What One Thing Could Decrease Anxiety and Improve Reading at Your Child’s School?
Imagine going through life with a thick fog obscuring the world around you, slowing you down and making it more difficult to navigate the obstacles in front of you.
Anxiety and the feeling of fear and worry is like this pervasive fog and many children are sent to school to learn, while still being cloaked in this cloud.
Anxiety affects 1 out of every 8 children, and when it does, it can interfere with learning by reducing their attention, concentration and memory.
Many students might not be able to learn effectively until this anxiety is reduced.
Many schools have introduced various mindful, calming classroom procedures to try to stem these anxiety problems.
I know my local school district has put in Calm Classroom, as their way to deal with this problem. This might very well be useful, to those who actually follow its instructions. Unfortunately, what I observe is too often the students don’t want to follow the instructions, and tend to mess around when they are supposed to be taking calming breaths.
So while I think there is value in mindfulness practices, they are only as effective as the child chooses them to be, and many children aren’t interested by the idea of sitting still, stretching, and breathing.
But most kids love animals.
How many stuffed, electronic, or plastic animals do you see overflowing the shelves at the toy stores?
How many people take their kids to the zoo, and watch them fight over the small window space, trying to get their best view of whatever animal is currently awake and active?
Currently 67% of families in the United States have a pet, and I am pretty sure that in those pet free homes are some kids wishing they had a pet too- I should know, because I was one of those kids (now I have 2 cats and 2 dogs).
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