Check out the latest article by Confident Parents, Confident Kids author Jennifer Miller on the “Smart Parents” blog series published by influential educational reformer, Thomas Vander Ark and his team at Getting Smart. The article will also appear on the Huffington Post Parents blog later this week!

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), a field leader in advancing the science and practice of social and emotional learning in education, has begun a collaboration on “Parenting and Social and Emotional Learning” with experts Roger Weissberg, Chief Knowledge Officer of CASEL, Shannon Wanless, Assistant Professor of Psychology in Education at the University of Pittsburgh and Jennifer Miller, author of Confident Parents, Confident Kids and Contributor to NBC’s Parent Toolkit. This is the first article written for this collaborative project with more to come.

Here’s the introduction…

The Power of Parenting with Social and Emotional Learning

On the one hundredth day of school, my son’s teacher morphed each first grade child’s photograph into an elderly individual with the facial lines of life experience and asked, “What do you want to be like when you are 100?” My son wrote in response, “I want to be kind to kids.” And I immediately thought, “Yes, me too.” It seems simple. But is it? As parents, we want to prepare our kids to be successful in life but figuring out what that means and what steps can be taken toward that intention each day seems anything but simple. Yet the question of what it takes to prepare kids for success is worth asking. A recent survey from NBC’s Parent Toolkit using the Princeton Survey Research Associates International found that the majority of U.S. parents interviewed ranked social and communication skills as the most important to build success for school and life even beyond academic grades. National experts would agree and offer greater detail on what those skills are.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) involves acquiring and effectively applying the knowledge, attitudes and skills to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions (CASEL, 2013).

Follow this link for the full article. 

Thanks Thomas Vander Ark, Bonnie Lathram and Smart Parents for the chance to contribute!