Developing resilience through dealing with Change
Our resilience program gives children the capacity to deal with change as well as adversity.
This weeks focus was all about change.
Change with the world around us and changes at home.
It can be unsettling for children; and as parents our instinct is to protect.
In fact, it’s not what we give our children, it’s what we teach them to do for themselves, that make them successful adults.
Teaching children how to deal with change at this age, is a life tool.
Protecting them from a change of teacher within their classroom or a change of sports teams, actually disadvantages them. As long as they have a sense of belonging with friends, family or environment, they will cope much better than what we give them credit for.
Teaching them the capacity to deal with it, is key.
Look at our current global pandemic for example. Here we are as adults, having to navigate the changes thrusted upon us on a weekly basis. Imagine having these coping tools since we were aged two, we would automatically surrender resistance and flow with what is.
The invisible String
“The invisible string” is a story that addresses the issue of separation.
The invisible String reassures children that even though they can’t always physically be with their loved ones, there is an invisible string always connecting them to the people they love.
Empowered thoughts of being energetically connected gives the children a sense of safety and security.
Our brain is like a supercomputer and our thoughts are the programs it runs. Mental wellbeing is all about the thoughts we think.
Children reflected and shared who they felt connected to via the invisible string.
They made a visual representation identifying themselves and their loved ones joined by a visible piece of string.
We discussed how at them moment we may not be able to visit our loved ones who live outside our home and shared a story from one of our classmates.
His Mammy titled it “Zeb and the Corona Virus”. This story shares how Zeb and his extended family are staying healthy by spending time apart and how Zeb is loved by all his family.
Dealing with Change
Next we discussed how everything is changing.
The children gave examples of how the corona virus has changed their home routines….
“we can’t go to the park” OR  “eat cake at a cafĂ© ” and “we have to spend more time at home”.
We took a moment to think about these changes before laying down on the yoga mats and to engage in a visualisation experience.
The children laid still pretending to be jellyfish and allowing their body to float through the ocean, as they floated they were guided to let their worries glide off their jelly bodies and slip away into the water.
They could then wiggle and jiggle freely through the ocean.
While on the mats the children also participated in several sea animal yoga poses. The crab, shark and star fish were our favourites.
Holding each position for 5 seconds, we worked on inhaling and exhaling to practice our deep breathing, in order to tap into our parasympathetic nervous systems.
Extended exercise
To extend on the Invisible String story we sat in a circle holding onto a rope. We spoke about how the class is connected together, just like a family.
We discussed how we are able to feel a range of emotions. Some had visual cues like smiling or frowning while others just felt it in their hearts.
This discussion was followed up with the book “my heart is like a Zoo”.
Through the text the children are introduced to different feelings and emotions like proud, bothered and hopeful.
Each illustration is highlighted by a colour. The children were then asked to close their eyes and identify which colour they see when they feel loved, they then selected the colour and contributed to a shared art piece.
Wellbeing
3.1 Building a sense of autonomy
- 1.1 developing self-regulation
- 1.2 developing resilience
That’s all from Miss Patti and Mr John
Sea turtles and Snakes rooms.
Also please follow our Facebook and Instagram Pages and stay up to date.
