Three common areas of family challenges are
1. managing emotions
2. sibling conflict
3.parent/child conflict.
I brainstormed a whole of family approach to navigate and address these topics, with the idea that I would present activities to the family but the family would do the work, and take the concepts in the activity and implement the skills into their day to day life.
I have found that a lot of conflicts can be addressed (not disappear overnight) when we reflect on how children are learning life skills, it’s a journey, they won’t be perfect, just like we as adults are not perfect. Today's blog post pick is of me at my latest night of trivia, I'm still figuring out how to handle sitting there when I have no clue what the answer is and not cheating by looking at my phone.
As adults, we can create opportunities for children to develop and build life skills that will help them as they grow. Three significant life skills that promote positive family functioning are emotional regulation, conflict resolution and problem solving.
Humans are very relational, all of these skills start being developed when the parent/carer role models and supports the child to develop these skills.
I made a pack focused on these three life skills with activities that can be used with the whole family or even in the classroom. My husband is a teacher, so I like to make resources that can be used in both settings.
Children start off the process of regulating their emotions through co-regulation, which refers to when nurturing adults establish warm and supportive relationships, facilitate self-regulation through coaching, modelling, and feedback, and create structured and supportive environments for children.
A key aspect of teaching children how to regulate is regulating ourselves as adults first.
This is why this resource pack supports the whole of family work. The adults reflect and discuss their emotions at the same time the children are, the adults lead the activities and role model to the children how they themselves manage emotions everyday. Both normalising emotions and coaching the children in how to manage emotions. It’s a powerful process, where the behaviours and emotions can be externalised, the person is not the problem.
Now, I’m going to dot point the series of topics explored within the pack. It may feel like a lot, you can pick out what works for you. For me, I’ll do 2-3 topics with a family in an hour.
- Discuss and write out family OR classroom values
- Brainstorm names of feelings
- Draw what ‘anger’ looks like to our family, to me?
- If we were to give ‘anger’ a name for our family, for me, what would it be?
- When do we feel ‘anger’?
- Where do I feel anger in my body?
- What things does ‘anger’ say in our heads?
- Triggers/ Warning signs for family members or Me
- What helps ‘anger’ get smaller?
- It’s okay to be angry. It’s not okay to be violent. This means it’s not ok to…in our home and classroom
- It’s okay to be angry. When we feel angry we can...
- Things we can do to feel good again poster- distraction, movement, relaxation, connection
- Anger volcano poster
- How our differences can create conflict but it’s ok to be different, What is everyone’s favourite colour?
- How our differences can create conflict but it’s ok to be different, What is everyone’s favourite animal?
- How our differences can create conflict but it’s ok to be different, What is everyone’s favourite movie?
- You might know conflict as...
- Conflict dump: Write down some things you have had a conflict/fight/argument about in the rubbish bin.
- What feelings have you experienced when you have conflict or seen with others in conflict? Create a mind map by naming emotions and attaching them to the circle with a line.
- Description/definition of conflict
- Tips for dealing with conflict poster
- Tip cards to support the family and class to design their conflict resolution skill poster
- In our family or classroom, this is our approach to conflict resolution with eight We… cards
- The process of problem solving
- Activity pack for problem solving, to practice problem solving skills at home or in the classroom with tips and space to brainstorm possible solutions to make it better or solutions for the problem to go away. I would set the problem solving pack up as a tool box with the resources laminated either at home or in the classroom for children to actively use and implement the skills with the tip sheet and prompts.
Hope this helps,
Claire