Weather Together

As an educator I believe in supporting children to process emotions rather than denying the emotion exists. I steer away from dismissive "like it not" or "you get what you get and you don't get upset" responses to students.

When calm adults can provide co-regulation to students, the students gain experience in understanding their own emotions and they develop skills to safely process big emotions, which allows them to participate in problem solving.

We do not survive storms by denying they exist.

A community thrives when it works together whatever the weather.

"The weather worries us not" because we know that together we will weather the weather.

Nursery rhymes can be a wonderful way to build connections with young children. I enjoy finding established nursery rhymes and giving them an update that reflects a current perspective on child development.

For example: The first version I heard of Whether the Weather includes a "Like it Not" message ... granted it is done with a happy sing song voice (gaslighting children's emotions is often done to a merry little tune), but as mentioned above, I prefer to encourage students to feel and express their emotions safely with a goal towards supporting their problem solving skills.

There are many times a student may feel disappointment with the weather. Anything from an exciting school trip cancelled due to a snowstorm to the announcement of an indoor recess due to rain, may cause a child to stomp and scream in anger and frustration. With a classroom of thirty upset and dysregulated students it is tempting to boom in a loud voice over top of them "You get what you get and you don't get upset!" in an effort to control the situation.

An adult telling a child "You get what you get and you don't get upset" is an adult's version of reaching into a depleted tool box of regulation. Just like a child using an established tantrum technique, the adult who uses cute little gaslighting rhymes to gain compliance might simply need more tools. In the same way that no child enjoys feeling dysregulated, no educator enters the profession expecting to shut down a child's social/emotional growth. We can only use the tools we know. If you are looking for new ways to respond to a student's emotional dysregulation consider the possibilities in an AGILE approach:

https://www.tatamoc.com/post/give-an-agile-response-to-children