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The kids will walk all over you if there are not consequences for misbehavior.

They could control themselves if they tried.

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Teachers will need to see their classrooms and their students' school days through new eyes. Students won't always know what's stressing them out or what it feels like to not be stressed.

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Children will be coming back to school with lots of challenging behaviors. These are not a reflection of child's character, temperament, nature, etc.

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There is a huge difference between self-regulation and self-control that needs to be well understood.

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p 16. "If there are too many of these  external "costs," on top of the usual emotional, social, and cognitive sttressors, the limbic system can become sensitive to the slightest hint of danger."
--Kids (and some adults) are going to be easily derailed
--p 17. all non-essential functions are slowed when brain in fight/flight/freeze mode

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pg 20
1.Social Engagement
2. Fight or flight (sympathetic arousal)
3.Freeze (parasympathetic arousal)
4. Dissociation

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p 20 "Children cannot be forced to "calm down" and threatening to punish them if they don't can add considerably to the stress they're already under."

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p 24. "The effort of trying to forcibly stop the cycle through an act of self-control can leave us even more out of control as both the physical and emotional arousal responses intensify one another and further deplete our already depleted resources for responding>'

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p 35 "How calm the child was before the plate of marshmallows appeared and the instructions were given is relevant information."

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p 35 "The problem is that if the amygdala sounds the alarm too often, the hypothalamus is constantly pressing on the gas pedal, then the brakes, and the brake pads wear out: the recovery system loses its resilience."

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p 18 "Fascinating discoveries are being made by molecular biologists about the functions that get turned off in fight or flight. For example, sudden, pitched stress affects the muscles in the inner ear, reducing the child's ability to process speech and amping up his hearing attuned to low-frequency sounds."

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p 40, "Instead of being irritated, you become inquisitive. Instead of disciplining or instructive, you listen - with all your senses. Instead of reacting in a way that only adds to the stress and causes the child to burn even more energy, you can help the child to calm, restore equalibrium and recover. That's Self-Reg."

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p 48. "But if we can tune out what he is saying and listen only to how he says it, what we hear are the sounds of a young child who is lashing out because he is in distress. Our child - even our older teen - needs us to return to the role of external regulator in these moments."

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p 58 "Sympathetic nervous system releases adrenaline and cortisol, and activates energy to upregulate. Parasympathetic system releases acetylcholine and serotonin to down-regulate"

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p 62 "A babies baseline arousal level develops in the crucible of the interbrain."

(Note that this makes a child's earliest experiences crucial and also that biology can also come into play, with some children simply coming into the world with systems that are harder to calm.)

p 87 "That is why the interbrain is so vital for the child or teen's well-being. Nature gave us, as adults, a higher order brain to calm the reptilian brain until such time as the child or teen can do this on his own."

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Ed Tronick's Still Face experiments demonstrate the interbrain. Critical to remember that humans' needs for connectedness is not just in infancy.
p 87 "We are designed to draw energy from one another and restore energy to one another."

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Students may be dealing with enormous numbers of additional stressors that we can't easily see from afar. So we have to find ways to authentically connect and tune in before thinking about content.

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p 181 "The answer was that Mr. Tela made him feel safe...the heightened anxiety that he felt in school then led him to see threats where none were actually present." These seems like one of the essential components of why relationships are so key: When we feel safe, we can thrive. Some kids will feel that safety more readily with the natural rhythm of schools, but we have to figure out how to make schools and classrooms better fit for all kids and not figure out how to make kids better fit our current systems.

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I think this question might be one of the most essential to ask teachers to think about. I was talking with a friend who is a teacher last night, and she was talking about how to grade students who haven't engaged in school work until being at home. I wondered if she might want to back up and think about why the student was able to engage now but now previously. She didn't have a concrete answer, but I think there's a missing piece of stress behavior that's been alleviated now that she'd want to look for.

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Shanker writes about looking for patterns and sources, and I think that might be helpful for parents and other caregivers who are now also becoming kinds of teachers.  Teachers need to observe all the time before they can figure out what's happening for a student; how can we support families in doing this same kind of thing?

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p 111 "Physical & emotional experience are inextricably bound together." It seems even harder to help students regulate (and co-regulate) when there isn't a physical connection. Any strategies we can think of to help with this?

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p 111 "A child who is frightened, angry, or sad will find it difficult if not impossible to engage socially, academically, or even just physically through the day." I think kids (and adults) are going to feel all of these things. Mitigating that stress is going to be really hard and really essential when bringing folks back to campus.

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p 128 "The child's greatest danger is if he is shamed for his feelings, blamed for a lack of self-control, and punished in ways that only make him more vulnerable to a wider range of negative emotions..." I wonder if focusing parents on trying to avoid shaming is one of the more important bits we could share. Thoughts?

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p 140 "Perhaps the greatest mistake we can make is to assume that children need to struggle on their own--without our support--in learning how to pay attention." I think this is really important for students but also for teachers right now; admin and staff need to work together and get specific guidance about what most needs their attention and for how long.

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What works for one person doesn't work for another

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What works for one person doesn't work for another

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On p 148, Shanker talks about how having the physical environment set up in one way might be great for one kid and not for another. It brought up strong memories for me of having my father tell me there wasn't enough light in a room for me to do my homework. At the time I thought that maybe you just needed more light as you got older, but I think this is an environmental trigger that we could also expand upon and share about with families. Just because you need something to look or sound or be one way, doesn't mean that's what your child needs in order to do their best work.

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p 157 "We seek to make children like Tyler more manageable, rather than self-managing."  I think we do this with most children, then we chastise adults who never learned how to self-manage.  Schools could serve to help all people become better self-managers.

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p 202 "Recent research shows that excessive focus on maximizing accomplishment and status can impede empathy development and prosocial growth." I'm thinking a lot about how some middle- and upper-class parents are struggling with the current lack of instruction and how they might be struggling or feeling stressed in this domain. How can we help lessen the stress that those families are feeling?

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Teachers will not always recognize the stress they are feeling either.

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p 91. "There are some simple ways to gauge when we are dealing with misbehavior. Ask the child why he did such and such, and if he answers with any explanation - no matter what his rationale - there's a pretty good chance he knew what he was doing."

"If you see confusion, fear, anger or deep distress in that face, if your child averts his eyes or finds it hard to even just look at you, those are often signs of hyperarousal and of stress behavior."

p 95 "read the signs and reframe the behavior."

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p 96 paraphrased: we know that infants are melting down and having tantrums on purpose, but as children get older we tend to see these behaviors as manipulative and become less tolerant. But the underlying arousal regulation issues that we present early on may still be driving the behavior.

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p 98 "In the biological domain, being too hot or too cold is a stressor. Loud noises, bright lights, crowds, strong odors, new sights and sounds, surprising sights and sounds, certain kinds of movement, and not being able to execute certain movements can also be stressors."

p 102 paraphrase: lowering a child's core stress level can leave them the energy reserves to self-regulate situational stresses.

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p 99 "if you're in disciplinarian mode, you've already decided that your child is being self-indulgent or willfully disobedient and that you need to lay down the law. You're out to make it clear that this kind of behavior won't be tolerated and follow up on your reprimand. But when you suspect you are dealing with a stress behavior, you need to be calm and reflective."

Teachers may want to start with the default assumption that they are seeing stress behaviors...

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p 100 "Your child's ability to self-regulate begins with having the energy she'll need to up-regulate and down-regulate to meet the demands of the day..."

Biological considerations: sleep, nutrition and eating habits, movement and exercise, body awareness, health status or special considerations

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p 103 paraphrased. Becoming aware of the moment (getting away from inner monologues) can be calming but it takes practice.

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p 107 "A child can be quiet and yet have surging beta waves, which are a sign of arousal; but when a child is calm, we see slow and rhythmic alpha, theta, and gamma waves, which are signs of deep relaxation."

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p 110 "Unfortunately, reason doesn't seem to be much help for a child overwhelmed by strong emotion."

"To be sure, it's important to help children voice their worries and other feelings. But this is always hard for kids and next to impossible when they are hyperaroused."

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p111 "A child who is happy, interested, and optimistic will find it easier to tackle academic or social challenges. A child who is frightened, angry, or sad will find it difficult if not impossible to engage socially, academically, or even just physically through the day."

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p 113 "Self-Reg can shift a child from negative [bias] to positive.There might well be strong biological factors that have tilted a child to negative bias. But Self-Reg enables us to recognize and ameliorate the relevant stresses; to substitute energizing for draining strategies for dealing with negative states; and, most important of all, to help our child become the agent of such change.

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p 114 : But children with emotional problems don't lack for effort; more often they are making too much effort trying to keep a lid on certain emotions."

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p 117 "Quite often the challenge for a child having trouble regulating his emotions is that he doesn't know - may even deny - that he is anxious or angry.  Being put on the spot isn't helpful. It is also a strategy that can easily become overly intrusive or stressful for the child and that can create a power dynamic that skews the student's relationship with a teacher."

"Help the child calm, not try to force him to monitor, evaluate, and modify what he's feeling."

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p 123 "The two way interbrain dialogue doesn't lie, and in Rosie's story, Marie, in her own frustration, was communicating to Rosie that her behavior was annoying, which, far from helping, was like tossing gasoline onto Rosie's emotional bonfire."

Students know when teachers are frustrated and annoyed with them. The interbrain dialogue doesn't lie..

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p 124 "Children who are calm have more details in their pretend play. There is more subtlety to their feelings and more situations that bring out those feelings. Conversely, children who are more easily aroused are more tentative emotionally or display more anxious or aggressive themes in their pretend play."

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p 126 "Emotions are our indicator, letting us know when our engine is overheating or running on empty."

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p 127 "The fact is that all of us - parents, teachers, even children - respond to someone's angry outbursts with anger of our own."

p 128 "Of all the negative emotions, anger might be the hardest for parents and children to deal with."

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p 129 " But the goal of discipline is to help the child develop self-discipline, and self-discipline comes from the child's positive, not his negative emotions. Self discipline comes from his desire to become a certain sort of person and his belief that he can become that sort of person, not from fear that he will be shamed or punished for his actions.

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p 135 "Pushing a child to master higher-order metacognitive skills - planning, self-monitoring, or evaluating their own learning - when there are constrictions in his sensory root system can be deeply frustrating for the child, his parents and his teachers."

"...we can't begin to work on a higher stage until a strong foundation has been laid."

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p 139 "This growing ability to recognize patterns anchors the child by significantly reducing her stress, so that she stays in learning brain mode, open to and interested in the world around her."

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p 141 "Arousal regulation is not just another root of cognition. It is the taproot that feeds all the smaller, lateral roots."

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p 145 "In our school-based Self-Reg work we use a general rule that children can concentrate for about the same number of minutes as their years in age. But there are, of course, always exceptions; ...But what all children have in common is that if they go past that point, whatever that is, you see the same sorts of emotional and cognitive problems that appear in children who have a kindled limbic system."

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p 146 "in addition to the stress of not seeing patterns, a common cognitive stressor is asking a child to solve a problem before he has mastered the underlying skills or concepts."

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p 149 "...the interbrain dynamic applies to the child's interactions with all the important adults in her life and her peers, not just her parents."

"...so often, the interbrain contributes to rather than mitigates their problems, especially in the school setting. Teachers get anxious or angry. Coaches get frustrated. Other kids get impatient with them or simply lose interest in the classmate who is unable to comfortably engage with them or class activities."

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p 157 Goal not to make Tyler feel "normal." "No, what we wanted was for him to experience how it feels to be calm, alert, and learning."

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pg 187 paraphrase: when we reframe a child's behavior, we see the child differently, and overnight our interactions can be transformed

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p 171 "Social arousal has a powerful effect on all the other domains of self-regulation. When a child feels threatened, the result can be sympathetic flooding (anger and aggression, flight or desertion) or parasympathetic flooding (withdrawal, paralysis). Such dysregulation can have a profound effect on her tension, emotions, and self-awareness."

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p 172 "Indeed it is somewhat misleading even to distinguish among biological, emotional, cognitive, and social growth, for all are inextricably tied together, really just different aspects of self-regulation."

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p 173 "If for whatever reason a child finds social engagement difficult, this learning process will be diminished. The child will find herself overwhelmed by situations that outstrip her social abilities, and she will likely respond aggressively to or withdraw from such situations."

p 174 example of the child who was super silly because she was in a constant state of social arousal, never really understood the jokes, and wanted to feel like she belonged.

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p 183 "A child's natural interests often become a path for discovering the inner motivation that supports development of self-regulation across domains."

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p 184 "The challenge: Social interaction can be a stressor  in its own right, yet social engagement constitutes the child's first line of defense for dealing with stress."

p 185 "It's never too late to learn to mindread, provided they are calm and alert."

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p 188 "Self Reg frames prosocial development as a matter of developing capabilities for empathetic connection that are present in every single child right from the start."

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p 180 "Being loved, even when you're behaving in a beastly fashion, is such an important point that it ranks as one of the governing principles of Self-Reg. Just as a child learns how to self-regulated by being regulated, so too a child develops empathy by experiencing empathy."

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p 193 "Some children are born with a biology that leaves them drained and more susceptible to limbic arousal. For others - something may have happened - an earlier experience or a history of hard feelings with someone - that has kindled their alarm. Either way, they are chronically hyperaroused, and in this state desires and impulses intensify while social and self-awareness declines. When this happens, the child finds it impossible to share or sympathize or, indeed, even communicate."

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p 194 "Self-regulatory problems in the prosocial domain are often revealed in a child's difficulty joining with others in one-on-one or larger group social interactions; or in his being drawn to a group that cultivates undesirable qualities."

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p 197 "The journey along the interbrain involves learning how to cope with the feelings of fear or anger that others arouse in us; learning how to cope with their fear or anger as well as our own."

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p 201 "When your child is exhausted and as a result has become highly irritable or irritating, what he or she needs is to lie down and restore, not to be harangued or punished. The same is true for antisocial behavior. Yes, he needs to be told that what he did was wrong and why - firmly but patiently, and most important, when he is receptive.
Typically that means guiding the child to a quiet environment where he can down-regulate. Not, I hasten to add, a "time-out." We are talking about a space where he feels safe and secure; "

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Even in the best of situations, many parents struggle with their children's frustration or anger over homework. The unfamiliar landscape of distance learning may exacerbate these struggles.
p 115 "Some parents find it difficult to stay calm when their child explodes with anger. They tense up and may hightail it from the interaction." Some children may start to to associate their parents response ( which might be scary) with their angry behavior. This could lead the child to become tense as they try to repress their anger. p 116 We need to help parents understand how positive emotions "fill a child's tank" with the energy to manage ups and downs. While negative emotions drain a child's energy.

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Isn't this just the same advice about sleeping and eating well that doctors have given for years?

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p 218 "The more tired they become, the more likely they are to register even the most benign facial expression or tone of voice as a threat."  I'm imagining that students are going to be weirdly tired when they come back, exhausted in different kinds of ways, and that might increase their arousal and interpret different reactions and interactions as threatening.  Will teachers even need to tone down genuine excitement?

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There is a section on p 220 where Shaker talks about the nature of our species to need "small-group activities built around a shared goal that requires dedication, sacrifice, and something greater than self-gratification," and he goes on to talk about how this can't really be achieved in a digital space. Can schools create this with distance learning? Can they help foster it with groups where that was already established?

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I really appreciated the section on p 236 where Shanker talks about how bored just means that kids feel off. I think one of his strongest points is that we functionally misunderstand certain words, and it has a big impact ("calm" and "bored" are, I think, the big two).

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p 263. I thought this was a really important idea, especially during distance learning. So many teachers are trying to compassionately get this right, and I think it's going to cause significant burn out, particularly in newer teachers. I think admin will want to be particularly aware of that.

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Students and parents also may not recognize the stress they are feeling.  It also makes sense to have counseling available for them as well. If a school does not have the resources to provide this, they might consider collaborating with local mental health organizations to provide this support.

When I was Executive Director of Parenting Journey, we had small contacts with about 7 local schools to help coach teachers and school staff on understanding problematic student behaviors. We also provided coaching and counseling for identified families.

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Our kids (kids of color) need discipline, the rules and structure we (the schools) put in place might be the very things they need to save their lives while they are out in the world.

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p 106 "Parents need to become just as aware of what sort of activity causes them to go into a state of diminished energy and heightened tension as of what causes this in their children.You need to become aware that, just like your child, you are much more likely when you are in a low-energy/high-tension state to explode over something that your child says or does than when you're calm and relaxed."

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p 213 Social, emotional, or learning problems are the hidden stressors that deplete energy reserves. But whatever the cause, in each of these conditions a teen is in a chronic state of low energy coupled with exceedingly high tension - an energy/tension ratio that is seriously out of balance.

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p 217 "What's most important for teenagers is that they go through the five steps on their own."

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p 218  "Adolescence heralds a period of dramatically increased sensitivity to stress."

See this whole section about the many stressors that are particularly acute in adolescence.

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p 220 "Teens need small group activities built around a shared goal that requires dedication, sacrifice, and something greater than self-gratification."

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p 222 "Heightened anxiety is an incontrovertible sign of chronic limbic arousal, the result of too great a stress load (often involving all five domains) coupled with the absence of the sorts of social activities that, from the dawn of adolescence, have helped teenagers reduce their tension and recover from their exhaustion."

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One of the trickiest parts of distance learning is humans "are made" for in-person interactions.

p 222 "Social engagement, the brain's first line for dealing with stress, requires "proximal" interaction: touches, looks, a sympathetic ear, and soothing vocalizations."

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physical activity is very important: walking, Wii fit, stationary bikes, etc. Singing is also a stress reliever

p 225 "Walking is extremely important for stress reduction in teens, and not just because the more time spent walking, the less time spent gaming or on social media. Walking is highly beneficial for their cardiovascual fitness and muscle and bone strength. It promotes the elimination of waste products in the tissues and the release of tension. It releases endorphins and has an inhibiting effect on the neutrons that fire when they are anxious..."

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p 236 "Studies have shown how overstimulation produces boredom and Self Reg tells us why. When we induce boredom with an activitiy that overstimulates a child, her cortisol shoots up. This happens because the adrenaline-stimulating activity - for instance an online war game- causes the child to dip into her energy reserves."

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Self-reg is crucial for parents, teachers, all adults as well as students. (Steps for adult Self-Reg, p 263)

p 261 "Self-regulation is made possible by, and proceeds from, a strong relationship - it's the core strength of the interbrain - and we need to honor our own personal needs to do Self-Reg