Some ways to parents, teachers and caring adults can help build resilience on a daily basis may include:

• Give comfort, guidance and suggest strategies to get through a difficult situation

• Work on problem solving skills together

• Help a child understand the situation and possible reasons why a certain behavior is happening

• Help a child with self-reflection       

With support from parents, teachers and other caring adults to help navigate situations, process them, and give them strategies to deal with them, a child’s resilience grows and their skills to navigate difficult experiences develops.  

StopBullying.govEdBoard, 2022. Help your child develop Resilience. [online] StopBullying.gov.
Available at: <https://www.stopbullying.gov/blog/2021/09/22/help-your-child-develop-resilience> [Accessed 22 September 2022].

The post Helping children navigate through tough times first appeared on Mary Albert.

So the characters come from some of my favorite bears that I have.  I remember when my niece came to visit Grandma, she was going to stay all night by herself.  She didn’t need her brothers to stay with her. Grandma would take good care of her. But as bedtime rolled around she was a little apprehensive about going up the stairs to bed.  I’ll never forget her face when she got to the top of the stairs and saw my Pooh Bear sitting on a small bench at the top of the stairs. Her face lit up and a huge smile appeared.  She went right to him picked him up and hugged him.  All was right in the world as any house with a Pooh Bear was an okay place to be.  

Another reason to use bears in storytelling is that many children can relate to them. Teddy bears equate to comfort and safety. They help children handle emotions and stress.  Bears are used by police to comfort children when they are in distressing situations to help calm them. I felt using bears to tell stories about stressful topics like bullying would make the story easier to understand and relate to. 

The hope is that later if a child is faced with a similar situation, they can apply the technique that Millionaire Bear shared with Bear to overcome his situation.  

The post Why Bears? first appeared on Mary Albert.