- [Announcer] The broadcast is now starting.
All attendees are in listen only mode.
- [Vicki] Hi, everybody.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
I'm Vicki Lang,
I'm a learning scientist here at Khan Academy.
And I'm joined by Dan from our marketing team,
who will be facilitating our Q&A
toward the end of the broadcast.
And a special guest, Dr. Lindsay Portnoy,
she's a cognitive scientist from Northeastern University,
who recently published a book called, "Designed to Learn."
She's an expert in using design principles
to work with kids in schools.
And she's a parent of two children herself.
So she's home working, managing multiple kids,
and is a great expert to draw from
for this broadcast today.
Before we launch into the topic,
I just wanna thank our sponsors,
Bank of America, Google.org, Novartis, Fastly, and AT&T,
for supporting this broadcast as well as other webinars
that we're providing during this time of crisis.
So, we've been getting a lot of questions
about how do I survive at home with multiple children
who have different schedules and different needs,
and different assignments and there's only one of me,
or there's two of me, however many,
and how do we do this?
So, we brought this expert here to talk with you
about some ideas for that and I'm gonna let her kick it off.
- [Lindsay] Thank you, Vicky.
Thank you for having me everyone.
I'm excited to be here today.
So, yeah as Vicki has mentioned,
I have been working in education for quite some time,
and when this whole event transpired,
I quickly moved to figure out what it was
that we were going to do to help support our kids,
and community, some sense of scaffolding and support,
in a time of very uncertainty.
And so, what I have shared for you today,
is something that I like to call, "The Five C's
"For Bringing Your "A" Game."
And, what I realized is that we really are
a very faithful family, and we do very much seek the joy
in all of the learning that we try to do at home.
And so, the C's that I'd like to share with you
are clarity, curation, creativity, curiosity and compassion.
And I'm gonna go through each of these
and show you of how they addressed those mean questions
that Vicki has shared previously.
And Vicki, hopefully, you can help me along here
to make sure that we're getting the most important pieces.
But the idea is that we're trying to keep it
as simple as possible.
We're trying to be as realistic as possible,
given the current constraints.
As (mumbles) now we have lost power.
So it's always something exciting and new,
but simplicity with consistency
and always leaving room for iteration.
The first C for clarity,
I think is a really big overarching concept,
which is basically about establishing expectations,
understanding communications and resources.
And it is really to address this question here about,
what ideas you have for scheduling
with such a diverse group.
So as Vicki and I were talking
I shared with my game plan.
So we use gaming as the analogy,
what's the game plan with our team?
So beginning of each week,
if we have a teacher that's sending us a week case.
So what has to be done and by whom?
And I've created this really simple and fun looking calendar
that my kiddos are now at this point quite used to
in week eight.
And they know what's happening at every time,
where they will find what they need,
and where we will find what we need to help support them,
where everyone will be in the house in terms of space.
We'll talk about that later.
And then when you know it's time to stop what you're doing
and have a break and eat and relax
and stretch and just and check in with us.
Also, another really important part of clarity
for us has been, why are you doing what you're doing
and when are you going to get feedback
on the work that you're doing?
And that really is about communication
and I'll show you later on.
This is just the big game plan sheet that we have,
but later on I'll show you a little bit about
how I should check in about with my kids as they're working
without necessarily getting up
and having to physically go to them
and sit with them every second of the day,
which became pretty burdensome pretty quickly.
Does that makes sense?
- [Vicki] Yeah, that makes lots of sense.
And it doesn't work perfectly.
We just saw I was distracted 'cause my six year old came in
and had a question for me.
So it doesn't work perfectly.
But we have a schedule also at our house
and we've done another webinar on that with Khan Academy.
And this idea of clarity
and just the kids being on the same page as the adults
of understanding what's happening when
and who to get helpful with
and why they're doing what they're doing
is really, really important.
So how do they know what to work on Lindsay?
And how do you prepare it for them?
- [Lindsay] Good question, that's a great question.
So the next C is curation.
And curation is really all about preparation.
So predicting what they're gonna need and when
and planning ahead.
And this reminded me of the question
that I saw which is,
how much active caregiver engagement
should I aim for and when?
When should I be available?
Because like many folks out there, we're working full time.
And so we have to ensure that we're doing our work.
So again, this is a similar picture
to the other one, but this is our schedule.
And the idea is, we have to know ahead of time
what the work is that they have to be doing in each day.
But we also have to predict what problems may arise
and whether it's my two boys getting in an argument
over who gets to use the computer at this time
or figuring out what hang ups they might have to log into,
one of the platforms they use in my kids' school is Clever.
So if they have trouble logging in, where can they go
and just anticipating what potential issues they may have.
And then also making sure that the materials
that they need are accessible for them.
That they know which space they're gonna be sitting in
and when in terms of timing for each child.
We try to figure out a day in advance if we can,
sometimes the week
and that we can see, who's gonna need more time and when.
I mean, I don't know how you're feeling with your kiddo
but for us, this has been really helpful
just to know ahead of time,
what information we're gonna need to give to them
so that we can have it in one place.
I circled here for you the hyperlinks,
I'm a big fan of hyperlinking
because that way they know where their schedule is,
everything is in Google Doc.
And then they click on the hyperlink
and it takes them right to where they have to go.
And there's no questioning,
they don't have to come and ask me for the the website
or the access or whatever, it's already all there.
It's like baked into the document.
- [Vicki] Yeah, and this makes me--
Oh, sorry, go ahead.
- [Lindsay] No, I was wondering,
is this similar to what you're using?
- [Vicki] Yeah.
And it makes me think of when I was in the classroom,
I was a fifth and sixth grade teacher
and one of the most fundamental things you're doing
when you're a teacher is anticipating roadblocks
that kids are gonna hit
and questions that they're gonna have
and trying to set them up for success in advance.
'Cause can you can you imagine if there's 27 students
and they all have different questions,
and you haven't anticipated that?
It's a management nightmare.
So this is a skill that teachers have.
And when I'm baking with my daughter
is another thing It makes me think of;
if you think about cooking with your children
when they're young, it helps if you,
I know it's easier for me if I set out the measuring tools
and the ingredients ahead of time,
and maybe I already have a list
of how much of each ingredient we need,
or maybe I've already measured it out,
and they can just help me by mixing,
that goes much more smoothly than if I just say,
"Hey, let's bake cookies."
And we go into the kitchen at the same time
and I'm looking for stuff
and she's like eating the chocolate chips
while I'm not looking and there's like everything at once.
It helps a lot, it's hard sometimes to find the time
ahead of time to invest to make a plan,
but on the weeks and days when I am able to do that,
the rest of the day goes much more smoothly.
That does sound very familiar.
- [Lindsay] Yeah, absolutely.
No, I mean for sure that we're familiar
and again, that was like using the game as the frame here.
Knowing the different players
and knowing what they're gonna need,
because every kid is gonna need something different.
One of my kids is much, much faster
going through the writing part of his work
and the other one needs a little bit more help
and support and scaffolding.
And so even just knowing where in the day,
they're gonna need a little extra love and encouragement
so I can go and make myself available to them,
or maybe switch where it is in the day.
So if, for instance,
I know that there's a big writing project,
maybe I'll put it at a time
when I know I don't have meetings with my colleagues
so that I can be available to him and help him out.
So yes, know your players.
The next one,
if it's alright if I move along, is creativity.
And here I'm talking about multiple opportunities to soar
and again, the folks are asking questions
about what happens in multi-age families,
how do you create a schedule when there's an older kid
and they see their younger sibling play,
they'd rather play and that is very real.
So again, following along with the game analogy,
is leveling up by being creative and being flexible
and thinking outside the box
about for instance where people are working
at different times of the day
so we have quiet spaces where we know
that we can go to if we have a meeting,
if we have to do go to webinar,
we know that nobody's going to bother us there
and then there are other spaces that are more open.
And of course, this isn't easy every place
and it's not a perfect panacea.
But just being creative and flexible
about where we should be at different times of day.
And then setting aside when we know
we're gonna have lunch together, for instance,
which is a lovely thing.
But if we don't make it for them,
we have to make sure that we have snap up for the kids,
we really did become so much more independent
about finding what they need,
I don't know if you're having the same experience,
but it's been quite impressive.
Flexibility in the resources and who has access to devices.
Also in communicating so one of the things we talked
about earlier and teachers do this in space
is give great feedback.
And so how do we continue to help them get feedback,
their teachers are still giving them feedback
in many instances.
And during the day,
we need to be helping them with that as well.
So I have on the screen over here, the morning reflections,
I have my kiddos write morning reflection,
and I have them reflect at the end of the day
with what I call Today I Learned.
And they're a bunch of questions for them
just to think about.
And as they're writing down,
sometimes I'll give them feedback in there
or I'll just write a little note to them
like, "Wow, I was really impressed to see,
"when you when you flew through that."
Or my older son wrote this beautiful,
compelling argument for why the US women's soccer team
should get equitable pay to the men's soccer team.
And I was really taken with it
and so I gave him feedback here.
And I could tell, I mean, he was so excited
he came running in and we had a great conversation about it.
So I think communication is key.
You can do it in Google Docs, you can use post-it notes,
I have whiteboard here.
I think it's fun if you if you have the space
for a family whiteboard, we don't
but it would be a really great thing if we could.
And also being creative about the responsibilities
and reflecting on what is working and what's not working.
- [Vicki] Yeah, and I'm seeing just...
I totally agree with all of those suggestions.
And I wanted to say I'm seeing some questions
about some of these resources in particular,
and I wanted to say that we're gonna share some links
to some of these resources for morning reflection
and schedule some things at the end.
So you'll have those.
- [Lindsay] Yeah, all the templates are available for free,
you should have access to all of them.
We'll make sure that you do afterwards.
The next one is, the next C,
I think it's very important that sometimes it's okay
for us to just let them play.
I think that this moment is a very tense moment
for many of us, for a host of reasons.
And so I really think it's important
that we allow our kids to sometimes just play,
just go outside if you can, go ride a bike, go read a book.
We have certainly had more hours on fortnight in Minecraft
than probably I'd like to admit,
and I'm okay with that right now.
In fact, I'm okay with that in general,
that's a different conversation.
But I think that one of the really important pieces here
is that it's okay for your kids to play.
The next one is curiosity.
And I say game on to curiosity.
One of the things
that I think we should be more curious about
is that feedback piece we were talking about earlier.
I have a whole (mumbles),
my kids were doing these reflections
and they were like, "Well, Mom, you're not telling me
"if I'm doing it right or not."
And I was surprised that they actually wanted the feedback.
They wanted to know if they were doing it,
what else they could do to make it better or did I see it?
So I created for them a super simple one point rubric
that I shared, and I'll share with you all as well.
Also being reflective on what they're learning
while they're learning it.
What did you love?
What is something that you never would have thought
that you would have been excited to learn about?
My kid got so excited about studying,
they're studying Ancient Greece.
And he was so excited and inspired to learn about it.
And he said, if I hadn't had the time to sit there
and watch that documentary,
I don't know if I really would have gotten vested in it.
So I think that, game on, be curious.
Silver linings for us,
I'm able to spend time having lunch with my kids
maybe once or twice a week,
but that's once or twice a week more than I ever did before.
And to me, that's incredible.
Also, in finding new ways to play,
I have this sheet that I'll share with you as well.
It's called "while you were waiting."
And basically, there are two columns.
So if you have an internet connected device,
you have a host of things that you could do,
if you don't, have a host of things that you can do
and I'll share them with you as well.
And so, there are amazing opportunities
that our kids can be doing.
If they're waiting for us if they need us to help them
before they can move along,
they don't have to stop playing,
they don't have to stop learning
because as we know,
we're always learning especially when we're playing.
How does that sound?
- [Vicki] That makes lots of sense as well.
There's so many great suggestions in here.
- [Lindsay] So we're ready for I believe the last one,
and maybe the most important one,
we probably should have started here.
But compassion.
And I think, everyone's asking the same questions
about how do we serve all of our kids?
How do we meet their needs?
And these are the questions
that teachers asked every single day.
And so I think we're getting a really important glimpse
into the life of what it is to be a teacher.
And I think that in terms of compassion,
the most important thing right now
is that we are compassionate maximum XP,
to level up in order to achieve a higher score,
be compassionate with our kids
and their teachers and ourselves.
And I have an asterisk here
because not only is it made for it,
it's also Teacher Appreciation Week.
So I wanted to just call out
that we have these incredible humans
that teach our kids all day, every day, all year
and we really are now seeing, I mean, always
but how important they are in our lives,
and I just wanted to,
as we're compassionate with ourselves,
and our kids also reach out to our teachers.
Also be compassionate and communicating the reality
of what's happening in this world right now.
And also being flexible with the expectations
if you need to reach out to your teachers
and let them know that your kid is struggling
and can't do the work or just needs a break, that's okay.
And I think we need to have permission to do that.
And again, you'll notice I said don't forget to play
'cause I think that's important as well.
- [Vicki] Yeah, this is so important.
And it can be really hard to because we wear so many hats,
we want everything to be just right
and it also is very emotionally draining.
Especially if our kids are fighting
or if our kids don't wanna do what they are supposed to do.
It can be very emotionally exhausting for any adult
and at those times,
it can be really hard to maintain compassion with yourself
or with your kiddos as well.
It's really important.
- [Lindsay] And I think it's important to remember
what is most important right now and if you are together
and you do have the ability to be together with your kids
I think that's a great gift.
And just, I guess taking a minute to just breathe
and be okay with where you are and forgive yourself
and cope with the world around you
is going to be as compassionate.
And if not let me know and (mumbles)
to hep and find that compassion.
The next piece that I really wanted to share
is that there over 76 million students and kids
to higher ed schools in the United States right now.
And many of those individuals
are currently learning at home.
And why is that important?
It's important because we're not alone.
And as we're struggling
and as it's important to have these baffles
and as important to have all of these great resources
to tap into, and ways to give our kids feedback
and help them keep learning and stay on track
and make sure that they're not losing
any instructional time,
it's also important to remember
just as we're being compassionate, that we're not alone,
that we really are in this together
and that together, we can move through this.
And hopefully, my goal is,
all of us should be better on the other end
than maybe we were going into this in terms of education.
I wanted to share also with you a quote
that is one of my favorites.
I have no idea who said this.
When I had my first son,
my husband brought home this postcard
and it didn't have an author,
but it was "Survival is the new success."
So let's just keep moving one day at a time,
there's no such thing as perfection.
Pinterest makes everything easy,
it's not and it's okay to be messy.
In fact, I think that that's how the best learning happens.
So what I have for you here
are a couple of different slides on resources,
the daily activities that I made for my kiddos,
but the game plan is available
as are the morning reflections in the spare line.
There's some really incredible content
that we have all from Khan Academy
that my kids have gotten engaged with
in terms of writing Pixar in the box was incredible.
And what I did is I created a document for them
so that they could document their learning
as they were using the Khan Academy content.
But there's also the MIT work there, it's extraordinary.
So was the Big History Project.
There are tons of amazing resources.
I also shared the feedback for the win.
So if you wanna give your kids feedback
in a Google document, very easy,
just take it, copy it, download it, use it for yourself,
and a list of while you're waiting
whether or not you have a device,
there's plenty of stuff to do.
And then here are some some non tech and tech toys
and games and playful experiences
that you might wanna check out in this interesting time.
And one of the things that I wanted to call out here
is that you could challenge your kids
to create their own versions.
I don't know if you've ever played (mumbles) perhaps
with your kiddo.
- [Vicki] No I don't know that one.
- [Lindsay] It's a great game.
And it's a great game that you could play
and have her create a version so you guys can play together.
All of these are games that are pretty easy
for your kids to hack.
And then they themselves can play the game
that they've created which is also very fun to do.
I wanted to end on a light note, very heavy time.
I wanted to say May the 4th be with you.
And I know we probably have tons and tons of questions
so if you'd like to go to them, we can do that.
We can go back and look at any of this slide.
- [Vicki] Yeah, no, we have.
I wish we had an extra half an hour
to answer all of these wonderful questions
that Dan has been compiling for us to look at.
So we'll try to keep our answers to the point,
so we can get to as many of them as possible.
Dan, I'm gonna turn it over to you to facilitate that part.
- [Dan] Yeah.
Thank you, Lindsay and thank you, Vicki.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Dan, and I'll be moderating the live Q&A session.
Two things before we get into the question section.
First, go to the handout section of this webinar
and grab a copy of the presentation.
It contains all of the tips,
the C's that Lindsay walked through;
clarity, curation, creativity, curiosity and compassion.
And it has the links to all of those resources
that both Lindsay created,
as well as Khan Academy links
to just some of our normal resources
that you can find on our site as well.
We already have a ton of questions.
So first before we start,
I just ask for all of your patience,
just because we have so many
and we only have about 10 minutes.
And we'll try to get through as many as we can.
Please submit more
and we'll try to get through as many as we can.
All right, I get to ask the easy questions
and then Vicki and Lindsay will do the hard job
of actually trying to answer these.
Lindsay, there's a great question on reflection.
So what actually is it?
So there's a question from M.A Lorraine
what do you mean by morning reflections?
Can you just give a quick high level overview
what that means?
- [Lindsay] Yeah, so the morning reflection
is a document that I made for my kids,
and it really is just reflecting
on what they've done so far during the day.
So anytime before, they typically do it
the last thing before lunch,
and there's a question of,
what did you read today and how did it make you feel?
What did it remind you of?
So it's some of the similar questions
that you probably are familiar with
from your kids answering in school,
making the text to text, text to self,
text to world connections.
I also ask them,
I have a whole bunch of just silly questions,
how do you define curiosity?
Or What does it mean to be creative?
Or if you were to be a scientific explorer,
where would you go and what would you want to discover?
So they really are just a host of questions
that my kids respond to every day.
You have them for free,
I think on the handout I added them all there.
That help?
- [Dan] Yeah, that's great.
Vicki do you have any opinions
like what's a question that you ask your kid every day?
- [Vicki] Oh, every day we reflect more
at the end of the day
on what's something that happened
to you today that was good?
What happened to you or that you felt or experienced,
that was good?
Something that was a "No thanks."
And something that was confusing.
And that helps kids to see
the whole spectrum of life experience,
not just to focus on on what's good.
- [Dan] I like that, I'm gonna use the "No thanks" moment.
We have a great question about just timing
and how to schedule these things.
So from Laura, she asks,
"How much time each week
"should I expect to spend lesson planning,
"planning out a schedule per child?
"Some teachers have provided a daily plan,
"some have, some haven't."
So just just curious if you all have some perspective
on both of those things.
Vicki, perhaps you first then Lindsay,
you could take from there.
- [Vicki] I don't, I spend time at breakfast
with my daughter planning her day while we're eating
and it takes 10 minutes, and she's very excited about it.
But I have a couple of just go to
I have a book of math problems.
We just do a page from that every day.
And that are thoughtful discussion-based questions
she spends time reading.
So I have repeated activities
and don't need to plan fresh lessons every day.
I use bedtime math is what I'm using right now.
I'm Lindsay, what about you?
How much time are you spending?
- [Lindsay] So I would say,
I don't know if I said this before,
I have a fourth and a sixth grader.
And so I have to give a lot of credit
to their teachers are still sending lessons.
So it's not as if I'm fully lesson planning for my kids.
At the beginning of this
when I was lesson planning for my kids,
I was pulling from different resources.
And I was being very flexible by saying,
"Look, instead of having 45 minutes
"of a particular subject area,
"you'll have an hour and a half to explore."
And so, I don't know, I had this flexible template
that maybe took me a couple of hours on the weekend
to put together and I would just iterate
throughout the week, it was not a happy burden.
If you have younger kids,
and you do need more flexible planning,
I think it's just a matter
of making materials accessible for them,
whether it's, play dough or paint or games
that they can play with siblings or by themselves.
I think it just depends, it's widely varied.
It depends on if the teachers give you work,
how old the child is,
but it shouldn't be an exhaustive experience.
- [Dan] Yeah, that's good.
That's good, good point.
We have a question from Nema
who has kids ages seven and nine
who keep comparing the amount of homework with each other?
I think it's probably, "She has less, he has less"
or something like that.
What should NEMA do about that?
- [Lindsay] It's a really great question.
So in our house, it's a really great opportunity
to talk about the difference between equity and equality.
And I have a fourth and a sixth grader
and you know, "That's not fair, he's done first.
"That's not fair, he's done first."
And I say, "Well, that's interesting,"
to my sixth grader,
"What happens is if I would give both of you the same test
"for a sixth grader?"
Well, of course, the sixth grader would finish faster,
and the fourth grader would struggle.
So everyone's really getting what they need
and it's not always the same thing.
This is very much like a very typical parenting conundrum.
And the best thing you can do
is saying everybody's getting exactly what they need
to meet them where they are and to help them grow.
And maybe instead of being upset
that somebody has more to do,
maybe you could go and ask them, "Hey, can I help you?
"What can I do to chime in and to help?"
- [Dan] That's great.
We have a question from Lizzie
about tips from families juggling younger kids.
"I have a preschool and a first grader.
"So they aren't as self sufficient."
What would you recommend for that situation, Lindsay?
If they need a little bit more guidance on on getting set up
and getting ready with certain activities and assignments?
- [Lindsay] Yeah, I mean, I don't know Vicki
if you want to chime in,
I know your kiddo's are a little smaller.
But when I worked in early childhood,
it was really about setting up centers.
If you think about going into a classroom,
and there's different centers
and I think our kids are more capable of being independent
than maybe we think that they are.
I think it takes a little bit of scaffolding over time,
which is the gradual release.
First you say "Look, hey, this is the space
"where we're gonna be creating flowers out of play dough."
And you do it a couple of times with them,
and then one day, magically,
they don't need your help anymore
because they can do that by themselves.
And so whether it's practicing with scissors
and cutting on different shapes
and having things cut out for them
or having magazines for them,
that they can tear out and use almost looted,
just stick them on to something
or you even if you teach them how to do a mongola
or just any sort of coloring, drawing sort of activity,
over time, you can slowly release,
that's the point of scaffolding, you're not there forever.
You have to release them, let them become independent.
- [Vicki] Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking also
was any kind of sensory play
and you can google sensory play activities for preschoolers,
and you'll find lists and lists and lists,
anything that's sensory like giving a kid shaving cream,
that kind of thing will hold their attention for a while.
Also note that developmentally speaking,
preschoolers aren't that independent
and they're not gonna be able to play on their own
for a very long time,
and it's not appropriate to ask them to,
it can be really hard for them.
But at the same time, we know that we have to work
and so it can we really feel like this push/pull.
When my daughter was two and three,
I was newly a single parent
and was trying to figure out how to live alone
with a two year old and do the dishes sometimes
and I needed a little bit of space.
And one thing that really helped me at that time
was podcasts for kids,
and I've mentioned that on some of these webinars before,
but for my daughter,
if I could give her a pile of craft supplies,
and put on a storytelling podcast that was age appropriate,
I could get enough time to do the dishes.
And that could that could help now
if you're needing enough time to be in a meeting
or do some work.
That can be helpful.
- [Lindsay] I want to say that painters tape is magical.
It is magical because we make a ginormous mess of it
and it comes off of everything and doesn't leave a mark.
So if they really are tactile and needing to be doing
and making you want to let them do that without being afraid
that they're going to destroy your walls
then that's always an option.
- [Dan] Right, and we have--
- [Lindsay] (mumbles) nothing
that we're using to play games.
You can play games on the iPhone, if you have
or if you wanna watch a show on PBS.
I mean, I'm okay with that.
I think that that's completely fine
and they're great resources.
- [Dan] Yeah.
And so that's a good segue to a couple questions
we have about screen time.
So Shree as well as Jennifer asks, both around
with a lot of work, learning, remote learning,
as well as some of these other activities,
there's a lot of screen time that their kiddos are getting.
And then another question around,
how much TV or tablet time is acceptable
for a pre-K four year old?
Before I pass it over to Vicki and Lindsay,
I just wanna comment
that the American Association of Pediatrics
just released a COVID-19 screen time recommendation,
which is a little bit more flexible than their normal.
I think their recommendation for earlier learners
are like 20 minutes a day
but I think they recognize that this is unusual times
and to be a little bit more flexible
and forgiving about that as well.
So just be sure to be mindful of that.
And with that Vicki or Lindsay,
do you have any opinions on screen time right now?
- [Vicki] We use a lot of educational apps
she does Khan Kids we, I love Khan Academy kids.
She'll also watch shows on PBS,
I do try to limit it to no more than an hour
or two a day, that's what I do.
But I think that's a personal,
what I need in order to balance my day for work
and to limit it for her.
We also watch, she loves science shows,
we'll watch Nova, or any science documentary.
And then she'll tell me, one thing she does,
is watch an episode of Nova
and then write down three facts she learned
or two questions she has after this show
or something like that.
- [Lindsay] Oh, I love that, Vicki.
We, early on before the kids started getting homework
from their teachers,
we would have a list of acceptable things to watch.
And we would have them share with us over dinner,
the goal was that they had to watch it,
but then they had to come to dinner
prepared to share with us what they had learned.
So that was another way to build a sense of
"Wow, celebrating what I'm learning."
I know we have more questions coming up.
So I'm gonna let you keep moving along with them there.
- [Dan] Yeah, sure.
So I think we have time for one more question.
And this one, we have quite a few questions around,
as a parent, how do you stop yourself from getting upset?
How do you deal with your frustrations?
And this is really important.
So Vicki, I think maybe if you could tackle this one
and then Lindsay, if you can close out
with answering this as well,
it's really important right now.
- [Vicki] Yeah, managing our own emotional regulation
as adults in frustrating moments is really hard.
And it's not, like you can't help your kid to be calm
unless you're calm yourself.
So this is really about, and I'll recommend some resources,
it's really about being able
to take a step away for a minute,
take the deep breaths you need to get yourself calm again,
and then come back and help them try to figure out
how to solve their problem.
One strategy for that is called box breathing.
Very quick, you just breathe in for four, hold for four,
breathe out for four, hold for four.
It's a box because it's four, four, four, four;
in, hold, out, hold.
And the military uses that, emotional scientists use that,
everybody uses that,
it'll physiologically calm your nervous system down
and then you'll be in a calmer place
to respond to your kids.
There are also a lot of great parenting resources on this.
one I really like "Hand in Hand Parenting,"
they have a ton of resources on their website.
As a parent with limited time,
I like to follow my favorite parenting educators
on social media.
So I'll follow like Seed and Saw is an Instagram account
that I really like.
And so it's just, she'll post a little square image
on Instagram of tips about how to regulate my emotions
and how to regulate my kids' emotions
and how to respond to her.
So that's some things I would recommend.
But it's what's gonna work for you, is gonna vary.
And with that, I think we'll turn it over to Lindsay,
to wrap up.
- [Lindsay] Yeah, I mean, Vicki,
I think you just did a stellar job.
I think that the most important piece
is that your mileage may vary, everyone is different,
and everyone needs a different way
for managing their stress.
For me, the most important thing is acknowledging
that it's okay to be frustrated
and it's okay to get anxious and it's okay to be angry
and to be sad and to be confused.
And I think for us in our house,
I'm very honest with my kids,
and I say to them, "Hey, I've never done this before.
"None of us have done this before."
And you don't want to lose the sense of stability
and strength and certainty
that everything's going to be okay,
but you also wanna be vulnerable enough with your children
to let them see that you're also trying to figure this out.
Nobody has all the answers,
we're all going through this together.
And I also think it's a really great opportunity
to take perspective
and to think from the perspective of your kids
and how they're feeling and why they're feeling that way.
And then also invite them
to take the perspective of other folks in their community
and in the wider global community,
and how it is in other places of the world.
'Cause everyone is having a different experience,
we have the shared experience of this very strange pandemic,
but we also have very different living experiences.
And so it's an opportunity to say,
"Let's be reflective about what it is
"to live in different parts of the world,
"different parts of the country."
And that's helped us quite a bit.
And even to just verbalize that to our children,
we've had some beautiful conversations;
hard, beautiful conversations.
- [Dan] Thank you, Lindsay.
Thank you, Vicki.
I just wanted to thank the audience for joining us.
I know everyone's incredibly busy during this time,
and thank you for sparing that time to be with us.
If you missed anything and you wanna review this webinar,
we'll be sending out a recording for those who registered.
And we'll also be making this available online.
As well as the presentation will also be made available
in both places as well.
You can always go to Khan Academy,
and there's a blue ribbon at the top
taking you to all of our COVID response resources as well.
So if you miss anything, you can always go there.
And then I would ask you to do one final thing
before we close out here,
there's gonna be a pop up that shows up
at the end of this webinar.
We ask you to do two things for us.
First, tell us how we could make future iterations
of this session even better for you all.
And then secondly, what other types of sessions
would you like to hear from us?
And we'll try to plan that out
and get that out to you as soon as we can.
And in closing, as I mentioned,
we know you're juggling a lot
and this is really uncharted territory for all of us.
And I think what Lindsay and Vicki closed out with
is really important just as parents
and as busy folks right now,
just be kind to yourself.
It's super important to remember
that this is incredibly stressful
and challenging for all of us and you're not alone.
So just be mindful about being kind to yourself.
So with that we here at Khan Academy
wanna remind you please check in occasionally
and thanks again.
And good bye.