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Parent Rights and Safeguards - YourRightsUnderSection504

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3 prongs of SPED Qualification & Section 504 Qualification Graphics

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LC 3115 - Students Experiencing Homelessness Enrollment Rights and Services 8-27-19

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LC 3115 Procedure Students Experiencing Homelessness-  Enrollment Rights and Services Procedure 8-27-19

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Parent Rights and Safeguards - YourRightsUnderSection504_Spanish (1)

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Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

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Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

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LC 2162 Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 12-13-16

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Procedure Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

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Procedure Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

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LC 2162 Procedure Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 12-13-16

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SEL and wellness during distance learning 

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SEL and wellness during distance learning 

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The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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Parent/Caregiver Guide to Helping Families Cope With the Coronavirus Disease 2019

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Provides information for parents and caregivers about infectious disease outbreaks in your community. Knowing important information about the outbreak and learning how to be prepared can reduce stress and help calm likely anxieties.

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Helping children cope with anxiety due to COVID 

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Helping children cope with anxiety due to COVID 

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As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread, adults, children and teens are trying to make sense of what the outbreak means for their families and communities. Those with anxiety disorders may feel more worry than usual.

On the Pulse asked Dr. Jennifer Blossom, a psychology postdoctoral fellow at Seattle Children's Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Clinic, how to share information with the children and teens in your life in a way that helps prevent too much worry. The good news is that just as there are steps you can take to help you and your loved ones try to avoid the illness, there are steps you can take to help your child or teen cope with the situation.

"There are a number of ways parents can successfully help their child stay on track during this time," Blossom said. "In general, the goal is for parents to encourage their child's participation in routine activities, such as going to school (as informed by the most recent public health recommendations or decision by your child's school district), while helping their child think realistically about the risks."

First, get the facts about COVID-19

Learn the facts about COVID-19, sticking to a few credible sources of information, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local health agencies.

"Limiting information seeking to a few credible sources can help parents stay informed without feeling overwhelmed," Blossom explained.

Having basic facts about the outbreak and knowing where to turn with questions can help you prepare for talking with children and teens and help them think more realistically about the risk. For example, the CDC and Public Health Seattle-King County's websites provide the most current information about the virus, including ways to avoid getting COVID-19, how to prepare for changes to daily life, symptoms and what to do if you or a family member gets sick. School districts are sharing their plans for handling the virus and are another source to pay attention to as the situation changes.

Check in with your child and ask what questions they have

Once you have some information as background, check in with your child or teen. Choose a time that works for you - some families avoid talking about tough topics right before bedtime.

Start by asking what your child knows about the situation. Listen more than you talk and try to validate their feelings. The COVID-19 situation is rapidly changing and there is still a lot to learn.

"Ultimately, a big driver of anxiety is uncertainty," Blossom said. "Parents can validate that sitting with uncertainty is hard for their child (and themselves) while also sending the message that their child can still participate in routine activities."

Be honest and give simple answers to their questions. You can correct misinformation, but avoid telling them not to worry.

"Anxiety makes us overestimate risk and underestimate our ability to cope." Blossom explained. "The goal is to help your child realistically evaluate risks based on available information."

You might say, "We can do things to try to stay healthy, like washing our hands regularly and avoiding touching our faces," "It's true that some people have died from this, and most people who get this illness are OK," or "Doctors and scientists are working hard to learn how to stop it from spreading."

Ask your child or teen to come to you with questions or concerns as the days go by. They may hear things from kids at school or see things online and wonder if they're true.

If your child's school has been closed, they may have concerns about grades, sports seasons and canceled field trips or events they had been looking forward to. Hear out their concerns. Ask for their ideas on what pieces they can control.

Watch for changes in behavior

Along with listening to your child's words, notice signs of extra stress, like problems with sleep, separation anxiety, repetitive behaviors (such as excessive hand-washing) or the need for excessive reassurance.

More tears or anger than usual may also show that your child is worried.

Help your child face their anxiety about COVID-19

"Anxiety promotes avoidance and over time avoidance ultimately worsens anxiety," Blossom said.

Stick to routines as much as possible while following recommendations from your county's health department.

"Helping your child function, such as going to school or completing regular chores, while they feel anxious is the key," Blossom said. "Doing so helps your child learn that they can accomplish tasks even when they feel anxious."

Continuing with regular activities like family meals, bedtime routines and family movie night can provide a sense of safety and security.

Model healthy ways to cope with anxiety that you may have, for example, mentioning that you feel anxious and showing your child or teen how you can still complete a task. Show confidence in your child's ability to face their anxiety. Recognize their bravery with praise and rewards, even when steps are small.

Limit media coverage

While it's important to be informed as recommendations change, try to turn off media, including social media, for most of the day to help you and your family from feeling overwhelmed. This can be a challenge in the modern digital age. If you have a Family Media Use Plan, stick to it.

Take care of yourself

Develop a plan to manage your own feelings. Talking with friends, family and colleagues may help.

Additional help

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) operates the Disaster Distress Helpline. It offers crisis counseling and support to people experiencing emotional distress related to disasters and infectious disease outbreaks. Call 1-800-985-5990 or text TalkWithUs to 66746 to connect with a trained crisis counselor.

Resources:

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Helping Children and Teens Cope with Anxiety About COVID-19 | On the Pulse

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As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to spread, adults, children and teens are trying to make sense of what the outbreak means for their families and communities. Those with anxiety disorders may feel more worry than usual.

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504s/IEPs-- what is the difference -- guide for parents 

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504s/IEPs-- what is the difference -- guide for parents 

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Coping through COVID ... one perspective 

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Coping through COVID ... one perspective 

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This article is by Matt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist who has worked at the intersection of technology and human behavior for over 15 years. He most recently served as the Chief Behavioral Officer at Clover Health, and is the author of Start at the End: How to Build Products that Create Change.

When the First Round Review team asked me to write something about staying healthy in the time of COVID-19, I spent a sleepless night on a post about how to create behavior change during this stressful season. You can't really blame me - I've been a behavioral scientist for more than 15 years and like everyone, when pressed, I default to what I know.

Fortunately, I've also spent 37 years as a human, so I waited two months for feelings to settle, scrapped that post and then spent an afternoon trying to write something different.

It's still based on science, because science is part of my normal way of being and this current crisis doesn't change that. But I wanted to instead write about two studies and how we live somewhere between them as we all look to adjust.

The first is a study on facial feedback and the design is fairly simple. We give people some cartoons to read and then ask them to rate how funny they are. In one condition, they do this while holding a pen in their mouth by the tip with their lips, like a straw. In another, they use their teeth instead.

The trick is that holding a pen by the lips forces their facial muscles into a frowning position, while holding it with their teeth forces a smile. And when they trick themselves into frowning or smiling, it turns out they rate the cartoons as less or more funny accordingly. A related study shows that people tricked into smiling had lower heart rates during stressful tasks and were more likely to emerge feeling positive; it isn't just perception that changes, it is your actual physical and mental reaction to the situation.

This is because your brain wants what you feel and believe to line up with what you do, avoiding what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. And because actions are tough to adjust in real time (it is hard to deny you were just frowning or smiling) and beliefs are easier, the brain tends to move the beliefs.

This implies we can trick ourselves into feeling better simply by acting better. When we act normal, our brains decide that things must be normal, and this allows us to be resilient in the face of great adversity.

There is a second study. In it, we force people to carry around a box of chocolate for a few days, then measure how much chocolate they eat. In one condition, we give them no instructions for how to deal with cravings. In another, we teach them control-based techniques to avoid the chocolate, such as distraction - if you find yourself thinking about it, clear your mind of those thoughts and focus on something else. In a third, we teach them acceptance-based techniques, like experiential acceptance - recognize and validate the cravings but don't act on them.

Both distraction and acceptance are effective at helping people resist the chocolate, when compared with doing nothing at all. But the most successful strategy turns out to be a combination of both.

Distraction is highly positive when the distractions we choose are positive; distracting from overeating by smoking isn't a great idea, for example. But a productive distraction, like performing an act of service, is both distracting and introduces meaning into our lives, which itself tends to then lessen the need to distract. It's the best kind of virtuous cycle.

The problem with distraction is that it works until it doesn't. Sometimes, our emotions simply overwhelm our distractions, often in catastrophic and traumatic ways.

When the dam breaks and self-control fails, there is nothing left to prevent all the feelings from rushing in. Acceptance is the relief valve that prevents those catastrophes.

Acceptance helps us eat one chocolate and not the whole bag, because it acknowledges our feelings and gives them an outlet. And the difference between one chocolate and the whole bag matters; serious setbacks are still different than catastrophes, now more than ever.

So what does this all have to do with living during the time of COVID-19?

At this point, it would be unreasonable to expect that we can simply stick a pen in our mouth and grin to bear it. No amount of cognitive dissonance can overwhelm the entirely rational fear we all feel in the face of a global pandemic.

Nor is distraction alone sufficient. Distractions are inherently fragile and especially so right now. With the unemployment rate climbing, we are confronting as a nation not just the economic reality of work, but also the powerful meaning it provides. And as for acceptance - nobody is that beatific. We simply cannot accept something so massive. It's impossible to fully experience the weight and not get even a little crushed by it.

But even as each individual strategy fails on its own, they work well in combination. Getting through the chaos caused by COVID-19 in a healthy way (personally and economically) depends on our ability to balance more than one kind of outcome.

Acceptance helps us to avoid magnitude insensitivity. In 2009, I quipped to a Salon writer that we could call the catastrophic failures of self-control that happen during crises the "Fuck It phenomenon": The perception that things are unrecoverable causes people to make bad situations dramatically worse. (Think of this in terms of the people in 2020 who are currently saying, "We are all going to get it, so we might as well go back to having large gatherings," but across a variety of domains.)

This is an area where magnitude does matter. Taking a few hours off to cope is different than checking out for weeks at a time. Letting one deal slip isn't the same as abandoning your entire pipeline.

Accepting that we're not at 100% gives us the ability to continue at 80% instead of crashing to 0%.

And acceptance can take many forms. While some may choose meditation or self-reflection, experiential acceptance can be as simple as acknowledging to ourselves that we are stressed, sad, and angry. We can vocalize it to someone else (now is a really good time to get a therapist or to work on emotional communication with friends and family). Or we can simply create a private space for ourselves to voice those emotions. The key is being able to recognize and accept that things are, in fact, really hard right now.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, distraction lowers cognitive burden. Being in touch with our emotions and yet not acting on them is mentally (and, studies suggest, physically) exhausting. And so using distraction intelligently isn't the sign of a weak mind, but rather an acknowledgment that everyone, everywhere needs rest. We all practice distraction differently (boxing for me, Netflix for some, video games for others), but anything that is engaging enough to actually circumvent deep thought is sufficient.

And finally, the simple strategy of smiling, which may be our most potent tool in the fight against hopelessness. Part of being normal is acting normal and you do have a choice about how you hold the pen.

Because that's the real challenge: deciding what our new normal is going to be and how we are going to be happy. Maybe your values have changed, maybe they haven't. But just as we built old habits, we must build new ones. Because when we do all the things that make life worth living, it becomes worth living again. Afterall, the only reason death is so terrifying is that life really is so good. Hard, but good.
Cover photo via Unsplash / Nathan Dumlao.

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Coping with the COVID-19 Crisis-This Behavioral Scientist's Tips for Changing Your Outlook

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This article is by Matt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist who has worked at the intersection of technology and human behavior for over 15 years. He most recently served as the Chief Behavioral Officer at Clover Health, and is the author of Start at the End: How to Build Products that Create Change.

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SIT: Critical Data for EL Students of Concern.docx