Lorena Seidel is our Social Emotional Specialist, a trained Positive Discipline Educator, a Mindfulness-Based Reduction teacher and a mother of three. She has hosted monthly meetings with our own IANY families and teachers and has been an inspirational resource for us through this challenging year. See more in her bio on the Faculty page).
Each week, Lorena dives into topics that relate to us as caregivers to young children at a very unusual time. We invite you to watch her videos below for some insight and support.
Accentuate the Positive
Every time we have an inner conflict we dissipate energy. If we want to move ourselves to a powerful state of being (and stay there for longer periods) we have to learn how to create energy from within. The strategy in this video is to start a connected conversation in your home or classroom about how to develop a grateful and optimistic mindset. This is not about sugar-coating problems, it is about eliminating them from your visual field altogether. The goal is to retrain our minds to see the positive outcomes of any situation. This week's video is about:
- Catching your family's/ classroom successes.
- Focusing on solutions and wins.
- Noticing what is working.
- Acknowledging only the effort and the strengths.
Parenting Mindset Hack
Learn a simple strategy for rewiring your brain for more peace, connection, positive communication and cooperation. Here's you'll learn how to create a better family dynamic and improve your home-life in less than 10 minutes. Note: Just like exercise, you can't just do this once. Repetition and practice is key!
The Power of Questions
Let's learn how to shift from stress, anxiety, and worry to joy, creativity, and positivity. Most importantly, let's learn how to teach our students/children to do the same. The strategy is: The Power of Questions! This is a simple and easy strategy that helps us improve our inner dialog, shift our perspective, and re-wire our mindset. This lesson is essential in creating more connection and harmony in our classrooms and homes.
From Surviving to Thriving
In this video, Lorena helps us stop just surviving at parenting and instead start thriving at it. This was also the topic of her workshop on Wednesday, February 3rd.
How to Practice Gratitude and Appreciation with Children
A Thanksgiving connected conversation lesson.
How to Build Self Esteem
Tired of handling not listening, back-talking, and negotiations? In this 7 minute video, you will learn three simple and concrete ways to boost your child's confidence and self-esteem.
How to Plan for Joy
How JOYFUL are we these days? I'm not talking about us being "happy", putting on brave faces, being "calm" while we burn with anger inside. Or trying way too hard to do the "right" things by our families because that is what we were programmed {and expected} to do. Joy and happiness are wonderful feelings to experience but they are very different.
Psychologists say joy is more consistent and is cultivated internally. It comes when you make peace with who you are, why you are, and how you are, whereas happiness tends to be externally triggered and is based on other people, things, places, thoughts, and events.
Well, if JOY is up to us... I'm inviting you to choose it. to plan for it. to add it to your "to-do" list.
How To Challenge Negative Thinking
Negative Experiences Start With a Negative Thought! We want POSITIVE Interactions, discipline, relationships, connection, emotional climate... But we are so NEGATIVE. This 4-minute video will help you and your child/student learn how to challenge negative thinking, self-doubt, triggering experiences. So you can bring joy back into your parenting, your teaching, your classroom peer interactions, and sibling dynamics at home. This one small shift can have a HUGE impact on your family-life or classroom.
Your Family Meeting
Learn one simple strategy that will help your family communicate better, solve problems effectively together, and experience more listening, respect, and cooperation.
The Brain in the Palm of Your Hand
In this video we learn how to help our children de-escalate and solve conflicts more effectively. Use this simple and powerful analogy to understand what is happening in your child's brain during a conflict and help them communicate effectively and navigate conflicts.
How to Get Our Children to Listen
How much do your children/students trust you?
If your child/student is NOT listening to you, it might be related to the level of trust you both share.
Watch this to learn how to experience more listening, respect, cooperation, kindness in your adult-child relationship.
Emotional First Aid Kit
Create your classroom or family Emotional First Aid Kit. How to develop more positive, productive, and healthier tools/habits for handling emotional challenges (also known as emotional injuries.)