SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING

Research has shown that children’s learning is influenced by a range of social and emotional factors. How well children do at school is affected by things such as:

• how confident children feel about their abilities
• how effectively they are able to manage their own behaviour
• how well they can concentrate and organise themselves
• how effectively they can solve problems
• how positively they are able to get on with teaching staff and with peers
• how effectively they take into account others’ needs
• how well they can understand and accept responsibilities.

Parents play an important role in this development. Over the next few weeks, I will include strategies for parents taken from the Friendly Schools Programme, to use to support your children in this area.

Communicating with your children

Regularly talking with and listening to your children reinforces that they can talk with you about both the positive and more challenging parts of their day. Make sure to engage them in genuine conversations about a variety of topics that are fun as well as more serious and thought provoking topics.

Reassure your children that they can talk with you no matter what the topic. Try to arrange times when you can walk or sit side-by-side and chat. This is a more relaxed way to have a conversation and enables your children to feel more comfortable talking with you about difficult topics.

Ask yourself:

• Are there times each day when I am able to share some time with my children?
• Do I really listen to my children and what they have to say?
• Do I show my children that I am really interested to hear their opinions and thoughts?

When your children talk with you about day-to-day things, where possible, stop what you are doing and listen. Try to keep in touch with what is happening in their lives.

Mrs Lillian Del Giudice

Assistant Principal