want to solve the problem, we have to get involved in the intensive work to teaching them to adults.
So, my kiddo is in first grade. There is an aggressor in her classroom. Bad stuff is happening in his home, and he spends most of every day misbehaving (from climbing on the furniture to threatening to punch other kids.)
The teacher is on top of it. The asst principal and disciplinary staff are on top of this. But my kiddo is still frustrated.
Last night she said to me, “Mom, I think maybe [aggressor] isn’t getting enough Mommy time. Or maybe he isn’t getting enough time at home. Or maybe he just has the angries and doesn’t know what to do with them. That happens to me sometimes.”
Hmm, I had a point relevant to your post when I started, but now I have just hijacked it.
Something something about “and help the kids, because not only do I not want this aggressor disrupting my kiddo’s education, I also want him to have better cope by the time he is an adult sharing society with me.”
Sadly I can’t seem to convince the asst principal that when I say “tell me what resources you need and I’ll make it happen” that I really will make it happen.
I am so in favour of programs like Roots of Empathy and the Neurosequential Model of Education.
I saw a presentation from a school not far from me that teaches about the brain and brain-based states of learning (like “when you’re upset, the brain yanks resources from higher logic centres to put you into fight-or-flight”) and one teacher talked about her experience. As part of brain education and part of a math unit, she had her grade 5s take their pulses at the beginning of every day, and she wrote hers on the board. Kids could share theirs if they wanted, and mornings often started with kids speculating on what had affected their heart rates today, and if they needed a warm-up or a calming exercise before being ready to learn.
For example, one girl’s heart rate went up a lot during one week, and she admitted to feeling more shaken and upset. When she thought about it, she said it was because her family had recently started watching the news over breakfast; she was a recent refugee from Syria, and it upset her a lot to see footage from home in the mornings. She asked her parents to wait until after she left for school to watch the news instead.
Another boy was a “behaviour problem”, who the teacher knew to have been in four different foster homes already; he frightened the other children with his unpredictable explosions. He revealed that his heart rate was frequently over 150, meaning he was always in fight-or-flight mode. He and his classmates talked about how it was hard for him to be calm, and they made it a class goal to get his heart rate down to 100. Over the next few months he worked on using breathing exercises, and his classmates were more likely to watch him for signs of stress and offer him help or socialization, and respond to explosions as requests to be left alone instead of aggression directed at them. After a few months, his heart rate frequently matched his teacher’s and his behaviour problems had massively decreased.
(Your picture was not posted)
star-anise:
lachesismeg:
star-anise:
After a year working in a women’s shelter I think my biggest issue with the anti-domestic violence movement as it stands is: All these models and programs are kind of built around the assumption that everyone involved knows how to have happy, healthy, respectful relationships, and resolve conflicts peacefully, and they just… choose not to, for some weird reason.
Whereas my lived experience was that healthy relationships, problem-solving, and conflict management are skills that a lot of people never learn during critical developmental periods in childhood, and if we want to solve the problem, we have to get involved in the intensive work to teaching them to adults.
So, my kiddo is in first grade. There is an aggressor in her classroom. Bad stuff is happening in his home, and he spends most of every day misbehaving (from climbing on the furniture to threatening to punch other kids.)
The teacher is on top of it. The asst principal and disciplinary staff are on top of this. But my kiddo is still frustrated.
Last night she said to me, “Mom, I think maybe [aggressor] isn’t getting enough Mommy time. Or maybe he isn’t getting enough time at home. Or maybe he just has the angries and doesn’t know what to do with them. That happens to me sometimes.”
Hmm, I had a point relevant to your post when I started, but now I have just hijacked it.
Something something about “and help the kids, because not only do I not want this aggressor disrupting my kiddo’s education, I also want him to have better cope by the time he is an adult sharing society with me.”
Sadly I can’t seem to convince the asst principal that when I say “tell me what resources you need and I’ll make it happen” that I really will make it happen.
I am so in favour of programs like Roots of Empathy and the Neurosequential Model of Education.
I saw a presentation from a school not far from me that teaches about the brain and brain-based states of learning (like “when you’re upset, the brain yanks resources from higher logic centres to put you into fight-or-flight”) and one teacher talked about her experience. As part of brain education and part of a math unit, she had her grade 5s take their pulses at the beginning of every day, and she wrote hers on the board. Kids could share theirs if they wanted, and mornings often started with kids speculating on what had affected their heart rates today, and if they needed a warm-up or a calming exercise before being ready to learn.
For example, one girl’s heart rate went up a lot during one week, and she admitted to feeling more shaken and upset. When she thought about it, she said it was because her family had recently started watching the news over breakfast; she was a recent refugee from Syria, and it upset her a lot to see footage from home in the mornings. She asked her parents to wait until after she left for school to watch the news instead.
Another boy was a “behaviour problem”, who the teacher knew to have been in four different foster homes already; he frightened the other children with his unpredictable explosions. He revealed that his heart rate was frequently over 150, meaning he was always in fight-or-flight mode. He and his classmates talked about how it was hard for him to be calm, and they made it a class goal to get his heart rate down to 100. Over the next few months he worked on using breathing exercises, and his classmates were more likely to watch him for signs of stress and offer him help or socialization, and respond to explosions as requests to be left alone instead of aggression directed at them. After a few months, his heart rate frequently matched his teacher’s and his behaviour problems had massively decreased.
(Your picture was not posted)
