Get Me Out Of Here: How To Help Kids Learn to Handle Feeling Frustrated
Feeling Frustrated is a very common emotion. It is essential that
teachers and parents have a few tools to be able to teach children to handle
frustration. It is not something that comes easy to all children. This is
especially true if you work with preschool children who are just beginning to
learn how to cope with such strong feelings.
Frustrated Feelings
“Ahh! Get me out of here!” Those are the words of a 5 year old who just
couldn’t handle being at school one more minute. He was running around the room
and screaming at the top of his lungs. When I entered the room, the teacher
shook her head with a look of defeat. This student had just transferred to
the school and this behavior had been increasing over the past week. The
teacher had earlier described this boy as usually calm and gentle. He just
seems to meltdown 1-2 times a day. Was there something wrong with him? Did he
have autism or ADHD? The teacher just wanted help.
I took the student to my office and we talked about school. He was really polite and pleasant. He was actually very charming and made me laugh. I was a bit puzzled
and thought maybe a phone call home would help. I called the parent and she was
also shocked. Her son does not typically act like this at home. She mentioned
that he can get frustrated but he is able to either handle it or calm down.
The next day, it happened again. I took the student back to my office but
I had a hunch this time. I began to ask him how he is feeling. Are you mad?
“No” Are you sad? “No” Then what is going on that makes you scream and tell us
you don’t like school? He looked at me very calmly and said, “When the work is hard all I have to do is scream.” Hmm….I inquired more. What do
you mean? He said, “When the work is hard, I scream and I don’t have to do the
work.” I smiled…I knew exactly what was happening. When he feels frustrated
at school or the work he has to complete, he has learned to cope with it by
screaming.
Does this sound familiar? Do you have a student or child who is handling
frustration in poor ways? When my son
was 5 and he was told “no” he just pretended not to listen and did it anyhow. I
picked up some tips on how to help him cope with frustration and it made life at home a little easier.
Teaching children how to handle frustration is important to their social and
emotional development. Without learning positive coping strategies children
will find ways to cope on their own.
How to Teach Children to Handle Frustration:
There are many websites and programs that
teach coping skills to children. Here are a few that have helped me in the
past:
http://challengingbehavior.fmhi.usf.edu/do/resources/documents/bkpk_frustration.pdfhttp://www.pbisworld.com/tier-1/teach-coping-skills/
http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/social-emotional-skills/fight-frustration
Within the school system I have found that I
needed a more concrete lesson to present these ideas within the classroom. Most
teachers would agree that teaching children how to deal with frustration is
important. However, coming up with their own lesson plan for teaching
frustration can be frustrating! (Okay, that was too easy to resist!) Seriously, the teachers I work with wanted a way to explicitly
teach a strategy they can use with students when they feel frustrated. I have
been using children’s picture books over the past few years to reinforce the
social and emotional learning targets we have identified for our students. For
an example of the scope and sequence click here.
Teach with Books:
I really using children's picture books to
teach social skills. It is an excellent way to engage students in topics they
need to learn or practice. Many children’s books are easily available and often
familiar to students. Most students (even older ones) enjoy stories read to them
and are more motivated to learn the concepts than through direct teaching.
Because stores are fun and pleasurable for many children, being read to feels
like a leisure activity during class time. Students also tend to relate the
emotions of the characters and can easily provide discussion into how they
should think, feel, or act. One of my favorites I enjoy using to teach
Kindergarten-2nd grade students learn to handle frustration is Zach Gets
Frustrated by William Mulcahy.
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Zach Gets Frustrated by William Mulcahy |
Zach
Get Frustrated by William Mulcahy
Why this book is on my bookshelf
This book is about a boy named Zach who gets
frustrated. Zach and his family go to the beach, but Zach is having a
lousy day. Zach kicks sand, yells angry words, and asks his dad if they can
just go home now. Instead, his dad teaches him a simple, three-step approach to
get a handle on frustration when things aren’t going his way: 1) name it (why
are you frustrated?); 2) tame it (self-regulation exercises such as deep
breathing or visualization); 3) reframe it (change your thoughts to change your
feelings). Easy to understand and easy to remember.
This book comes with its own suggestions for how to use teach children to handle frustration. There is also a free worksheet you can download from
the publisher’s website. However, I created the following teaching guide to
help students get more practice with the skills taught in the book.
Zach Gets Frustrated Lesson Plan
No Prep Social Emotional
Learning
This resource includes a 30-45 minute lesson plan and activities which
is a perfect way to introduce stories during circle time, social emotional
learning time, or even as a sub plan when you want to reinforce concepts
already talked about. At my school we use the Second Step® Curriculum so this
resource has additional pages that use the same language from the curriculum.
This is specifically designed to help teachers, parents, social workers, counselors,
or psychologists teach this very important skill with a group or one child.
Everything you need is included!
- Scripted Lesson Plan includes essential questions, connections to social emotional and common core standards
- Vocabulary Card: Frustrated
- Frustration Triangle Teaching Guide
- Chill Skills or Calm Down Steps Teaching Guide
- My Frustration Triangle Worksheet (2 adapted levels: PreK-K and K-2)
Freebie:
Check out this free resource on how to define
frustration for your students. This visual is a great teaching guide when explaining frustration. You can also post it on your word wall to remind students of the different feelings that you are working on.
Related Posts in this Series:
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Other Resources you might like:
How do you teach your students to handle frustration?
Leave me a comment below. But be nice! We are all learning how to manage this
thing called life.
