Transcript
Kirk Martin (0:00)
Hey moms and dads, don't you just.
Casey Martin (0:02)
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Kirk Martin (1:20)
Do you have a child or a student? Because we're doing this particular podcast for teachers, child or student who struggles with anxiety. Maybe they don't want to go to school in the morning. Maybe they have a frequent upset stomach. Or maybe it's a child who has trouble sitting still all day or focusing. Right? And what about the kids who struggle with social skills? Because a lot of strong willed kids connect better with older people or little kids or animals, but they struggle with kids their own age. Well, that makes school kind of tough and it makes recess even tougher. You know what else makes recess tough? Your strong willed kids can't lose. Well, and so they change the rules of the game. They cheat or they quit and they don't always play well with other kids. So what do you do at recess time? So you're not just managing fights all the time? And then we also have kids. Some of us have kids who struggle with transitions. I want to give you some very practical tools for the classroom in this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us@celebratecalm.com so if you're a parent, feel free to share these ideas with teachers or send the podcast to teachers. If you're a teacher, thank you for doing what you do. It is extremely difficult job. Look, many of the people listening to this podcast Maybe have one or two strong willed children and we have enough trouble getting our one or two kids to listen to us. You've got like 20 or more kids and at least five or six, if not 10 of them have trouble listening and focusing and, and you've got to corral all of them and get them through an entire day. That's exhausting. And you don't always get a lot of support. So I want to, if I can provide a little bit of support. We've done teacher training all over the world. We love our teacher training. If you're ever interested in it, we can do it online or we can come visit you in person. We can combine teacher professional development training, a parent workshop, and my son also does school assemblies for kids teaching them how to control their emotions. So we kind of get everybody on the same page. Feel free, whatever you need. Reach out to our strong willed son who really struggled in school. So if you're a teacher, you wouldn't have liked my son. Reach out to him. But he's awesome now. Casey C A s e y celebratecalm.com so let's go through these and I'm going to do this kind of quickly and I'd ask you, if you struggle with other issues, email us and say, hey, do a teacher podcast on X topic and I will try to oblige you. So kids with anxiety, I'll just do this one really quickly. Here is the best thing you can do for a child who struggles anxiety. If you are a teacher, give that child a very specific job to do. Oh, Jacob, I'm so psyched that you're in my class. Listen, you are really good at doing X. Tomorrow morning, every morning when you come into my classroom, will you help me with X project? Because when he wakes up in the morning, his first thought isn't like, yay, it's a new school day. I can't wait to go to school and get in trouble all day and not connect with any other kids and fall behind and my parents are going to be upset at me. That's their experience, right? That's just reality. But if their first thought is, hey, Mrs. Henderson needs my help and I'm really good at doing X and she asked me to be her special helper. Now listen, if it's a 15 year old, you're not going to ask them to be your special helper. You know the right language to use. But the idea behind this is with kids with anxiety, anxiety is caused by unknowns, things you can't control. And if I'M with a child with anxiety, and I wake up in the morning, there are so many unknowns of what's going to happen on the bus, right? Am I going to have a test today? What if the teacher calls on me and I didn't do my homework or I don't do the assignment the right way? And what about I walk into the cafeteria and I sit alone because I don't always have a lot of friends? Or I turn other kids off? There's a lot of anxiety, and there are a lot of reasons why these kids shouldn't rationally want to go to school. But if I know that there's someone there who's giving me a job to do, who believes in me and said I'm really good at doing X, right? Like, even if I'm not good at sitting still and listening and recalling information for tests and doing assignments, use their gifts and skills. And here's one more. Make a positive personal connection, right? I used to tell Casey's teachers because he was really into ice hockey. I was like, if you just ask him how his hockey tournament went after every weekend, you will own him. He will do anything for you because you're taking an active interest in him. What about kids struggling with sitting still? So you've got a kid and he's moving all the time. Look, I learned to observe kids, and I can tell pretty quickly. If I'm a teacher and I walk into my classroom and there's a child whose leg is bouncing the entire class, that kid probably needs to move. I don't need a diagnosis. I don't need a diagnosis. I just need to watch their behavior, right? And so what I know is that kid has never stopped moving his leg. He probably needs to move in the middle of class. So usually what happens is little Jacob, we'll call him Jacob, or big Jacob, gets up in the middle of the class, just starts walking around the class talking to people. Jacob, sit. You need to sit down right now, right? And once you go to that negative tone, whether you're a parent or teacher, these kids either shut down or. Or they defy you really badly. And so I want to come up with. So here's an idea. This skews to a little bit younger. You can change it for older kids, but I may pull that child aside at recess or some other time, say, jacob, I can really use your help. Listen, when I'm teaching in class, my mouth gets really dry and I know you need to move. Look, I acknowledge simple things, Facts. You need to move. I didn't put a label on it. I didn't say that it was negative because it's not negative. It's just the way he's made. Right.