Dr. Tamar Kahane

“Being brave is not feeling the presence of fear, it is feeling it and still doing it.” -10 year old girl at TKC who was learning to apply the “AND” skill of POWERS.

Summer is often a time when parents provide less structure and let children stay up late and break out of their normal routines. To facilitate the transition back to school, it is helpful to reinstitute structure slowly and start practicing it now! This will help ease your child’s transition back to school and help them to get the sleep they need in order to focus and process each day and their feelings. Try that!

Routines help children feel more control in their lives and alleviate anxiety. Together with your child, make a checklist of what they need to do each morning before school. Teach them to use the checklist to develop good habits and independence in the morning so you do not need to nag them to keep on track and get ready for school. This will take some patience and time. Practice this for a few days before school starts when you don’t have the pressure of getting them out the door on time. This will help your child become familiar with the new routine, grow their independence, and decrease the morning stress and conflict when school starts. Try that!

Frequently, our natural response to transitions is to focus on happy or excited feelings while minimizing or ignoring our less positive emotions. Parents often say things like “I’m so excited to meet your new teachers” or “I bet you can’t wait to see your friends”. This is well-intentioned but it leaves our children feeling alone with their worries.

This fall, use this transition as an opportunity to connect with your child emotionally and practice the “both” skill. It is normal for children to feel both sad about summer being over and excited to see their friends and meet their new teachers.

Grateful for the wonderful team at TKC!

Today was W (work) Day! Children learn from Flopsy how to be successful setting and working hard towards their goals!

Watch Flopsy as he learns STEPS here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SQ7zlkr69M

“O” Organize day at the POWERS camp! Here are some pictures showing Dr. Erica Samson-Pepose and some children having fun working together on the skill of Organize.

Excited to greet this weeks POWERS campers! The children had fun engaging in planting as a metaphor to help them understand and embrace a growth mindset.

“Rather than being told what to do, we want to help them know what to do and, ultimately, connect the dots for themselves,” Dr. Kahane says.

To read the full article, visit the family section of PureWow at purewow.com or click the link below!

https://www.purewow.com/family/why-performative-narration-parenting-needs-to-stop

Is the summer half full or half empty?

We all look forward to the summer and it’s sad when it flies by. Embracing a positive and present mindset can be hard and helps us enjoy!

Stretching in all spheres of life is helpful!

Taking a moment as a team to pause and practice yoga is nurturing.

What an empowering week it has been during this summers POWERS Program! Here are some pictures from day 5 - Social Awareness Day.

Amazing Day 3 “Work Day” of POWERS! Here are pictures of some of the kids growing seeds and practicing a growth mindset.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can severely affect a child’s social, academic, and emotional functioning. Medication alone is not the answer.

Not only is there a real risk of serious side effects when young children are overmedicated, but also medication often sedates the child enough so that there is no need seen by the family or the school to remediate their deficits. In effect we are medicating the symptoms but not addressing the etiology.

The great tragedy here is that the overuse of medication often prevents these kids from getting the help that they really need in learning how to compensate for their difficulties and struggles.

Learn more about an integrated approach to ADHD that can help children better manage the symptoms: https://bit.ly/428FCzY

Teaching our children to regulate their emotions by developing feeling awareness and expression skills is critical. Learning to use our full range of emotions together with our reasonable mind to make decisions is our superpower.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3Y4pxZR

The POWERS curriculum has already helped over a thousand children learn to better manage themselves and succeed to their potential. We use an evidence-based model to help our children grow into responsible, productive adults.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3ZpZ4Y2

Give yourself credit for being a good role model and good advocate for your children.

Happy Father's Day!

This statistic needs to be a wake up call for parents and schools to prioritize teaching children social and emotional skills and coping strategies at home and in school.

Exercise not only boosts physical health, but also enhances our emotional control, focus, and energy levels. Keeping your child active is key to their health.

Instead of movie night this weekend, try out a family sports game or go for a long walk to teach your child the importance of movement in everyday life!

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3Y4pxZR

Trying to help your child become more organized? Introduce the following tools:

• Lists: Create lists with your kids about the things they will need to do each day. Set up a system that identifies who will make the list, its location, how it can be altered, and when and how it will be used.

• Calendars: Make a calendar of events with your child that includes all extracurricular activities and any known school and personal events. Place this calendar in a central location so it is accessible to all.

• Physical space setups: Decide together where everything goes! You may want to begin by deciding where backpacks and extracurricular materials (i.e. sports equipment, uniforms, dance shoes, musical instruments) will be located. Afterward, set up a homework area and make sure that it is stocked with all essential school supplies.

Learn more about routines and helping your child get organized: https://bit.ly/3N92Lhv

How do we get better at things that are hard for us? Practice, practice, pactice!

Each POWERS vocabulary word is a skill. Once you have a name for the skill, you can label it, readily retrieve it, and learn to use it. By practicing these skills, children learn to bcome more competent, confident and independent!

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3Y4pxZR

Human beings are social animals and have a need to connect with others. Warm and trusting relationships with friends and family enhance the joy in our life and support and fortify us to get through the hard times.

A researcher who has followed more than 700 people over the arc of their lives found that the major determining factor in which people grew happily and healthily into their 80s was having good relationships.

In his words, “social relationships are good for us, loneliness kills."

Watch the video here: https://bit.ly/3MWxpKK

If we want to raise our children with kind inner voices, we need to start noticing our own harsh inner voices and change the way we speak to ourselves.

No one likes an overbearing boss. With POWERS, rather than being our children's “bosses,” and nagging them constantly, we learn how to help them become increasingly independent.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3Y4pxZR

Do you prioritize playfulness with your child?

This summer, prioritize some playfulness and engage your child in leading the way!

Work is the effort we put forth to complete a task. In POWERS we teach the skills that are necessary in order to grow our work endurance. Developing work endurance is essential in life.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/3Y4pxZR

This summer, The Kahane Center is excited to, once again, be offering a one-week long, in-person, half-day POWERS camp.

POWERS is an evidence-based social-emotional learning and executive functioning program.

Through fun, hands-on, interactive activities, POWERS camp helps children begin to develop self-awareness and the skills they need to grow in their abilities to organize, prioritize, strategize, pay attention, regulate their emotions, and become more socially and emotionally aware. These skills will help your child thrive throughout the year and facilitate their transition back to school in September. Each day will focus on a different core POWERS skill.

To register or get more information, go to https://powersprogram.com/powers-for-students/ -camps-englewood