Tell-Me-Toss Game

        Let me first start off by saying that this is totally not an original idea. I did not come up with this in any way, shape, or form. I will gladly post some of my favorite blogs and sites that have utilized this idea on my Littles and Bigs Group Pinterest boards. If you haven’t yet, please check out The Trauma Teacher on Pinterest where I am always updating ideas for residential and support programs, learning spaces, and more!

Tell Me Toss or Tell Me Dice, depending on what you use or have on hand at the time, is an awesome game to keep in your back pocket should you need to fill a time gap. Every group I have ever played this game with has enjoyed it and the customization options are really limitless. If your group is old enough to stand, toss a ball, roll dice, follow directions, and read or comprehend simple pictures, this activity can absolutely work for you. What makes it fun is the mystery of not knowing what you will land on and what you will have to do. I have made adjustments to this game for nearly every lesson I’ve ever taught and it has fit beautifully into every single one. 

The first time I can remember encountering this activity was at a training as an icebreaker game. It was upon my return that I immediately went to work figuring out how to incorporate it into my group lessons. There isn’t much set up if you keep the right tools on hand so even if you have a full night of activities planned, you can still pull this one out should you finish everything else up early or just need to change gears. You can go online and buy professionally printed dice and balls but I have never had the funding nor saw the purpose when making your own keeps things so much more flexible. If you see that purchasing a printed version is best suited for your program, then more power to you. I have personally used a printed dice foldables (provided in this post!) and a small donated bounce ball for this game. Simply write the questions or actions you want to use on either one in sharpie. For a more durable dice option, you can check your local Dollar Tree education section to see if they have large dry erase play dice. I have been lucky enough to find them a few times. Another option is to use a cube shaped cardboard box. There is really no limit to what can be used to make this game work as long as it is light and not breakable. Regular dice could even be used with a numbered list! (Any fellow nerdy advocates could incorporate their D20 collection)

This can be just as much a social experiment as a fun game for the kids. I highly recommend that you pay close attention to make sure everyone is getting a turn. If you do notice over time that one or two people are consistently being left out of the game, stop everything immediately and address it. This game is just as much about sharing and inclusion as it is about teaching whatever lesson you have revolved it around. This game should never EVER be allowed to be used as means for bullying. Everyone has to get a turn, both in catching the ball or receiving whatever praise or nice comments are requested on a turn.

The game is simple. If you are using a ball, you toss to one person and whatever command their thumb lands on is what they are supposed to do. The command can be complimenting someone else in the circle, telling information about themselves, giving an example of a topic, or any number of other things. Then the player chooses another person to toss to. If you are using a die, it is the same idea but they roll the die on the floor and then hand off to another person after they’re done their command. At the end of the post, you will find a much more detailed instruction card for how to play as well as photos and links to others who have used this activity with their classes or groups. If you like this activity and opt to use it in your own advocacy, I would love to hear about it. Comment down below and tell me how it went with a picture of what you used to play!

    As always, I hope you have a blast with this activity and thank you for all that you do in helping children heal. You are amazing and an inspiration, don’t ever forget it!

Good Luck and 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 ♥️