Move over helicopter and free-range parents. New, trending parenting styles are in town and making themselves known. While gentle parenting has had its seat at the table, new ones have risen in response, and we can thank Kylie Kelce for bringing one into the light.
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Parents can only do so much. In our kid’s early childhood, we try our best to teach and model everything they need to know to thrive. But eventually, they need to test their skills in real-life situations, and that’s most likely going to come on the playground.
When parents in the clinic would stress over their child’s social skills, I would say “playground rules,” meaning that kids best learn socialization in a setting with their peers and with limited interference from their parents. While the home serves as a training ground for trial and error, peers provide real-time feedback and refinement of those skills.
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Social and emotional development involves gaining the capacity to understand, manage, and express. One way to guide its growth is with social and emotional learning (SEL). While this systematic approach is often seen in educational settings, it can be applied across the lifespan.
There are five competencies in this area, also known as the CASEL 5. They are:
These skills enable us to maintain a healthy self-perception, manage stress effectively, comprehend others, and collaborate to support the community.
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Being an OT-forward blog, we’ve written a lot about motor and cognitive development, but what about the social and emotional?
My most recent course focused on just that: Social and Emotional Development – Therapeutic Interventions for Children, Birth Through Adolescence. From that seminar, we think it would be helpful for many parents to understand how social and emotional development builds as our kids get older, similar to all those Development Milestones we watch so closely.
Social and emotional development refers to a child’s ability to understand who they are, what they are feeling, and how to navigate social interactions. These skills are essential for forming and maintaining positive relationships, expressing and managing emotions, and effectively exploring and engaging with their surroundings and other people.
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A little backstory for me. I was up in Virginia for work this past fall and was invited to come to my high school crew team’s afternoon practice. I was a crew coxswain for six years; starting in high school, through college and two years in Masters rowing. I’ve sat in on practices, but this was my first time a long while helping novice high school girls.
Crew is an amazing sport when it comes to culture, work ethic, and mental game. But the coach was quick to point out that he wasn’t seeing a lot of physical fitness and strength in this group of girls. While crew was fun and they enjoyed being on the water, they were still very much learning fundamentals and not speed. This is racing after all.
So how do you connect with a young person about being competitive? How do you motivate without turning into a zealous tiger parent? How young does this start?
Raising Empowered Athletes: A Youth Sports Parenting Guide for Raising Happy, Brave, and Resilient Kids by Kirsten Jones. Kirsten, a Hall of Fame DI volleyball player from The College of William and Mary, and fourteen-year NIKE executive, is now a motivational speaker, writer and Peak Performance Coach. Her clients include teen athletes (and their parents), where she helps them learn how to reach their goals and release their limitations. She co-hosts the #RaisingAthletes Podcast with Susie Walton on iTunes and Spotify.
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Child(ish) Advice 