The Connection Corner

Your "Whole Child Hub"

Welcome to your "Whole Child Hub"!

Welcome to The Connection Corner 2024-2025! Here, you'll find insights and resources to strengthen the home-school connection and support your child's social, emotional, and behavioral development. Thank you for being part of our community!

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Navigating Social Development

Supporting or Enabling?

How do you know if you are helping your child — or limiting their growth by doing too much for them?

Supportive parents empower kids to be more independent. They work with their kids as they learn to overcome obstacles. Being supportive means acknowledging how your child is feeling, including difficult emotions. It also includes modeling healthy coping skills for managing challenging things, and providing structure and clear expectations.

Enabling, on the other hand, inadvertently reinforces undesired behavior. Being enabling includes letting your child avoid uncomfortable situations. All parents do this to some degree, to protect kids from pain and difficulty. But if kids are going to grow, they need to learn to take little risks. This boosts their confidence and makes them more independent. Enabling also includes being inconsistent about rules because you feel bad for your child.

(childmind.org)

Reflect:

Am I supportive parent?

Would my child describe me as being supportive or enabling?

Do I allow my child to learn from their mistakes?

Do I jump in and "save" my child from difficult situations?

Am I consistent with my expectations for my child?

*Are you interested in learning more from the Child Mind Institute? Check out their Parenting Guides on a multitude of topics.

Navigating Emotional Development

Dealing with "Back to School" Anxiety

Is your child nervous or anxious about going back to school? If so, that is completely normal and expected!

Let your child know that it's okay to feel a wide range of emotions, and that everyone experiences ups and downs. Remember that anxious parents send anxious children to school. Kids really are like sponges, absorbing the energy and adopting the behaviors around them.

One of the most helpful things you can do is model calm, confident behavior, particularly while helping a child get ready for school. (childmind.org)

Here are some tips to ease the transition:

1. Listen: You don't always have to "fix" the problem for your child. Just being an empathetic listener may be all they need. Validate their feelings. Respond with, "I hear you." or "I can understand how you would feel that way." The knowledge that they are not alone in this experience will help your child feel heard and understood.

2. Do a "dry-run": Practice getting up in the morning, engage in your morning routine, and practice driving to school. This will help ease the first day jitters. Talk about the routine and let your child know what to expect. Predictability promotes calmness.

3. Bedtime: Bedtime is one of the hardest transitions. Children may be accustomed to going to sleep later and/or waking up later during the summer, so the new school schedule can be difficult to get acclimated to. Set your child up for success with clear expectations, simple step-by-step instructions, and praise at the completion of each step. Not getting enough sleep is linked with lower academic achievement, as well as higher rates of absenteeism and tardiness.

Navigating Behavioral Development

Promoting Positive Behavior at Home

Children learn how to behave through a combination of observation, modeling, and guidance from their parents.

Here are some tips for teaching and promoting positive behavior at home:

Establish Clear Expectations

Begin by listing the traits that you want to see from your child. Then, create three to five house rules for these traits. To help you make the rules, you can use this three-step process:

What trait/outcome do you want to see? (ex. Show respect)
Where or when is this trait/outcome expected? (ex. Inside the house, at a friends house, at school)
What is the desired behavior? (ex. using kind words, manners, being inclusive)

Set an Example

You are your child’s first and most important teacher. Children learn and imitate behaviors by watching and listening to others. This is sometimes called “observational learning,” when children can learn things simply by observing others. On the opposite end of the spectrum, children can also acquire prosocial behaviors through observational learning. Watching someone cooperate, share, take turns and demonstrate altruistic acts can teach children to show those behaviors too. In other words, "be what you want to see".

Reinforce the Positive

Children are more likely to imitate a behavior if they get some sort of positive reinforcement for it. Notice your child's positive behavior and use phrases like, "I love how you turned off your iPad the first time I asked." or "Thank you for including your sister in the game with your friends."

Behind the "SEL" Scenes

Middle School Staff Participate in Advisory Training

During Institute Days, all middle school staff engaged in training with consultants from SEL Integrations around the advisory period for middle school students. The training included information on the role of the advisor, the purpose of advisory, and community circles.

SAEBRS/mySAEBRS Benchmark Screener

Hawthorn School District 73 focuses on the growth and learning of the whole child. This includes programming that supports students’ social and emotional well-being. One way we help ensure that students’ needs are being met is by participating in benchmark assessments for social-emotional learning three times each year using the SAEBRS/MySAEBRS screening tool.

Kindergarten - Grade 5: Please click here to access information regarding our fall social-emotional screening.

Grades 6 - 8: Please click here to access information regarding our fall social-emotional screening.

ReferralGPS: Connecting Families to Mental Health Resources

ReferralGPS is a web-based service that aids our community in locating local mental health resources and treatment.

Searchable Database: Offers a database of treatment options for easy access.
Care Navigation: Provides services to support families in triage, appointment scheduling, and follow-up care.

Inclusive Insurance Coverage: The service is compatible with all types of private and public insurance, including PPO, HMO, Medicaid, and it caters to uninsured or underinsured families.
No-Cost Access: Available free of charge for use by district students, staff, and families.
Confidentiality Assured: Rest assured that all information entered into the ReferralGPS tool is kept completely confidential and securely stored.

Site: https://referralgps.com/find-help/hawthorn73

Educate and Empower: Parent/Guardian Education Series

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