How to Use Halloween Fears to Build Confidence in Your Kids

Available for Interviews:  Nadine Levitt

Nadine Levitt is an education advocate, speaker, and the CEO & Founder of WURRLYedu, an educational technology platform. Nadine specializes in the social-emotional curriculum (SEL), and she is also the author of the children’s book, My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Village. 

What Nadine Levitt can say in an interview about
The Opportunity of Halloween to Help Kids Build Confidence
:

    • Halloween can be a scary time for kids, imaginations are vivid and there is little distinction between reality and fiction—especially when the world suddenly changes into a horror landscape!
    • But Halloween can also provide a fabulous opportunity to talk about fear, and what it does to other emotions. It is also a great time to distinguish the line between what is real and what is not, and shift the power back into their hands through creativity!  

    • Ideas for Kids:
      1. Let kids participate or plan the decorations. If they are the ones to plug in the greeting Gargoyle, they will be quicker to remember that it isn’t real!
      2. When you see decorations elsewhere that are scary, acknowledge that it is perfectly normal to feel fear in that situation, but that the decorations are not real. Talk about how they might have been made, or who dreamed up or designed such a decoration? This creates a little space between the emotions and the thoughts that can spin.
      3. Have kids imagine their emotions celebrating Halloween: How would they celebrate? Who would do what and why? Have them tell the story through art, music, dance, or creative writing!  
    • Tips for Adults: 
      1. Try not to tell kids that they shouldn’t be scared; they are perfectly reasonable in their emotions. But do make the distinction between emotions and thoughts (thoughts are simply fairy tales of the mind).
      2. Don´t stop at the loudest emotion (likely fear); this is a great time to model that emotions don’t come alone, they come in groups, so ask what other emotions are there.
      3. Once the fear dissipates, think about what replaces that emotion? Do they feel more confident? Signpost for your kids how well they just managed their emotions! They identified, acknowledged, and moved through the fear. This is a valuable skill to develop for a happy and successful life!

 

Interview: Nadine Levitt

Nadine Levitt is a Swiss-born, German, Kiwi, American thought leader, speaker, and author who is passionate about education, especially focusing on child emotional wellness, social and emotional skill development using the Arts, and EdTech.

In 2015 she founded the technology company WURRLY, which also makes WURRLYedu—a leading music education solution being used in schools across 22 states. Nadine has authored two children´s books for social and emotional learning (Inside Me Lives a Village and Inside Me Lives a Superhero), initially developed as a tool to use with her own kids, to help them develop positive self-awareness, self-regulation skills, confidence, empathy, creativity, and self-expression. This quickly grew into a school program, with the development of a supporting curriculum and classroom resources, and toys and other children’s products that foster a healthy relationship with emotions.

As an education thought leader, Nadine Levitt gives keynote speeches around the world on the subjects of music education, social and emotional learning, and technology in classrooms.

My Mama Says Inside Me Lives A Village: Nadine Levitt ...          My Mama Says Inside Me Lives A Superhero

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