No matter who you are—parent, teacher, or student—you’re dealing with stress related to aspects of living through this pandemic. Chronic stress and anxiety can negatively impact children’s ability to focus and learn, whether it’s in the classroom or through an online education portal or some hybrid of the two. Unfortunately, due to the uncharted course of living through a pandemic, we can’t eliminate these stressors. However, children and adults can work at building positive, emotionally grounded relationships by sharing each other’s vulnerabilities. Many children with social emotional learning challenges are limited in their ability to express their thoughts and feelings.

In this webinar, Michelle Garcia Winner guides parents and professionals in creating structured empathetic discussions with their children and/or students through the use of visual supports and tips to encourage children to share this type of information. Talking about one’s feelings, tying them to one’s thoughts, and examining how to manage stress over time involves learning about aspects of executive functions.

Metacognitive strategies and tools are highlighted in this very practical webinar, including helping social learners:

• the use of a feeling-emotion scale
• exploring how feelings change throughout a day
• recognize their feelings even when they don’t have words to describe them
• use language to understand why they feel the way they do

This process helps children learn about themselves, which is critical for building strategies for self-regulation. Spending time learning about our children’s stressors not only builds positive relationships, but also helps interventionists consider how to adjust their lessons and expectations to avoid contributing to creating even more stress for our already stressed-out children during this time. Viewers may also find the information shared in this webinar helpful when talking to other adults in their families, workplaces, and communities.