Hello DATA Families!
Coming up on Spring Break, we wanted to give some tips for you and your family to help manage spring fever! Spring is a time of the changing of the seasons where people become restless, ready for the longer days, warm nights and summer break from school. This can lead to dysregulation from children, and frustration from the adults in their lives. Here are some tips to limit your frustration and their dysregulation:
- Discuss boundaries and have clear expectations. If one chore your child completes is helping to clean up after eating, make sure they know what they need to clean and by when they need to start. Have incentives for them to do a preferred activity afterward, such as time on their phone or watching a show together as a family.
- Encourage time outside. As it warms up, bike rides, walks in the Sandias or the Bosque and outdoor sports are much more enjoyable. If your child prefers to not be active, maybe consider making their chores something that gets them moving outside such as walking the dog, cleaning the yard or taking out the trash.
- Help them learn to use reminder tools. That could be a wall calendar, an app on their phone, an agenda, or anything else. This will help them stay focused and build skills that will help them for their whole life.
- Take a deep breath and remind yourself that they’re still kids. They’re going to still make mistakes and push boundaries, and our job is to help model positive behavior and reflection on the mistakes we make as well.
- Have fun! Do things that you enjoy as a family such as having a picnic or planting flowers. Remind them that summer and extra free time are coming up as soon as they finish the school year strong! Communicate with the families of your child’s friends so you can have similar routines that allow them to have social time outside their own family as well.
One thing that can often exacerbate dysregulation of spring fever is too much technology. Video games can be like living inside a movie while being showered with gold coins. Too much of any good thing can be problematic when we hyper fixate or become hooked. This article from our math teacher Ms. Cote discusses some ways and warning signs that video games are becoming a problem, while giving tips for creating boundaries that allow children to enjoy a game, without it becoming a problem. For more information about teens and technology more broadly, Dr. Russell Sabella has a website with a wealth of resources and information on whatever topic you might be concerned about.
This is also the season where allergies tend to be at their worst. If your student needs to take allergy medication while on campus, please have them bring it into the health office so we can monitor the amount and frequency it is taken. Guardians will need to supply any medications your student takes since the health office does not keep extra medications on hand.
Lastly, we want to acknowledge March as Women’s History Month. As a DATA wellness team, we want to ensure that our students learn a full view of history including the often-underrepresented women history makers, particularly Black, Indigenous and other women of color. Over this long Spring Break, perhaps you and your child can learn more about Dolores Huerta, New Mexican labor activist and civil rights leader. Ella Baker, a leader in the NAACP and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Maya Lin, who helped design the Civil Rights Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial. New Mexico’s Deb Haaland, current Secretary of the Interior. Or so many others; we’d love to hear about who you learned about! We hope you all have a wonderful Spring Break and Women’s History Month!
DATA Health and Wellness Team
