There are also specialized Guidelines for Teachers to build connection and support students in a virtual classroom environment. Many of these materials are useful to both parents and teachers.

Also please see the Managing Pandemic Stress Toolkit to support caregivers, educators and healthcare providers, or anyone experiencing unprecedented stress during the corona virus pandemic.

There are also guides and tools to help you Prepare Yourself for the Return to School in the Fall. Including support for trauma-impacted children.

Support Children Who Are Home

Modules I-VIII are guidelines to help parents support their children while they are home from school during corona virus (Covid 19). Each module is a different component of support, because you may want to provide this information in smaller organized pieces. Modules are grouped, so please be sure to scroll through longer documents.

Module I:  Structure Through Schedules and Routines
Module II:  Attunement, Increasing the Quality of Adult Attention
Module III: Quiet Time, Solitary Time, Restore and Reset
Module IV: Promoting Positive Actions and Positive Emotions
Module V: Expressing Gratitude and Appreciation
Module VI: Information Control for Children
Module VII: Supportive Communication (Part 1)
Module VIII: Supportive Communication (Part 2)
Related Materials and Links (All Modules)

Please also see: Additional Related Materials/Links for Modules I-VIII

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Materials to support teachers managing virtual classrooms:

Promoting Engagement in a Virtual Classroom
Achieving Social Connectedness While Physically Distant: The Appreciation Journal
Building on Your Student Relationships:  Staying Attuned in a Virtual Classroom
Building on Your Student Relationships: Recognition and Reward
Related Materials for Teachers (All Articles, Guidelines/Links)
Engaging Less Motivated Students: A Checklist of Intervention Options for Virtual Classrooms
Student Performance During Distance Learning – Rating Form

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The Pandemic Stress Management Toolkit for caregivers, educators and healthcare providers.

Stress during this pandemic is like no other stress we’ve experienced before, which is why large numbers of educators and service providers are breaking down and experiencing uncontrolled stress responses. Many of our normal and automatic means of coping are inadequate for this increased demand. We need to be more deliberate in our efforts to reset the stress response ourselves. The following toolkit gives specific instruction to support individuals to interrupt the stress response and reset their brains and bodies.

Go to: Prepare for Your Return to School

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He’s parked on the couch in front of the TV when I come in the door, but it takes no convincing at all to get him into the garage looking for the Frisbees. I can’t get into my sweats fast enough so my suit and tie and my white pinpoint oxford shirt just lay deflated on the chair near the closet as I race downstairs. We get the music playing full volume on the outdoor speakers. Let someone complain, I’ll just put my arm around my son and say, “Gabe’s home.”

Gabe takes the far end of the field; he’s going to do most of the running and he knows I relish the challenge of sailing the Frisbee completely off the far edge of the field—if the wind is just right and my arm holds out.

We start out with a few easy throws (the old man has to warm up), and soon we have pinpoint accuracy, taking great pride in ensuring the other doesn’t even have to take a step to catch the flying disc, often hitting the other right in the hands. We both wait for the other to begin to crank it up, for the disc to launch like a comet. When slightly off target, only the explosive and lightning quick can catch up to it.

Back and forth the disc flies and both of us sprint, leap and crash—into the trees, onto the ground—until we’re out of breath, soaked in sweat, bruised and a little battered. Time is frozen as the moment stretches across the warm afternoon. No one wants to stop because neither of us ever knows when this will happen again, and our ordinary life just doesn’t measure up to this kind of experience very often.

The old man is amazed that the young guy can throw that thing with such power and accuracy. The young guy shakes his head and smiles at what the old guy can make that disc do. They’re both gasping for air when they hug each other in the middle of the field and walk back to the house with their Frisbees and their stories.

It’s time to make the marinade for the fish and set up the fire pits. People are coming over tonight. Dusk will fill in behind the early evening sunset, the string lights will glow above the deck, torches will flare their warm light, the oak fires will crack and burn, and the music will echo off the clapboard walls and carry out into the night. Gabe will visit with our friends, hopefully hang around longer than expected, and then we will lose track of time as we get lost in the warmth of this moment with our friends.

I head to the shower with a glass of wine, loose and warm from the afternoon Frisbee with Gabe and heartened by the anticipation of the evening.

Strive to be as present as possible and let the moment capture you fully. It’s only here once.

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While the Mighty Monkshood (Last Plant Standing) have multiplied prolifically (from 4 plants to about 300, and I’ve given away dozens), this fragile variety is hovering around zero population growth (4 original plants—all long gone—producing a meager remaining population of 6 plants in 10 years, and only 3 will flower this year). Sometimes, for no apparent reason, a healthy-looking plant will just stop growing midseason, frozen in time—arrested development—at half of its potential height, as if it just got too tired and changed its mind, deciding instead that it isn’t up to the task this year after all, just doesn’t have enough energy for such a long growing season.

I like having tough plants. I could build an incredible army out of the hydrangea and the astilbe, and the mighty monkshood, and they would just keep coming at you no matter what you threw at them. I admire their fortitude, their versatility, their grit. They show up and do their job in stellar fashion—no excuses—with incredible consistency. But the fragile and the delicate, the sensitive and reactive have a purpose as well, and if we can figure out how to help them thrive we will all be better for it.

You have to be present, you have to be patient, and you have to be perceptive and discerning as you note the subtle changes in wellness and try to relate these to the circumstances. What does it need to survive and what does it take to truly thrive, to be the best it can be? You have to be attentive, attuned. If you are willing; this delicate, teetering, toothpick tower of indigo can teach you a great deal.

What they set out to do, and what they can achieve if they get what they need, if they avoid excessive adversity, if they budget their energy; what they strive to accomplish, is to rise up more ten feet above the earth, above all other plants in the garden, and sweep the sky with their elegant yet bony arms, gracing those below with a magnificent display of deep indigo beauty. Paradoxically, they don’t have the stem strength to support their own ambitions. You need to be at your best to help them grow, and once you’ve succeeded in that, you have to stay with them, lending support throughout their growth by anchoring them to bamboo poles, adjusting to new poles as they grow ever taller. Their one survival strength is that they will wrap themselves around whatever they find that is sturdy and substantial.

If they manage to reach their full potential, you will not be disappointed. They will grace your every day, bowing in the breeze as you pass, smiling their regal beauty down on you, thanking you profusely for believing in them, fighting for them, for figuring out how to help them become their best. When the season turns—the days are warm and the nights are cool—I can sit quietly on my back deck, listening to the morning come to life, and witness the quiet majesty of the delicate and the sensitive, as droplets of morning dew glisten and hang from each exquisite blossom—rich pearls of indigo subtly illuminated in the trace of early sunlight filtering through the tree canopy.

Your patience, your kindness and compassion, your dedication and determination, your sensitivity and creativity will be well-rewarded in your efforts to nurture the fragile, the delicate and the reactive, and we will all be better for it.

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There are several reasons why parents want to conduct informative discussions with their children when their children return home after a full day at school. Sometimes students arrive home in a bad mood and parents want to find out why. Sometimes students are upset and they want the understanding and support of parents who are willing to listen. Other times students have had a history of school difficulty and parents want to keep up with how things are going.

You may also wish to utilize form Daily Review II

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Let’s face it, no one ever likes to get advice, unless they’re in the midst of a crisis, and they especially don’t like to get “fatherly” advice, particularly on a birthday (so, a triple violation). 

But this is not advice about a problem, a lifeline to bail you out after a fatal decision, or words to alter the doomed course your life is so set on taking. Such advice that is needed most is most unwelcome because it is directed to those who don’t want to do it (or they would have done it) or don’t think they can do it (or they would have done it).

But you, Gabe, are already doing it. So my advice is more like cheering on your favorite team as they march down the field with incredible skill, while showing an amazing blend of determination, composure under pressure, breathtaking raw talent, brute force, quick thinking, clear-sighted vision and an attack that is well-balanced.

So here are my four pieces of advice as you march on past 25 in glorious fashion.

Seek work that stirs your passion. You are unstoppable when you’re passionate about what you do (and when you’re not passionate you’re prone to misery).

Fun is like a nutrient your body and soul needs. Find the fun and use it to make the rest more bearable. 

Work with, play with, and hang out with people that make you laugh, that stir your creativity, that share your sense of adventure and match your ability to get things done when it matters. I think you are particularly energized by being part of a tremendous team, surrounded by people who can keep up. 

People matter a great deal to you—they fuel you—but not just any people. Some people can snuff out the light of your spirit and suck the life right out of you. Spend as much time as possible with people who appreciate you, people who see the best in you, people who celebrate what matters to you, people who encourage you and lift you up, and people who can support you and lead the way when you need it.  

At 25 I think you have a pretty good idea about what makes a good life, and probably nothing I am advising now surprises you. Perhaps you already see yourself this way and strongly believe in all these things. I’m just cheering you on and further encouraging you. Your first quarter century has been an amazing journey, a good time to reflect on what you know about yourself and what matters most. 

Know what you need and pursue what you need to be your best, and I’ll keep cheering you on, because the world needs people like you at their best.

Happy 25th birthday, Love Dad

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You are such a solid, grounded, and totally wonderful person; and like so many people, I’m so proud to say I know you, and I’m so thrilled to think that I get to share a substantial part of your life. But unlike all those other people, I have something they don’t have. My life, every moment of my life, is inextricably bound together with your life—even when we are not together, not sharing the current moment—because you—this lovable and amazing person—are my daughter, and I get to be your father, and—I have to tell you—that is the most extraordinary, most life-affirming feeling imaginable. I can’t tell you how many times in a difficult week that I think about that. That is my “blue sky.” Happy birthday Rachie. You are an incredible gift to me.

Love, Dad.

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Take good care of yourself and get what you need in your life
to stay balanced and healthy. Watch your stress. You will continue
to do things that are hard, that are stressful at times, and you will handle yourself well, but our world needs people like you at their best,
so put yourself first sometimes and take good care of yourself.

Spend more of your time with people who really know you
and appreciate who you are, people who genuinely care about you,
people who encourage you and lift you up,
people who can selflessly celebrate your life.
Don’t let anyone suck the light out of your life or give you back
so much less than what you deserve.

Tolerate your mistakes and don’t let “getting it wrong”
define you or trigger your fears.
Measure success by how willing you are to keep trying—
again and again—despite getting it wrong.
Trust the process and trust yourself
and keep your sights set on where you’re going.

Advocate for yourself, stick up for yourself,
stick by what you believe in.
You are one of the most sensible and reasonable people I know.
Don’t get caught up in making other people happy.

Maintain your good sense of humor and find
people who appreciate that and can make you laugh.

Happy birthday, my 21 year old amazing young woman.

You are more amazing than I ever could have dreamed you would be.

Live your dream and be the person you want to be.

Love, Dad

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I had to go the Rl Attorney General’s office, Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), to have them conduct a national background check on me. You’re probably thinking that I’m being investigated as a world-wide terrorist, or maybe cooking Meth, but it’s really just a requirement for working in schools (not very intriguing, I know). I’ve been avoiding it for months, because it’s such a hassle. As I’m currently in violation of the law by avoiding it for so long, now I risk being an actual criminal. So, I decided to go in on Monday on my way home from work.

It’s a big hassle to get there in downtown Providence and nearly impossible to find the time when they’re open and not on break. So, on Monday (after a month of trying to find the time) I finally made it with just enough time before they closed. I loaded up the meter with all my change (who knows how long I’d be in there, but I had an instinct that it wouldn’t be quick), but it turns out I only needed five minutes.

I learned right away, from the perpetually miserable clerk behind the bullet proof glass, that I could not pay the fee with cash or a credit card; they take a check only. Usually places refuse to take checks and insist on cash or credit card, but not the attorney general. They even have a separate sheet of instructions as to how to obtain a check or money order in downtown Providence. Evidently it is a common enough occurrence that people are completely surprised—dumbstruck, actually—that they can only pay by check. So, it’s a common enough occurrence for them to have a sheet of instructions to help people solve the problem that their ridiculous policy creates, but not common enough to warn people ahead of time when they visit the website to figure out how to get the background check in the first place. If anyone should take a check, it’s the police, because they can prosecute fraudulent check writing and they already have the complete background of the check-writing criminal from the background check they just did on the person. I tried my best, most charming approach and still the clerk wouldn’t budge, she just sat on her stool behind the glass—perched to rule over her domain—and pointed to the flimsy slip of paper explaining how a deadbeat could get a check from a pawn shop in downtown providence. She had to know, when she told me to do this, that five minutes after I left to get that check the Attorney General’s office would be closed.

A man with a gun on his hip (probably a sergeant) took notice of the commotion and came out from behind the glass and escorted me aside so the other unsuspecting people in line could conduct their business, which, by the looks of them, their business could have been any one of a dozen crimes. I was the only one wearing a suit and without a tattoo. The sergeant wanted my story (let’s start from the beginning, he insisted), including why a psychologist would need a background check (listen detective Stabler, not everybody is a suspicious character up to no good, so settle yourself). I finally got him to believe me (it was harder than it should have been because he kept looking me up and down to see what I was really up to), and he seemed to warm up to me (or at least he sympathized with me) so he gave me a package of “paperwork” to fill out, just so it wouldn’t be a completely wasted trip. I left knowing that I had accomplished absolutely nothing, and as I vacated my parking space a driver immediately pulled right into it to discover that I had left him a full hour remaining on the meter.

I returned two days later, and oddly enough, the clerk and the sergeant remembered me, but it was a higher-ranking official who took me back for finger printing. I’m pretty sure it was Bookman from Seinfeld, all business, no sense of humor (standing in front of the ominous machine, “what happened to the old ink pads?” I said, then smiled and nodded, kept nodding and smiling, he gave a dead stare for a slow count, then, simply “I.D.” please”.).

He told me to take one step forward toward the machine (soup Nazi style) and place my index finger on the glass. It would appear as a print in a designated square on the display screen, he told me, but it didn’t, not even a piece of a print. He told me to press harder, so I did, but this revealed just a small sketchy patch. Annoyed, he marched over to where I was standing, pulled a glass cleaning kit out of the draw and meticulously polished the surface of his special machine. Then he grabbed ahold of my right index finger and pressed it down himself, as if a girlie man psychologist might not have the strength to push it as hard as he wanted. The print that appeared was less than 50% complete, and when he tried the rest of my fingers he got the same result.

“For crying out loud you don’t leave any finger prints!” He gave me a look that made it seem like somehow I was at fault. “It’s not like on T.V., you know,” he said, as if explaining the ineptitude of his prize finger print machine. “Everyone thinks it’s so easy to get a print off any old damn object at a crime scene. That’s the way they make it look, but there’s other people just like you who don’t leave prints. You don’t have the coating on your skin that you need to leave prints.” I thought he would question me further to see if I had any other super powers, but instead he left to retrieve some special fluid.

A minute later Bookman returned and applied a mysterious fluid to all my fingertips, then he personally pressed each one in the designated square. Sure enough, the prints appeared as clear as could be and now I am in the national data base. So, with my prints on file in every state in the country, my chance to be a successful criminal is very limited. Of course, without the special fluid my prints are nearly invisible, so… you never know.

—Dad

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It took a year to decide on the colors for the dining room and living room but the final decision for the color of the bookshelves was made last night and it was not based on any of the paint chips or paint samples I had retrieved. It was based on a lacy cotton ivory-colored dress. So, this morning I had to return to Home Depot with the actual dress. I carried it into the store in a plastic grocery bag and discretely made my way over to the wall of paint chips and samples. Like sneaking a bag of candy into the movie theater, I surreptitiously opened the bag and slipped in one paint chip after another to compare it to the ivory-colored party dress.

Periodically looking over my shoulder, I compared dozens of paint chips, each one I thought would be the perfect match, but the more I compared them, the further from a match it took me. The whole color matching process, I realized, was slowly and steadily turning me color blind. I made my way over to the light booth (where you can see paint chips enhanced under stronger and different types of light), and in a bold move I pulled the entire dress out of the bag and put it under the light. It didn’t help a bit, and what’s worse, now the dress was completely out of the bag.

My back was to the paint manager but apparently my activities didn’t escape his scrutiny. At 7:30 in the morning the store is nearly empty of customers, so what made me think I could escape notice? He snuck up behind me and asked over my shoulder, with a slight bit of amusement in his voice, “So what’s going on?” Sheepishly I turned to face him. He had the wrong kind of smile on his face, but the dress was out of the bag and I couldn’t reverse time or erase his memory or make myself instantly disappear, so I had to follow him over to the counter with the dress, trying to think of just the right thing to say that would give him a favorable impression of these circumstances (instead of providing him with a priceless work anecdote to share with his girlfriend).

I thought he would say, “People bring in all types of crazy things to match the paint, so this is totally normal.” He didn’t say that. He took the dress from me, adjusted his orange apron, and hooked up the dress to the computerized “eye” to break down the color code. Unfortunately, I had to interrupt him and correct his handling of the dress, advising him to use the satin inside lining instead of the lacy outside pattern to get the color match that interested me. He paused briefly and gave me a look with just one eye, held it for a second to make his point, and then turned the dress inside out to use the inside satin lining.

I’m pretty sure the rest of the day will be eventful enough for the paint manager to nearly forget all about the man with the lacy cotton ivory-colored dress. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

-Dad

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Parents and teachers find it difficult to forge a positive relationship with these children, it is exhausting to deal with the constant power struggles and it is easy to get locked into negative exchanges that escalate into serious conflict. The matter is further complicated when parental or teacher authority is challenged in front of other children. Often, what starts as a refusal to cooperate, ends with raised voices and verbal threats from both sides (“You will do this, or else . . .”).

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