KIDS COLLEGE SUPPORTS FAMILIES WITH THE 1-2-3 MAGIC AND EMOTION COACHING PROGRAM AND OUR TALK LESS LISTEN MORE PROGRAM

At Kids College we view our place as your child’s ‘home away from home’ and we value our role in supporting and engaging with families to create our shared Kids College family. We are part of the village it takes to raise a child, as the saying goes.

We are experts in social emotional intelligence and aim to assist and work with our families to create the very best outcomes for children. We use the educators ‘Talk Less Listen More’ program which links directly to the ‘1-2-3 Magic and emotion Caching’ program for families. The aim of both of these programs is to foster emotional intelligence, support behaviour guidance and empower children and families in their social emotional intelligence. Jennifer and Denise at Kids College are 1-2-3 Magic and Emotion Coaching qualified practitioners and guide and lead our Kids College staffing team and our families, working with Behaviour Tonics. Jennifer and Denise are currently working with Behaviour tonics in developing an online 1-2-3 Magic and Emotion Course for families.

‘123 Magic and Emotion coaching’ for families is closely aligned with ‘Talk less listen more’ program for educational settings. Kids College have embraced this program for both it’s behavior guidance and it’s ability to teach emotional intelligence to both adult and child.

 

Daniel Goleman on emotional Intelligence

Daniel Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence, says that emotional regulation skills are hierarchical,starting with children learning words that match how they feel. Adults can help their children to reflect on their emotions by helping them to name their feelings. This is the ethos behind the emotion coaching. Children and adults are taught to balance their responses and choose the most appropriate behaviours when dealing with their emotions.All families have patterns and parents need to look at their role in patterned behaviour before attempting to change their child’s behavior and indeed early childhood educators too. The aim of managing children’s difficult behaviour is to help them to become better self-regulators of their own behaviour. 


 

The three choices model

There is a three choices model for considering how to deal with difficult behaviour.

The three choices are;-

  • If the behaviour is minor – an MBA – we ignore it.
  • If the behaviour is a BIG ROCK that is really inappropriate or hurtful behavior or something we want our children to stop, we signal to them to stop by counting.
  • The third option is to emotion coach our children to help them gain a better understanding of their feelings and to manage their own behaviour.

  1. Ignore it

If the behaviour is minor – an MBA – we ignore it. An example would be a child bouncing a ball, his intention is not annoy he is simply trying to play. The adult needs to evaluate this behavior as harmless and ignore it. This requires a degree of emotional intelligence on the part of the adult too.

  1. Count

If the behaviour is a big rock that is really inappropriate or hurtful behavior or something we want our children to stop, we signal to them to stop by counting. This involves signaling the child by counting (1, 2 and 3) when the child needs to make the choice on how to proceed. This gives the child a moment to choose his responses proactively with a considered approach. This entails the child ‘toggling’ (making a choice) between his accelerators (wanting to act impulsively) and making a choice on how to proactively choose how to respond.

An example would be a child behaving in a negative manner, calling his sister bad names, the adult would signal to that child, by saying 1 and then pause to allow the child time to choose how to proceed. If the child chooses to carry on the count moves to two and he has another opportunity to choose. This approach involves the adults viewing the child as a competent and capable learner who has the ability to start choosing the correct pathway with guidance.

  1. Emotion coaching

The third option is to emotion coach our children to help them gain a better understanding of their feelings and to manage their own behaviour. This is where we teach our children proactively how to recognize their emotions and how to choose to respond to them. We are effectively teaching them to toggle through their emotions and choose effectively thus growing their emotional intelligence and ability to deal with their emotions. According to Daniel Siegel, a worrying concern is that the children who don’t get practice at wrestling with strong feelings may not develop the connections in their brain to control their impulses. Like all aspects to our bodies to grow big and strong the brain needs to be working out, stretching, evaluating to grow the neural pathways needed for emotional intelligence

Our brain needs practice in controlling our emotions. This is how our brain works to control our emotions. Our empathy helps children get in touch with that part of their brain 
that can soothe their experience of threat. 
The attunement process of being empathetic to children’s needs helps children to gain some control over 
their feelings of anxiety or danger. 
This is the goal of emotion coaching: to immerse children in a feeling language where they not only experience attunement, but where they also get used to a language to describe how they’re feeling. This ability to reflect on feelings is crucial in developing emotional maturity and a sense of oneself. 


Stephen Covey and Dr John Gottman talk about the importance of spending enjoyable me together. ‘Putting credits in the bank’. We can draw back on this ‘credit’ when we are trying to influence our children’s behaviour. Balancing our responses to our children through the three choices gives us the opportunity to manage behavior guidance and to top up on the emotional intelligence with empathetic loving responses.

Simply put, we are aiming to create wonderful memories together with loving moments and shared joy. We are not just becoming good guides during the early years of a child’s development but we are empowering them with life long skills, literally growing their brains through love, trust, understanding and precious quality time spent together.

Emotion coaching through the RULER approach

These programs complement the RULER approach we use at Kids College teaching children emotional intelligence. The Emotional literacy that we are teaching refers to an individual’s attitudes, knowledge and expertise regarding five key emotion areas of the RULER approach.

  1. Recognizing emotions in self and others,
  2. Understandingthe causes and consequences of emotions,
  3. Labelingemotions accurately
  4. Expressing emotions appropriately
  5. Regulatingemotions effectively

For more information regarding the RULER approach that we use at Kids College please see the article “Kids College, RULER approach pioneers for teaching social emotional intelligence’ on our Kids College website.

 

Join the Kids College family

Make sure to follow Kids College Childcare on facebook, watch for our regular emails and keep an eye on our Kids College website. Please join the Kids College family community and share in our vision of creating the very best childcare where children experience love, laughter and learning every day. You can reach us on Jennifer@kdiscollege.com.au

 

Quote from Kids College Philosophy 

‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’ and Kids College values our partnership with parents and takes pride in our position as our children’s home away from home, ensuring our families and children build a strong sense of belonging to the kids College family’ 

‘Kids College values our strong leadership that promotes our ongoing cycle of professional development with educational leadership to ensure continual improvement and a sustained commitment to excellent professional practices.’

 

NQS

6.2.3 The service builds relationships and engages with its community.

7.2.3 Educators, co-ordinators and staff members’ performance is regularly evaluated and individual plans are in place to support learning and development.

 

Proud to display our Exceeding Childcare Centre Award

 
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YOUR FEEDBACK MATTERS

Our practice is shaped by meaningful engagement with our families and community. If you could add something to our program, come up with great ideas, or know of resources or people we can contact could please send us an email on Jennifer@kidscollege.com.au as we really do value your input.

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