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Forman (1993) defines coping skills, or coping efforts, as sets of information and learned behaviors that children can use purposely to bring about positive outcomes in potentially stressful situations. Coping techniques teach psychological, social, cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills that children and adolescents can use to deal with potential stressors. According to the author, knowing and using coping skills can prevent or reduce a variety of academic, emotional, behavioral, and health problems in children and adolescents. On the other hand, the inability to handle potentially stressful situations or stressors may result in emotional, behavioral, and/or physical health problems. Coping skills are a way of promoting general, emotional, and social competence in children, and we can divide them into two major categories: a)      Problem-Focused. Acting on the stressful stimuli to change or to solve the problem. Using problem-solving techniques, we focus th...

On this blog post, you will find additional language-based strategies that school-based staff can use to cope with negative feelings and self-defeating thoughts when things get out of hand with a hard to handle student. With minimal variations, parents and caregivers can apply these strategies to handle children having difficulty complying with rules. 1.      Focus on a personal goal so that you shift your attention from where you have been to where you intend to go; in other words, shifting from a past-oriented focus or negative view to a future-oriented focus or more positive view. 2.       Create mini-goals (shorter and easier to do) branching from your bigger goal so that you move, incrementally and in more manageable terms , from where you feel you are placed in the present to where you aspire to be placed in the future. You can create a timeline such as: in two weeks, in four weeks, in three months, in six months, and finally, b...

 RET, or R ational- E motive T hinking  is a popular model of behavior modification that teaches how we can get along better with ourselves by means of disciplining our thoughts and emotions; with self-disciplined and balanced thoughts and emotions our behavior has no other choice but to fall in line. According to this school of thought, our mental state, either positive (e.g. feeling enthusiastic and hopeful) or negative (e.g. feelings of frustration and mortification) do not directly link with the factual event or what happened (e.g. class was unruly), but they link directly with how we think about what happened (e.g. “I cannot control my class”). For instance, thinking that we do not have the skills to control an unruly class can easily lead to feelings of discouragement and giving up on students. Conversely, believing that although we had a rough day, we do have the skills and endurance to get better behavior from children takes us primarily to feeling both excited ...

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1.      Focus on a personal goal so that you can shift your attention from where you have been (past-oriented) to where you want to go ( future-oriented ). 2.        Create mini-goals (shorter and easier to do) branching from your bigger goal so that you move, incrementally and in more manageable terms , from where you feel you are presently to where you want to place yourself in the future. You can create a timeline such as: in two weeks, in four weeks, in three months, and finally, by the end of the academic period. 3.      Change your approach from problem-focused or what is wrong with the situation to solution-focused or what you can do to improve your interactions with the student . With a problem-focused approach, we are mostly labeling students (e.g. oppositional, messy-sloppy, or disruptive); a solution-focused approach, however, focuses us on processes (i.e. strategies, steps and procedures). 4. ...

To read, click on this link: Watch What You Say—to Yourself | ASCD Inservice

Strategies for Controlling Your Anger

Irrational Ways of Thinking Which Keep You Angry: Projection, Blaming, Grudge Holding, Doomsday Thinking, Revenge Thoughts, Black and White Thinking - article by Dr. Lynne Namka

Identifying Irrational Thoughts | Psych Central