Mindful Moments Blog
Mindful Moments Blog
Teaching Academics and Social-Emotional Skills in the Montessori Classroom
by Ashley Patek
Emily Canibano, a Montessori teacher with a classroom of 16 students ranging in age from 1.2 to 5.5 years, was looking for a way to teach social-emotional skills in her classroom, both in feeling emotions and in the safe expression of them.
Mindful Moments Blog
Blue Dolphin and Green Hummingbird Are Perfectly Imperfect
by Ashley Patek
A manufacturing inaccuracy of Generation Mindful's SnuggleBuddies gave rise to a beautiful lesson: we are all perfectly imperfect.
Mindful Moments Blog
Morning Meetings and Connecting a Classroom
by Ashley Patek
A the school counselor shares how her school transformed its classroom culture by using SnuggleBuddies plush toys to teach students about their emotions.
Mindful Moments Blog
Manage Your Emotions, And Your Child's Too: Interview With Suzanne Tucker
by Ashley Patek
You can actually be yelling at your child and be mindful. If you notice that you're yelling... pause, and celebrate. You say to yourself, 'I'm yelling, and I noticed I'm yelling' and then take a deep breath. Now you have some power. to do something different, but not if you're busy beating yourself up.
Mindful Moments Blog
How One Child Learned To Manage His Emotions By Watching His Sister
by Ashley Patek
With the use of the Time-In-Toolkit and SnuggleBuddies Plush Toys, one child learned how to manage his emotions by modeling his older sister.
Mindful Moments Blog
The Ultimate Guide To Building A Calming Corner And Using Time-Ins At Home
by Ashley Patek
How do you say goodbye to time-outs and introduce time-ins? This is the ultimate guide on the do's and don'ts for building and using a Calming Corner.
Mindful Moments Blog
Enhancing Emotional Development to Treat Child Depression
by Alex Petrou
A recent study shows that focusing on the parent-child relationship and enhancing emotional development may be a powerful and low-risk approach to the treatment of depression.
Mindful Moments Blog
SnuggleBuddies Plush Toys Help Kids Communicate Feelings
by Ashley Patek
The best way to decrease meltdowns associated with big, unpleasant emotions is to give our children tools to communicate them.
For just a moment, step into your toddler’s adorably-sized shoes. All of a sudden, there is this sensation in your body and it doesn’t feel good. You don’t know what it is. You just want it to go away but, because you live so deeply in the present moment, it seems like the sensation will last forever. This panic sends a message to your brain and your brain sends a message to your body: There is a threat. React now!
Stage left, enter a toddler meltdown.
Seems a little scary, doesn’t it? So much happening in such a small moment of time for such a relatively new human. Stepping back into your adult shoes now, it helps put into perspective the tears, power struggles, and thrashing that happen during your child’s dysregulation. It’s not that our toddlers have different emotions than us, but they are new and unfamiliar to them. This can feel pretty unsafe for a brain that’s still heavily under construction.
SnuggleBuddies® Help Big Emotions & Meltdowns
Name It To Tame It!
To decrease meltdowns associated with big, unpleasant emotions, we can give our children tools to communicate with them. This type of co-regulation takes the newness and scariness out of their feelings and replaces them with two key ingredients: connection and play.
Feelings face posters and plush toys help children create these pathways for emotional regulation when practiced in ritual with a safe, supportive adult (wink, wink, I am looking at you). When children realize that they have tools to work through these big feelings and that they are not alone in figuring them out, really amazing things happen.
For younger tots, kiddos with developmental speech delays, nonverbal children, and children who would rather “show” you their emotions than speak them aloud, SnuggleBuddies plush toys just might be the balm to soothe the alarm that happens when emotions take over. They mark all the boxes. Take a look for yourself.
Safety: SnuggleBuddies are soft and cuddly which feels safe to your young learner.
Motivating: Your child can choose from eight snuggly plushes to intrinsically motivate them to learn about emotions with their new friend.
Play-based: SnuggleBuddies are playful and fun, and as science shows, play is the language in which kids learn.
Practical: Your kiddo can take their Pal with them wherever they choose so they can process emotions at home or on the go.
Educational: SnuggleBuddies have four mood emojis to help children notice, name, and regulate their emotions.
SnuggleBuddies remind us to get CURIOUS... not furious about big emotions.
This is what that looks like in action. In this video a member-mom sent in, you can see a sweet 4-year-old girl who has been struggling with hitting and biting (impulse control issues) since her parents separated.
Instead of hitting mom or their dog as she had been doing since the separation, after a week with her SnuggleBuddies, this child was able to name and share her feelings instead.
Playing With SnuggleBuddies Plush Toys
Much like your child, each SnuggleBuddies has four main moods that live inside of them. These are represented by color-coded mood emojis, or "storytellers":
Yellow = Happy
Green = Calm
Blue = Sad
Red = Mad/Scared
Because children are wired with mirror neurons that mimic the nervous systems in front of them, model using the SnuggleBuddies yourself, sharing when you feel a big emotion. First, describe the emotional sensation in your body. “My jaw is clenched and my hands are sweaty.” Then share how you feel. “I feel mad.”
You may also witness these emotions within your child and help them notice as they occur. For example, let's say that your child wants a cookie and you set a boundary. Your child falls to the floor crying, banging his fists. You may say, “I notice you banging the floor. You wanted the cookie.” as you grab your child’s plush, pulling out the Red Emoji.
Over time, your child will begin to associate certain sensations with different mood emojis. You may also find that the presence of your child’s SnuggleBuddy offers comfort to help regulate him.
Another way to bring safety and familiarity to SnuggleBuddies is to create nightly rituals where your family comes together to share: “When did I feel happy, sad, calm, and mad today?” Even the youngest of learners, who can’t yet fully participate, absorb so much as they listen and watch. You can even use The SnuggleBuddies Feelings Song to make this ritual more playful.
And of course, maybe the best way to play with SnuggleBuddies is through actual play! Use the sing-a-long, Feelings Bingo, or encourage them to share using the laminated feelings journal that comes with each SnuggleBuddies. Role play or play pretend. Come up with new games with your child. The greatest learning is through exploration, and when emotions become something to explore together, we don’t have to experience them alone. Step by step, this is how we create an emotionally healthy home.
Mindful Moments Blog
Holiday Survival Guide For Parents: Managing Your Child's Meltdowns
by Ashley Patek
Here are some reasons why toddlers meltdown more during the holiday season followed by some easy tips to help regulate their environment and their moods.
Mindful Moments Blog
De-escalation Strategies For Jingled Out Kids
by Rebecca Eanes
December is a sensory-overload kind of month. It’s loud. It’s busy. It’s flashy. For a lot of kids, it can be so overwhelming that they may just jingle all the way to a meltdown. For this reason, it’s good to have a few de-escalation strategies in mind. Here are 5.
Mindful Moments Blog
by Ashley Martin
Developmental domains contribute uniquely to a child's overall well-being and success. By addressing these domains, educators create a solid foundation for students to build their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Mindful Moments Blog
Discipline Your Child's Behavior, Not Their Emotions
by Ashley Patek
There is a difference between how our children feel and how they behave. Rather than trying to force our children to not feel certain emotions (especially the ones that are inconvenient for us), we can teach them how to deal with emotions. Here are four ways to do this.
Mindful Moments Blog
by Guest Author
Rather than gifting toys this holiday that will likely find their way to the bottom of the toy bin, give the children on your list meaningful memories instead. Here are seven connection-based gift ideas for ages one and up that we love for the holidays and all year long.
Mindful Moments Blog
Ask Andrew: Finding Ways To Motivate
by Andrew Patterson
Andrew answers today's question: I am working with a family that struggles to motivate their son to practice the application of new skills. Any advice on how to discuss the importance of things or improve motivation? This kiddo is highly intelligent and strong-willed.
Mindful Moments Blog
Teaching Your Child How To Be Mad
by Ashley Patek
It’s not about teaching our children not to be mad, sad, or frustrated. It’s about teaching them how to be mad, sad, and frustrated. Rather than teaching them to suppress or bottle their emotions, we can empower our children to move through them in healthy ways. Here's how.
Mindful Moments Blog
5 Calming Strategies To Do With Your Kids
by Ashley Patek
We’ve all been there before, face to face with our child, locking horns, emotions escalating (both yours and theirs). What do you do? Here are 5 calming strategies to do with your child to bridge the gap from being at odds to being on the same team.
Mindful Moments Blog
Connect, Regulate, and Teach Through Play
by Rebecca Eanes
Playfulness isn’t only a tool to keep in your parenting toolbox, it’s a mindset. Here are some tips and tools on how to use play to build connection, bolster emotional regulation, and enhance learning.
Mindful Moments Blog
Feeling Emotions As An Adult When Taught Not To As A Child
by Ashley Patek
When we learn to suppress unpleasant emotions as a child, we become adults whose conditioned self masquerades as our authentic self. This dampens our human experience (and affects our mental health and parenting). Here's how to break the cycle.
Mindful Moments Blog
From Classroom to Home: One Teacher's Journey to Positive Parenting
by Ashley Patek
After maternity leave, I decide to shift from my role as a teacher of an academic classroom to that of teaching our “one and only.” My full momma heart told me that I would nail it. I mean, how hard could it be to teach one child when I had taught so many?
Mindful Moments Blog
Positive Affirmations are Helping Kids
by Ashley Patek
These printable mantra bracelets are a great way for parents to share comforting and empowering mantras with children as young as age two on up. Because when we feel worthy and loved, we respond as if we are worthy and loved. And when we feel powerless and not enough, we respond as if we are powerless and not enough.
