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Building Social and Emotional Learning during the School Holidays
The school holiday period can be a great time to reflect on the last term, prepare for upcoming changes and review skills that need improvement.Returning to school is typically experienced with mixed emotions.
For some parents, it is a welcome relief after what feels like a very long holiday. For others, the return to school signals the end of a carefree, relaxing break. There can be feelings of sadness and/or anxiety associated with the return to routine and the academic and social demands associated with the school. Children and young people equally experience a range of feelings about the return to school.
For some, there is great excitement about starting a new school, seeing friends or perhaps finding out who their new teacher will be. For others, there may be sadness about the end of the holidays or anxiety about a raft of possible concerns such as making friends in their new class or coping with the work/homework requirements. A tried and test way to prepare for changes and transitions is by focusing on your child’s social and emotional adjustment.
Tips to Help Your Child Settle Into Term 3
Whilst a lot of focus is placed on the academic tasks associated with school, paying particular attention to a child’s social and emotional adjustment over the coming weeks/months is also critical. Below are 3 tips to get you started:
- Make time to check in with your child about how they feel and cope with the school year so far. It’s important to really listen to what your child is saying. To do this, begin by just repeating back or paraphrasing what your child is telling you. Where your child is experiencing uncertainty, try to normalise this and remind your child that it can take a few weeks to really settle in. It is not uncommon for children (and parents) to express disappointment about a new teacher they may have been assigned or about the discovery that they don’t have as many close friends in their class.
Rather than jumping to solve the problem for your child, build resilience by encouraging your child to come up with some ideas about ways to help themselves cope in such a situation. - It can often be a good idea to make time to check in with your child’s teacher as soon as terms resume. Whilst you will, of course, wish to discuss their educational strengths/weaknesses, also address how your child is feeling about their progress and highlight anything (e.g. camp, homework) that may be worrying your child.
Make sure you also discuss your child’s social skills with the teacher. If they are struggling with friends, ask your child’s teacher how the school can help in facilitating friendships. If your child has had any ongoing incidents of bullying/teasing, it is critical to mention this again and ask how they can help ensure that such incidents don’t occur again during the next terms.
Equally, if your child has a history of seeking attention from others in a class by misbehaving, check how this is being handled at school. Teachers will undoubtedly find your insights into what works and what doesn’t work at home very useful. - Encourage friendships and further consolidate social skills by organising playdates or outings with any new classmates made throughout the term. Children often request existing friends; it can be worthwhile to extend friendship networks by inviting new children over. This is good for your child and can also help expand social support networks for you as a parent.
In secondary school, it is equally important to encourage friendships by providing opportunities for your son/daughter to have friends over or by offering to drive them to a movie. This helps foster friendships and gives parents valuable insights into the type of friendships that your child is building.
Why social-emotional learning is so important
The importance of focusing on children's social and emotional well-being is becoming increasingly acknowledged. In the current climate of increasing rates of mental illness in young people and concern over youth suicide rates, the NSW government has reportedly decided to tackle the problem more aggressively by proposing a more preventative approach to addressing such issues. The Government’s decision to begin at the grassroots level and start better educating school-aged children (from Kindergarten) about mental health issues is welcome news to everyone here at Quirky Kid.
The changes to the Personal Development, Health, Physical Education (PDHPE) syllabus, which are apparently due for implementation from 2020, including a more comprehensive effort to address social-emotional learning and mental health issues from primary school onwards.
Beginning in Kindergarten, it is proposed that children will begin with simple social-emotional concepts such as feelings and building relationships with others. Still, as they progress to higher grades, the aim will be to address important issues such as coping with success and failure, overcoming adversity, grief and death, coping with controlling behaviour in others, domestic violence, and substance abuse.
Helping Children to Build Important Social-Emotional Skills
Equipping children to cope with the social and emotional demands of school fosters increased coping and resilience skills. The evidence suggests that well developed social and emotional skills are both protective and helpful. Strong social and emotional skills in children not only predict fewer behavioural problems in the classroom but they are also related to positive academic outcomes and improved school performance (Myles-Pallister, Hassan, Rooney, & Kane, 2014; January, Casey & Paulson, 2011; Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011).
The government and other mental health agencies hope that by tackling such topics in school and better-educating children about mental health, steps will be made to demystify such issues and crucially equip children with a more effective toolkit for managing difficult feelings. It is further hoped that lessons learned at school will have a lasting impact as children become adults.
Further Reading
How Can Quirky Kid help develop your child’s social-emotional learning skills?
At The Quirky Kid Clinic, we are strong advocates for prevention and early intervention when it comes to children’s mental health issues. Prevention is, of course, the preferred approach. In our experience, providing intervention to children and families before problems become too entrenched can often be the key to success. Where issues have been developing for some time, it can be much harder to address problems, and for both the child and family, such situations can feel insurmountable.
The Best of Friends® gives children the knowledge, skills and confidence to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, develop and maintain friendships and make good decisions.
Designed for children aged 7 to 11, the program teaches these critical skills to children in an age-appropriate and practical way.So embrace this potentially challenging time with your son/daughter and remember children tend to take the lead from their parents. With this in mind, try to model calm, brave behaviour while keeping the doors of communication wide open. By adopting these strategies, your child should feel a little braver about adapting to their new classroom, teacher and school expectations.
If you are looking for a more extensive approach to preparing your child for Term 3, book now for our The Best of Friends®
View article references
- Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D., & Schellinger, K.B. (2011). The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405-432
- January, A.M., Casey, R.J., & Paulson, D. (2011). A Meta-Analysis of Classroom-Wide Interventions to Build Social Skills: Do They Work?. School Psychology Review, 40(2), 242-256
- Myles-Pallister, J.D., Hassan, S., Rooney, R.M. & Kane, R.T. (2014). The efficacy of the enhanced Aussie Optimum Positive Thinking Skills Program in improving social and emotional learning in middle childhood. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 909.
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