Topic 3: After the Report
What You Can Do To Help
In this section you will learn about:
- Resiliency in children and what you can do to promote it
- How to best support the services offered to the family
Promoting Resiliency
Despite adverse circumstances, some children just seem to be able to rise above their situation and do well. These are resilient children. Resiliency is the ability to draw on personal strengths to help overcome negative circumstances. Remember, knowing when to reach out for help from an outside source is a personal strength.
As a teacher, you play an important role in helping children become resilient. Teachers are often that source of strength and support that resilient children identify as having made the difference. Your unconditional support and positive regard for a child may be the only such support and recognition that child has.
You are ideally positioned to promote resiliency in children in your classroom.
The following are things that you do every day that help children become resilient:
- Communicate positive regard for the child despite occasional behavioral lapses
- Communicate respect for the child
- Listen to the child and honor the child’s perspective
- Realistically acknowledge the child’s accomplishments (do not patronize)
- Capitalize on the child’s interests, promoting activities that give the child a chance to shine
- Demonstrate self-control
- Demonstrate positive coping skills
- Teach responsible behavior and responsibility for one’s own behavior versus blaming others
- Teach cooperation (not competition)
- Be a good role model
- Keep your promises
- Encourage, encourage, encourage!
How to Support Services Offered to the Family
Often the services that are identified for the family come from a variety of community resources. The school is just one of those resources. You, or someone from your school, may be asked to participate in an interdisciplinary team that coordinates and follows the child’s and family’s progress as they participate in community services.
Remember: The family is an important member of that team. You are also an important member of that team. You have a wealth of information about the child and how he or she is progressing. Outside of the family, you may be the only one who sees the child on a daily basis. Because of your daily contact with the child, you are able to interact in ways that are consistent with treatment interventions that are in place through other community providers.
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