Social and Emotional Skills Resources for Families
MindTools: Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a tricky concept to fully grasp, but this extensive article provides a perfect starting place for those looking to get a better understanding of it.
Snapshots of Your Child’s Social and Emotional Well Being
Emotional wellness can manifest differently for students of different ages, which is where this guide comes in so valuable – it gives parents a lens into common signs of emotional wellness and distress for children in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.
Technology and Youth: Protecting Your Child from Electronic Aggression
This brief tip sheet from the CDC informs parents about a tragically common occurrence in the lives of young people, electronic aggression, and provides helpful advice for preventing it.
5 Ways to Help Teens Build Self-Awareness
This candid and eloquent blog post plainly outlines 5 easy practices for parents to help their teens build emotional wellness and self-awareness.
Self-Awareness in a World of Constant Chatter
As adolescents become increasingly invested in electronic communication, it can be a challenge to encourage self-awareness and an appreciation for silence. This article prescribes some easy ways for parents to do just that.
Fostering Self-Discovery in Adolescence
Written by a Duke psychology professor, this piece discusses the identity formation process that takes place during adolescence, and provides key pointers to parents with adolescent children manage this transformation.
Social and Emotional Changes in Adolescence
This multifaceted article focuses on four key issues faced by adolescents as they grow older, all of which impact their social and emotional health: Social changes and emotional changes, parent support for social and emotional development, mental health and well-being, and children with special needs.
Ways to Build your Teenager’s Self-Esteem
As most parents know, good self-esteem during one’s teenage years can be a fickle thing, but this article provides a few valuable strategies for parents to help their children regard themselves with positivity.
Learning from Mistakes: Helping Kids See the Good Side of Getting Things Wrong
Most adults are familiar with the inevitability of making mistakes, but many kids are taught to feel negatively when they get something wrong. This article lays out a compelling case for parents to praise their children for good effort more often than intelligence, and to treat mistakes as learning opportunities.
How Does Positive Self-Esteem Affect Children as they Develop Through their Teen Years?
This article focuses less on how to promote good self-esteem in teenagers, and more on the beneficial effects that good self-esteem can have on a teenager’s life.
Adolescence and Emotion
This nuanced and clearly-written article gives valuable insight into the causes of emotional intensity in adolescence, and how parents can navigate it effectively.
The Teen Brain: Behavior, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
It is easy to forget that emotional and behavioral changes during adolescence result largely from physical changes to the brain as it develops. This article gives a simple, scientifically sound description of key changes that can affect teenage behavior.
Parent Toolkit: High School Social Awareness
Empathy, kindness, curiosity, and diversity are all core components in every high school student’s educational experience. This remarkably well-designed website gives parents a deep insight into each topic, as well as ways to promote each in their child’s life.
Empowering Parents: “Why is Everyone Always Mad at Me?” Why Misreading Social Cues Leads to Acting Out Behavior
Accurately reading social situations is a deceptively important aspect to social and emotional wellness, as incorrect reads can lead to inappropriate actions. This article gives parents some strategies to help their kids develop this critical ability.
Understood: Trouble Picking Up on Social Cues in High School
This brief, easy to read chart shows how a young person’s difficulty to accurately read social cues can have detrimental social and emotional effects.
APA: Resilience Guide for Parents and Teachers
This substantive and well-designed guide takes a head-on approach to a difficult question: how can parents and teachers help adolescents learn resilience?
Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework
In this exhaustive report, University of Chicago researchers compile scientifically-guided answers to pressing questions about the best way to prepare young people for holistic success as they get older.
Young People and Decision Making
This article dives deep to present a neurological explanation for adolescent decision making.
Helping Teens Develop Healthy Social Skills and Relationships: What the Research Shows about Navigating Adolescence
While teenage social development can be a complicated process for parents to decode, this report relies on a wealth of scientific findings to clarify the process for parents, teens, educators, and others.
Sheryl Sandberg: How to Build Resilient Kids, Even After a Loss
A New York Times Op-Ed. After her husband’s death, Sheryl Sandberg set out to learn everything she could about how kids persevere through adversity. The good news is that resilience is not a fixed personality trait and we can help kids build it.