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What is Emotional Coaching?

In emotional coaching, parents or caregivers help children name and accept their emotions. By virtue of acknowledging what kids are feeling by accurately naming their emotions (i.e., I see that you are upset, frustrated, lonely, worried, anxious, excited, elated) negative feelings are released, allowing the child to move on. In fact, if a child is angry, in order for him/her not to feel angry anymore, it is necessary that their being angry first be acknowledged and accepted. Oftentimes adults deny what children are feeling, or tell them not to feel something – which only pushes what children are feeling deeper inside where it can cause mental or physical harm. Remember that all feelings are allowed and acceptable; it is certain behaviors which are not allowed or acceptable.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand one’s feelings, to be able to manage one’s feelings in the face of life’s setbacks and challenges, and to relate empathically to the feelings of others. Research indicates that high emotional intelligence leads to more personal happiness, better mental health, better physical health, greater academic performance, and more successful professional functioning. Child caregivers can play a vital role in helping kids become more aware of their emotions and in developing their emotional intelligence.

Example of Emotional Coaching

If a child is crying and upset because his favorite toy has broken, as an adult, you want to teach the child that this is not the end of the world. However if tell a child straight away: “Don’t cry; it’s not the end of the world,” or, “Calm down; we will buy you a new toy,” in all likelihood the child will respond by crying even louder. Your telling a feeling to ‘go away’ only causes the feeling to dig in deeper. Instead, you want to validate the child’s feelings using emotional coaching, such as saying: “I see how sad/upset you are that your favorite toy broke! I can tell you really want to play with it right now.” The more empathically and accurately you can name a child’s feelings, the sooner and more completely will the feeling ‘clear,’ allowing the child to return to a level of stability and calmness. At this point you can help the child come up with solutions to the problem at hand.

One golden rule of emotional coaching is to never use the word “but” when validating a feeling, as it effectively erases the entire message. For example, avoid saying: “I see how upset you are that your favorite toy broke, but it’s not the end of the world; we can buy another one just like it.” Remember also that making a child happy is not the goal of emotional coaching; rather, we want to give children a set of skills whereby they can learn to manage their distresses by learning how to name their feelings, which will ultimately help them develop into well-adjusted and high-functioning older children and adults.

“Shades” of Feeling Words

In order to maximize the effect of emotional coaching and the naming of children’s emotions, it is best to keep on hand an entire glossary or list of “feeling words” which include not only the standard words we tend to use again and again (happy, sad, glad, mad, scared), but a words which describe ‘shades’ of emotions, such as: calm, peaceful, excited, disappointed, hurt, lonely, insulted, embarrassed, unsure, hesitant, bored, curious, interested, anxious, annoyed, worried, terrified, furious, panicked, and more. With such an expanded vocabulary of feeling words at their fingertips, both children and adults will be able to better manage, process, and clear negative emotions throughout their lives.

4 Additional Benefits of Emotional Intelligence

Here some additional benefits of helping children develop emotional intelligence:

•1) Kids become more sensitive to the feelings of others

•2) Kids are better able to connect with other people

•3) Improves children’s listening skills

•4) Children are better able to resolve conflicts peacefully instead of resorting to problematic physical behaviors such as hitting, kicking, punching, etc.

Finally, there are many fun ways to teach children all about feeling words. Search the Internet for a variety of creative activities and games which help children learn to identify and name facial expressions and feelings.

Teaching Young Children to Use Their Words

Teaching young children to “use their words” is a well-known educational tool aimed at increasing kids’ communication skills and teaching kids how express their feelings rather than resort to physical means (i.e., hitting, biting, scratching, etc.) to resolve conflicts. All daycare staff should be trained in how and when to encourage children to use their words, and at which ages children need help in finding the right words to express their feelings. Teaching kids to use their words is also a developmental strategy in the realm of “emotional intelligence,” or “emotional coaching,” wherein parents and caregivers teach kids how to name their emotions and learn to deal with setbacks and change.

Giving Children a Vocabulary of Words

Whether you are teaching kids to use their words to promote peaceful conflict resolution, or whether you are trying to provide children with a vocabulary of “feeling words” to express their emotions through language rather than through problematic behavior (i.e., tantrums, crying, sulking, hitting, biting, kicking, or becoming withdrawn and silent), you can play a vital role in their development by promoting the skill of “using your words.”

Teaching Kids Which Words to Use

Preschoolers often don’t have the skills necessary to use their words on their own. Not only do they not have experience in solving conflicts, but their language skills are not yet developed, and even kids who have an excellent vocabulary may not know exactly what to say in a certain situation. Furthermore, in the middle of an actual altercation, kids tend to forget what they have learned in theory. As caregivers, you can do a lot to train kids in advance and to serve as a verbal resource and guide during ‘real time’ situations.

3 Ways To Conflict Resolution

Here is but a small sample of specific “using your words” suggestions you can teach daycare kids to promote conflict resolution:

•- I don’t like it when you grab my crayons. I want them back.

•- Can I have a turn on the swings when you’re finished?

•- I was here first. I don’t like it when you push ahead of me.

Top 9 Words For Emotional Coaching

Here are some examples the types of words you can teach children to increase their “feeling word vocabulary”:

•- Happy

•- Frustrated

•- Lonely

•- Sad

•- Embarrassed

•- Mad

•- Relaxed

•- Loved

•- Proud

Practice, Practice, Practice

One of the keys to the success of children being able to use their words is how much practice they have in doing so. Adults should role-play with kids so that they can practice using their words in an array of situations and especially in scenarios where you know they have run into difficulties expressing themselves in the past. Keep the sentences simple, specific, and short, but practice, practice, practice…

Benefits of Teaching Kids to Express Themselves Verbally

Studies indicate that children with high emotional intelligence feel more positive, more in control, and are better equipped to handle their emotions when life throws them a curveball. Kids’ ability to express their own emotions also makes them more understanding of others and more sensitive to other people’s feelings. They learn to respect others, how to empathize, and ultimately to listen without judging.

When parents and childcare providers teach kids to use their words and speak directly to other children, kids also learn to set personal limits (i.e., “It’s my turn now; you can play with the car when I’m finished”) and to set these limits in a respectful manner.

Hopefully, the communication skills children learn in daycare settings will serve them well throughout their lives.

The past decade has seen many concerns for parents as to whether placing your child in daycare during the pre-kindergarten years has negative or positive effects on their long-term development and overall well-being. Of course the mother-infant bond is incredibly important, and should never be damaged, but the burning question is whether or not daycare actually does damage that bond, or if it has some positive effects that successfully counteract the negatives. Although the early studies seemed to focus solely on the harm done to children who are put into daycare, more recent studies show that out-of-home care does not appear to damage children’s cognitive development or their social and emotional skills in the least-good news for parents!

Choose Your Daycare Wisely

Before you get too excited, most studies agree that if at all possible babies before the age of one do tend to do better when they are with their parent. You must also take into consideration the quality of daycare, as that will definitely have bearing on the final outcome as well. As all parents are aware, you must choose your daycare wisely, and ensure there is a good adult to child ratio, and that all necessary safety features are in place. Talk to lots of other parents whose children attend a particular daycare as they are usually always the very best source of information in making your final decision. If the majority of the parents are happy with the daycare, and the children mostly all seem happy, occupied and healthy, then it is probably a good choice. Depending on where you live, your daycare may or may not require licensing, however if a daycare is state-licensed, you can be fairly sure they have been through some fairly rigorous testing.

Family Still Has More Influence

The parent who worries that his or her child’s daycare may end up having more importance in the child’s life than the child’s family can relax. Even families who use full-time child care have every bit as much influence on their children as the families who use no outside child care. Parents should never feel as if they have relinquished control over their own child, because the family impact will still remain the highest for the children. Of course the day care your child is in will affect his or her development, however high quality day care-the critical component-is related to children who perform well on tests of social and emotional development as well as intellectual development. Low-quality child care can, of course, be the cause of poor performance in these areas. Even the children who were put into day care as babies, and show some negative effects by the age of two, have mostly overcome the negative by the age of three, and certainly by the time they begin kindergarten. Consider, however, that testing children’s emotional and intellectual development at age two can be an unsteady gauge–two year olds are, after all, testing every boundary known to man, whether in day care or at home with mom.

Quality Time Spent With Mom and Dad

If we assume that children are safely in a high-quality daycare situation, studies have shown that even though the mothers who stayed home with their children may have more actual time with them, the quality of the time spent with the children does not differ between working and non-working mothers. The working mothers will usually compensate for the time they spend away from their children by doing their best to make sure the time they do have with them is high quality time. The fathers of children in high-quality daycares also appeared to be more involved with parenting duties and the interactions with their children

In the end there is little solid evidence which points to the disruptive effects of daycare, and much of the newer evidence points to positive outcomes for most children in daycare, depending on the quality of the particular daycare as well as the home environment of the child.

The Montessori Method was started over 100 years ago when Maria Montessori opened her first childcare center in Rome in 1907.

Philosophy

The Montessori Method is a whole philosophy and there are several different approaches and organizations in the United States. Since Maria Montessori’s day, many of her concepts and methods like self directed learning, experiential play and the use of child sized furniture have been incorporated into the main stream. However, some other specific materials like her mathematical rods are not so well known.

Mathematical Rods

Mathematical rods are designed to enable children to understand mathematical concepts and consist of 10 rods of varying lengths. These rods work on the metric system and increase in size from 10cm to 1 meter. The first 10cm rod is colored red, the next the 20cm rod is half red and half blue, with each 10cm addition being marked in either red or blue. The 1 meter rod is divided into 10 sections that alternate in color red, blue, red, blue etc. With other equipment like spindles, cards, beads and numbers cut out in sandpaper, a child not only learns the numbers but experiences the relationship that numbers have to each other. By combining the rods in various ways, and using other Montessori equipment like the pink tower, a child can learn mathematical concepts at a younger age than traditional methods.

Music

Ideas like music and movement which we are very familiar with today were developed by Maria Montessori and her associates. One idea used in the Method is ‘walking on the line’. This is where children place one foot in front of the other, heel to toe, and walk slowly and carefully along a painted narrow curved line while listening to a simple tune. Variations on this include balancing a bean bag on the head, carrying a bell without letting it ring and so on. You can now buy CD’s and even a Nintendo Montessori Music game ($30) to allow you to develop musical skills in the children in your care.

Sensorial

Maria Montessori was a great believer in a sensorial approach to learning. She believed in letting children focus on one sensation at a time. To enhance this she would blindfold the children with colorful blindfolds so they could concentrate on the other senses of smell, taste, touch or sound. For example, with the sense of smell, children smelled various scents and learned to identify them only using their nose. In other exercises a child may have found an object inside a full bag, indentifying it only by the sense of touch. Again many of these ideas are used today in a modified form in a regular playgroup, pre-school or kindergarten.

Training

Montessori schools and daycare programs are very popular and you can learn more about the Method or take training courses from one of the Montessori organizations. If you wish to run a formal Montessori day care program you will need accreditation. Online accredited diploma courses ($2000 +) are available for both parents and professionals who wish to use the method with either the 0-3 or the 3-6 age groups. Alternatively you may be able to find an accredited teacher training class in your area.

Even if you don’t want a professional qualification there is nothing to stop you using some of her methods or the Montessori equipment in your day care center.

Check out the rest of our site for more information and tips for your day care center.

If you run a day center for young children one of your problems is how do you communicate with your young charges when they are too young to speak? Well now you can use ‘baby sign’.

What Is It?

Baby sign is a way for young babies to communicate with their carers before they learn to talk. Based on ASL (American Sign Language) or BSL (British Sign Language) they use simple signs that a baby can easily learn so that they can ask for ‘milk’ or say they are ‘wet’ or ‘dirty’. They can even make up simple sentences, well before they can speak.

How Does It Benefit?

Babies who know how to sign are less frustrated and have fewer tears and tantrums trying to communicate with adults who don’t understand what they want. If you are looking after a lot of children, imagine how much easier it will be to care for them if they all communicate using the same signs instead of you having to work out what each of them wants by guesswork.

Isn’t Signing For Deaf People?

Yes, usually it is deaf people who use sign language, but now with the world-wide ‘baby sign movement’ lots of hearing parents are teaching their toddlers and young babies to sign. And because ‘babysign’ is based on ASL or BSL both you and your small charges will be able to sign with deaf people in the neighborhood too!

Will It Affect Speech Development?

No. Leading baby sign experts’ research shows that babies taught to sign actually have better vocabularies when they do start to speak. By helping children to communicate easily with adults, baby sign gives young children more incentive to speak. Because caregivers respond to signs the baby makes with speech as well as sign, as the baby gets old enough to talk the baby also will use both sign and speech. In fact, learning ‘baby sign’ gives the baby a head start in language acquisition. Children who have learned baby sign also appear to have better IQ’s and more self-esteem and self-confidence.

What Age Can They Start?

You can start using sign with a baby as soon as you like, and you can actively teach a baby sign language from about six months. Depending on how old the baby is when they start, they will start to use the signs themselves about 4-6 weeks after being introduced to a sign.

Which Signs Should They Learn First?

Start with signs like ‘milk’ ‘more’ ‘juice’ and so on. Only introduce one or two signs at a time. As the baby starts to sign back you can gradually introduce more signs.

Learning Sign

If you want to introduce ‘baby sign’ as an activity in your day care center there are various ways to learn ‘baby sign’. You can choose from DVD’s, sites like YouTube, or certified centers of baby sign. There is even an iPhone application you can download!

Why not train all your staff in ‘baby sign’ so that you can become a recognized and certificated ‘baby sign daycare center’ and thereby boost your business.

Kids come in all different flavors. Some are outgoing while others have a hard time engaging their peers and being sociable. It behooves daycare educators to gain some understanding of why some children are shy so that they can help timid children to be less afraid of social interaction.

Parents of such children tend to express concerns about their child’s shyness. From the daycare worker’s standpoint, the shy child is observed to be an outsider: he doesn’t participate in group discussions, doesn’t speak unless spoken to, and is a follower rather than a leader. What causes this behavior and is it unnatural?

Shows Discomfort

According to Dr. Jodi Stoner, a clinical psychologist, shyness is several interrelated behaviors that involve the child withdrawing from social interactions with others while exhibiting limitations in social skills. The child will show discomfort when placed in a situation where he must make friends. He may hide, or cling to an adult. He plainly shows his discomfort and his reluctance also to engage in any new activities. Many shy children come from homes where they have been the subjects of much criticism. Shy children have difficulty talking about their feelings.

The trait of shyness is one that is usually acquired as a result of a child’s environment. In some cases, shyness is cultural. Shyness in 6 month-olds is normal and the trait tends to resurface as the child turns 4. Such timidity may be attributed to feelings of social self-consciousness in combination with feelings of embarrassment. Such feelings tend to peak just before adolescence with self-consciousness being a hallmark trait for “tweens.”

Genetic Predisposition

Another factor is that certain children have a genetic predisposition for shyness. It is just their nature to be quiet and observant and to keep their feelings in reserve. In other cases, shyness is the direct result of a very extroverted or imposing sibling or parent who tends to overshadow the child.

One very important piece of advice is to not allow your child to hear you call him shy. This will have the affect of labeling him and if you call him shy, he will respond by acting as you seem to expect. Hand and hand with this advice is to never make excuses for the child’s shyness, “Excuse Billy for not thanking you. He is very shy.” All this does is to perpetuate his shyness. The stereotype hurts the child’s feelings on a certain level, as if this is the highest level of your expectations for him: that he is and always will be shy. This causes damage to his self-image and the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling. Don’t discuss his shyness in front of him.

Positive Trait

Instead, change the way you think about shyness. Shyness can be a strong, positive trait in which the child has a rich internal life, is a good observer, thinks before he speaks, and has no need to be at the center of attention. Shy children like to be prepared and if they are not labeled may mature to a place in which their shyness evolves into something else: good listening and thoughtful speaking skills.

Lots of preschoolers exhibit behaviors that have all the hallmarks of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They can’t sit still, they’re impulsive, they find it hard to wait in line, they interrupt during storytime, they’re disorganized, they can’t stick with a task and finish it, their attention spans are briefer than brief, and they can’t take the slightest bit of frustration without blowing a gasket.

A Challenge

If, as a daycare provider, you have one such child in your charge, you’re bound to find it a challenge. But often, there are many such children within a given group. Learning the strategies for coping with these children and their behaviors is crucial for everyone involved, including the other kids in your care.

One of the most important pieces of advice you’ll ever receive is to limit negative remarks. According to child neurologist Dr. Sara J. Dorison, such remarks may lead not only to an escalation of symptoms in children with ADHD, but will also lead to a state in which the child feels anxious about the daycare center or preschool. Also, there is a tendency for teachers to make lists in their heads so as to make a full, very negative report of the ADHD child to his parent at the end of the day.

Instead, Dorison suggests abbreviating the report to a short statement with a positive ending such as, “Billy had a rough day, but I’m sure tomorrow will be much better.” This type of statement lends an air of encouragement to the child and parents and helps them to know you’re on their side. If there are other negative issues that must be discussed, send the details in a sealed note, or make a call to the parent; but never in the presence of the child in question.

Well-Timed Activities

Daycare providers should take a close look at the activities they schedule and make sure to include plenty of opportunities to develop gross motor coordination. Author Laurie LeComer, who wrote A Parent’s Guide to Developmental Delays says that if gross motor activities are well-timed, they should enable the ADHD child to sit and focus during more passive activities, such as storytime.

Another important concept is to target only a couple of problem behaviors at a time. For example, if the ADHD child acts out in an aggressive manner, the daycare provider can sit down with the child and explain that angry hands can’t touch. But if every behavior is targeted at the same time, the child will end up in a state of confusion and can’t possibly comply with even a single demand. The only results will be frustration and an inability to cooperate. Start with aggression and then when this issue is resolved, move on to fidgeting, cleaning, and so forth.