Yes, this is the first time that the world comes together to celebrate and recognize the critical importance of social and emotional skills in our roles as parents and educators and for raising confident kids!

Social and emotional learning is a framework for understanding and cultivating essential skills that help us come to deeply understand who we are as individuals, our thoughts, feelings, impulses, values, strengths and limitations and also, how we relate to others in ways that are meaningful, fulfilling, and sustainable. Those competencies include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Educators have the ability to practice these skills everyday through the academic curriculum and many schools use research-based curricula and professional development to help them do that in a high quality manner. Families also have the ability to teach social and emotional skills, not through a formal curriculum but through their everyday interactions — their routines, their power struggles, and challenges. In fact, research conducted in partnership with Shannon Wanless, a child development psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh and the “Grandfather of SEL” Roger Weissberg showed a direct alignment between the hopes parents expressed for their children and for their own roles as parents and social and emotional competencies. For more on that research, check out “Parenting For Competence, Parenting With Competence: Essential Connections between Parenting and Social and Emotional Learning.” And to learn specific simple strategies for promoting social and emotional competence at each age and stage, get your copy of “Confident Parents, Confident Kids; Raising Emotional Intelligence In Ourselves and Our Kids — From Toddlers to Teenagers.”

Hope you’ll join the first of the CASEL Cares webinars today with author of “Permission to Feel” and Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Marc Brackett. Register here!