 Hi everybody. Welcome and I'm happy to be here today. My name is Jennifer Lopez Garza and I'm with the City of San Antonio Health Department and today I'm going to be discussing raising resilient children and this is through one of the triple P selected seminars and so really excited to be here today. I'm looking forward to everything. I hope everybody is having a great morning and so let's just jump on into it so we can have some extra time at the end for questions. Perfect. Okay. Again for those of you that are just writing my name is Jennifer Grace Lopez Garza and I'm going to be presenting a triple P seminar over raising resilient children. I hope y'all find the session informative and helpful and we're going to be talking about raising emotional I'm sorry about emotional resilience in children including what it means why it's important and how it benefits children. We're going to discuss six important building blocks our life skills that help children manage their emotions and I'm also going to look and talk about how parents can promote the skills and after we're going to conclude with some key take home messages. So again it's going to be a 45 minute presentation and due to the time limit I'm going to probably leave about five minutes at the end for questions so I'm going to do my best to to go through this so we can have that time but we're also going to be following up with any other further questions through email we're going to try to do our best to do that. So let's go ahead and jump right in. So emotional resilience one of the most important tasks in Parenthood is helping children learn to deal with their emotions. Emotional resilience refers to children's ability to manage their feelings and this means being able to recognize, understand and accept their feelings express feelings appropriately in ways that don't harm others face and resolve difficult or unpleasant situations and cope with stressful or upsetting events. Children's ability to recognize, understand and deal with different emotions develops gradually and is related to their language and cognitive development. So the importance of resilience children must learn to cope with everyday feelings both positive and negative such as excitement, anticipation, frustration and disappointment. All children experience stressful events in their lives such as preparing for exams or like not winning a game or a race or managing relationships with their peers and friends. A lot of children have some upsetting things happen to them like their parents separation or divorce or even a death in the family or the loss of a pet. So it's really important for children to learn how to cope with these experiences. Their ability to cope with feelings is important to their long-term happiness, emotional well-being and overall success in life. Emotional resilience is important for the development of social skills and relationships with others, tolerance and compassion, ability to cope with life experiences, stressors and the prevention of emotional problems. So some of the benefits for children would be that emotionally resilient children are more likely to be caring and socially skilled, empathetic and sensitive to the needs of others, able to manage their feelings and move through negative feelings to feel better again and able to cope with stress like exams or those unpleasant experiences like going to the dentist. They are less likely to resort to unhelpful ways of coping such as avoiding or denying problems or relying on others to fix everything or to give them lots of sympathy. So it's inevitable that children will experience periods of stress in their lives. Therefore children need the emotional skills to deal with stress. Emotional resilience involves six key skills are building blocks and they are recognizing, understanding and accepting feelings, expressing feelings appropriately and ways that don't harm others, building a positive outlook, developing effective ways of coping, dealing with negative feelings and unpleasant situations and managing particularly stressful life events. These are all skills that can be encouraged as children develop. So now let's get into the first building block. The first is for children to recognize and accept feelings both in themselves and in others. From the earliest stages of development, children experience different emotional states such as contentment, pleasure, discomfort and distress. As children move through their preschool and primary school years, they become better able to recognize, talk about and understand how they feel and how others might feel. This involves being aware of what they are feeling such as anxiety or worry and having the words to describe it such as afraid. Their feelings may also become more complex. This developmental progression is related to children's language, thinking and experiences. So for example, one might compare toddler frustration and tantrums to teenage social anxiety. So some ideas of how to help children learn to recognize, understand and accept feelings are, accept that it's normal and healthy to have ups and downs and let your child know that it's okay to have different feelings and show them. Talk about feelings in a way your child understands. From time to time and everyday conversations, talk to your child about emotions and how to recognize them both in themselves and in other people. Talk about the reason for these feelings. Be emotionally expressive yourself. Children learn a lot about emotions by watching their parents' faces and gestures. These provide clues about how someone is feeling. Talk about your own feelings. Share stories of times you felt different emotions, happy, excited, sad, angry, worried or annoyed. Explain the reasons you felt this way and talk about how you dealt with your feelings. Help your child recognize and label emotions. When your child shows an emotion, ask how they feel. If they can't tell you, try to describe the emotion for them. So you can say something like, it sounds like you're getting frustrated with that puzzle. You can encourage children to be emotionally expressive and to express themselves with books, stories, fantasy play, art, drama, music. Children can become more aware of their emotion when expressiveness is valued. So now on to building block number two. There is more than emotional resilience and simply being able to recognize and accept feelings. The next building block is expressing feelings appropriately in ways that don't harm others. Parents have an important role in helping children learn acceptable ways of expressing their feelings. So according to Triple P, children need to learn the following. What types of emotional expressions are okay? Like what words, expressions and actions are appropriate? And when to express their feelings? Like who they should talk to and how often and how much? They need to learn what types of emotion expressions are not okay, such as being affectionate to people they don't know well, for example, hugging strangers. And socially inappropriate ways of expressing feelings, like losing control and yelling or hurtful actions, for example, hitting or abusing others. Acceptable ways of expressing emotions are related to cultural and family expectations. It's important for children to learn about culture through rituals and traditions. So like weddings, funerals and festivals can teach children how their family and culture deal with celebration and loss. And there are a number of traps parents can fall into that can accidentally encourage emotional distress in children, such as spending too much time talking about their own feelings and troubles, dwelling on upsetting experiences, maybe showing too much interest in how a child feels, accidentally rewarding them for being upset by being overly sympathetic or encouraging avoidance, overreacting to minor upsets such as small bumps or graces. And even sometimes thinking that we're not giving enough attention. So let's look at some tips for encouraging children to express their feelings appropriately. There are a number of ways parents can help children feel comfortable with talking about their feelings. Ask your children how they'll feel about things that happen to them. When your child starts to tell you about their experiences or how they're feeling, stop what you're doing and try to listen carefully. Summarize what they're telling you, for example, like you were really disappointed with your marks on that exam, weren't you? And try not to tell them how they should feel, like saying things like there's nothing to worry about or that they shouldn't feel the way that they do. For example, oh, don't be silly. It doesn't matter if they call you names. Don't get so upset about it. Instead, try to acknowledge their feelings. For example, I can see how that would make you feel upset. Read children's books about both happy and upsetting events and talk about how the characters feel. Help your child recognize feelings in themselves and others and ask how they might think another person feels. Give your child a positive, give your child positive attention. So for expressing their feelings in appropriate ways, so it's important for both positive and negative emotions. For example, if your child is being generous, kind, friendly, or cheerful, tell them that you're pleased with them. So for example, it's great to see you laughing together. Whose joke was that? But if your child is successfully dealing with difficult situations, like being teased and without getting upset, congratulate them on how they're handling that situation and for being able to work through those emotions. Because as parents, we need to decide how to deal with children when upset feeling turned into anger or hurtful behavior. Using consistent discipline in your child, if your child expresses upset feelings and rude hurtful or disrespectful ways. So you could say things like, for example, acknowledge the upset feeling before dealing with the problem behavior. Tell your child what to stop doing. Briefly say why and tell your child what to do instead. So a scenario would be, I can see you were very disappointed about not being able to go to the skatepark today. Please stop kicking your skateboard because you might break it. I'd like for you to put your bag down and take a deep breath. Depending on the situation, a logical consequence, such as a quiet time or a time out might be suitable backup if the problem behavior continues. Model better ways of expressing upset feelings. When you're annoyed or upset about something, avoid yelling. Show your child how to stay calm and deal with situations assertively. On to building block three. This building block is for emotional resilience is developing a positive outlook. Children's feelings are related to what they think about and tell themselves and the experiences they have. Parents can help children develop positive ways of thinking about themselves in the world. Having a positive outlook involves optimistic thinking to develop goals, use initiative, look for the positive experience and develop confidence and a sense of control. Curiosity and exploration to take an interest in the world and find things to do rather than being bored or negative and a sense of contentment which can involve appreciation, empathy for others, acceptance of things that can't be changed and the ability to enjoy peaceful times doing very little. Curiosity is great to help children's learning to encourage your children's curiosity. Let them decide on activities they'd like to do. Let your child explore. Show interest and excitement about things you discovered together. Talk about things like colors, hearing sounds, tastes, smell and touch to promote your child's awareness and appreciation of their environment. Be available when your child wants to show you something. Try to stop what you're doing so you can pique their interest and talk to them about whatever it is that they're interested in. Ask questions and make comments about the activities that your child are doing like the different creations or whatever it is that has them excited. The main thing is just showing them that you care. Teach your child how to find information such as using maps, books, libraries and computers because those are really good life skills to have. Encouraging contentment. This involves helping children to be accepting, tolerant and appreciative of what they have. So some suggestions for this would be to model being appreciative and grateful. So saying thank you when someone does something for you are commenting on things with beauty. Ask your child to talk about the highlight of their day. Create and talk about shared family experiences and happy childhood memories. Encourage empathy by discussing other people's points of view. Discuss acceptance of things that can't be changed. Acknowledge feelings of envy or dissatisfaction. Then gently encourage children to accept what they don't have control of and not to dwell on the things that they can't change. Encourage involvement in meetings for activities like sports, volunteering, our clubs to help your children experience achievement and belonging. Encourage them to slow down sometimes and just take time to be still, to take in the world around them and doing activities like stargazing or looking at fish and a pond. So now it's a building block four. Coping skills are the skills children can learn to help them deal with negative emotions. These include problem solving, positive self, self-talk, encountering unhelpful thoughts, relaxation both mental and physical, and the ability to ask for help when it's needed, and to look for support. So how can we assist our children in developing problem solving skills? Here are some key points. Children learn a lot about problem solving through watching. So setting the good example again and letting your child see how you deal with problems is a great first start. Talk about how you can break a problem down into smaller parts that can be worked out one at a time. Play games with their child that promotes thinking and problem solving, and rather than solving all the problems, encourage your child to find the answers and to work at solving their own problems. Congratulate your child when they when they do solve a problem on their own, and involve them in family problem solving discussions, like tackling and invasions in the yard, or maybe helping mom or dad with some leaky faucets in the house and coming up with ideas on how they're going to fix it. So here are some other steps that can help children as they're problem solving. And so you can, the first with me to state the problem clearly. Then you want to come up with some possible solutions. Think about the good points and the bad points of each solution. Choose the best solution or a combination of ideas. Try out the solution by putting the plan into action, review, and see how it works and make the necessary changes from there. Another coping skill is positive thinking and self-talk. So here's some pointers to help your child develop these skills. Ask your child to evaluate their own achievements and what they did well and what they would like to do differently next time. Explain how thinking about the same thing in different ways affects how you feel. Prompt your child to imagine how someone else might be thinking or feeling. Maybe even point out some helpful and unhelpful ways of thinking about a situation and encourage your child to practice helpful ways of thinking. For example, I can do this. Model using positive self-talk to cope with your own stress or negative feelings. To help your children learn to relax, provide a good model of how to manage stress by looking after yourself and taking time to relax. And then maybe even help your child find ways to relax that works for them. So like taking some nice, slow deep breaths, relaxing their muscles, listening to relaxing or calming music. I know my son particularly enjoys listening to beach music at night. He really likes the waves. All right. So discuss with your child that everyone needs to talk about their feelings, especially when they feel bad. Talk about how to get support from others when you feel bad. If your child doesn't want to talk to you about their feelings, help them find someone to talk to, like a close family member you trust or a good friend that you trust or a school teacher or a counselor, just let them know that it's okay. So now we're going to go on to the fifth building block, which is dealing with negative feelings. So a lot of children experience negative emotions. They're part of everyday experiences. However, they don't need to be extreme. Children can learn to manage their feelings, negative emotions that might include anger, anxiety, disappointment, guilt, loneliness, rejection, sadness. It's not impossible. It's not possible to completely protect children from these feelings. Many emotions are short lived and passed quickly without parents needing to do anything. When children are in distress, parents can calmly assist and pump problem solving. Parents can also work on helping children learn to resolve negative feelings without needing adults to intervene. So let's go through some steps that parents can follow to help their children when they're in distress or upset. So we can recognize when your child is upset. Maybe stop what you're doing so you can pay attention. Ask your child what's wrong and encourage them to tell you what happened. Listen to what they have to say. Ask a question or two to clarify the problem. Summarize what you've heard to check your understanding and if you have it right. But whatever you do, don't put words in their mouth. Acknowledge their feelings. Name the feeling or emotion and let your child know it's okay to feel upset. Maybe even share a recent example of your own if it's appropriate. Ask your child how they would like to deal with the situation and if they need any help from you. When appropriate, you know, prompt your child to problem solve for themselves. If the upset situation continues, suggest a cooling off period and distract your child with another fun activity that they enjoy. Stay calm and avoid getting angry or upset yourself. Make a time later to talk about the incident when your child is settled down. So parents can also help children learn to deal with negative emotions on their own. For example, to help a child learn to deal with anxiety, you can set a good example by staying calm and modeling how to face and cope with worries. Talk with your child about their anxious feelings. Teach your child strategies like positive self-talk, relaxation, distraction. Stay calm when your child is anxious and prompt them to use their coping strategies. Praise them for their effort and achievements and facing their fears. And for safety, talk to your child about dangers or emergency situations and what to do. So this is the final building block and this is coping with stressful life events. There are many different types of stressful events that children might experience, including a chain such as moving a house or changing schools, or maybe getting poor marks in school, or even more severe ones like a loss in the death of a family member due to COVID, especially right now, or parents going through a separation or divorce or even just traumatic situations. Think about how children might perceive these experiences and life events in the different and how it affects them at their different stages of their development. When children are distressed by major events such as our current COVID pandemic, it's important for parents to reassure them of their safety and to be available to them to work through the crisis. Some tips about how to do this are allow your child to be upset, allow them the space to explain maybe why they're upset and maybe something in particular that happened. Say something positive about the situation if possible. Reassure your child that their safety is of your utmost importance. Don't feel like you have to solve their problem or alleviate their feelings completely, especially because there's some things that we can't change ourselves. After they've had a chance to talk, suggest some things that they might like to do to cheer themselves up. Encourage your child to use their coping skills. Check in on them later and see how they're feeling and give them attention once they've calmed down. And as always, if things continue, please don't be shy to reach out and seek professional assistance because this is whatever is best for the child and for y'all, for yourselves. So I skipped the last one because I'm trying to make a little bit of extra time. There was two examples. So I'm going to stick with this example. So this is, I chose this one dealing with loss because of everything that we're going through right now. And so here's some things that we can go through when we're trying to assist our children. So in some situations, it's not possible to prepare for losses in advance, you know. And so some tips about how to help them would be to consider your child's developmental level and their experience with the loss. Wherever appropriate, encourage them to express their feelings appropriately about the situation, what caused it and how it would affect them, such as maybe Ben talks about what's going to change in the future because of it. Try to maintain routines as much as possible. Arrange for another child to look after your child, for another adult to look after your child. We don't want another child looking after them, especially if the loss affects your ability to take care of them and realize that it's okay to take that time for yourself. Talk about feelings and coping and shared memories. Again, be prepared to seek professional advice and support if the loss has long-term effects on your child. So we're going to quickly review some of the take-home messages. Okay. The foundations for becoming emotionally resilient are late in early childhood. Coping with emotions is important for their happiness, well-being and success in life. Children learn about managing their emotions from their parents. Parents can help children learn to recognize, understand and accept feelings, express feelings in appropriate ways, develop a positive outlook, develop coping skills, dealing with negative emotions and coping with stressful life events. So now we're going to open up the floor for any questions that we might have and I was so happy to see that we were able to get through that a little bit quicker. Let me see. I'm going to come here to the top to see what kind of questions we got. Oh, here it is. I'm sorry. I had a trouble finding that one. Okay. So the top question here is how can we help children to become resilient to bullying? How do we build them to overcome it? So one of the things that I would recommend is really talking to your children about self-value and self-worth, encouraging them again, if you're struggling with some of those self-talks or if they're struggling to meet some of those self-talks, maybe even talking to somebody or getting them a part of a counseling service that can assist them so that they can start being confident in themselves or even I would suggest as a mom doing some things that they like that they know that they're good at to build their self-esteem. I know one of the things my little brother was bullied a lot growing up and that's one of the things that really assisted us. But I know when I work in the professional field, I know it can be really difficult for some kids and having that extra support is really what a lot of that needs sometimes. And so you're also breaking down that barrier of letting them know that it's okay to ask for help and to talk to people when they're feeling a certain way. And there's a follow-on comment to that one, would you say acknowledge and validate when it is happening? Yes, absolutely. You definitely want to validate their emotions and letting them know that what they're feeling is totally okay because it is. And thank them for being courageous and opening up to you in that way and for being able to express themselves and identify how those how you know all of that was making them feel okay. So we will go to the next one. Okay, many of the interventions shared are tough for parents under stress to implement. Which building block is best to start with? So I would say that I would go with whichever one feels best for you. If you're going through a lot of stress or if you have a lot going on in your life, you also don't want to overburden yourself either. And so be gentle with yourself and remember that everything that it's a learning process and we don't have to master everything in one day. And so pick and choose. Go through them and see which one might be the best one for you to start with. But at least you know that you have all these other skills there so that you can refer to in the future when you're ready to. I hope that helps. Okay. Okay. Do you feel that children need to have more outdoor experience to help with stress? Yes. I would say if that's something that your child likes and it's something that they enjoy. And I would say yes. But at the same token if it's something that might give them discomfort or something that they're not necessarily keen to, we might want to keep that in mind too. I know for me personally, it's hard to keep my son inside because he's nine years old right now and he just wants to be outside all the time. But I know somebody, Aisha just commented on here that outdoor experiences have been a focus with COVID resources and I would agree. And I think just it helps a lot being outdoors. You know, there's like a lot of scientific research behind it, gardening too. Even if it's like a little small something but just you know getting your hand in some dirt. There's a lot of scientific research about how that really helps calm the anxiety as well. Awesome. Okay. Okay. Somebody had given an example and it said that their son helped put some lights on their car and grandma with the yard. And they want to let them know that sometimes that they need help and that they love their child's health. But they're not too sure what they can do to help during COVID. And also because they're going through a divorce themselves. And so I would just like to say that thank you for being here today. I think that it's awesome that you're here and you're taking a proactive step in your child's life. That you're asking these kinds of questions yourself to see how you can as a mother or as a parent become you know a better supportive role to him during this time. And so another tip that's not it through Triple P but that I like to use as community health worker is the love languages. And I know that that's a common thing through adults but there's also children's love languages and so I know sometimes for me a lot of the times when I'm working with parents that's a common trend is you know they're like I don't know how to you know how to support my son or my daughter how to I tell them but I feel like they don't hear me. And one of the main things is sometimes you know just learning their love language you know because we all kind of have these different ways that that we show our our compassion and care or that we like to receive you know love from others. And so I think that that's that's a good step and then also just opening that floor to ask them what you can do. That's that's a good first step and so again thank you so much for being here today and for for being brave and asking these questions. Let's go to the next one. Okay. Ways to help children understand their thought because children think too much oh I know think too and their thoughts might get in the way that they feel. So I really like to think about like how how children are understanding their thought just kind of like guiding them through some of the tips of what they might be feeling letting them know that it's okay to express their thoughts no matter how silly it is and even more so with their parents you know that's something that I try to encourage a lot you know as a mother myself you know is just letting my son know that at home we we've created this open safe space you know and and for you know for a reason and so that so that we can all feel comfortable to express our thoughts and so maybe starting off by demonstrating yourself you know and sharing your thoughts would be a good way to assist your child kind of work through those themselves. Okay so this question I'm not it's asking how special kids I'm assuming the special needs kids can come over difficult situations that's actually not an area that that I'm it's like a strength of mine and so I don't want to answer it and not give like the best the best answer so I'm not going to answer that one but I hope that maybe we can follow up I can I can ask somebody and follow up with you. So okay so I think this is the last question awesome so how do how do you suggest communicating this type of information to parents I find that they can sometimes be resistance to information feeling that they know better so this is something that of course it always happens and so the whole purpose of Triple P is to encourage parents to know that you're not when these types of things come up that you want to talk in a way that you're not necessarily telling them but you're prompting the questions to make them think about the solution themselves and so so because you don't want to talk negatively and necessarily right especially because they're there and this is a sensitive subject for for any parent right ultimately and so we have to be come from a place of understanding compassion ourselves and and trying to to promote them you know to yes you know like we they're they're not wrong per se but maybe there's a better way to be thinking about situations and so really trying to watch your verbiage asking some key questions to lead to those solutions awesome so I think that's all my wait we had one more question one more okay oh somebody works for a day care and there's a child that always wants a hug is it okay to hug or not and so I my funny story my mom actually works for daycare she my mom actually owned a daycare for years over here in san Antonio Texas and she worked for PCI for a really long time and so when I was young I started working in with her and I there was a lot of children like that and so I'm going to go back to the love languages there's some kids that are just so affectionate and they just love hugs you know and so I had a lot of students like that and I you know of course like I would talk to their parents and let them know like hi you know like your children or your child is awfully like you know loving there or as we would say in Spanish like they're very cariñosos you know and so um there there are things that I think like as a teacher you start establishing like that rapport with the parent and then once I think from there kind of depending on what the reaction is it might tell you like okay is this like because this is how their their family is or the child is because of that dynamic or could it be that um you know maybe something isn't inappropriate it's happening at home that's that's leading the child to to do certain actions awesome okay any other questions oh yeah somebody said COVID-19 won't allow us to hug and take care and that you're absolutely right because right now yeah we're social distancing and so thank you so much for the person that put that that comment in there because yes we're we're not doing that right now but okay well then if that's all thank you so much everybody for your time today and I hope everyone stays well and thank you so much