Behavior Savers: Get Me Out Of Here: How To Help Kids Learn to Handle Feeling Frustrated

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.pdf
http://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.

This books teaches students how to handle frustration. It is an important social emotional skill.

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

This resource has a no-prep lesson plan and activities that teaches the social emotional skill of How To Handle Frustration.

Click here to preview this 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.

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.