The goal of YJT is to provide parents and guardians with the knowledge and skills that promote resilience, and help family members better cope with life’s challenges and reach their full potential. Your Journey Together shows parents how to use ordinary, everyday routines, activities and interactions as resilience-building opportunities.

Since everyone faces adversity at some point in life, DCRC’s mission is to promote protective factors and strengthen resilience for children and the adults who support them. Promoting resilience involves reducing risk factors and strengthening protective factors at the environmental, familial and within-levels.

Adult Resilience Initiative focuses on promoting the health and well-being of all adults who parent, nurture and/or work with young children. The critical connection between children’s resilience and the health and wellness of the adults in their lives can not be underestimated.

children ages 3 through 5 years old. 

Self-Control: The ability to experience a range of feeling, and express them using the words and actions that society considers appropriate.

When teachers are not able to cope with constant changes and increased demands, they may not be able to provide the quality teaching and learning experiences expected of them. The same can be said for parents, administrators and other individuals who care for and educate children. One way to help adults overcome stress and burnout may be to provide them with professional development that introduces strategies that support resilience and the building of protective factors.

Early Childhood Professionals Teachers of Young School Age Children Parents Foster Parents Social Workers Mental Health Professionals Bus Drivers EVERYONE!

Remind the child of the positive limits and expectations you have for his behavior.

Gently talk with the child about his feelings. Tell him what you see and hear as a result of his emotions. Help him to identify the root feelings causing the behavior.

Attachment/Relationships: refers to the child’s ability to promote and maintain mutual, positive connections with other children and significant adults. Initiative: the child’s ability to use independent thought and action to meet his or her needs. Self-Regulation: the child’s ability to to express emotions and manage behaviors in healthy ways.

You can now administer the nationally standardized, reliable and valid Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and clinical ONLINE!

The Devereux Center for Resilient Children (DCRC) strives to promote social and emotional development, foster resilience, and build skills for school and life success in all children from birth through school-age, as well as to promote the resilience of the adults who care for them.

Targeted strategies are focused on the specific needs of the at-risk child, can be implemented in the home and classroom settings

most important adults in a child’s life, namely, parents (and other family members) and teachers.

Hey, parents! Don’t FLIP OUT, use FLIP IT! Are you interested in finding a way to stay calm, be consistent and support your children (ages 3-8) when they are challenging you? FLIP IT® is a strategy that offers a simple, kind, and commonsense process to address children’s challenging behavior. Check out this one-hour webinar designed just for parents/families, all about this four-step strategy.

DCRC’s strength-based approach is prevention-oriented, meaning that it is designed to benefit all children, and the families and adults in their lives. Because all children benefit from strong protective factors, and because a child may face increased risk at any time, DCRC emphasizes the importance of building strong protective factors for all children and adults.

Families, providers, specialists and other community resource professionals share knowledge and work as a team to understand and jointly determine how to best promote children’s healthy and social and emotional development.

The well-being of the adults who parent, nurture and education children: Young children’s healthy social and emotional development is strongly influenced by the health and well-being of the adults who care for them.

She found that about one-third of the children at high risk (having four or more risk factors by age two) grew up to be adults who “loved well, worked well, played well, and expected well.”

“the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” 

Relationships

Resilient leadership is the term used to describe those leadership behaviors that help others withstand crisis, and adapt to or rebound from adversity (Everly, 2012).

Engaging families is an essential component of I/ECMHC, as they know their children best and have a monumental impact on children’s mental wellness through their own behaviors. Families are critical partners in developing strategies that are well-attuned to the child and family’s strengths, needs and preferences. Using a family-centered approach increases the likelihood that family members will support implementation of strategies at home, thus strengthening the overall impact of consultation.

Reflective Practice Sessions are a time to talk about the work you do to support children and adults. The sessions focus on experiences, thoughts, and feelings directly connected with the work you are doing with young children and the adults in their lives. Reflective Practice Sessions are characterized by active listening and thoughtful questioning by both parties. The role of the facilitator is to help you to answer your own questions, and to provide support and knowledge necessary to guide decision making. In addition, the facilitator provides an empathetic, nonjudgmental ear. Working through complex emotions in a “safe place” allows you to manage the stress you experience on the job. It also allows you to experience the very sort of relationship that you are expected to provide to those with whom you work. During Reflective

Early Childhood Mental Health Professionals Early Childhood Leaders Coaching Professionals Teachers

Flexibility. You name the time and the place. Each of the three lessons within our Learning Series is prerecorded, so you have great flexibility in when, and even how often, you participate. Recorded files can be licensed to your organization for ongoing use over time so that current and future staff benefit. Choices. Participate as an individual or as part of a group. Program leaders can decide whether to bring the staff together for a group learning experience or to offer individuals the opportunity to participate on their own. Each lesson comes with facilitator questions that program leaders can use  to take the learning deeper at a staff meeting or any time staff meet as a group. Reflection. Opportunities for reflection are embedded into the series to help spark conversation and provide participants with meaningful opportunities to think. Creative, reflective activities have been intentionally added to help facilitate understanding and have a little child-like fun too! Time. Each of the videos is approximately 30 minutes in length. A short amount of time for adults to invest in their own mental health! This professional development opportunity offers a cost effective and flexible way to share the message of resilience with your staff!

Don’t Miss the Moments: Slow Down and Take Time to Listen, Laugh, and Learn with Your Children

In early childhood, a child’s resilience and social and emotional health are directly influenced by the culture of the early childhood program they attend and the culture of their home. An early childhood program whose mission, values, policies and leadership support resilience-building cultures can promote child resilience in a number of ways.

Werner’s study showed that the protective factors found in these resilient children served as a buffer against the negative effects of risk. Strengthening children’s protective factors to offset the negative impact of risk is essential to supporting children’s resilience. The image below represents  a Resilience Model. A child is more likely to have a positive outcome when protective factors outweigh risk factors and is more vulnerable when risk factors outweigh protective factors.

ur mission is to promote social and emotional development, foster resilience, and build skills for school and life success in children birth through school-age, as well as to promote the resilience of the adults who care for them. We accomplish this by doing research and producing resources for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and adults. And our partnership with Aperture Education brings social and emotional learning and resilience to school-age children.

Students spend between 25-30 or more hours in school each week, and you the teacher or administrative staff is in a position to play an essential role in identifying and assisting students to tackle unwanted anxiety.

However, anxiety can be an invisible disorder, not necessarily noted by the busy teacher.

But how do you, the teacher or administrator, know when a student might be struggling with an anxiety disorder? In some situations it may be obvious. For example, you have a young student who still cries and clings to his mother each morning at drop off, and remains sad and tearful for the first hour of each day despite school being in session for six months. Or the student, who has lost her sister to suicide, and now withdraws from others, has difficulty concentrating, is jumpy, and skips class daily. And finally, there is the student that spends upwards of thirty minutes in the bathroom several times a day, and has red, chapped, and bleeding hands. These examples highlight the more obvious cases of anxiety disorders in the classroom.

nxiety triggers something called the “fight-flight-freeze” response (F3). This automatic response affects our thoughts, body, and behaviors. When faced with a potential threat, your thoughts focus on the danger, your body revs up to help protect you, and you take action (fight, flight, or freeze).

Anxiety is our body’s normal reaction to perceived danger or important events.  Anxiety is like an internal alarm system. It alerts us to danger and helps our body prepare to deal with it. For example, it allows you to jump out of the way of a speeding car. It also lets us know when something important is happening and helps us perform at our best. For example, anxiety can prompt you to bring home your textbook to study for a final exam or motivate you to practice for a class presentation. Anxiety is something that everyone experiences from time to time.

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience obsessions, compulsions or both. Obsessions are unwanted and disturbing thoughts, images or impulses that suddenly pop into the mind and cause a great deal of anxiety or distress. Compulsions are deliberate behaviours (e.g. washing, checking, ordering) or mental acts (e.g. praying, counting, repeating phrases) that are carried out to reduce the anxiety caused by the obsessions.

Physical feelings of anxiety (e.g. heart racing, sweating, stomach discomfort) Feeling fidgety, restless or unable to sit still Feeling irritable, getting easily upset, snapping at people for minor reasons Sleep problems: this can include having a hard time falling asleep, waking up frequently during the night, or having a restless and unsatisfying sleep Difficulty paying attention or concentrating Being easily fatigued Muscle pains (often in the neck and shoulders)

Worries

Trichotillomania

This disruption can interrupt or even stop adults from participating in a variety of experiences such as attending higher education, pursuing meaningful work, joining social, athletic or recreational clubs, being in relationships, and more. Finally, it is this combination of factors that increase the chances of being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

However, for some youth it is as if they never grow out of the stage, and/or they become more rather than less afraid as they mature. As a result, this ongoing and excessive fear can begin to cause considerable distress or interference in everyday life. It can prevent them from engaging in age-appropriate activities or meeting expected developmental milestones. It is this combination of excessive anxiety and disruption in life that helps us understand that anxiety is no longer normal and has become a problem.

Anxiety is a normal emotion that is essential for survival. Specialists in child development have noticed that certain fears are more common at certain ages and stages of life. Most parents are familiar with stranger anxiety, a common response in infants and toddlers when meeting new people.

Being unable to do routine tasks without crying, tantrums or having continual reminders

They appear disorganized, unfocused, or fail to reach their full academic potential (and if they can reach their potential it is due to extreme efforts). They miss out on important social and recreational activities due to fear, often missing opportunities to learn important skills like making friends, dating, asserting oneself, and more. They experience more conflict with their families than is typical for teens, or depend more on parents to get their needs met causing them to be unprepared for adolescence or the adult world.

Anxious children and teens worry in excess and to an extreme. They worry about more things, more often, and in more extreme ways than their peers. Socially anxious teens are not just worried about saying the wrong thing once or twice, but are afraid that they will say the wrong thing repeatedly, be judged harshly by their peers, and embarrass themselves beyond repair for the rest of their lives!

Anxious children and teens reply and depend on their parents’ far more than same aged peers. These anxious kids either seek reassurance or ask their parents to do things for them that seem unnecessary. While it is normal and helpful for children to ask for information when they are learning about new things, or seek comfort when they are scared, anxious children and teens often ask the same questions over and over again, or demand comfort in non-threatening situations. In addition, these kids often ask their parents to do things for them, or to be available to help just in case something goes wrong, even when the feared outcome seems unlikely. When parents of anxious children compare their children to their peers, parents often notice they are doing far more for their children than are the parents of their children’s friends.

These worries can be about a current situation or about some future event. Young children may not be able to identify anxious thoughts even when they are very anxious. This also sometimes happens for older children and teens. However, when they are able to tell us what they are worrying about the thoughts can range from the reasonable (e.g. I will fail my test) to the remote (e.g. I will get sick and die if I eat in a restaurant).

Avoidance is a habit-forming, unhelpful way of coping with stress. With your patience and consistency, your child will learn a variety of coping skills to practice, and will then learn to face his or her fears with success!

One of the most common behaviors in anxious kids is not doing things or refusing to go places, also known as avoidance. In a situation of real threat (e.g., being cornered by a large, snarling dog), moving away from the threat, or avoiding, is very helpful, as the fight-flight-freeze response keeps us safe from danger. In other situations where there is no real danger, avoidance prevents children from learning to cope with a challenging situation or from engaging in age appropriate activities.

is a physical response. Often, when children feel anxious, they do not actually recognize or describe their body symptoms as anxiety or nervousness. Instead, they may say that they feel sick, or have a sore tummy. Teens may complain of headaches, chest pains, and sore shoulder muscles.

Anxiety can impact the lives of children, teens (and adults!), in the following 6 ways: Affect: Emotionally and physically–what we feel in our body Behaviour: Behaviorally–what we do or our actions, such as avoiding or seeking-reassurance Cognition: Mentally–what goes through our mind like worrisome thoughts Dependence: Relying on parents–what happens over time is that children and teens depend too much on their parents Excess and Extreme: Anxiety is a problem when it is excessive and extreme in relation to the situation Functioning: How your child manages each day

Think of anxiety like fog: if it covers everything, makes it hard to see, stops you from doing what you usually do, and generally gets in the way, then it has likely become a problem.

Since anxiety is everywhere, one of the greatest gifts you can give your anxious child or teen is the confidence and skill to tolerate anxiety whenever it occurs, and to continue living his/her life anyway!

Trying to eliminate anxiety from your child’s life is almost impossible, and even if it were possible, we are not sure you will have created a life worth living for your child.

Anxiety is not dangerous. 

It is common for children and teens to experience anxiety symptoms of more than one anxiety disorder. This means as you read the definitions below, it would be fairly common to say, “Yes! This sounds like my child, but so does this other description!” Fortunately, the helpful approaches outlined throughout this website can be used for various anxiety problems, so that even if your child has 2, 3, or more disorders, many of the same tools can be used for all the disorders.

Physical responses Thoughts Emotions Behaviorus

As a result, parents of anxious children and teens are often confused about what to do, as well as frustrated, and overwhelmed.

knew there was something different about their child, but did not immediately recognize it as an anxiety problem

Anxious youth are often quiet and well behaved, and thus frequently go unnoticed by their parents, teachers, and coaches. Alternatively others can be disruptive and act out, being labeled as having attention deficit disorder or being a “bad” kid. Both scenarios result in youth failing to receive the help they desperately need. Sadly, untreated anxiety can lead to depression, missed opportunities in career and relationships, increased substance use, and a decreased quality of life.