The focus for the fortnight is: Be a Friend – We respect everyone’s personal space bubbles.

Knowing how close or far away to stand from other people is one of our many social skills. For most of us, we don’t have to think about this, we just know. For some children, this may not happen naturally and they may require support to understand how far or close to stand to someone and why this is important.

Personal body space is the imaginary ‘space bubble’ that surrounds our bodies. We like to keep this area to ourselves most of the time. If people enter our personal body space we might feel uncomfortable and move away from the person. The complexity of personal body space deepens when we explore different relationships in our lives.

The space bubble is smaller with our immediate family, meaning that we can stand closer to them and feel safe and comfortable. With strangers and people we don’t see as often we need to stand further away. Other factors are also important, including age, gender, culture and emotions.

We don’t just have personal space around our bodies, we may have it on other spaces too. An imaginary zone forms around our desk space, table space at dinner and around us while we are on public transport. When someone invades our personal body space they become a ‘space invader’. If this person is a stranger, we may even feel scared as well as uncomfortable.

When teaching personal body space rules to children we can use our arms to show the distance you stand from someone. A fully outstretched arm represents the distance between people in your outer circles and the distance between the end of your hand and your elbow can represent the distance you can stand with people in your inner circle. This can be modelled by placing your elbow on your hip and reaching your arm towards the person. We can also tune children into other people’s body language when the child is too close and the person feels uncomfortable. Looking at spaces between characters in books and on television can also be useful. If your child participates in pretend play you can demonstrate personal space using characters and toys.

The SEL focus for the fortnight is Bouncing Back (Resilience)
Resilience is a term that most people have heard before. Research into mental health has found that a strong sense of resilience is an extremely good quality to have and that the presence or lack of resilience can have a direct impact on a person’s overall health and wellbeing. Since resilience begins to develop from birth and can grow over time, it is important for parents to have good understandings surrounding how to foster this valuable character trait in their children.

In very simple terms, resilience refers to the ability to cope when things don’t go as planned. Being able to deal with the ups and downs that come with life and being able to accept and deal with disappointments, hurts and surprises requires a good sense of resilience.

For children, developing resilience is important for helping them deal with life, but also for helping them develop the skills and habits they will need to manage difficulties and challenges as they grow up. A strong sense of resilience will support children to be persistent and not give up in the face of failure. Resilience will help a child to recover after difficult times, deal with challenges and just generally be able to cope with all that life brings.

Fortunately, we know that a child’s resilience is not fixed at birth. That means that whilst some children might seem to be more naturally resilient, there are certainly things that can be done to promote, support and build a sense of resilience. There are many ways that parents and teachers can support children to grow their sense of resilience. Encouraging children to have a ‘growth mindset’ will help them to place value on their effort rather than on the outcome. By utilising a growth mindset, children can see opportunities for learning rather than focusing on failures. When we are able to see that we are not defined by our failures, we are able to be more resilient in the face of disappointments and setbacks. Raising children to practice gratitude will also help them to build their sense of resilience. Being able to recognise and appreciate the good things that happen in life will automatically mean that there is less focus placed on the bad things.