Be a Generous Passenger

 Are you a victim to feelings or a passenger?

This questions comes from a comment made during a podcast with Dr. Marc Brackett on Armchair Experts. This idea stuck with me. Are we victims to our feelings? Are we victims to our students feelings? Or are we passengers? Can we sit with them?

Dr. Brackett is the founding director for the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence. If you have ever come into my office then you have seen a mood meter. You may have one in your room. The mood meter is his brain child. He wrote the book Permission to Feel and has a new book Dealing with Feeling.

Here is my next question for you to ponder... how do you deal with feelings? Do you deal with them? How do you deal with students feelings?

Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist who works with children reminds us that it is important to let children know that their feelings are not too big for us or too difficult for us. We need to show them we can sit with them and their feelings.

Dr. Kennedy is telling us to be a passenger to the feelings of children.

If you came to my mini lesson during PD week then you heard me make a similar comment regarding sitting with the emotions of students. 

It is easy to dismiss a student with big feelings, call for help and have the student removed from class. As easy as it may be, it sends the signal that their emotions are too big and too difficult for you. It lets them know you are not a person there to help in a time of need. The student beings to internalize this as "they can't help me." 

Helping students with their big feelings can mean helping them with de-escalation. When we want to assist a student with de-escalation we need to ensure that we are calm and ready to handle whatever may come. It may be uncomfortable for the student. It may be uncomfortable for you. It takes time and practice, learning to sit with feelings, rather than ignoring, pushing away, or pretending the feeling does not exist.

Key things to remember when it comes to de-escalation:

De-escalation is Response over Reaction. De-escalation begins with your emotions. Brains have mirror neurons that we want to utilize through co-regulation. Co-regulation is staying steady and calm. This helps anchor the student’s nervous system. Invite the student to your calm. Don’t join their chaos.

One last question and thought to ponder.

After a situation is done, how do you see the child? Are you taking it personally what happened? Have you moved forward, or are you stuck in the bad moment? 

Dr. Becky Kennedy in her book Good Inside, says "Finding the good inside can often come from asking ourselves one simple question: 'What is my most generous interpretation of what just happened?'"

Dr. Kennedy is asking us to look at the child, see the child, and be generous with the child. 

High emotions can cloud our judgment. We may look at a child and only see the emotion that lead to an escalation of behavior. Be generous. 

Being generous doesn't mean we overlook the behavior, it means we allow space to figure out the why to behavior.