Cards and chocolates, romantic gifts, and emails, IMs and texts filled with love, are the hallmarks of Valentine’s Day. Young people who are the recipients of these romantic recognitions often feel good about themselves, while those who are alone or single during this romantic time can feel sad. Low self-esteem and social anxiety can follow.

Creating a healthy sense of self-esteem is an effective way to prevent damage when young people don’t receive the romantic attention they would like on a media fueled Valentine’s Day. The Charge up Your Confidence® Tool Kit for Kids (High School/Middle School Edition) can help. Using tools such as Five Great Moments, Pattern of Positives and Getting to Know Me, kids learn to enhance self-esteem and create a positive identity. Other tools in the Tool Kit teach them to think in constructive ways and develop the skills so critical in developing and maintaining social confidence.

Help your child sail through this day with a smile. Feeling good about oneself as a unique and valuable person regardless of relationship status is a wonderful goal.

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Imaginative children as well as those prone to anxiety can weave pieces of frightening stories into a terrifying scenario. They may worry, What if something bad happens to me and my family? Since worry often intensifies at nighttime, exhausted parents are at wits end to come up with a creative plan to stop their kids’ worry from escalating.

The Tool Kits for Kids team are experts in combating worry and have designed a clever approach to help children and teens become stronger and smarter than their worry. Children often worry about events that rarely happen, yet they keep thinking about it and rehearsing this negative information in their mind. The Popcorn Tool is one of twenty powerful tools from the Outsmart Your Worry Tool Kit for Kids® that helps kids stop obsessing about unlikely situations. The No More What If’s tool shows children how to stop fear from going wild. The 10 Minute Rules tool is designed to help adolescents block anxious thoughts from spreading. These tools and more help young people when they are worried and scared. They also provide parents with much needed strategies at their fingertips to short circuit their kids’ worry.

If you have a worried child or teen, you may be interested in the following information: Mommy, Daddy Don’t Leave Me; My Neighbor’s House Was Robbed; Do You Have A Child Who Worries About Death?

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Many children identify with Rudolph. Most kids have been laughed at or made fun of by other children at some point in their lives. Some kids are targets of chronic bullying. Roughly 10-15% of today’s kids are the victims of severe bullying. Our friend Rudolph undoubtedly falls into that category. Another 10-15% of kids today do the bullying. Many of Rudolph’s fellow reindeers taunted and teased him relentlessly.

Rudolph manged to handle the bullying, staying strong and resilient. In the famous story, something magical and deserving happens. Rudolph saves the day by steering the reindeers one stormy night. His red-nose, once the object of scorn, now saves the day.
Rudolph remains an enduring model of resilience, which is but one of the many reasons that the story is so compelling.

If you have a child who begins to doubt herself or question his strengths because of criticism from others, you can help the child be more confident and strong. The Finding Your Hidden Treasures tool from the Charge Up Your Confidence® Tool Kit for Kids is one of 20 tools that helps kids recognize and value their positive qualities. Just like Rudolph, all children have unique attributes that make them shine.

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The whole family is in turmoil when a child has died or will be dying soon. Telling the surviving child some of the truth in an age appropriate way may be the hardest conversation parents will ever have with their child. It must be done with the utmost tenderness, the utmost respect. Be prepared for questions as time goes by. Here are a few of the questions a sibling may express.

Why did this happen? How come it didn’t happen to me?
I’ve always wrestled with my brother. Who can I do that with now?
Who will I play with? Who will I fight with?
Was this my fault?
Can you have another baby? I need another sister.

While discussing the loss of a child, it’s important to stress that the child who died will always be an important part of the family. There can’t be a replacement. You could say, You can always remember and love your brother/sister forever.

Surviving siblings have a tough road ahead. Children have to integrate the loss into their lives. It’s particularly difficult because moms, dads, grandparents and extended family are grieving too. There are grieving groups, weekend grief camps and professionals who can help the child and family deal with the loss.

There is another resource to help brave siblings deal with the loss of a brother or sister. The Build Up Your Resilience Tool Kit for Kids™ helps children and teens learn strategies to heal and get stronger, while they are walking through the grief process. Very often siblings have very intense feelings after a loss such as guilt, deep sadness, anger, fear and anxiety. The resilience tools help manage these feelings carefully. Siblings learn how to keep their self-esteem intact, deal with frightening dreams and images, develop a longer term perspective about their future and retain a sense of hopefulness. Kids can keep the Tool Kit right next to them in their bedroom and review the resilience tools whenever they need to feel better.

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What do elementary school aged children from 5 to 11 think about? Here are just a few of their concerns:

I’m really bad at math.
Some kids get left back if they don’t do their work. I’m scared that could happen to me.I’m the only one in my class who can’t tell time.
I have too much homework.
I don’t want to go to school.

There are many excellent opportunities both in and outside of school to provide reinforcements for learning. Some kids get help with reading, decoding and writing. Others receive skill-building in math. Still others have organizational tutors. Some parents spend hours helping their children with homework. There may be nightly tantrums, arguments and punishments. Some kids are plain exhausted from all these interventions.

Children also need emotional strategies to manage the anxieties, worries and fears that consume their young brains. Now, kids can use effective tools to counter worried thoughts and build confidence. It won’t be another source of added stress because the tools take minutes a day to learn. Children will need a little bit of practice to make sure the anxiety-busting and confidence-boosting strategies become a natural part of their lives. That’s where you come in.

Kids can learn to block worried What If’s, replace anxious thoughts with competent and realistic thoughts, use their mind and body to stay calm, and prevent worries about situations that usually never occur. When children feel steadier and secure, they learn better. To read more about managing worries about school, check out these articles:
Afraid of Giving School Presentations
Going Back To School is an Important Transition for All Kids
Math Drives Me Crazy

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• Repetitive behaviors – Children may touch or tap an object with their right hand and then feel compelled to do the same with their left hand.

• Interaction with people – A child sitting next to both parents might first lean next to one, and then feel compelled to lean against the other in the same way. Or, a child may feel compelled to speak to one parent and then to another.

• Arrangement of their environment – A child may need to arrange their belongings so they are even. For example, three dolls on one side of the bed, three dolls on their other.

• Doing behaviors an even number of times – A child may insist on saying Goodnight an even vs. an odd number of times.

Although these behaviors might not seem important to an observer, children with this symptom experience great anxiety if they cannot make certain behaviors symmetrical. The compulsion, the actual behavior of making things even helps reduce that anxiety. Unfortunately, as with every compulsion, the relief that it brings is only temporary, and ultimately makes this OCD symptom even stronger.

OCD in children and teens CAN be helped. Children with this OCD symptom can be taught to resist the urge to perform the compulsion. Cognitive Behavior Therapy teaches children thinking and behavior skills designed to relieve the anxiety from the obsessive thoughts, and the heightened anxiety they feel when they say No to making things even,

If you would like to learn more about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Children, you may find the previous articles helpful:

OCD and Worry in Kids
Checking and OCD in Children and Teens
OCD and Kids – Compulsive Handwashing

To learn more about thinking and behavior skills to reduce worry and anxiety, check out the Outsmart Your Worry Tool Kit for Kids®

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Have you ever asked your children who their heroes are? Some children might say firefighters, police or soldiers are modern day heroes. Other kids identify scientists and doctors as heroes because they save lives. Some kids might mention sports figures. There are also children who pick heroes right in their own family.

Heroes provide a blueprint as to how to make meaningful contributions to society. Heroes don’t have to be perfect to still have a powerful effect on the developing minds of young people. In fact, coping models who struggle yet succeed are often the role models most admired.

To learn more about heroes and their impact on young people, check out Tool Kits for Kids 2011 Fall Newsletter.

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If you are the parent of a child who does not have friends in the classroom or dislikes the teacher, you know how difficult this can be. Children are often afraid of being alone in the class, at lunch or on the playground. Separation from friends who may be together in another class can be especially hurtful. Teachers who may be strict, very structured, or who yell a lot, may be intimidating to youngsters.

A disappointing classroom assignment can be challenging but it can also be a good opportunity for learn how to problem-solve. For example, learning how to make new friends and learning how to deal with different teacher ‘personalities’ are important life skills that youngsters can use for the rest of their lives. Following are two simple, but very effective interventions to help your child feel better.

1. Try to reflect your child’s feelings. Basically, this means to listen to your child in a non-judgmental way and repeat back what you think he or she said. For example, you might say something like, I know it’s hard when you don’t have your special friends in the class. Or, Yes, your teacher is very strict.

2. Children need to learn that a difficult situation can be a good opportunity to develop new skills. Even though it is hard to be in their classroom right now, making new friends and trying to get along with a new teacher, can help them feel better later.

Transitioning to a new school year can be a challenge for children and parents. Your support and patience can help children develop the confidence and skills they need for a successful transition. Read our Back to School Newsletter for more tips on managing September stress.

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All of these situations are traumatic for children and teens. Many young people are faced with these complex losses, and the number of families dealing with crises are on the rise. Half of all American children will be part of a family who gets a divorce. Close to half of these children will experience a second divorce in their family. Many families are experiencing significant economic hardship today and this has a negative effect on children’s academic, behavioral, and emotional functioning. Natural disasters, resulting in home loss, injury and loss of life is increasing, with costs in the U.S. reaching a billion dollars a week, with untold emotional costs. One in twenty American children will lose a parent through death before the child turns 18.

How can a child remain hopeful and develop their talents despite traumatic events? How do young people handle feelings of anger, depression and guilt without leading to aggression, self-harm, or substance abuse? And how can kids block repetitive terrifying thoughts, connect with others, and stay strong when dealing with major loss? It’s very difficult to recover from significant crises, but it is still possible. The word resilience has been used lately to signify powerful strategies that a person can draw upon when faced with serious difficulty.

Resilience in the face of tragedy is clearly admirable. Young people are particularly vulnerable and need more than tender loving care to move forward in their lives. Kids need a resilient plan to understand that their lives can get better and still be meaningful. They can reassuringly learn such a plan by using a disaster survival Tool Kit that builds resilience.

Read more about resilience and how kids can master these life-empowering strategies: Tragedy in Tucson: Help Your Child Deal with the Death of Another Child; Earthquake Fears Skyrocket in Kids; Resilience Skills Help Kids Cope with Divorce.

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There are children who won’t participate in classic summer activities such as swimming, diving, hiking, or roasting marshmallows at a campfire. What about kids who flat out refuse to try a musical instrument, sign up for a new sport, or visit a museum? Or what about playing with the same two friends, and objecting to expanding one’s social horizons?
There are many reasons children want to play it safe and do just what they know well. How much video game playing, texting, and TV watching can a young person do? In fact, kids are involved with electronic media about 7 1/2 hours a day, instead of actually learning, seeing and doing in the non-virtual universe.

Self-esteem issues are one of the main reasons that a young person stops trying. There is a new, easy way to build up your child’s confidence, by learning encouraging strategies to undercut fear, renew belief in oneself, and deal with common self-esteem blunders such as mistakes, criticism, and embarrassment. In just a week’s time, with a few minutes a day of practice, young people can acquire the confidence skills to help them say, Yes to new experiences. Then, the world is open to them.

To read more about child confidence, check out: Learning from Mistakes Builds Confidence and Losing Friends and Making New Ones: Confidence Helps Kids

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