Miracles from Children’s Play, Day by Day

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Appendix C

Other Adaptive Tools which Help Organize the Experience of Positive Psychology Interventions: Engagement, absorption, sense of coherence and self- awareness with moments of the day

What is Flow?

• A state of deep absorption in an activity that is intrinsically enjoyably
• Individuals in this state perceive their performance to be pleasurable and successful, and the activity is perceived as worth doing for its own sake, even if no further goal is reached
• Research Findings
• Flow Theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997)
  • Finding Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1997

• Flow in children and adolescents
  • Many studies have focused on the concept of flow in relation to student engagement
  • Shernoff and colleagues (2003) found that high school students experienced increased engagement when:
    • Perceived challenge of the task and their own skills were high and in balance
    • Instruction was relevant
    • Learning environment was under their control

fair description of the “in the groove phenomenon.”

What Lifestyle Skills? – Targeting functional daily skills will enhance lived experience, positive mental states and live healthier

Optimizing routine, everyday bodily functions can act as a positive experience and opportunity to tune up resonance and attunement with optimal moods with improved attitudes. Utilizing physical activity with aerobic exercise can be antidotal to worry, frustration and sadness. Achieving more movement with some effort expended turns negativity into positivity with modest effect sizes and has brain changing power by increasing Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). Behavioral sleep tools with assurance of normalized sleep breathing (treatment of obstructive breathing) with health producing REM sleep are also available to intervene with insomnias and optimize energy and vitality the next day. Children need a minimum of nine hours of good sleep. Diet of healthy whole of high fruits, vegetables, fish and lowering of processed foods loaded with simple carbs, fried food, refined grains and high fat and a healthy breakfast with a minimum of three grams of protein strongly predicts mood control. Omega 3 nutritional supplements may facilitate management of negative mental states. We in our clinic have suggested special needs children may benefit using daily a good brand name vitamin with trace minerals and an anti-oxidant to supplement their good diet. (Consult your doctor) Closely associated with a more positive lifestyle is also building more connections with others and social network building that will result in a wider range of friends for family and children all endorsed by the Positive Psychology movement. Rituals, mindfulness exercises and times for processing special moments around transitions before and after some of these lifestyle events will help story them and make more compelling and rich to ideally make them a part of both explicit and implicit memory.

What is Mindfulness? – personal awareness of subjective wellbeing experienced in ordinary moments of the day

Secular mindfulness is a contemplative tool to teach children awareness of highlighted experiences of the day (best when child does this with parent or guide) by quieting the mind and relaxing the body and using a beginners mind they can attend, focus and reflect with a sense of curiosity and playfulness. The child can learn to be in the present (natural for them) in a non- judgmental state, processing total awareness with acceptance while trying to concentrate on her breath or interesting object. When practiced, latency age kids struggle with more than a few minutes to start but when staying with a routine with a parent or teacher, the outcome can achieve for the child a sense of enhanced consciousness, (mindsight awareness of oneself and others people’s minds) possibly sometimes conjure up a sublime moment but mostly sensing pleasant and peaceful moments. Of course, some kids will enjoy the peace and calm, but some will be indifferent with possible sleeper effects achieved later and others frankly will continue to bounce off the wall as they did before. Children will come to this practice on their own terms and pace. Science is now amassing much knowledge with positive neuro-biological outcomes akin with positive psychology that can advantage children. Schools have made time for students to practice together and, have demonstrated improved learning skills, achievement and behavior control. There may be enough evidence to write mindfulness into the IEP. Special needs can very much benefit but require more patience and enhancement of interest.

Mindfulness

Teaching Mindfulness to Children

Books

Building emotional Intelligence, Linda Lantieri, Daniel Goleman, Sounds True, 2008

The Mindful Child, Susan Greenland, Free Press, 2010

What is Taking in the Good?

Savoring moments of exceptional sensory emotional experience is an off shoot of mindfulness. Teaching children to relish a present moment in an activity or episode can promote a special memory of something good to retrieve when needed (can infuse positive stuff into negative material) as well as it helps accumulate pleasurable mental states contributing to positivity. When experiences are consolidated in memory they include, if intense, all of what is in awareness. Children may be asked especially at the end of the day to think and feel what was good that day and to reflect back and let sink in what happened with a friend, getting a positive remark back from a teacher, rough and tumbling with a sibling or dad, cuddling, eating a treat, goal scored in soccer or playing with a pet. Change a child’s brain by allowing him or her to take in the good over many times. Check out Rick Hanson’s book, Buddha’s Brain on practical neuroscience of happiness.

What is Story Telling?– as applied to Positive Psychology help children turn events into experiences*

A story reflects life accounting for events in sequence of past, present and future time (pleasurable moments creating positive emotions and subjective wellbeing)* and is all about principle characters with the child as a super hero (positive traits, character and virtue)* who meet a challenge or solves difficulties with increasing action in a plot working toward a peak and a turning point to hopefully resolution. A story is life containing all of positive psychology’s tenets of ascending tension positive and negative emotions testing the hero in her quest for life satisfaction and the consummating pleasures of happiness and joy reaching the quest.* Telling a story, oral, written or non-verbal gestural and movement expressions of children’s experience using narrative structures and which satisfy Grice’s maxims (clarity, quantity, quality, and conciseness) can give great meaning and understanding to support integration and facilitate in bringing together cognitive, social, and emotional and sensory information (purposeful life well lived).* A well told story in words or performed using expressive arts is coherent and cohesive, both criteria for functionality and informed neurological processes with increased brain plasticity and language centers as well as middle prefrontal activation in the brain. Similar to mindfulness researched outcomes, a story concludes in how well it is told about aspects and events of one’s life especially interpersonal experiences that will determine the status of a child’s security of attachment. Able-differently labors its program under this premise that using narrative theory and practices in self- reflection using both internalized and externalized language (facts and feelings communicating with both sides of the brain) will consolidate flow states and consummate similar outcomes as in Positive Psychology applications. See our web selections below under Websites Storing Arts and Activities.

Storytelling

Storytelling Websites

Books

Check out Rick Hanson’s Buddha’s Brain  Also, an important study recognizing positive experience turning negative into a strength, making a difference for people. Review the preliminary study at  rickhanson.net/teaching/tgc-public-summary