1. Helping Your Children Build Critical Life Skills
Presenter: Nayeli Calle-Sousa, LCSW

2. Agenda How to support the development and practice of skills for:
Frustration Tolerance
Anxiety Management
Problem Solving

3. Anatomy and Functions of the Brain

4. Learning Happens Within Relationships
Modeling 01
Scaffolding 02
Practice 03

5. Scaffolding: Teaching a Baby How to Walk

6. Frustration Tolerance

7. Frustration Frustration:
The feeling of being upset, annoyed, or disappointed especially because of being unable to change or achieve something
Triggered when an individual perceives resistance to the fulfillment of their will or goal. Likely to increase when a will or goal is denied or blocked
Frustration tolerance: The ability to withstand obstacles and stressful situations

8. Low Frustration Tolerance
Low frustration tolerance: Inability to tolerate unpleasant feelings or stressful situations
Focusing on immediate gratification rather than long term goals
Seeking out easy solutions rather than difficult challenges
Giving up easily
Impatience
Meltdowns when frustrated

9. Skills Needed to Tolerate Frustration
Self-reflection
Identify your feelings
Identify intensity of feelings
Understand your body’s reactions to frustration
Coping
Do something to reduce your frustration level
Flexibility
Adjust path towards goal or adjust goal

10. Teaching Frustration Tolerance Skills
Help your child develop a feeling vocabulary
4 basic feelings: Sad, Mad, Happy, Scared
When reading books or watching videos with your child have them identify the feelings of the characters
Play Feelings Charades
Help your child talk about “how much of a feeling” they’re experiencing
Help your child identify the “clues” their body gives them

11. Teaching Frustration Tolerance Skills
Validate your child’s feelings instead of dismissing
You can validate feelings without condoning the behavior

12. Teaching Frustration Tolerance Skills
Modeling
Scaffolding
Practice
Talk about your own feelings
Support emotional regulation
Help your child verbalize their needs before responding right away
Talk about your own “clues”
Give suggestions or options if your child is stuck
Allow your child to tackle challenges based on their current skill level
Let your child see you overcome frustration
Engage in coping skills with them
Games:
Chutes and Ladders
Sorry
Praise effort and not giving up instead of only praising success

13. Anxiety Management

14. Anxiety
Anxiety
A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about a pending event or an uncertain outcome.
Normal reaction to situations that we might find challenging
Beneficial: Keeps us alert in case of danger, helps us prepare and pay attention

15. Anxiety Disorder
Anxiety disorders are different from normative anxiety
Excessive fear and anxiety
Persistent
Out of proportion to the situation or age inappropriate
Negatively impacts your functioning
Avoidance is used as main coping tool

16. 1 2 3 Traumatic Stress Emotionally Costly Stress
Normative, Developmentally Appropriate Stress 2
Emotionally Costly Stress 3
Traumatic Stress

17. Anxiety Presentation in Children
Avoidance
Behaviors that seem oppositional or like “acting out.”
Trouble Concentrating
Increase in motor activity
Irritability

18. Skills Needed to Manage Anxiety
Self-reflection
Identify your anxiety triggers: environmental and cognitive
Identify intensity of anxiety
Understand your body’s reactions to anxiety
Coping
First children learn to co-regulate
Then they learn to self-regulate
Use of body and senses for coping
Cognitive coping

19. Anxiety Management Techniques for Parents
Remind yourself to slow down
You don’t have to have every solution or answer right away
Stop and think: Am I responding to my child’s need or to my own anxiety?
Try not to take your child’s behavior personally
Be a behavior detective
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Mental Vacation

20. Teaching Anxiety Management Skills
Modeling
Scaffolding
Practice
Talk about what makes you nervous
Validate their feelings of nervousness
Engage in gradual exposure rather than complete avoidance
Talk about what it means to be brave
Engage in co-regulation
Practice coping strategies when child is NOT anxious
If you’re having a difficult moment with your child tell them you’re going to use a coping strategy and invite them to join you.
Support their use of coping strategies
Use Games:
App called Triangle of Life
Perfection
Operation
Let your child see you manage anxiety
Create a “tool kit”

21. Problem Solving

22. Problem Solving Definition
Having a goal but not knowing how to achieve it
Encountering obstacles
Experiencing a conflict
Problem solving: Cognitive processing directed at finding solutions to difficult or complex issues
Children will have difficulty developing this skill if adults solve all of their problems for them

23. Skills Needed to Problem Solve
Two types of mental skills:
Analytical: Using logic such as ordering, comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and selecting.
Creative: Using your imagination to create a large range of ideas for solutions. Being flexible and original.

24. Steps Involved in Problem Solving
Identify the problem
Collect information
Decide what is causing the problem
Identify possible solutions
Select a solution
Create a plan to implement solution
Test out your solution
Review outcome

25. How Children and Adults Experience the Same Problem
Problem for the Adult
Attempted Solution for the Child

26. Teaching Problem Solving Skills
Modeling
Scaffolding
Practice
“Think out loud” when you are engaging in simple problem solving
Ask your child for help in solving problems that you know will be easy for them
Prompt your child to engage in problem solving when encountering an issue or conflict
Let your child see you apply a solution that doesn’t work and try again
Adjust level of support based on stress level of child
Let them apply a possible solution even if you’re sure it won’t work (as long as safety is not an issue)
Invite your child to think through a problem with you
If your child is stuck or problem is very challenging for them, offer possible solutions and let them choose
Games:
ThinkFun: Logic and Problem Solving Games
Function as a coach through conflict resolution

27. Problem Solving Games

28. Resources
Wall Street Journal Article: The Right Way to Help Anxious Children
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The Beginning of Life
Documentary streaming on Netflix