Social emotional family fun activities: this video will help you teach your child self-regulation without them even knowing! Just have fun!

These printable cards can help you set up a routine and establish working times and family play times.

Since changes in routine can be stressful, it will be helpful to talk with your kids about why they are staying home and what your daily structure will be during this time. Let them help create a daily schedule that can hang on the refrigerator or somewhere they can see it each day. Be sure to include breaks from tele-work or schoolwork to relax and connect with each other.

Here are some ideas to help you create a daily schedule:

• Wake up, get dressed and have breakfast at the normal time.

• Decide where everyone can do their work most effectively and without distractions.

• List the times for learning, exercise and breaks.

• For younger children, 20 minutes of class assignments followed by 10 minutes of physical activity might work well.

• Older children and teens may be able to focus on assignments for longer stretches, taking breaks between subjects.

• Include your hours as well, so your children know when the work day is done.

• Schedule time for nutritious lunches and snacks. Many schools are providing take-home school meal packages for students who need them.

• Don't forget afternoon breaks as well!

• Have dinner together as a family and discuss the day.

• Enjoy more family time in the evenings, playing, reading, watching a movie or exercising together.

Stick with normal bedtime routines as much as possible during the week to make sure everyone gets enough sleep.

Try not to have the news on all day. Try not to have the news on all day. It is best not to have the news on while kids are in the room as it can increase their fear and anxiety (and yours!). For kids who do want to be informed, Lester Holt from NBC Nightly News: Kids Edition is a digest of the top headlines broken down for kids. It presents the world today in understandable terms for kids by kids. Here is a link to one episode, and the others can be found on YouTube and at https://www.nbcnews.com/nightlykids.

Please encourage your child to join their counselor's classroom,

if they haven't done so already!

Daly School: Casey Horowitz

chorowitz@portnet.org

Daly Pre-K: Samantha Verdecchia

sverdecchia@portnet.org

Guggenheim School: Gina Kelly

gkelly@portnet.org

Manorhaven School: Barbara O’Donnell

bodonnell@portnet.org

Salem School: Abby Duffy

aduffy@portnet.org

Sousa School: Jen Biblowitz

jbiblowitz@portnet.org

Anxiety has become a regular part of our society and daily lives for our children (and ourselves). Worry and fear can cause our children to feel bad and often increase parent-child conflict and stress. In this pandemic and “new normal” there are simple and effective strategies that kids (and parents) can learn to drive the Worry Monster away.

Teaching kids about how fears and worries work in their bodies, and specific thinking and doing strategies to fight the Worry Monster, empowers them to take a stand against anxiety.

It’s time for us to take the Worry Monster down once and for all and turn our worriers into warriors.

Here are 5 steps to do it:

Step 1: Teach How Our Brain and Body Work When We Are Scared

We all have a “fight or flight” survival response that is designed to keep us alive. We have a tiny ball of neurons called the amygdala (ah-mig-da-la), known as our fear center, that runs our in-body security system. When it senses danger, it sends adrenaline through our bodies to make us run fast and fight with one goal, survival!

Step 2: Identify Body Feelings

When your amygdala gets activated, you will feel the physical sensations of worry and fear in your body, especially your head, chest, stomach, and throat. This is because your heart has to beat super fast to get extra blood from your brain and stomach to your arms and legs so you can fight and run fast. The blood leaving our brain and stomach makes us feel light headed, have headaches, have stomach aches, butterflies, and make us nauseous. These feelings are our signal that the Worry Monster is messing with us! Any of them sound familiar?

Step 3: Externalize the Problem

Label your worries and fears as the “Worry Monster” who is a bully who is responsible for making you (and all of us) think worrisome and scary thoughts. The Worry Monster’s job is to keep us from enjoying life. He gets joy from picking on children (and adults) and making them worried and scared. The more you talk about the Worry Monster and gang up on him with your allies, the weaker he will get and the sooner he will go away.

Step 4: Make a Worry List

Make a list of everything your child (and you) worries about. The Worry Monster doesn’t like us to talk about him or how he works, so the more things you put on the list, the better. Once you have done this, put the worries and fears in order starting with the most powerful (severe) at the top and least powerful (mild) at the bottom of the list.

Step 5: Make a Success Ladder

Choose a behavior from the worry list and make a success ladder by breaking it down into baby steps, or rungs, with the ultimate fear or goal at the top of the ladder and the least scary behavior at the bottom. You will need to decide whether you can start with a single fear like swimming or whether the task needs to be broken into parts (looking at a pool) so that you can gain confidence by becoming used to each baby step along the way to conquering your fear.

For additional steps and to read the complete article please click below:

Adapted from: / DR. DAN'S BLOG / www.drdanpeters.com & Huffington Post Parents/