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.

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

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.

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.

Handling Strong Feelings

Handling Strong Feelings

Feelings can overwhelm the best of us. When my daughter was 4, I swear I could see the steam coming from her ears when she was upset. When she was angry we all knew it. Her face was red, her voice was loud, and she would use her body to express this very strong emotion. However, if you asked her if she was mad she would scream "NO".

Learning how to recognize feelings in our body is an essential skill for all children. Some children can go from calm to angry in a matter of seconds. This often leaves the adults scratching our heads trying to figure out what happened. Often, the trigger to these strong feelings are internal and can be very scary for the child too.

One way to help children manage strong feelings is to help them become more aware of what their body experiences when these feelings come. This can help children to become better at recognizing the feeling and slowing it down.

How to Teach:
1. Pick 1-2 feelings to discuss
2. Have children think about a time they felt this feeling
3. Have children label how that feeling was experienced by the body
4. Have child practice being aware of these sensations during role plays

Teach with Books

One of my favorite ways to teach children how to handle strong feelings is by using the book:
The Way I Feel by Janan Cain

The Way I Feel by Janan Cain

Why this book?
This book does a wonderful job exploring different emotions. It introduces the feelings of silly, happy, disappointed, scared, etc. The book is vibrant in color and the children remain engaged the whole time. While I read the book, I stop at any of the feelings we have discussed before and have them make connections with it. We also think about how our bodies feel for each feeling.

If you don't have access to the book or you have children that really like using media to explore these concepts, you can view the online version. Sometimes I read the book and then we watch the video to see if we missed anything. Children tend to love the repetition.

No Prep Social Emotional Learning

To make it easy to teach this to your children, this lesson plan and activities can easily guide you through the process.

Click here to view the lesson plan

Freebie

Click here to download this resource

This worksheet helps students to put body labels to their feelings. They can begin by cutting out the feelings listed here but they can also come up with their own descriptions. It is a great way to get insight into how the child experiences the feelings. 

Other Resources You Might Like:

Zach Rules Series

Zach Rules Series
by William Mulcahy

Zach is a young boy who struggles with life. This book series is a great way to teach social emotional concepts. I have created lesson plans and activities to use with the books in Kindergarten to 2nd grade classrooms. The students enjoy when Zach comes to class and we can talk about how we can handle the situations presented in the books.

Come back often as I review this resource and post activities to use with all of these books.

Zach Apologizes by William Mulcahy

When Zach shoves his little brother to the floor, he knows he did something wrong. Even so, it’s hard to apologize. Like any seven-year-old, Zach tries to ignore the problem, but finally, with his mom’s help, he learns the four steps to apologizing: (1) say what you did; (2) tell how it made the other person feel; (3) say what you could have done instead; (4) make it up to the person. Zach Apologizes teaches children social skills using an apology strategy presented as the “four-square” apology, which is illustrated with prompts that kids will easily understand and remember.

Zach Apologizes Lesson Plan

Make Delivering Social Emotional Learning Easy

This resource includes a 30 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. It is also designed to follow the concepts presented in the Second Step® Curriculum. This product has been granted permission from the publisher and is meant to align with the materials of the Second Step® curriculum. It is also perfect for social workers, counselors, or psychologists to reteach the Second Step® Curriculum concepts in small groups or individual sessions. It comes complete with a scripted lesson plan, connections to social emotional/common core standards, lesson worksheets, and individual practice pages. 

This resource includes:

2 page Scripted Lesson Plan

Apology Worksheet

Spookley The Square Pumpkin

Bully Prevention Unit

Kindergarten to 2nd Grade

Spookley the Square Pumpkin is an great way to teach empathy and bully prevention with Kindergarten to 2nd grade students. The Spookley book and movie are great ways to begin to have these conversations with younger students.

This 5 lesson Prevention Unit is available at Teachers Pay Teachers

This 5 lesson bully prevention unit was developed to help teachers explain several of the bully prevention components such as empathy training, recognizing bullying, reporting bullying, and refusing bullying. This unit is the perfect way to explore these topics in a fun and age appropriate way. The lessons build on each other but can also be used singularly or with different grade levels.

Each lesson contains student objectives, key vocabulary, fully scripted content with discussion questions and checks for understanding, and hands-on activities or printables. It makes teaching the lesson easy and with no prep. Perfect for classroom teachers, special educators, counselors, social workers, or psychologists.



Enhance your lessons with these great Spookley products.

The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin

Spookley the Square Pumpkin DVD

Plush Spookley

How do you use Spookley in your classroom? Leave a comment below to share in all the Spookley fun.

Rudolph Teacher and Student Gift Ideas

Every year I try to find a small gift to give out to my fellow teachers, students, and my kid's teachers. Since I see almost 100 students and work with over 50 teachers I try to keep the price to about $.50 each. This year I decided to make a Rudolph inspired gift. The students received a Tootsie Roll pop and the teachers a milk chocolate Lindt Truffle. My kid's teachers also received a gift card to thank them for all of their hard work.

In my search, I found several patterns online but they all seemed to require cutting out the shape of the Rudolph head. This was definitely something I was not interested in doing. Then, I stumbled across a Rudolph graphic. With a few modifications, the only thing I had to do was print the picture, cut out a circle nose, insert the candy, and attach the tag. The graphic templates listed below worked with 4x6 or 5x7 paper. You can either use photo paper or plain index cards. They printed on my printer and were the perfect size.

For the candy, this project works best with red Tootsie Roll pops. I found a bag of 60 at Amazon.com for about $18.00. I bought the Pomegranate suckers to keep with the holiday spirit but Amazon also had Red Raspberry and Cherry. I thought the teachers would like a better type of candy so this also works well with Lindt Truffles.

Note: I hand write every student and teacher's name on the cards. I feel it adds a personal touch. The attached cards have space at the top and bottom for you to hand write their name and yours.

Here's how to make them:

 

Materials Needed:

Rudolph Head
1 1/8" Circle Punch
Scissors
Hole Punch
Tape
Tags
Red Tootsie Rolls or Lindt Candies

Instructions:

1. Print the Rudolph head on either 4x6 or 5x7 paper.

2. Fold the paper so that the head is about 1/4" from bottom. This will allow the punch to reach the circle and secure the candy between the fold of the paper.

3. Use the 1 1/8" circle punch where the nose is.

4. Use the hole punch to punch a small circle on the fold. This will allow the stick of the sucker to go through the paper.

4. Fold the paper up and secure the flap with tape.

5. Cut out a tag and attach it with more tape to the sucker handle below the head. Alternatively the tag can be taped to top of the card by the antlers.

Note: For the Lindt Candy, follow the same directions except skip step #4 and tape the tag to the top of the card.

Here's the links for the Rudolph heads and tags:
Rudolph 4x6
Rudolph 5x7
Tags

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Wishing you and your family a great holiday season!
Hiedi

Life Hack

My new favorite thing! It is the perfect laptop desk when working in bed. What favorite thing do you have. Leave your ideas in the comment section!

 

 

Are you teaching social emotional curriculum but feeling a bit let down by student’s participation? Do you wish your students were a little more engaged? Here are 5 tips to liven up and reengage your students:

 

1. Smile…If you are not having a great time the students will pick up on it. Some of the topics can feel a bit heavy and students may clam up.

2. Share...If you have a personal story, share it. Students love to hear the blunders that adults have faced. You don’t have to give explicit details but if you are teaching about apologies give an example of when you had to give one yourself.

3. Show...Most students love to role play. To learn some of the finer details in the lessons, role playing is the best way for them to practice (e.g. facial expressions, body posture, tone of voice). For younger students, puppets and books are a great way for students to see what a behavior looks like.

4. Support...Give students a lot of support as they are learning new ways to think and behave. Apply the same learning principals for learning new behaviors as we would for learning new academic content. Teach the lesson and expect some errors. Have students support each other by being detectives during the role plays and give feedback to each other. 

5. Strengthen...Give lots of praise and reinforcement for effort. It’s not always easy to learn new behavior but know that the more the students attempt the new behavior, the more likely that behavior will be strengthened.

 

How do you engage your students? Leave in the comment section your tips or tricks.