What we are getting wrong and why

Billions of dollars are spent every year to help children develop better social emotional skills. And yet, we still can’t seem to get it right.  This is evidenced through readiness assessments, as well as children being expelled or suspended from school at an alarming rate. 

Social emotional skills include self awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision making and self management. As children develop these skills, parents and educators are often working from misguided assumptions and outdated approaches, and may find themselves increasingly frustrated. 

Faulty Assumptions Around Social Emotional Skills Get In Our Way

It turns out that the reason many of our approaches either don’t work, or even make things worse, is that they are based on faulty assumptions about what social emotional learning is, and how it develops, as well as our misunderstandings around why challenging behaviors exist. In...