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Inside the Kids Anxiety Journal: Tools That Help Children Feel Safe and Seen.
Anxiety in kids often has two very different faces—depending on who’s looking. For us, the parents whose children live under its weight every day, anxiety is personal. It’s not just a label—it’s a constant, exhausting reality. It’s the “big grey cloud” that quietly follows your child everywhere and sometimes looms over the whole family. It shows up in morning meltdowns, bedtime battles, and the heartbreak of watching your child shrink away from things that once brought them joy. But from the perspective of social caregivers—teachers, coaches, school aides—anxiety might look more like behavior problems: trouble making friends, shutting down in class, acting out, or not following directions. To them, it…
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Adverbs vs Adjectives Example: 3 Ways to Teaching Grammar in Context.
Teaching grammar in an elementary classroom is an important component of literacy education. Kids are known for hating grammar or ignoring it altogether, especially when explicitly taught. While kids may intuitively know when to use adverbs vs adjectives, the goal of literacy education to bring this implicit knowledge to the level of metacognition so that kids can learn to play with the language on a more creative level. The problems of many teaching resources I encountered are not often evident, but the way grammar is treated is either not student appropriate, or exercises on a specific language phenomenon are given in isolation. Take teaching adverbs vs adjectives example. When adjectives are…
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How to Calm Down From Anger or Other Big Emotions: Emotion Regulation for Kiddos with Anxiety (7–8-year-olds).
My daughter has anxiety. While we have been on a journey of overcoming selective mutism (which is rooted in anxiety), I learned about and experimented with many calm down from anger techniques. Before I even started to understand how essential it was for my child to learn to calm down from anger, the house was like a battlefield, day after day. Her being very young, some sensory issues, academic struggles were fueling my child’s emotional rollercoaster. At school, where she was mute, my daughter would hold it together, and all the anger, frustration, and emotional aftermath from the inability to speak and socialize like other kids would trigger explosion of emotions during…
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Worksheets For Fun: Homework That Makes Sense.
In this article, you will read about some fun alternatives to homework for second, possibly third graders (depending on where your kiddos are) – worksheets for fun. These fun worksheets were born from an idea that I had as a second-grade teacher, and that has been on my mind forever. Every time the new school year begins, I just start getting overwhelmed by the idea of homework. The truth is I do believe in homework and parents of my second graders want homework too for their kids. I’ve tried high frequency words worksheets, short reading comprehension stories, word lists to practice spelling and sentence writing, and so did you, perhaps. It all sounds…
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Back-to-School Plan for Parents of a Child with Selective Mutism:Tips and Steps to Take.
In this article, you will read about essential tips for getting back to or starting school for a child with selective mutism. Let’s be honest, the whole thing of “getting-back-to-school-successfully” seems like an “oh-gosh-here-you-go…” moment. Whether your kiddo has made some or significant improvements in summer, or you are just starting to wrap your head around going back to school with selective mutism, you need to know this: for most kids and parents (just like it was for us) the beginning of school time will be a massive smack in the face. Oh yeah, I know it. So, you might be thinking, “Why am I reading this?” I know, I…
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Selective Mutism Dos And Don’ts: Easy Guide for a Classroom.
This post will give you easy-to-follow guidelines about dos and don’ts of selective mutism in a classroom. I’ve been a parent of a child with selective mutism for quite a while. Tackling the behaviors prompted by anxiety daily is a matter of applying tricks and procedures we, as a family, worked out to handle the moments of big emotions, occasional screaming and hitting, meltdowns, school work and homework issues, siblings troubles and many more. The rule of thumb in figuring out selective mutism anxiety disorder dos and don’ts is to: Because selective mutism anxiety is so unique in its manifestation in children, there is no 100% match of child’s behavior…
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Helping a Child With Selective Mutism Through Big Emotions: Mom/Parent-Child Relationship, Resentment, Anger, and Detachment.
If you don’t believe in mental health, neuropsychology ( how a person’s nervous system and brain influence their cognition and behavior), nor do you believe your child’s journey with selective mutism has to include your own mental health, my advice is to close this window immediately or just move on. If you are still hanging there, it means you may be desperate or ready for anything to understand how the selective mutism journey can no longer be a burden but a transformative path to get to the mental health issues. So, continue reading because you will get 6 insights into how you can help your child with selective mutism through big…
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Selective Mutism Tantrums: How to Deal With a Ball of Anger After School.
In this post, you will find out how to help your child with selective mutism who has bad tantrums after school or any activities. Before my child was diagnosed, I surely thought my daughter’s selective mutism tantrums were due to my failure as a parent. It felt horrible. Not being able to understand the reasons would push me into self-blaming and resentment towards my child. The bad news about selective mutism tantrums is that they linger for some time even with therapy and medication in place. The good news is that tantrums can become more manageable and preventable in most cases. Even though there can be dozens of triggers that…
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7 Must-Do Things For A Parent of A Child With Selective Mutism: Actionable Tips and Resources to Consider.
Selective mutism is manageable, even though at times it seems like an overwhelming and slowly-dragging endeavor, lacking the final destination. Most of the time it surely seems to consume all of us, my child in particular – and this is when the realization of having to deal with selective mutism, an anxiety disorder, becomes even more real. Luckily, some days feel like we are over it as if selective mutism has been gone forever as if it never happened. Having witnessed how much progress can be done with early detection, treatment therapy, strategic school accommodations, and medication, I’m sure more optimistic now to believe my daughter’s therapist’s words, “She will…
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6 Things You Can Do Right Now To Help Your Child With Selective Mutism.
This post will answer many of your questions such as: Apart from that, I will give you 6 actionable steps you can start incorporating in your day-to-day functioning now to help your child with selective mutism. To skip to the section about 5 actionable steps, click here. How Does Selective Mutism Work? In our family’s more than 3-year-journey with selective mutism disorder, we have learned that selective mutism is not only difficult to spot and recognize, but it is also difficult to manage and address. What does selective mutism mean? Selective mutism is an anxiety disorder that impacts a child’s ability to speak in many social settings and at times…
