Random Acts of Kindness Calendar

     This is always a go to when I am teaching kindness in a support group. Since I try to keep this lesson as one of the first introductory topics to get kids in the swing of things (fourth week at the LATEST) I find that it sets a tone early on of carrying these skills and ideas home to practice throughout the rest of the week. It is a really fun activity to be done independently or as a family that DOUBLES as a tool for kids to use in their own journey to empowerment and adding a bit more kindness into the world. If it goes over well, this calendar can be adapted to other lessons as well. It can be used to create a schedule of self-esteem mantras, track things a child is grateful for around thanksgiving, and set small baby-step goals for responsibility.

I should mention that, personally, I try to keep my groups super low pressure. I have very little expectation when it comes to kids taking work home to complete and bring back. The kids that I (and I would assume you) work with are already carrying a heavy load of healing from their own stress in life as well as normal kid academic, homework, and extracurricular commitments. That being said, I have been known to offer small rewards for anyone that CHOOSES to take a worksheet like this home, complete it, and bring it back with proof (usually parent initial or testimony) that they actually followed through with a few of the things they wrote down. It is totally up to you to decide how much of a commitment you want your support group to be, but just keep in mind the age you’re working with and what else they likely have going on outside of your learning space.

Along with this calendar activity, I usually keep full page print outs of this adorable list from CoffeecupsAndCrayons to give to parents at the end of the group with the weekly newsletter. It is super cute with lots of color and has lots of ideas for cheap and free Random Act of Kindness tasks for kids and families to do. Typically my families don’t have much money to throw around at non-necessities so this is great to encourage low stress participation. Some of my favorites are making thank you and get well soon cards that can be hand delivered for free (or mailed for the cost of postage), picking flowers for a teacher, drying off play equipment at the park after it rains, and making kindness stones to place in public gardens. There are so many other great ideas all over the internet so you can choose to print off premade lists or create your own!

As far as the calendar itself, you can be as creative with this as you like. I never knew what age groups I was going to have until everyone arrived so for me it was practical to make and print off copies of my own calendar worksheet. Early on I used this activity when I was going to be teaching kindness in January and made specific month calendars with the dates already printed in. It was a cute way to tie in the new year and starting new habits of being kind. I found, however, that the activity had a lot of success and kids actually brought it back the next week, so I started using it throughout the year and had to make a flexible calendar. If you enjoy playing around with computer graphics programs like I do, I would recommend creating a basic 5x7 square calendar table with enough space for the kiddos to write in the month and dates themselves. Then you can keep copies to use at any time. I made a sample of something that I would use in one of my groups that also has space at the side where they can write down ideas they might hear during group that they can put into their calendar.

If you’re not computer savvy, don’t fret! There is also the option, especially with elementary and older groups, to make their own calendars. Really all you need to provide is some paper, markers and drawing utensils, and any other art supplies you have on hand (sticky notes and cut up paint chips from home improvement stores work great for calendar squares) and a sample calendar as a template. Then you can just let the kids get creative. This would even be a great art journaling project if you opt to have your groups keep a weekly journal throughout the sessions.

Finally, if neither of these appeal to you you can pretty easily pull up premade calendar templates in Microsoft office to print off or make copies of a store bought calendar page. Whatever you choose to do, I am sure it will. Get the job done and equip your kids for the job. I hope that this has been helpful. Please comment down below and let me know if you want to see more content like this. I would love to hear if you chose to use this activity and how it went. As always...

Good Luck & Keep Fighting,

Jess ♥️

Organizing a Support Group for LITTLES - Ages 4-9 years

    Welcome to the elementary level group. Bear in mind that your age ranges don’t have to match mine exactly. Honestly I just made an educated guess on where to draw the line and ran with it. It is all going to depend on your needs and the resources you have available to you. If this is the first post on TheTraumaTeacher that you are reading, stop what you are doing and rewind a few weeks to my “Support Groups for Kids?!” post before reading on. 

This is where a classroom style group is really going to start making sense. Kids this age are either just starting school and learning the routines or already have a few years experience under their belts knowing what to expect. No need to try and reinvent the wheel here. Something that you will want to keep in mind with this age group, though, is the short attention span. Elementary schools have recess and hands on project learning for a reason. Children this age aren’t going to learn well by sitting quietly listening or even conversation. They need to be engaged in interesting things and moving around once in a while.

For littles, I have found it best to switch gears often and plan a series of activities related to the main topic so the kiddos don’t have enough time to get bored. It is also a good idea to give them an opportunity to burn off any excess wiggly energy before starting discussion. As with every other post, I would like to remind that my background is mainly in working with children affected by violence and abuse but truly believe that this basic layout can work for children of any demographic in need of support programming.

DROP-OFF

This is going to be highly dependent on what resources and spaces you have available to you as well as any schedule you are having to abide by. The most successful drop-off scenario I have had thus far has been an outdoor sign-in procedure. Parents were asked to accompany their child to the drop-off and actively sign their child into the group. This has a lot of positive benefits. It gave myself the opportunity to speak briefly with the parent about how the week has been and get a feel for if the family was in need of any further services or referrals usually out of earshot of the already playing child. It is a great low-pressure atmosphere for any children new to the group as they can choose to join a group of already playing children to get acquainted or play on their own and observe while they adapt. It also serves the aforementioned purpose of getting out any overflowing wiggles before the group. This is by far my favorite approach as it gives kids time to just BE KIDS around other kids like them.

In times where weather has been an issue, a backup plan I have used has been the parent settling the child in for dinner at drop-off. If the group I was facilitating wasn’t having a meal, I would have related “starter” worksheets made up and printed set up in a way that the children could access on their own as they entered along with pencils, crayons, or any other tools needed for the assignment. Unfortunately a downside to this approach with this age is that you will likely have kiddos still learning to read and write and may be unable to complete it on their own (usually leading to bored and frustrated misbehavior). I mostly use this approach if I am short on extra adult hands and have a combined littles/bigs group and older kids are available to help the younger ones. This is not a perfect approach and definitely has its hang ups but it can do in a pinch. You are basically just aiming to keep your group engaged and entertained long enough that everyone can filter in (someone is ALWAYS late).

TOPIC DISCUSSION

Imagine you’re a teacher. Now open your eyes because that is exactly what you are. Or at least to them you are, which is a good thing. School teaches kids to respect, listen to, and trust their teachers so let them believe it. No need to confuse them with titles they’ve never heard of. If you’re group is violence or abuse related, this can also have an added benefit should there be a visitation agreement in place and the child decides to starting talking about their favorite teacher Ms. Jessie and how fun she is during those visitations with the other parent. “Advocate” may raise eyebrows and trigger further questioning.

Again the number and subject of your topics is going to be totally relative to your needs and resources. My experience usually meant I was working in unison with an adult support program so I mirrored the format of that group when deciding how long my program cycles would be. If they had an off week with some sort of special event planned, I would plan something on my end as well. My group started when theirs started and ended when theirs ended.

In the groups that I have facilitated, the best basis for themes that I have found thus far have revolved around character education. Most children have heard the theme words I use from their teachers, guidance counsellors, coaches, and likely even their parents at home. An observation I noticed in myself as well as in these kids AND their parents is that the theme words I chose were used so often and freely that when I asked anyone what the word actually meant, they weren’t able to tell me. Take a moment for yourself and try to write down definitions for a few of the following words WITHOUT using the word in the definition: Humility, Forgiveness, Self-Esteem, Respect, Responsibility. You may be tempted to write examples instead of a definition, but those still don’t explain WHAT those words MEAN. That is what I chose to teach. Every lesson started with that exact exercise as I called on raised hands to try and give me a real definition for that night’s topic word. We then followed it up with the actual dictionary definition. My goal was to break these big, seemingly simple but surprisingly complex concepts down to their bare bones. This way, I wasn’t telling these kids where they should be seeing examples of each topic, but giving them the ability to evaluate situations on their own. I followed the definition with a few pre-planned discussion questions to encourage participation and critical thinking. Some examples of these open ended questions might have been: How do we show humility? What are the benefits of being responsible? What does low self-esteem look like? Who does forgiveness affect? Questions like these, I’ve found, do a great job at allowing a child to reflect on their own experiences and interactions in a gentle and healthy way. It is worth mentioning that with this age, you’re going to want to watch the clock and try to keep this section short with a max time of 30 minutes or the wiggles will emerge.

DRIVE IT HOME

This will be the bulk of your group time so prepare accordingly. As mentioned before, kids this age are wiggly and short fused. They aren’t going to cooperate doing one activity for too long. You have a couple of options here. You can have preset activities for each topic (I would recommend 2-3 for each) or you can use a method that worked for me and create a pool of activities that you mix and match from each week. This is a great method if you are just starting out and have more topics than you have activities and can also allow your group to revisit and recycle some old favorites from earlier in the session. Again, keep them short and prepare multiple. If you see your kids losing interest, move on to the next one. You also want to make sure you’re taking the time to reflect with the kids on how the activity relates back to the night’s topic. Don’t just tell them, ask why they think you chose that game. A crowd favorite of mine has always been a game I called “blind man.” It was super flexible because it could be easily adapted to almost half of my curriculum and the kids always asked to play it over and over. Their favorite was when it was Ms. Jessie’s turn to wear the blindfold and they got to tell me where to walk. If you’re interested in this activity, let me know in the comments and I will make a future post with more information about it.

SEND OFF

Now is when things can get a bit tricky if you don’t have procedures in place. For a long time, I struggled with being at the mercy of another group and never knowing when my group was going to end. Some sessions we would get through everything on time and I would just be throwing coloring sheets at the kids trying to keep them entertained until they were picked up. Other sessions we would be halfway through our first activity and giving directions with parents suddenly starting to filter in half an hour earlier than they were expected causing my entire group to dissolve into chaos. Any point I had been trying to get across was effectively shattered. There is a better way, but it takes a lot of persistence and communication of expectation. What worked for me was to have a waiting area set up for parents outside of my teaching zone with already printed and displayed information about what was going on with kids programming. This would usually consist of the weekly newsletter covered the night’s lesson plan, a calendar of upcoming events that month, and an extra handout or brochure detailing further information or a local resource to help continue practicing the skill learned that night. Some handouts might have self-esteem building positive affirmations for the family to practice, a list of age appropriate books about the nightly topic, or a calendar of easy and free/cheap acts of kindness for the parents to consider trying. I would also have instructions in this area that group was still taking place and would be finished momentarily. 

Is everyone going to pay attention to this? Not at first and some maybe not ever. But with consistency, I hope you will have mostly success with this method. As I’ve said before, the best we can do is put the tools in a person’s hands and hope they use them. It isn’t our fault if they don’t, but it can't be said that we didn’t try and give it our all.

I feel it is important to remind anyone reading this far into the post that our job, tasks, and responsibilities are just as important, if not debatably more important than anyone else’s. Anyone that works with children has worked far too long in a world where no matter what role they were in or age they worked with, they were seen by an alarming chunk of the population as babysitters.  This just is not so. Especially if you are working in an advocacy field, but even those working across the board in child related fields, your work is important. We are the architects of the future. It is our job to shape, inform, and prepare the minds of the upcoming generation to run this world when we are gone. The people that we are shaping will still be around as we grow old as our doctors, nurses, lawyers, bankers, drivers, cashiers, cooks, etc. The skills and knowledge we teach them will affect their ability to carry out those jobs for sure, but the wisdom and morality that we bestow on them will affect how well and compassionately they treat us while they do.

As always, I hope that this information helps you in your journey creating your own children’s programming. If you have any questions about any of the information in this post, what me to elaborate on anything specific, or would even like to share your own experiences, I would love to interact with you in the comments. As always…

Good Luck & Keep Fighting,

Jess ♥️

Organizing a Support Group for Children BASICS

        In case you weren’t aware, April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Since this blog is still fairly new and children’s programming is my specialty, I thought the perfect way to recognize the occasion would be to lay out the framework of how I went about creating effective children’s support group programing. As you may have read in some of my other posts, I am a huge advocate of meaningful programming for kids that helps them process and heal from traumatic events in their lives. I truly believe that children are our future and are the keys to a more compassionate, better functioning society. If you haven't already, I invite you to check out my other post, Support Groups for Kids?!? and why I feel it is so important to cultivate and provide this type of programming.

        This post will be an introduction to the basics of what you’ll need to plan for in any support group catering to minors (0-17 years old). Before I begin, I want to be very clear that the information and experiences I share in this post come mostly from what I have personally learned in my time as a children’s advocate as well as other opportunities working with groups of children. I entered this field as a former nanny with very little direction and essentially had to figure it out on my own through research, trial, and error. The children I worked with specifically came from homes affected by domestic violence and in most cases, the child was a witness to this violence in some capacity. This format could definitely be adapted to work for children with other complicated or traumatic experiences, though I can only speak for its use with children coming from abuse. I also cannot guarantee that this exact format will work for everyone. That being said, the foundation pieces and tips I detail here have worked tremendously for my kids over the years. I can only hope that this information serves any child advocates out there, either new to the field or well seasoned looking for fresh material, in inspiring new ideas, techniques, or even just validation and encouragement. If you are in this field and feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle that no one else quite understands, I assure you that you are not alone in that fight. I can only pray that one day the world catches up to what we are already well aware of, children and families need more meaningful and tailored support.

    Gain Some Experience    

I have to say that I was a bit lucky when it comes to preparedness when I was offered the position as children’s advocate. As a teen, I had experience helping my mother teach children’s Sunday school classes as well as taking on some leadership responsibilities in church youth groups. I also realized in middle and high school that I learned information far better when I was attempting to explain concepts to another struggling student versus focusing on my own learning. These opportunities afforded me knowledge about teaching, engaging a child’s interest, and class management that served as starting points for my planning. If you are starting with little to no experience managing a group of children, I would HIGHLY encourage and urge you to start with gaining that experience. Offer to help a friend teach their Sunday school or VBS class. Volunteer to bring snacks to your nephew’s t-ball practices each week. Tag along as a chaperone on your baby cousin’s next school field trip. Whatever you do, make sure you observe the moments when children are learning and following directions. Make mental notes on what the experienced teachers and adult guardians do to rein a child’s attention and interest back in if they get distracted. Notice what gets them involved, asking questions, excited, distracted, or sets them off on a path of misbehavior (an inevitable occurrence). Having just a basic understanding of what it is to manage a group of children is probably the most important thing you will need starting out. 

    Know Your Audience    

This is going to come from a lot of different places. I would highly recommend doing a bit of reading on child development at different ages to get a better understanding of how they best learn. The average teenager may learn very well from a long group discussion, but a 5-6 year old will get the jitters and need to move after the first couple of minutes. Don’t even try that serious, deep discussion with a toddler. Knowing your audience is going to play a big role in deciding what angles to use when discussing topics and also how to talk about them. That same 5-6 year old will become much more engaged in conversation if the questions are printed on a ball being tossed around the room. While you are doing your research on average milestones and development, I would also encourage you to do some more targeted research depending on the purpose of the group. In my own case, I tried to read as much as I could on the effects of trauma, violence, sexual assault, and neglect on child development and how those factors affect learning ability, behavior, and all around health. I took great care in respecting each child’s boundaries, allowing them to participate and engage at whatever level they felt comfortable. When a child would tell a story relating to whatever topic we were discussing or question that had been asked, I allowed them a reasonable amount of time to be heard and tried to gently steer the story in a way so that they felt they expressed what they needed to process while trying not to allow another child’s traumatic memories to be triggered before they are ready to face them. I knew early on that the kid’s program I would be working on would take on more of a classroom or Sunday school vibe, as it is what children understand. I was more often referred to as “teacher” than “advocate” in that setting which helped the kid’s better understand how they should behave in group. 

    Focus On The Needs    

Okay, so you’ve spent time helping and observing various groups of children (and made sure that you actually LIKE being around and working with children! No lie, it’s not uncommon to change your mind once you’ve tried it. There is no shame in turning back.) and you’ve done some google searches on how they learn, but what are you actually going to TALK about?! This is also a bit of a know your audience section but is important enough to deserve it’s own header. This is where knowledge about your field comes in, as well as some creative brainstorming. Let me walk you through my own thought process at this phase.

Obviously, I wanted to avoid re-traumatizing children as much as humanly possible so I didn’t want to just walk in with a safety planning activity and talking about what to do when mommy is hitting and screaming at daddy on day one. In fact, I personally chose not to ever refer to violent events with a child unless they initiated the conversation one-on-one. We can discuss methods for how to navigate those conversations later because they do happen. As far as initiating them, however, I feel like that is usually better left to more advanced interventions and much more highly educated therapy professionals. The last thing you want to do is cause a child to regress in their healing process by unintentionally saying the wrong thing. This is my personal comfort-level and approach, the choice is totally your own.

With this in mind, I started thinking about what information I could talk about with these kids that would relate to what was happening in their homes and set them up for a much more peaceful future. My mind immediately went back to my own school days remembering classroom visits and lessons from the guidance counselor. You see, in school children are taught about being a good person and good citizen in very generalized terms, which is exactly what they are supposed to do and doesn’t single anyone out. What I realized was that if children were being taught about respect or trust, it may be assumed or generalized that all parents/family members are deserving of trust and all children have parents that respect one another. This becomes an issue when factors such as domestic violence and sexual assault from a family member are present in a home. So I landed on Character Education being the basis of what I would teach. This was a foundation I could build on for any age group and had a wide range of customization possibilities if a child or group needed help with something specific. (I once tailored a lesson on trust largely around the topic of information sharing as I had been made aware of multiple children in that particular session having boundary and oversharing tendencies. They were safe at that point and receiving interventions, but sharing every detail of their lives with their entire classes and people behind them in the grocery line.)

    Time and Resources    

I don’t know what format your groups will take. They may be stand-alone services or, like mine was, running simultaneously alongside a partnering parent/adult program. One way or another, you will likely have time restrictions you need to work by. When I began at my first agency, the adult program had a 12 week cycle and ran 1.5-2 hours per session. I designed my program to do the same as that was what I had available to me. Something else you will want to take into consideration is what will need to happen in that session timeframe. Does your group occur during traditional meal times? Are kids coming to you right after waking up or right after school when they will need to be burning off excess energy before being able to concentrate? How many parts will there be to your lesson and how long can you do each one? What are your age groups and what are they able to do? Do you have a plan for if the adult program runs overtime or worse, gets done early? What materials, technology, and space size do you have access to us for your teaching? Most of this will be much easier to work out in later posts when we take specific age groups, but go ahead and start thinking about solutions that would work for your own group.

    Before and After Windows    

This one changed for me with nearly every program rotation, sometimes multiple times during that rotation. You have a lot of options. The thing you will come to find out about kids is that they are HIGHLY distractible. The smallest things will steal their attention and then its a 50/50 chance of reining them back in. Have a plan for those first 10-15 minutes when kids are still filtering in. The option that seemed to work best for my usually mixed age group was doing sign in on the playground on-site. I required parents to physically bring their children to the playground, sign them in on a roster sheet, and it allowed me to get a moment with the parent out of kiddo’s earshot to get a brief update and offer quick resource referral ideas. Some options I tried before were to have parents settle their own kids at the dinner table first thing (still used this for inclimate weather), free play in the playroom/classroom area, pre-lesson worksheets, the sit-and-wait (do not recommend), and in the very beginning cartoons/tv. You also want to establish expectations with parents (and partnering adult group staff) routines for after group. For a long time, I would talk as fast as I could and just be at the mercy of when the adult group finished. I was young and naïve. Parents would be released from their group and walk into my classroom ready and expecting to leave immediately if I was still working with them or not. In my later years doing groups, I found my voice. I communicated with parents where they could wait if our group was still in progress and worked with other staff members to help communicate this when the parents returned. I also made a habit of keeping the classroom door shut with a printed sign on it. I want to encourage you to set these boundaries and expectations for the sake of the kids you serve. Many will try to convince you that you’re just daycare and at everyone else’s mercy. Know your position and job responsibilities, find your voice, and advocate for your services.

    Take Home    

You may or may not choose to do this. I am very much the pamphlet, newsletter, and literature girl. I like to put information into people’s hands if for no other reason so that they can’t claim they didn’t know something. The lessons you will be teaching these kids are directly related to their home life, so I feel it is super important to send material and information home (if it is safe to do so) for parents to continue working on. Will they read it? Possibly. Will they do what you recommend? Maybe. Will it get thrown in the trash? Almost certainly. But making the effort means you have done your absolute best to equip this family for what lies ahead and that is all that we can do. As a bonus, you can prepare the family for the next week’s lesson, give simple updates about cancellations or breaks, and include a calendar of upcoming events. The last lesson of my group cycle always included a really messy paint craft, so I utilized my weekly newsletter to remind parents to send playclothes.

I know that this was an extremely long post but I hope that it gives you some ideas and angles to think about in your own group and program development journey. I plan to do more specific posts in the near future on planning groups for specific ages so please keep an eye out for those. I also have plans to post topic ideas with suggestions for teaching and tailoring, activity and game directions, and more. If there is anything you want to see or have questions about, please reach out in the comments! The sole reason I am doing this is to compile everything I know about child advocacy in one place so new advocates won’t have to struggle teaching themselves. I’m here to help!

Good Luck & Keep Fighting,

Jess ♥️