3 The Principles of Well-Being

We are social beings. We are connected. The African proverb It takes a village to raise a child is true. But even in the best of times, the village can be complicated. We can get angry and frustrated with each other. We can feel alienated from or not supported by others in our community. Before COVID-19 hit, our villages felt like they were coming apart. Political polarization, more significant disparities of income, increased antisocial behavior online all made many people feel unsettled at best. Young people were experiencing unprecedented rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness and have grown up among economic, cultural, and social turmoil along with a revolution in technology. In the United States, school shootings and active shooter drills have become normalized in a young person’s experience with school.

And still, young people are remarkably resilient. And we are too.

We are going to figure this out. We will rebuild our villages by strengthening our connection and commitment to each other. We must cherish and maintain our relationships with each other to keep our children safe and healthy. But how? By grounding our decisions and actions in principles, increasing our ability to manage our emotions, and sharpening our own social skills. We are, and will continue to grow at being, the teachers and role models our children need us to be.

In this section:

• □ Social Emotional Learning Is Not Just Soft Skills
• □ Happiness
• □ The Power of Dignity
• □ Separating Dignity From Respect
• □ Putting Principles Into Action
• □ Understanding Emotional Regulation
• □ Emotional Granularity
• □ Anxiety
• □ Self-Compassion
• □ Managing Conflicts
• □ FriendshipS in COVID-19
• □ Teasing: It’s Complicated
• □ Bullying
• □ Communication With Other Parents
• □ Pod Teaching: Learning Pods

Social Emotional LearningIs Not Just Soft Skills

What is it?

When you opened The Distance Learning Playbook for Parents, you read about the ideas that set the foundations for this book. In this section, we will build from this foundation to deepen your knowledge of social and emotional learning and emotional regulation for your own benefit and support the young person in your care to increase their emotional intelligence and social skills. Now, they have never been more important and simultaneously more challenging to maintain.

Schools provide instruction in various content areas and disciplines, but the real magic is how they socialize children. Ideally, they provide a safe place to practice social skills, receive coaching on those skills, and help children develop a sense of responsibility to and for others. As noted in the opening letter, employers want to hire people who can work together in productive ways and require that they have the underlying social skills to make that happen.

Many schools have social and emotional learning programs integrated into their curricula to teach students the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. These skills, combined with a young person’s ability to understand and regulate their emotions, have always been critical to navigating school, but will be even more essential in the current educational environment.

Why is it important?

Having a sense of belonging is key to a young person’s physical, psychological, and emotional well-being. Student orientations, spirit weeks, community service, school assemblies, affinity groups, school colors, and mascots are just a few examples of what schools have done to create this feeling of belonging.

Why is it important in distance learning?

This year, schools will do their best to fill the void created in distance learning, but they will need your help. Moreover, young people have an opportunity to contribute to this effort in a way they never have before. From their online classes to extracurricular activities, student government, political advocacy, and countless other opportunities, how students participate will directly impact their sense of belonging and in the best of cases build a sense of community alongside their school peers.

Take action

• ➔ Encourage your child to join a new extracurricular activity—one that maybe they never had time to do before or is completely new to them.
• ➔ Ask your child to inventory the extracurricular activities they enjoyed the most in the past and encourage them to continue participating in the one in which they felt most connected to other people.
• ➔ With your child, choose a way for your family to support the school, especially the staff and faculty. Even the smallest gesture helps the school village to be stronger and the people within it to feel cared for.

Happiness

What is it?

Before the pandemic, most parents, when asked what they want for their children, said, “I want my child to be happy.” But what does happiness really mean? It can’t mean free from painful experiences or conflict with others because those things constantly happen. It can’t be free from failure because that happens as well, and it often presents important lessons. Not only can happiness include struggle and uncertainty but can also provide emotional resilience to be content even through hardship. Here’s some good news. What makes humans happy tends to come down to the same things no matter their race, age, political viewpoint, ethnicity, religion, or class. It’s one of those things that connects us to each other. So, let’s define it in a different way. Consider the following five conditions as essential ingredients of happiness.

• ➔ A sense of purpose and meaning beyond oneself
• ➔ Hope of success
• ➔ Meaningful social connection
• ➔ Fulfilling work (especially if you are working with others on a common goal)
• ➔ A place to process and find peace

By the way, one of the reasons why young people love playing video games so much during COVID-19 is because the games provide these conditions. They are working hard, usually with a group of people, to hopefully succeed (advance to the next level) toward a common goal like unlocking new powers. Then, after the game, you can talk to your friends about it. That’s happiness.

Why is it important?

When we focus on these conditions, it’s also easier to see why the process of developing social and emotional skills is so connected to happiness, even when it feels hard. This definition of happiness grounds us and reminds us of what we need to be OK, to have the capacity to meet the daunting situation we are facing, and how important the lessons we are maybe being forced to learn now will positively come with us in the future.

Take action

• ➔ Ask your child to go through the conditions of happiness and identify something in their life that fulfills each condition.
• ➔ Go through the same process for yourself.
• ➔ If you feel comfortable, show each other your responses.

The Power of Dignity

What is it?

Dignity is the belief that we all have inherent worth. When it is the foundation of our relationships, it is transformative because we feel recognized, acknowledged, included and safe, and seek to affirm those feelings in others. Dignity is the inherent worth and value of every human; everyone has it and everyone has the same amount. Why does this matter? The second we decide that someone’s dignity is negotiable, we have opened up psychological distance between people, the idea that there is an us and them. When we feel psychological distance from others it changes how we see them, what we think we owe them, and how we think we get to treat them.

Schools are among the most socializing places in our society and ought to be a place where every child’s dignity is upheld. Schools, like society, can be places where diverse views are heard and experienced. Knowing how to deal with such diversity and being able to hold and understand counter views is a key for advancing a civil society. An aim that we imagine parents share with educators is empowering children to overcome any oppressive conditions that can strip human dignity and teach them to see dialogue as the starting point of valuing one’s and others’ viewpoints. Many teachers work very hard to model these values in schools, and when parents work alongside educators to impart these values, young people feel safer because they can see their villages address conflict productively and see the benefit of coming together to solve problems.

Why is it important?

Dignity cannot be earned or lost: it is a non-negotiable right. It may seem apparent and straightforward that everyone has essential value. However, the practice of using dignity to guide our interactions with each other is actually a radical shift—especially in parenting and educating young people. While we are all born with dignity, we are not born knowing how to act in ways that honor everyone’s dignity, including our own. These skills must be learned and practiced. Dignity also provides invaluable context for young people and answers their inevitable question, “Why is learning emotional intelligence and how to manage relationships important?”—because it gives us a common language and concrete tactics to create and maintain a school climate where all can engage and feel welcome.

DIGNITY CANNOT BE EARNED OR LOST: IT IS A NON-NEGOTIABLE RIGHT.

10 Elements of Dignity

by Donna Hicks

Acceptance of Identity

Approach people as neither inferior nor superior to you; give others the freedom to express their authentic selves without fear of being negatively judged; interact without prejudice or bias, accept how race, religion, gender, class, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc. are at the core of their identities. Assume they have integrity.

Recognition

Validate others for their talents, hard work, thoughtfulness, and help; be generous with praise; give credit to others for their contributions, ideas, and experience.

Acknowledgment

Give people your full attention by listening, hearing, validating, and responding to their concerns and what they have been through.

Inclusion

Make others feel that they belong at all levels of relationship (family, community, organization, nation).

Safety

Put people at ease at two levels: physically, where they feel free of bodily harm; and psychologically, where they feel free of concern about being shamed or humiliated, and that they feel free to speak without fear of retribution.

Fairness

Treat people justly, with equality, and in an evenhanded way, according to agreed-upon laws and rules.

Independence

Empower people to act on their own behalf so that they feel in control of their lives and experience a sense of hope and possibility.

Understanding

Believe that what others think matters; give them the chance to explain their perspectives, express their points of view; actively listen in order to understand them.

Benefit of the Doubt

Treat people as trustworthy; start with the premise that others have good motives and are acting with integrity.

Accountability

Take responsibility for your actions; if you have violated the dignity of another, apologize; make a commitment to change hurtful behaviors.

Separating Dignity From Respect

What is it?

Respect is one of the most common words we use to communicate our expectations to young people. It is also one of the most misused. The definition of respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone based on their abilities, qualities, and achievements. When respect and dignity are used interchangeably, we conflate the meaning and lose the power of each. Even more complicated is that young people often have negative associations with respect, because in our culture, respect is often about recognizing power: who has it and who doesn’t. Young people can perceive respect as demanding their unconditional obedience and being forced to show respect to someone who is taking away the dignity of someone else. Without taking away the importance of respecting one’s elders, when this happens in school, as in a family, a young person disengages. As long as we tell young people to respect others who are abusing power, they will be conditioned to be silent: from the playground, to our classrooms, locker rooms, workplaces, our faith communities, and the halls of government.

RESPECT IS A FEELING OF DEEP ADMIRATION FOR SOMEONE BASED ON THEIR ABILITIES, QUALITIES, AND ACHIEVEMENTS.

Why is it important in distance learning?

While distant learning, we want students to feel as comfortable as they can to raise questions, share concerns, and advocate for themselves. If dignity isn’t present and a part of their language, it is harder for them to do these things when there are inevitable negative interactions with the people at school.

Imagine a ten-year-old child asking a teacher for help because another child is being mean to them. Imagine a sixteen-year-old who has a teacher rudely call them out for being out of dress code on a Zoom study group because they don’t think about the reasons this may be happening—like the child is depressed or the parent has lost their job and can’t buy new clothes. When young people go to an adult for help, the most common advice they receive is usually one of two extremes. In the first example, the child might hear “Don’t let it bother you/be the better person/tell them to stop.” while the other extreme is some variation of “Fight back/don’t ever start a fight but always finish it.” With a teacher, “You don’t have to like it, but you have to respect your teacher” or the opposite when the parent of the out-of-dress-code student will write a threatening email to that teacher and the principal. Although often well-meaning, these responses aren’t usually that helpful. Blanket statements don’t give an action plan that effectively addresses the problem, and in the case of parental intervention, young people can often feel like they are making the problem worse and will be reluctant to tell their parent other problems they experience.

Now imagine you as the parent that uses dignity to frame your response by saying something like, “I’m sorry that happened and thank you for telling me. Let’s work together so you can have some control in the situation and do it in a way that upholds your dignity.” This response validates the young person’s experience and gives them a path forward to stand up for themselves. It gives them a process where they will develop self-respect because they handled the situation with courage and integrity.

AS LONG AS WE TELL YOUNG PEOPLE TO RESPECT OTHERS WHO ARE ABUSING POWER, THEY WILL BE CONDITIONED TO BE SILENT.

Take action

Think for a moment: What adult in your young adult life did you respect when you were growing up? How did they make you feel?

Holding that person’s image in your mind, ask yourself

• ➔ When you think of them now, what feelings come up?
• ➔ Why did you respect them?
• ➔ What stories come to mind?

If you answered, “because of how they made you or others feel,” you probably respected that person because they treated you with dignity. Even if they were “hard” on you, they made you feel that you mattered—that you were just as significant, valued, and worthwhile as everyone else—even if you didn’t feel that way about yourself.

It is also fascinating to consider the teachers that had the most profound impact on you when you were at school. When you reflect on the reasons, it usually comes down to two—either that teacher cared enough to encourage your passion or that teacher saw something in you that you did not see in yourself. These qualities of sharing passion and upscaling expectations are attributes we trust parents also exhibit with their children, and well worth recalling when times get tough during out-of-class learning. It is a simple act of dignity to see more in others than they may see in themselves, and to share your passions for learning and problem-solving.

 Key Messages

• ➔ It is imperative to a young person’s physical, psychological, and emotional well-being to have a sense of belonging in their community.
• ➔ Respect is a feeling of admiration for someone based on their abilities, qualities, and achievements. Respect can be earned and lost.
• ➔ Dignity is recognizing the inherent worth of each of us. Dignity is a given.
• ➔ Using dignity allows us to separate someone’s actions and behaviors from their essential worth. You don’t have to respect what they did, but you do have to treat them with dignity.
• ➔ When we ground our work, relationships, and community in the principle of dignity, we can get through tough times.
• ➔ Make it a practice to see more in others than they may see in themselves and to share your passions for learning and problem-solving.

Putting Principles Into Action

What is it?

Using dignity as a foundation, let’s get more concrete with the skills to build the core competencies we all need to strengthen our connection with others: how to listen, ways to value everyone’s contribution, strategies to maintain curiosity when we are uncomfortable, and ways to accept help.

Why is it important in distance learning?

Principle: Listening is being prepared to be changed by what you hear. This doesn’t mean you always have to agree, but like anyone, if the young person perceives that your judgments or assumptions stop the ability to exchange ideas, they will shut down. Shutting down can look different. From the obvious “I’m not telling you anything about my life!” to “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it” as a way to tell you they don’t want to talk, to merely saying what you, the adult, wants to hear. The ability to listen demonstrates you understand (again not necessarily agree with) what they said. This is a gift, and it makes it more likely that the other person may come to listen and understand you also. Right now, young people may be hesitant to share their problems with you because they don’t want you to worry about them or add stress to your life. If they want to talk, it’s really time to listen.

Despite their outward appearance, managing the transition to school online, giving up their expected routine for the fall, and navigating our current landscape of constant change is a lot for young people to manage. It’s a lot for you, too, as the adult in their life. Lead with the idea that creating space for them to be heard, without adult commentary, is essential to establishing a healthy distance learning environment and to support your relationship with them. Emotional dysregulation, apathy, antagonism, anxiety, and regressing are all normal behavior responses to stress for ages 7 to 17. Starting conversations with the simple question, “Are you looking for advice or are you looking for me to listen?” will go a very long way to support your young person and create positive experiences with distance learning.

EMOTIONAL DYSREGULATION, APATHY, ANTAGONISM, ANXIETY, AND REGRESSING ARE ALL NORMAL BEHAVIOR RESPONSES TO STRESS FOR AGES SEVEN TO SEVENTEEN.

Principle: No one knows everything, but together we know a lot. Right now, we are all on a tremendous learning curve and we all have valuable lessons to teach each other. It is truly a village moment where we can see the importance of learning and sharing with each other. In education and raising young people, we need to integrate this principle with acknowledging that young people know the most about what it is like to receive distance learning. Yes, adults’ wisdom and experiences matter, but we must appreciate and listen to young people’s experiences so that when we do share our wisdom and insights, it is reflective of young people’s culture—which, you have to admit, is radically different from the way we grew up, even before COVID-19.

Principle: Activating curiosity, especially when we’re uncomfortable, is the key to learning. Being uncomfortable is normal when you are learning something quickly. Discomfort is the new norm as we are working, parenting, and being in community during COVID-19. You may have had the experience of being bewildered or frustrated with the young person in your life. From acting out to withdrawing or just doing something that makes no sense to you, remember that there is always a reason for their actions. You just have to figure out what that reason is by asking curious questions. A curious question communicates that the person asking the question wants to gain greater insight into the other’s feelings and experiences. We know it can be challenging at the time, but if you can remember to get curious, you are enabling the dynamic between you and a young person to change toward greater understanding, honesty, and trust.

LANDMINE!

When an adult says, “Why are you being so difficult?” or “What’s wrong with you?” neither comes across as a curious question. Instead, it comes across as an accusation. If you activate curiosity and say something like, “I don’t know what’s going on but there has to be a good reason why you’re acting like this. When you’re ready, I’d like to know what it is,” you have a better chance that the young person will calm down and believe they can explain what’s going on.

Principle: Asking for help is a skill, not a weakness. Many of us were raised to believe that admitting we need help, feeling overwhelmed, or not knowing the answer is something to hide and even be ashamed of. If there was ever a time to realize we all need help from each other, this is it. It will benefit the young person in your care throughout their life to develop the skills to know when they need help, identify the person who can help them, and then seek out that help. That ability can be truly lifesaving.

Take action

An exercise you and your child both can do is sit down and write the three characteristics you need in a person you would go to for advice. An example might be, opinionated but not judgmental, calm, and reliable. After you both come up with your lists, write down at least two people who fit the criteria you each came up with. Then you can show each other what you wrote and create a plan to reach out to those people.

A CURIOUS QUESTION COMMUNICATES THAT THE PERSON ASKING THE QUESTION WANTS TO GAIN GREATER INSIGHT INTO THE OTHER’S FEELINGS AND EXPERIENCES.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Listening is being prepared to be changed by what you hear.
• ➔ Activating curiosity, especially when we’re uncomfortable, is the key to learning.
• ➔ No one knows everything, but together we know a lot.
• ➔ Asking for help is a skill, not a weakness.

Understanding Emotional Regulation

There are a few core concepts about emotional intelligence all people should know.

1. Emotions feel like they are happening to you but are actually created by you based on your context and how you have been socialized.
2. Feelings are not facts and your brain is capable of profound change, even when you are in distress. This means that while emotions are “real” and no one has the right to question how we feel, emotions are not permanent.
3. Humans aren’t always that great at guessing how others feel, despite what we may think or how well we know someone.

When you assume you have correctly interpreted how someone feels or why someone is emotionally dysregulated, remind yourself you may be incorrect and coming from your own perspective. The more we understand how emotions serve us and how we can process them, the better able we will be to manage ourselves and extend empathy to others. We all have to learn and practice. To get us started, we are focusing on three emotional regulation topics to build our knowledge and skills: emotional granularity, anxiety, and self-compassion.

STOPPING TO THINK CRITICALLY ABOUT WHAT EXACTLY YOU ARE FEELING GIVES YOU MORE CONTROL, SELF-AWARENESS, AND PERSONAL AGENCY.

Emotional Granularity

What is it?

Emotional granularity is the ability to have a wide range of precise, specific words to describe how you’re feeling. For example, take the word angry. There are many more specific words that can describe anger, such as infuriated, upset, furious, mad, annoyed. All these feelings have differing sets of experiences, elicitors, and require different strategies to process. Having more words to describe your feelings gives you many more options to understand and communicate your feelings.

Why is it important?

The better you are at describing and understanding the emotions you feel, the better you can understand your emotional state, increasing your emotional intelligence. You have to have a concept of an emotion to experience it. For example, you were not born knowing what sadness is; you were socialized to understand it because of how adults responded to you when you were a child. Stopping to think critically about what exactly you are feeling gives you more control, self-awareness, and personal agency. Getting emotionally granular also empowers you to decide how you perceive a specific experience. This will help you manage your emotions more efficiently when working with young people, and coach them to better understand their emotions as well.

Why is it important in distance learning?

Everyone is experiencing this time differently and everyone feels different emotions in these moments. Young people need the capacity to describe the experience they are going through during this pandemic. At base, that is about having the skills to define how you feel so it feels accurate. Being able to describe your feelings more specifically also connects to building your vocabulary to better articulate and understand your experiences.

YOUNG PEOPLE NEED THE CAPACITY TO DESCRIBE THE EXPERIENCE THEY ARE GOING THROUGH DURING THIS PANDEMIC.

Take action

When you or your child feels a strong emotion, try to get curious about how it feels physically and name the sensations. Having more words to accurately describe your feelings gives you more options to understand what you’re feeling. How can you help a young person to develop emotional granularity? Encourage them to write down all the more specific words they are feeling. They can draw their feelings or talk them out with you or a friend. Whatever activity helps them design, build, and see their emotional landscape will give them increased understanding and with it an increased sense of control.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Getting clear about your emotions empowers you to define your experiences.
• ➔ Emotions are real, but they aren’t permanent. You can change the way you feel.
• ➔ The more granular you can get about your emotions, the better able you will be to manage them.

Anxiety

What is it?

Anxiety, like all emotions, is a physiological response; it is your brain’s attempt to respond to something that it perceives as threatening or something that makes you feel uncertain. It’s easy for our minds to race as we try to make predictions about a world that doesn’t feel stable. It is an understandable reaction to feeling like life is uncertain, unpredictable, and unsafe. And while it’s true that we have limited power over the outside world, we can develop the skills to better manage the anxiety we experience.

Why is it important?

Anxiety is powerful; it can lead you to feel stuck, overwhelmed, trapped, and out of control. It also impacts your ability to view things with clarity because your brain is trying to protect you from something. When you feel anxious, you are faced with two options: either the anxiety will hijack your health and ability to process your feelings, or you can slow down and change the process so you have more control over the anxiety. Signs you are hijacked by anxiety are avoidant behavior, feelings of shame or powerlessness, and racing, repetitive, or catastrophic thoughts. You may also experience physical symptoms like chest tightness, quick heartbeat, and trouble focusing. Anxiety has a pattern that often looks like this:

1. There is a trigger or event that causes you anxiety.
2. Your mind reacts with repetitive or catastrophic thoughts described above.
3. Your body responds, for example, with sweaty palms and a racing heartbeat.
4. Your behavior expresses your anxiety: Your tone of voice, facial expression, or your body language all convey the anxiety you feel.

Why is it essential in distance learning?

This isn’t going to be surprising. Studies report that during COVID-19, we are all experiencing anxiety in ways we never have before. According to a report by the American Psychiatric Association, “More than one-third of Americans (36%) say coronavirus is having a severe impact on their mental health and most (59%) feel coronavirus is having a serious impact on their day-to-day lives” (American Psychiatric Association, 2020). Young people were already experiencing anxiety at unprecedented levels—it’s been reported that students today feel more anxiety than students who were child psychiatric patients in the 1950s (Twenge, 2000). Combined with young people’s possible reluctance to share their feelings of anxiety about their social and academic lives, you both need to know the signs of anxiety and how you can support each other. As the adult guide, knowing some basic facts about anxiety to share with the young people in your care helps you better manage your own anxiety and model healthy processing. Remember that we are not good at predicting what exactly others are feeling, so if you have an overwhelming sense your young person is anxious, that is a good opportunity to check in with yourself first before trying to tell someone else they are anxious.

Take action

Decreasing anxiety for you or a young person means slowing down, analyzing your emotions, and then remembering that while they are real, they aren’t permanent facts. You can ask yourself, “What feelings am I feeling? Why am I feeling these feelings?” Remind yourself that everyone can feel anxiety and it is very normal to feel shame or embarrassment when you realize you are feeling anxious. Remind yourself that feelings are not facts and that you have the power to choose how you respond. Remember that anxiety is physical and craves a physical response. Exercise, take a walk, meditate, do a breathing exercise. It can be unnerving for our children to see us really upset or anxious, but we can reassure them by talking about it in a straightforward, compassionate way. Normalizing and demystifying are the goals of teaching emotional intelligence. For younger children, we can comfort them by saying, “I’m sorry it was hard for you to see me upset. I feel better now that I [fill in the blank: took a minute, took a breath, exercised, etc.]. Why don’t you pick out a book [or some calming activity] we can do together?”

For teens, you can modify with “I’m feeling overwhelmed because of [state general reason]. We’re all figuring it out together. I’m going to take a few minutes to calm myself down, and we can talk about it if you want. Even though I was upset, I can still support you too if you’re struggling.”

NORMALIZING AND DEMYSTIFYING ARE THE GOALS OF TEACHING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

If your child is experiencing anxiety so that it is interfering with normal functioning and relationships in work, school, family, friends, and things you used to enjoy, then receiving mental health support is essential self-care. If at all possible, include them in the process of choosing the therapist. They can come up with three questions that they would like to ask the therapist on the introductory conversation and then ask them to assess if they think the therapist is a good fit for them. Finding a good fit between a young person and therapist not only is good social and emotional skill-building for them, it also gives them ownership of their mental health and they will be more likely to benefit from the experience.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Anxiety profoundly impacts your child’s health so it’s important to take the feeling seriously.
• ➔ If you develop skills to manage anxiety, you can slow down, change the process, and feel better.
• ➔ Young people may not want to share their anxiety with you because they don’t want to add to your worries—which is why it is so important to talk with them.

Self-Compassion

What is it?

Self-compassion is choosing to turn toward your suffering with kindness and empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. If we can’t have compassion for ourselves it is harder to empathize. The truth is, it’s not uncommon for us to be harder on ourselves than other people, especially when it comes to our kids. We so often blame ourselves for making a mistake with our kids or regretting a decision we made that somehow will follow them for the rest of their lives. But we can always repair our relationships, beginning with repairing the relationship we have with ourselves and modeling this for our children. We will make mistakes. Model compassion toward yourself so you can coach the young people in your life to do the same.

Why is it important?

Of course, we make mistakes with young people in our lives. Sometimes those mistakes are big ones. But ironically, one of the ways we can repair those mistakes is to exercise compassion for ourselves. Self-compassion is essential to have the skills to hold ourselves accountable for our behavior, treat ourselves and others with dignity, and do better. Emotions are like tunnels; you have to go through them to get over them. Self-compassion is proven to be one of the most effective mitigation strategies because it allows you to confront the situation and the feelings associated with it while also combating shame or other negative emotions that impact our self-worth when we make mistakes.

IF WE CAN’T HAVE COMPASSION FOR OURSELVES IT IS HARDER TO EMPATHIZE.

Why is it important in distance learning?

Even though we intellectually know that we should give ourselves and young people a break as we live through this pandemic, we still can be hard on ourselves. We are all going through a tremendous amount of change and anxiety as the world we have known is turned upside down. We are constantly comparing ourselves and our children’s online learning experience with others. We worry that our children are falling behind compared to other children their age instead of focusing on their academic needs. It is challenging to give ourselves or others a little grace. When it comes to young people and how they will be learning online or having to be instantly flexible about how they go to school, teaching them to be self-compassionate will make things a little easier for them. When you are self-compassionate, it becomes easier to be compassionate and patient with others as well. It also helps you react to your emotions while also depersonalizing their impact. Teaching young people positive emotional mitigation strategies allows them to have more agency, become more resilient, and increase their ability to be adaptable in the face of any adversity.

Take action

Practice comforting yourself like you would a good friend. Say to yourself, “This is so hard, I’m so sorry you are going through this. What do you need right now?” Yes, it’ll feel awkward at first. Try it anyway. When we are kind to ourselves amazing things happen in our body. Anxiety and fear tend to decrease, while feelings of safety and generosity tend to increase. Role modeling self-compassion, and in general, the struggle you may have doing it, shows your child that you are challenged by these issues, too, and that there is no shame in self-forgiveness. You can still hold yourself to high expectations while allowing the space to make mistakes as you grow.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Self-compassion is choosing to turn toward your suffering with kindness and empathy.
• ➔ Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
• ➔ The more compassion you have for yourself, the easier it is to have compassion for others.

Managing Conflicts

What is it?

Everyone, in some capacity, has been affected by the stay at home orders and physical closure of schools. We are all spending more time with our immediate family, which is causing us to navigate and negotiate those relationships in new ways. Some of us are living with a profound sense of loss. Our children are similarly dealing with loss, change, and loneliness. All of this means we are going through some hard, challenging times and that will inevitably make it harder to regulate our emotions at times, so we will be irritated at each other. In the words of Dr. Bryan Harris, from Casa Grande Elementary School District in Arizona, “If you have no conflict in your life, one of two things are true: you’re dead or you’re not paying attention to the people around you.”

There are lots of ways conflict comes into your life with a young person. So, when you want to talk to your child about a potentially charged topic, here are suggestions to remember in preparation:

• ➔ Good or bad, the situation you and your child are experiencing is a moment, not a lifetime.
• ➔ You don’t have to fix everything all the time. Young people usually confide in a trusted adult because they want to vent, not because they want the adult to fix the problem.
• ➔ Young people (just like all of us) don’t usually “get it” overnight. All of us learn over time so it’s helpful to manage your own expectations. Do not judge yourself or your child if the behavior shift takes time.
• ➔ Learning how to manage conflict is one of the most complex, critical, and ongoing social skills any of us can acquire.

WHEN YOU ARE SELF-COMPASSIONATE, IT BECOMES EASIER TO BE COMPASSIONATE AND PATIENT WITH OTHERS AS WELL.

LANDMINE!

Have you ever shared a difficult experience with someone, and they immediately started telling you all the things you should have done? Do you listen to them gratefully, or do you get frustrated because you don’t feel listened to? It’s the same thing with young people. Adults can easily fall into the trap of immediately trying to fix the problem by giving a young person “helpful” advice or telling them how they would have done it. If a young person shares a problem with you, the same thing applies. Respond by asking if they are telling you because they want to vent or if they want advice. Feel free to tell them they can vent and then ask for help, but to let you know when it’s advice-giving time.

Why is it important?

How many of us are good at processing our feelings when we are in conflict with someone, and then communicating those feelings effectively with the same person we are upset with? Many of us have underlying and understandable reasons we hide our feelings of anger, anxiety, vulnerability, or frustration—or we don’t know how to share them in ways that effectively address the problem we are upset about. We also have learned to define success in a confrontation by either being in complete agreement with each other afterward or dominating the other person and “winning” the argument.

Why is it important in distance learning?

In “school” when young people have conflicts with others, they’ll have less time, and fewer opportunities and space than they had in the past, to talk to each other face to face to resolve their problems. It will also be tempting for young people to get frustrated with a teacher or a student but not feel like it’s worth saying anything about it. In the spring of 2020, we heard many students talk about experiencing these frustrations during online classes, and it was one of the primary reasons why they reported being less interested in school. Giving young people concrete strategies helps them feel more prepared and better able to advocate for themselves. If they feel they have more agency, distance learning will feel less like something to simply endure.

WE HEARD MANY STUDENTS TALK ABOUT EXPERIENCING FRUSTRATIONS DURING ONLINE CLASSES AND IT WAS ONE OF THE PRIMARY REASONS WHY THEY REPORTED BEING LESS INTERESTED IN SCHOOL.

Take action

We’re going to give you three strategies: (1) for yourself when you are communicating with a young person, (2) to guide a young person to go through the process of managing a conflict with another person, and (3) for facilitating an airing of grievances in your family—but it works with other people too.

1. Preparing to have a challenging conversation

When you are ready to have a conversation about a topic that may be challenging, keep these tips in mind:

• ➔ Keep it short and don’t repeat yourself.
• ➔ Keep it to three: What are the three things you want to get across in this conversation, no matter what happens?
• ➔ Be strategic: Are you and your child in a place and time where they can listen to you, and you can listen to them?

2. Helping a young person navigate conflict using the SEAL strategy

SEAL is a strategy to name the hard feelings we are experiencing, process those feelings, and then help us decide how and when to talk to the other person you’re in conflict with. The SEAL strategy doesn’t tell you what to say; it helps you think through how to say it. SEAL redefines what it means to be in a confrontation, and it can be used with anyone. You can even tell your child, “If you get mad at me, you can always use this strategy to help you tell me why you’re mad.”

SEAL stands for STOP, EXPLAIN, AFFIRM and ADMIT, and LOCK.

Stop: Take a deep breath. Observe where you are. Decide what you need to do now to make the problem smaller.

Explain: Take your bad feelings and put them into words—be specific about what you don’t like and what you need instead.

Affirm and admit: Affirm means that both you and the person you are angry with have the right to be treated with dignity. Admit if there is anything you did that contributed to the problem and need to include in your SEAL.

Lock:

• ➔ Lock-In: You want to keep the relationship or the connection with the other person.
• ➔ Take a pause: You want to pause the relationship. Think of it as Velcro; it can stick and unstick. So, if you separate (unstick) you can always stick back together later.
• ➔ Lock out: You feel that you aren’t being treated with dignity, so you need to end the relationship.

Let’s talk about the locking out part because it can seem harsh or too final. We understand that when young people are in a friendship with a lot of conflict it can feel that there is no way to stop being friends with the other person. A good question to ask is, “When is it OK to decide not to be friends? What would it look like to not be friends but still treat them with dignity?” We want young people to face these awkward moments and understand that friendships are stronger when people work through complicated feelings. We also want them to recognize the signs that they are in an unhealthy or unsafe friendship now, which also sets a good foundation for other relationships when they are older.

If employing SEAL in a sibling conflict, the option to Lock will look different. You can strategize within your household around what Locking could look like if someone needs space or time from the person they are in conflict with. Perhaps the siblings are allowed to go a few days without talking, or rules are established that they cannot invade the personal space of the other for a period of time, or that bedrooms or beds are private spaces. While this could present an added complication, during this new reality it is very important to help young people advocate for their boundaries, so they feel agency over their lives.

There’s also a complication to SEAL, or anytime we teach young people how to express their anger to another person. It’s called the pushback. It’s the other person’s response that may upset you, distract you, or just irritate you so much that you get off track. It’s important to ask about the pushbacks because it allows the young person to talk about the reasons why they are reluctant to tell someone they are angry and helps them be more prepared when a pushback happens to them in real life.

Now you have a strategy to help you and the young person in your care. But there’s a problem convincing and teaching young people to use SEAL or any conflict resolution strategy. It always feels awkward. Here are a few options to introduce SEAL:

“Let me ask you a few questions so I can understand what you’re going through. How is this situation making you physically feel? Like in your stomach or your head? Put the feelings you’re having to words. Or draw it. Just get it out.”

“Everyone’s probably going to experience a conflict where they lose their words or think of what they really wanted to say five minutes after the conversation (or argument) ends. SEAL is just a strategy to figure out how to speak what you want and what you are feeling in those situations.”

“When you first learned to play a video game or other activity, were you good at them the first time you played them? How did you get better? Practice. This also means that you expect mistakes, and you will learn from those mistakes. You don’t expect to be perfect the first time. Or even the first ten times. The more you practice, the better you get. It’s the same thing having conversations with people when you are uncomfortable or angry with them. The more practice you do the better able you will be to say what you want and be heard by the other person.”

3. Facilitating the airing of grievances

We also inevitably have conflicts within our families. The added stress, lack of freedom, and tight quarters makes for new challenges. We have heard from our students that many of them are closer to their siblings than they ever have been before, and they are also bickering a lot. As a parent, sibling fighting can be a huge stress for you and sometimes it’s hard to know how serious the argument is. Again, here is where dignity can help you. If a young person is taking away the dignity of their sibling that is not acceptable; it’s your responsibility to affirm the importance of dignity in your home. This means that while people can get angry with each other, they don’t have to respect behavior that puts down others; behaviors that result in demeaning another’s worth are not acceptable. A helpful strategy to calm family arguments is to allow each person two minutes to explain what is bothering them, why, and what they want to change. While they are speaking, the other person has to listen and not interrupt. After the first person finishes, the other person speaks and does the same thing for two minutes. Then there can be a round of curious or clarifying questions (we suggest you remind the people what those are). Lastly, each person will have up to a minute to articulate what they heard from the other person and what they can commit to do to improve the situation. This is best done when both parties are in a position to be able to listen, so you may not want to try this when you or your children are in the middle of an argument. It may be best to let them, or you, have some space prior to engaging this strategy and make sure everyone’s phones are left in another room while this discussion is happening.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Conflict is inevitable and a normal, healthy aspect of managing relationships.
• ➔ SEAL is a strategy to help you manage yourself in a conflict, so you are best set up to communicate your feelings, your boundaries, and affirm everyone’s dignity.
• ➔ We will all have countless opportunities to practice SEAL. So, don’t stress on doing it perfectly. Any part that you do builds your skills and confidence.
• ➔ Giving young people strategies to manage conflict means they may engage in more conflict because they feel empowered. While this can be challenging in the short term, learning to manage conflict is essential to long term success.

Friendships in COVID-19

Friends can be everything to a young person. Friendships allow young people to process the experience of growing up and feel connected to others. It’s fundamental to the human experience. It is central to the feeling of belonging that is so important to most of us. It is also the first experience children have navigating the complexities of healthy relationships and boundaries.

What is it?

For some parents, there has been a tendency to worry if their child doesn’t have a lot of friends. But more important than having a large group of friends is having at least one person who “gets” us, who we can be ourselves around and we can depend on. But friendships, especially in school, have always been complex. Sometimes because of the natural rhythm of young people’s social dynamics, but also because of the influence of adults’ expectations.

We often adopt the personality of our friends as we hang out with them more and it can lead to a loss of self-identity as we try to meet their expectations (the hobbies they like, etc.). As a result, young people can be dynamic with their personalities and cause up and downs with the relationships with their parents as they try to define themselves. Jake, 16

In elementary school, you’re basically told that unless you are friends with everyone you are mean and a bully. So often people pretend to get along just to make things easier. As I got older, there were people I was friends with because they were in a class or activity with me. Sometimes I picked friends based on not having anyone else I knew. Sometimes I picked a friend because I had to be around them all the time, so it was easier for everyone if we got along than if we didn’t. Sometimes I was friends with someone just because they didn’t like another person, and we bonded. Friendship has levels and is as complicated for young people as it is adults. Sara, 17

It’s important to remember that friendships are often multifaceted. Young people can show different facades to different people. How they show up with you may be very different than how they show up with their friends. How they show up with one friend could be different than how they show up with other friends. How they show up to their friends online can be very different than how they show up in person. Young people maintain certain kinds of friendships in specific ways. Some friendships are maintained in group chats, in texts, some over social media, some by talking (in-person, on the phone, or video calls), others by online video games. They all matter. It is essential that your young person feels like you respect the importance of their friendships, even if they are struggling with them. Take their concerns seriously, offer feedback without demeaning their friends, and remember that to young people, digital connection feels as vital as in person, so avoid dismissing friends they have made online or prefer to only text or play video games with.

Why is it important?

Friendships teach us what it means to be in relation with each other. They give us the opportunity to learn how to stay in relationship with people we care about while also learning how to maintain personal boundaries. When young people, like many of us, have conflicts with friends, we can understandably struggle between expressing our anger and worrying that doing so will end the friendships. This is one of the reasons why changing friend groups when a young person doesn’t like one or more of the people in their friendship group is way harder than just finding another group of friends, especially now when it can feel like you have to hold on to the friends you do have because you have so few opportunities to meet new people.

Coming from such a small, suburban community like I do with an even smaller school where everyone knows each other from elementary to high school, it can be hard to leave those who you’ve known for years at fear of being shunned within your friend group, much less your class. Charlie, 15

Why is it important in distance learning?

One of your responsibilities is ensuring that your child has a friend, someone they can talk with as they go through this new reality of school and socializing. But of course, how that happens has changed. Young people are having to quickly adjust from the way they made and maintained friendships before COVID-19 to what will work for them now. In the spring, we saw friendship maintenance patterns emerge quickly. Some children and teens preferred “parallel play” by video call with one friend so they could study, watch movies, or do projects together. Others preferred hanging out with a small group after an online class to catch up. Others depended on online video games to maintain friendships. Others depended on long-distance relationships from camp and other places to share what they were going through. And often a young person did some combination of the above. All these strategies are great for maintaining connection with friends when the options to do so are so limited. You may see a major spike in time spent on their phones or other devices, which may worry some parents. While it is important to remain mindful of healthy tech use, if their phone is their only method of social connection at the moment, that is also an important factor to consider. This is an excellent opportunity to invite young people into the conversation and set rules together. If they feel heard and understood, it will likely decrease the amount of conflict around technology use.

DURING DISTANCE LEARNING, FRIENDSHIPS WILL BE MAINTAINED ONLINE IN WAYS THAT THEY NEVER HAVE BEFORE.

All of this is to say, friendships will be maintained online in ways that they never have before. Friendships in school help young people feel connected during the day. And young people are worried about how to maintain their friendships during this time. It’s similar to maintaining a long-distance relationship. The ease of just being in the same building or running into someone is gone. It takes much more work to be in relation with one another remotely and takes much more work to sustain relationships that miss the fleeting moments of socializing that makes you feel connected to others. Young people may be trapped in friendships since they have no one else to turn to or can’t socialize at school so they can meet new people. For the near future, it looks like we really are going to have to do our best to make the friendships we have work, and that’s why handling conflict is so much more important than it was before. As parents, we have to acknowledge the complexity of friendships right now and understand that they may look drastically different than we would like. Spending hours playing a video game online together or watching a movie on FaceTime is valuable time young people are spending to build and maintain friendships.

With my school we have 1400 kids total and we are going to be divided into 3 groups of 475 that go into school every third day, when we don’t go in, we will be doing virtual learning. So, my main concern is that I won’t be able to see most friends and other kids at school. Gus, 16

Take action

How do we help young people know who they want to be friends with and how to maintain those friendships? Here’s an activity you can do with a young person that gives them the ability to develop the friendships that make them feel good and supported. Healthy friendships make everyone’s dignity feel important.

DON’T EXPECT THEM TO REALIZE THEY ARE IN AN UNHEALTHY FRIENDSHIP AND BREAK IT OFF. THAT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE RIGHT NOW.

Avoid focusing on a particular person (for example, a child you may not like who they hang out with) while walking through this activity of creating the criteria for any friendship or relationship. We call this a Friendship Bill of Rights and it is an essential reference when a young person is thinking through a problem they have with a friend.

• ➔ Identify the three most important qualities of a good or healthy friendship.
• ➔ Identify the three most important qualities of a bad or unhealthy friendship.
• ➔ Think about the quality of your friendships: Do your friends treat you according to what you value in a good friendship? Are you treating people according to what you say you value in a good friendship?

If the young person is struggling with a friendship, they can compare their list with how they would describe the friendship. Just don’t expect them to realize they are in an unhealthy friendship and break it off. That may be impossible right now. Encourage them to at least admit to themselves when the person is doing something against their friendship bill of rights. Remind them the smallest act of establishing personal boundaries to a friend like this is actually a really brave decision. Recognizing the state of their friendship gets them on the path to making better decisions about their friendships and other relationships in the future.

 Key Messages

• ➔  Friendships make it possible to go through incredibly difficult times.
• ➔ Young people will have different ways of maintaining those friendships and all of those ways are important to them.
• ➔ We will have limits on our freedom to make new friends so it’s in our best interest to make the friendships we have work.
• ➔ If we aren’t being treated with dignity in our friendships, then knowing how to articulate those feelings is essential to our well-being and ability to make friends who will.
• ➔ Having a strategy like SEAL to have difficult conversations with friends can strengthen the friendship.
• ➔ Make sure that the young person in your care feels that you know all the above.

Teasing: It’s Complicated

What is it?

In any good friendship there will definitely be a lot of teasing and each friend knows which lines they can’t cross. If you start to notice this line being crossed over and over chances are, they are not a good friend. The sections below are really good for helping someone figure out this stuff. Gus, 16

I do feel that lines are sometimes blurred and that even close friends don’t really recognize them simply because we’re good at hiding when jokes hurt us—for the most at least. Radhika, 16

Why is it important?

Teasing is and always has been complicated. It’s one of those evergreen issues that adults and young people can both relate to. But now, when so many of our friendships will be maintained online, and we will have fewer opportunities to figure out misunderstandings in person, understanding the definition of teasing is critical to your child’s ability to navigate the inevitable confusing moments in friendships. It’s important to define teasing.

TEASING CAN BE THE GLUE IN A FRIENDSHIP. IT CAN ALSO MAKE A PERSON FEEL RESENTFUL AND UNSAFE IN A FRIENDSHIP.

Good Teasing

The teasing feels like a good part of the friendship.

The teasing makes you feel closer to the other person.

You don’t feel the teaser wants to put you down.

If you decide you don’t like it, you feel like you can say something, and it will stop.

Annoying Teasing

You feel the teaser should know you don’t like it, but they don’t or won’t admit it.

You feel weak or too sensitive to bring it up, so you don’t say anything.

If you say you don’t like it, the other person doesn’t take you seriously.

Hurtful Teasing

You feel like the teasing is being done on purpose to make you feel bad.

If you say you don’t like it the teasing gets worse.

The teasing is in public (in person or online).

The teasing feels relentless.

LANDMINE!

It can be really helpful for parents to share their experiences with a child so if you were teased when you were a child, tell them. You can even tell them what you were teased about (but you don’t have to tell them everything). However, avoid telling a young person that you know exactly what they’re going through. You don’t know what it is like to be teased on social media where everyone can see what you are being teased about. So, you can say, “When I was your age, I had similar experiences but you’re growing up in a different time than me. It’s really important that I listen to what things are like for you, so I don’t make any assumptions and if I do give you advice it’s based on your experience, not mine.”

Why is it important in distance learning?

Teasing can be the glue in a friendship. It can also make a person feel resentful and unsafe in a friendship. As the adult, it is important to talk to your young person without making assumptions. We may see or hear teasing from one child to another that we find upsetting, and yet it is part of the natural rhythm of your child’s relationship and something they use to build connection. Ask your child about it before offering your point of view. However, if you hear children using identifiers like race or sexual orientation as the root of their joke, step in. Helping children understand when their teasing is rooted in dehumanization is important. As we said above, it’s important to try and work through problems in friendships but we don’t want young people sacrificing their personal boundaries and feeling of dignity so they can keep a friendship. It’s only logical that these dynamics—keeping the friendship even though you don’t like how you or others are being treated in that friendship—will be a significant challenge right now.

REMEMBER AS A PARENT, THERE IS ALWAYS AN UNDERSTANDABLE REASON FOR A YOUNG PERSON’S ACTIONS; YOU JUST NEED TO KNOW WHAT IT IS.

Obviously, teasing doesn’t just happen between friends. Annoying or harmful teasing can happen between peers like during an online class, an online breakout room, or class. When young people are dealing with or even anticipating negative social interactions like this, the incentive to miss that online class will probably go up. Remember as a parent, there is always an understandable reason for a young person’s actions; you just need to know what it is. If your child starts missing their online classes, it could be because someone is making them feel they don’t want to be there.

Take action

If a child comes to you and says some variation of, “These people are teasing/messing with/bothering me,” pay attention. We suggest responding with, “I’m so sorry. Can you tell me a few specifics or describe what’s happening that you don’t like? I don’t want to make any assumptions.” That way you and your child can figure out what category the teasing is in and can strategize appropriately. But the bottom line is, no matter how small or how long it’s been going on for, no one gets to dismiss their feelings or how they perceive their own experience.

Here’s a suggestion for the family from a teenager:

Parents and children could make an agreement to treat each other with dignity in the future, possibly outlining sensitive topics that both sides would not want to be teased about. It relates to the golden rule in a way where the family trusts each other to be civil and to know when to stop. Jake, 16

HOW TEASING IS DEFINED IS ALWAYS UP TO THE PERSON RECEIVING THE TEASING. NO ONE GETS TO TELL ANOTHER PERSON THAT THEY ARE OVERLY SENSITIVE OR TOOK IT THE WRONG WAY.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Teasing is an important part of friendships.
• ➔ To better understand the impact of the behavior on the person being teased, teasing can be divided into three categories: good, annoying, or harmful.
• ➔ How teasing is defined is always up to the person receiving the teasing. No one gets to tell another person that they are overly sensitive or took it the wrong way.

Bullying

What is it?

Bullying is a form of aggression with the following three characteristics:

1. It is intentional.
2. It involves a power imbalance between an aggressor (individual or group) and a victim that is based on physical differences, social differences, or other differences that make it difficult for the victim to defend their self.
3. It is repetitive in nature and occurs over time. It can occur face to face, through written communication and online.

Why is it important?

Bullying is a matter of public health and negatively affects the physical and mental health of both targets and perpetrators. In a school, although the target most directly experiences its impact, they aren’t the only ones who feel the effect. Friends and other peer bystanders feel its consequences as do parents and educators who aren’t able to stop it. To say it another way, bullying weakens the foundations of our villages.

For many years, schools have addressed bullying with various anti-bullying programs. Unfortunately, we have sometimes missed the mark in our efforts to address it because we have tended to concentrate our efforts on assemblies and campaigns that don’t land with the students (and often the teachers as well) because they are unrealistic or superficial. We also tend to rely on large group messaging around the importance of kindness, which does not offer young people a complex framework for understanding human behavior. Kindness campaigns, while well intentioned, can also be easily weaponized by young people because it’s very easy for young, concrete thinkers to use the idea of kindness as a tool for social aggression and exclusion by categorizing one act by a child as “mean,” and thus taking that as permission to dismiss the whole person or retaliate by being mean back. Anti-bullying programs do not engage in substantive pro-social critical thinking; they tend to offer black and white vocabulary that does not separate aggressive acts (which require attention, redirection, and consequences) from the worth of the individual who committed the act. As a parent and educator, it is essential to acknowledge with young people these dual realities: that bullying is an important issue, the way it’s taught can lack credibility among young people, and there is often a belief among students that in spite of these campaigns, assemblies, and posters the bullies (including adults) are not held accountable. It’s as if teaching these values without teaching the skills will stop the behavior. If you teach both, then they are more likely to come to you if they experience bullying.

BULLYING WEAKENS THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR VILLAGES.

Why is it important in distance learning?

According to Cyberbullying Research Center, while we are still gathering information about teens’ use of social media and the possible increase of bullying during COVID-19, there are indicators that there is and will be an increase in online aggression. Sameer Hinduja, the co-director of the Center, explains:

In the midst of major crises, where everyone is already on edge, hostility toward others tends to escalate along with self-preserving and self-defensive behaviors. Many cyberbullying targets will hesitate to get help from their parents. When it happens, they may suffer silently since there will not be any visual cues for educators to see or investigate because the student is not physically at school. In addition, with everyone now receiving instruction online, students cannot readily stop by the guidance counselor’s office, chat with a teacher after class, or let their coach know about what is troubling them and affecting their ability to play sports (since youth sports also are shut down). Those opportunities for meaningful, connective conversations and check-ins largely will not happen organically.

Understanding how bullying happens in school is only possible if we recognize that the people who probably know the most about it are the students. This was the case before COVID-19 and is certainly the case now. One of the first ways you can do that is to ask a young person to define different levels of social aggression that can get lumped together under the category of bullying. It can also help them define what they may be observing or experiencing, which is also a way of getting emotionally granular. If they are experiencing bullying, they are better prepared to describe their experience to the appropriate adults “at” school. Remind young people that we are not born knowing how to act in ways that honor everyone’s dignity; we have to practice. Part of that practice is identifying behavior of others that violates our worth, or the worth of others. Young people have as much responsibility to address behavior that negatively affects them, as they do behavior that negatively affects others. Show these definitions to the young person in your life and ask them their opinion and even modify what we have here. Your goal is to have a common language with the young person so they can better define their experiences and articulate them.

Rude is unintentionally excluding, isolating, or hurting someone’s feelings.

Mean is intentionally excluding, isolating, or hurting someone’s feelings.

Drama is a conflict between people that is entertaining to everyone else but still hurtful to the people involved.

Bullying is repeatedly abusing power against another person.

Then ask them if and how any of this has changed since distance learning began and how they think it could impact their (or other students’) ability to learn.

Take action

Don’t wait until there is a problem! Your child will be online all the time for the foreseeable future. With your children’s input, you can create online guidelines that set behavior expectations for your child around mean behavior and bullying.

THERE IS OFTEN A BELIEF AMONG STUDENTS THAT IN SPITE OF THESE CAMPAIGNS, ASSEMBLIES, AND POSTERS THE BULLIES (INCLUDING ADULTS) ARE NOT HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

Here are a few tips to get you started, with suggestions from Devorah Heitner, PhD, author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World.

• ➔ Create clear definitions for all your family’s online learning platforms about mean, rude, and bullying behavior.
• ➔ Based on those definitions, make clear guidelines about how people in the family should conduct themselves online.
• ➔ Determine specific meaningful consequences if someone in the family goes against these expectations.
• ➔ Create criteria or a list of things your child or children could experience online; if any of these things happen, your child agrees to tell you.
• ➔ If your child receives content online that upsets them, ask them to screenshot and/or make screen recordings as a record of abusive content.
• ➔ Write down your child’s every single website, user login, and password. Take a picture to keep on your phone for safekeeping (Heitner, 2020; So, 2020).
• ➔ Is there a time of day that’s proving hard? As in, your child is in a worse mood after a particular class? It may be because of how they’re being treated in that class. If so, communicate with the teacher what you are observing (Heitner, 2020).

One of the trickiest situations for a parent is when their child tells them that someone has been mean or bullied them. Just like your child needs skills to manage their anger, you also need the same skills. Yes, it’s tempting to rush in to protect them, but these moments are priceless opportunities to demonstrate emotional regulation and social skills with and to your child.

Overall you want to be behind the scenes, coaching your child as they navigate these challenging moments. While you are always there for support and guidance, show them that you have confidence in their abilities. It is also an essential opportunity to model using dignity as the foundation for all relationships.

Let’s imagine that your child shares a problem with you, especially a conflict, they are having with another person. Your go-to response is some combination of

• ➔ “I’m so sorry.”
• ➔ “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”
• ➔ “I’m going to help you think this through so you can come up with a plan to feel a little more control.”

You don’t have to say these things in this exact order. Also, remember that your child will probably start with generalities or only part of the story to see if you’re going to freak out.

Here a few common things we suggest not saying:

• ➔ “They’re jealous of you. They’re insecure”: This response is ineffective because there’s nothing the child can do with this information. Even if it’s true, there’s no action plan. And you never want your child telling other children what you told them. It could easily motivate the other child to retaliate.
• ➔ “Be nice.” Accommodating people who are mean to you doesn’t look like you’re being nice. It looks like you’re vulnerable and easily manipulated.
• ➔ “She probably comes from a bad home. You should feel sorry for her.” While it can be helpful to understand other people’s backgrounds as a way to build sympathy for another person, that doesn’t give them an excuse to lash out at other people.
• ➔ “Are you sure? Maybe you took it the wrong way.” Without meaning to, you can come across as if you don’t believe them or you think your child is overly sensitive or overreacting.
• ➔ “Use your words.” How? What words? What happens if the person doesn’t listen? This puts the ownership for the violation on the young person, not the perpetrator.
• ➔ “Just ignore it. Walk away.” By the time your child comes to you for advice, they’ve probably been trying to ignore or walk away from the problem, but it hasn’t worked. That’s why they are coming to you. This also sends the message that they have to accept violations to their sense of safety, which is not a pattern we want to create in our young people.

What if your child says, “I’m going to tell you, but you have to promise not to do anything”? This is an incredibly confusing moment for parents. You want them to tell you what’s wrong, and it’s understandable to feel if you don’t make this promise, they’ll shut you out. However, you don’t want to make a promise that you may have to break because you need another adult’s advice or involvement. Instead, this is what we suggest you say:

“I wish I could make that promise, but I can’t. But I can promise that if you tell me something where we need to talk to another adult, we can decide together who is the best person to talk to. And we will do it in a way that makes you feel safer and that we are working together to make the problem better.”

If you include your young person as part of the process, they can tolerate your decisions, even if they disagree. What you don’t want to do is take action without your child’s knowledge. This is, after all, their conflict and they are the ones who have to deal with the fallout. One thing we know is young people don’t tend to confide in adults who they think will patronize them or overreact, no matter how good their intentions may be.

LANDMINE!

Don’t say, “Why did you wait so long to tell me?” Even if you have no intention of coming across as accusatory, you probably will. This will make your child feel shame and create a pattern where self-advocacy doesn’t feel safe, which will make them less likely to advocate in the future. If you really want the answer to that, say something a few hours later like, “Whenever it feels right for you, I would really like to know why you didn’t want to come to me sooner.”

 Key Messages

• ➔ Bullying is a form of aggression with the following three characteristics:
  1. It is intentional.
  2. It involves a power imbalance between an aggressor (individual or group) and a victim.
  3. It is usually repetitive in nature and occurs over time.
• ➔ Any advice or information we give about bullying must be given in the context of the child’s experience.

Communication With Other Parents

What is it?

The stronger your relationships are with other parents in your child’s life, the better able you all will be able to support each other. You don’t have to be best friends; you just have to work together and support each other during a difficult time.

Why is it important?

This is especially important because getting support from other parents gets you through the worst of times. They can help you laugh, give you advice, see things in perspective, be a shoulder to cry on, and be someone to whom you can admit that sometimes you don’t like your children. All good things.

DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF OR OTHER PEOPLE’S FAMILIES TO YOURS.

Why is it important in distance learning?

You and your child’s social world is probably smaller, so the better your relationships with the people in your world are, the less alone you and your child will feel. You also need to share and compare information you are getting from your children and the school about how their online education is going. However, there are some pitfalls to avoid. For example, don’t compare yourself or other people’s families to yours. No one has a perfect life. It wasn’t possible before COVID-19—despite our curated social media posts to the contrary—and it’s not possible now. If you find yourself comparing your parenting or your family dynamics to someone else’s, this is a good opportunity to practice self-compassion. Trying to be the perfect parent has always distracted us from being the parents our children need us to be, people who can acknowledge our struggles and mistakes with messy grace.

Take action

Remember empathy? Let’s make sure we extend that to other parents (and any adult in education right now). Give you and the other parents a break. When another parent annoys you or makes you really angry, operate from the place that they aren’t doing it on purpose. Refrain from participating in gossiping or putting down other parents or other young people. If you hear or see something bad, say something like “That must be really hard for that child or family. What can we do to support them?” Using dignity, the idea that everyone is equal in worth is a helpful way to reframe and depersonalize when you are feeling antagonism toward others. It allows you to still have your feelings but realize they should not take away from how we perceive others’ worth.

What if you get angry or frustrated with other parents? Should you reach out to other parents and if so, how? Using SEAL to frame your strategy, here is a structure you can use to frame your conversations.

• ➔ Text or email them and ask them when a good time is to talk.
• ➔ When you’re talking, thank them for taking time with you.
• ➔ Explain specifically why you’re reaching out: what happened that is a problem and what you would like to happen instead.
• ➔ Acknowledge that you may not have the whole story or got it wrong and you would welcome any information they have that would help you understand the situation better.
• ➔ If appropriate, set up a time for checking in to see if the issue has improved.
• ➔ Thank them for listening.
• ➔ Assure them they can reach out to you anytime.

 Key Messages

• ➔ Other parents deserve our empathy.
• ➔ We don’t have to be best friends with other parents, but we do need to use each other as a support system.
• ➔ Supporting other parents means sometimes having courageous conversations with them. You can use SEAL to guide your approach.
• ➔ We are always modeling how to manage relationships; avoid modeling that using gossip or dismissal of others’ experiences is a good way to deal with frustration.

Pod Teaching: Learning Pods

What is it?

Pod learning is small, in-person groups of students learning together with the help of an in-person tutor or teacher. Pods can be parent led or taught by a teacher hired by the parents. Many families are turning to learning pods as a way to create a more consistent structure of “school” when traditional schools can feel so uncertain, the family isn’t confident in remote learning, or they have health concerns that make having a child go to school and increasing exposure to COVID-19 too risky.

Before we go further, we think it’s important to have a village moment: if we don’t take steps to address it, learning pods will exacerbate the inequities that already existed in our educational system before COVID-19. We are all balancing the responsibilities we have for our loved ones and our communities; from our neighborhoods, to the towns and cities we live in, to our country. We all want to do our best by our own children, but we also have to think about other children who don’t have the same resources. They have always deserved the same opportunities and resources as wealthier children, and it is a profound loss that systemic, institutional discrimination against marginalized people has resulted in fewer educational resources for these children. It is to all of our benefit that we have young people who have a sense of purpose, feel connected to their larger community, and can see that this larger community values their education and believes they can meaningfully contribute to their individual and our collective futures.

If you have the means to hire a teacher and provide enrichment opportunities for the children in your learning pod, also consider financially supporting the education of other young people in learning pods where parents don’t have the ability to provide the same resources. Include educational content in your children’s learning pod that highlights equity work across disciplines from the fiction reading your children do to their social studies. Ask your “old” school what you can do to support ALL of the children in your area. Don’t just focus on your children’s right to a good education; focus on the right for all children to have a good education.

Why is it important?

If you decide to organize with a group of parents to teach your children instead of them participating in their traditional schooling, or if, as a group, you want to be more involved in working with your children when they are working at home with their regular teachers, we want you to start off on the right foot. You all want a common language and understanding for how your children will be taught no matter who or where they are learning. Things you thought were clear or just common sense may not be to the other people in your teaching pod. Conflict is inevitable. You will save yourself a tremendous amount of time, energy, and frustration if you create a good foundation with the other people you are going through this experience with. It is all about learning, your child’s learning. Too many think it is about you telling them what to do, and then magic, they do it and learn. Not so simple. Learning is a struggle, learning is confronting what you do not know, learning is so different when you are beginning a new task than learning after you have succeeded with the new task—the words “It is just common sense.” “It’s easy.” and “I don’t understand why you can’t do it.” should be banished when speaking to children about their learning. You can also have the most amazing content, but it will likely fall flat if you don’t create and maintain the learning environment where young people in a group want to and can learn with and from each other.

Steps for Successful Learning Pods

1. Parents meet together to articulate goals, principles, and protocols. You can use the principles in this book or use them as a jumping off point to create your own.
2. Parents, children, and any teacher(s) hired meet together. During this meeting, the following is done with the children: (Preferably there is a scribe: someone who can write on a large flipchart paper)
   • Share the principles the parents created with children and give children the opportunity to ask questions and modify.
   • Share the goals and give children the opportunity to ask questions and modify.
   • Parents and children establish “classroom” agreements. There is an activity on page 95 that you can use. Those agreements will be placed visibly in every learning space.
   • Schedules are agreed on. Review and get feedback on the schedule and determine when the final schedule will be shared with the group. We recommend a spoke-and-wheel approach where one person is responsible for the curriculum and what the agenda will be and then the other teachers meet once a week to review lesson plans and goals.
   • Attendance policy: review what it is and how you will all communicate if a child won’t be participating that day.
   • Determine how will you communicate challenges and frustrations (see the conflict section here to help you).

Parents complete the Note to Self activity. After the activity is completed, we encourage people to say them aloud.

Note to Self

What is your philosophy of teaching and learning in a virtual space? Write no more than 100 words to craft a succinct message.

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________

Available for download at resources.corwin.com/DLparents

The First Parent Meeting

All parents, if physically possible, should attend the parent meetings in whatever mode they can. Once there, we think that everyone needs to be aligned; we recommend you and your group discuss and agree on the following:

1. A Classroom Management Plan
   • Classroom management is different from discipline.
   • A classroom management plan outlines the procedures, routines, and expectations for all the students in the class. These include simple routines such as retrieving and replacing materials, as well as more conceptual ideas such as expectations about the way students interact with others and their learning environment.
   • Discipline, or behavior management, is a component of the overall classroom management plan and is devoted to how problem behavior is prevented, as well as the approach one will use in addressing problem behavior.
   • What will the classroom management plan be for your pod?
2. Classroom Norms
   • Classroom norms are the beliefs and values you and your children want the collective classroom community to abide by. What will be the classroom norms in your pod?
3. Agreements Instead of Rules
   • We use the term class agreements instead of class “rules” for a very important reason. Students are more likely to understand and agree if they are involved in making the agreements. Agreements also serve to convey high expectations, mutual respect, and an acknowledgment of the learning community’s needs. A set of rules that are strictly compliance based (“Don’t speak unless called on.”) tell the students that you’re the one with all the power, and they better listen or else. Agreements represent the social contract of the classroom community, rather than a narrower set of behavioral guidelines that have been written by the teacher or parents alone. You will need to work together to establish these agreements.

How to Create a Great Set of Agreements

• ➔ A fewer number, rather than more, works better. The recommendation is about three to five.
• ➔ Co-construct them with students. That’s why we call them agreements. Even young students have a good sense of what is right and fair.
• ➔ State them positively. Beware of a list of agreements that all begin with the word “No” because these do not tell students what they should do, only what they should not. Behavior cannot exist in a vacuum, and in the absence of clear positive statements, students are left to speculate about what is acceptable.
• ➔ Make them specific in nature. Agreements that are specific in nature state explicitly what the expected behavior should be, which is a key to building students’ ability to self-regulate.
• ➔ Post the agreements. Once developed, they should be clearly posted in your virtual or pod classroom. One way to do so is to put them on a chart that is behind your head so that students can see them. Another advantage is that you can refer directly to the agreement when redirecting a student’s problem behavior. Young children may also benefit from picture symbols to represent each one.
• ➔ Teach and rehearse the expectations. This is a critical component for ensuring an efficient virtual classroom. The agreements should be taught during each distance learning session during the first week of school and revisited occasionally throughout the remainder of the year, especially after school breaks. The teacher or parent should model each rule so that students can learn what they look and sound like. For example, if one of the agreements is about written communication on discussion boards, model examples of how these are done in ways that are respectful and academically appropriate.

Take Action

Activity: Cross Your Arms

Time 5 minutes

Purpose ➦ To connect feeling uncomfortable with the feeling of learning

1. Ask students to cross their arms.
2. Ask students to uncross their arms and let their hands hang free for a moment.
3. Ask students to cross their arms in the opposite direction.
4. Once they figure out how to do that, ask them to drop their arms again.

Debrief ➔ Why do you think you always cross your arms in the same way?

   ➔ How did it feel to cross your arms the way you usually do?

   ➔ How did it feel to cross your arms the other way? It probably feels a lot less “normal” or comfortable that way.

Takeaway

You usually cross your arms in the same way, but that doesn’t make it “right”—it just makes it what you’re used to. There are a lot of things in our life like that—things we do without realizing it. Our class may sometimes feel like we are doing something that feels different or asks you to think about things in new ways. I will probably have the same experience. But the more practice we all do, the easier it gets!

Time to Teach!

Activity: Creating Group Agreements

Time 5 minutes

Purpose ➦ To establish agreements

Materials Whiteboard or flip chart paper

We need to set up some agreements for our group.

So, let’s start with me: We are trying a new way to learn to “do” your education. You already bring a lot of experience to this moment. You have had teachers that really taught you well. And you may have had other teachers that didn’t work for you as well.

First, we are going to do something unusual. We are flipping the script. As a general rule, we don’t like to answer negatively. But just for this one question you can answer in the negative because we are acknowledging if we have had teachers or coaches in the past who have treated us or other young people in a way that has frustrated us, made us angry, or just haven’t worked for our learning style.

Once we get these experiences out, we will flip them around to decide what you do want and does work for you.

The first question is, “What would you like me to not act like, be like, or do when I am teaching you?”

Write students’ responses down on the whiteboard or flipchart using positive wording.

Examples

Don’t lecture all the time.

Don’t call on us if we don’t want to be called on.

Don’t punish the class if one person did something wrong.

Don’t treat us like we’re 5 years old.

The second question is “What do you want me to act like, be like, and do when I am teaching you?”

Examples

Listen.

Get us out of our seats.

Make it fun.

Do different kinds of activities.

Make what we are learning relatable.

End the classes on time.

Now let’s turn to you: What agreements should you have for yourselves?

Examples

Listen to each other.

Take turns speaking; don’t interrupt.

Tell me what you think, not what you think I want to hear.

Teacher note: If students say, “Respect each other.” or “Don’t be boring.” ask them to give concrete examples of what that means.

Troubleshooting

Now let’s think about some common challenges we may have working together. What if someone doesn’t feel comfortable participating? Let’s come up with some ideas about what to do if that happens. If you’re ever feeling that way, you can always set up a time to talk to me, or you can write me a note to tell me how you’re feeling. Don’t worry about spelling. The most important reason for writing the note is for you to tell me how you’re feeling.

Troubleshooting what if your child complains about the parent/teacher? It’s basically the same as when they are in school, except that in this case the teacher could be a parent, so the dynamics are trickier.

First, let’s differentiate the level of the problem:

1. How the teaching parent made your child feel—this more likely requires your intervention.
2. Content that was boring, too hard—we would encourage your child to have that conversation with the person who is organizing the content.
3. What if your child complains about another child in the pod?

All of the tools in the conflict section will help you manage these challenges. Think of it as a two-level SEAL. First we encourage your child to start the process by using SEAL (see page 77 for a review of SEAL) to write or record the following on an audio app:

• What they don’t like that’s happening
• What they want to happen instead
• Anything they are doing that contributes to the problem (which again is not blame)
• What they want in the relationship or interaction to positively move it forward

You can frame your words using SEAL as well. Then your child or you can use what they have written to share your concerns with the teacher. What you want to avoid is having your child try to talk to the other person, lose their words, and then not have a back-up plan to communicate their feelings and experiences. Having them write it down is the backup plan if words in the moment fail them. Usually just having the paper in your hands where you have written your SEAL keeps you from needing it, because you know your words are there when you need them.

Takeaway

• Learning pods can be incredible educational opportunities for young people.
• If you are fortunate to have one, seek ways to incorporate equity education and work into your learning pod.
• A well-run learning pod will have co-constructed agreements so everyone is clear on group expectations.
• Conflicts will be inevitable in learning pods. You have the tools in the conflict section to help you navigate them successfully.

Source: Adapted from Wiseman, R. (2020). Owning up: Empowering adolescents to create cultures of dignity and confront social cruelty and injustice (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.