Psychological Resources for Parents

Be reassuring. Children take their emotional cues from the significant adults in their lives. Your reactions are most important. Recognize that some children may be concerned about something bad happening to themselves, family or friends. Explain to them the safety measures in place and reassure them that you and other adults will take care of them. 

Be a good listener and observer. Let children guide you to learn how concerned they are or how much information they need. If they are not focused on the tragedy, do not dwell on it. However, be available to answer their questions to the best of your ability. Young children may not be able to express themselves verbally. Pay attention to changes in their behavior or social interactions. 

Monitor the news. Images of a disaster or crisis event can become overwhelming, especially if watched repetitively. Young children in particular may not be able to distinguish between images on television and their personal reality. Older children may choose to watch the news, but be available to discuss what they see and to help put it into perspective. 

Homework has been around as long as public schools have, and over the years considerable research has been conducted regarding the efficacy of homework practices. While the results are not uniform, most experts on the topic have drawn some common conclusions. 

Reasonable Homework Expectations   

It is generally agreed that the younger the child, the less time the child should be expected to devote to homework. A general rule of thumb is that children do 10 minutes of homework for each grade level. Therefore, first graders should be expected to do about 10 minutes of homework, second graders 20 minutes, third graders 30 minutes, and so on. If your child is spending more than 10 minutes per grade level on work at night, then you may want to talk with your child's teacher about adjusting the workload. 

Self-control is an important skill for all children to learn. It refers to having power or control over one’s own actions. It also means that an individual knows right from wrong. Children who do not make choices for their own behavior, but instead rely on other children, parents, teachers, or adults to make choices for them, do not learn self-control. These children may follow others’ bad choices and get involved in ridiculing others, taking away others’ things, and not taking responsibility for the consequences of their behavior. They also may listen to others who say negative things about people who may be different due to skin color, race, culture, religion, or disabilities. The skill of self-control will allow children to know that the right thing to do is to be tolerant of others despite differences. If students are taught self-control at an early age, then they will feel better about the choices that they do make. 

Sleep and Sleep Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Information for Parents and Educators 

By Peg Dawson, EdD, NCSP  
Seacoast Mental Health Center, Portsmouth, NH 

Physicians and psychologists estimate that as many as 30% of children may have a sleep disorder at some point during childhood. Sleep disorders have implications both for social-emotional adjustment and for school performance. For this reason it is important for both parents and educators to understand how sleep works and how disruptions in normal sleep patterns can affect children and teenagers. This handout will provide an introduction to normal sleep patterns, definitions and descriptions of the kinds of sleep disturbances that may affect children and adolescents, and a brief description of recommended treatments. 

Normal Sleep Patterns 

Types of Sleep Patterns 

Sleep is broadly classified into two types: REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep and non-REM sleep (NREM). By studying brain wave patterns we know that NREM sleep consists of several stages, ranging from drowsiness through deep sleep. In the early stages (Stages I and II) you awake easily and may not even realize that you have been sleeping. In the deeper stages (Stages III and IV) it is very difficult to wake up, and if you are aroused you are likely to find yourself disoriented and confused. In NREM sleep your muscles are more relaxed than when you are awake but you are able to move (although you do not because the brain is not sending signals to the muscles to move). 

REM sleep is more active. Breathing and heart rate become irregular, your eyes move rapidly back and forth under your eyelids, and control of your body temperature is impaired so that you do not sweat when you are hot or shiver when you are cold. Below the neck, however, you are inactive because the nerve impulses that travel down the spinal cord to body muscles are blocked. Your body is essentially paralyzed. It is during this sleep stage that you dream.