DCRC Blog

Early childhood professionals know how important social and emotional health is for young children, but they don’t always know how they can teach children critical social and emotional skills. The beauty of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) Program is that it takes the best of what research tells us children need and puts it into a practical framework that teachers can use every day during their lesson plans and daily activities to teach social and emotional skills, thereby promoting a child’s resilience and social-emotional health.

We all want to be happy and to achieve in life. We all also know that life can come at us and knock us down, and that we must pick ourselves up and keep moving forward. But how do we do that? How do we face great risk but continue to find success and happiness, despite the odds against us? With resilience, and focusing on what contributes to our resilience and well-being.

Resilience is the ability to “bounce back” from misfortune or change. A resilient person tends to have something in their life which helps them overcome challenges and move forward in positive ways. That “something” includes their protective factors, and there are four key protective factors that contribute to our resilience.

Our team is always so thrilled to spotlight the Week of the Young Child®. It is our mission to promote social and emotional development and foster resilience in young children, and to support the resilience of the adults caring for them. We work with so many programs across the country, and it would be impossible to express the amount of gratitude they deserve. To all our friends out there taking care of young children, we celebrate you and wish you a fun Week of the Young Child®.

We offer some activity ideas to help you celebrate all week long, and ones that can contribute to the social and emotional well-being of young children, their families, and you!

As every parent and teacher knows, children’s behavior varies throughout the day. A child is likely to act in different ways depending on the activity, the time of day, or the children present. Conducting multiple observations is an effective approach to getting to know children and for tracking ongoing progress throughout the year.

While not always possible, it is best if children’s words and actions are captured in a running record during the activity rather than from memory later in the day. Running record observations are written in the moment, capturing factual details about what the child says and does.

Can you help someone develop and grow, socially and emotionally, without having a solid relationship with them? When you think about the nature of social and emotional learning (SEL), a healthy relationship is truly at the center… Whether you are working with a young child or another adult, establishing a relationship should be the prerequisite to any SEL work. As that relationship develops, a trust begins to build. The stronger that trust is, the better both the teaching and learning experience can be.

Here is why a healthy relationship should be a prerequisite to SEL work…

The e-DECA is a web-based platform for use of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA)! And it’s much more than that. The DECA Program is focused not only on promoting the resilience and social and emotional health of young children, but of the adults caring for them too. The Devereux Center for Resilient Children (DCRC) understands and appreciates that there are many tools and resources out there with the same goal, which is why the e-DECA offers resources designed to help you connect the DECA Program with what you’re already using. There’s plenty to love about the e-DECA, but right now, we’ll share just 11 things to love.

The researchers behind this particular study believe that practicing random acts of kindness helps build our sense of belonging and strengthens social connections, two critical elements of overall health and happiness. It was with these latest findings in mind about the positive outcomes of random acts of kindness that I challenged myself to come up with a list of small acts of kindness. I challenged myself to come up with ideas that feel small, take little time, require no monetary value, and feel very doable.

In order to center equity in our resilience work with young children, it is helpful to acknowledge that a child’s resilience is inextricably connected to the systems that touch their lives. These systems can either affirm and uplift a child, or uphold inequities that create harm.

Therefore, if we wish for our resilience efforts to center equity, we must focus our work on the very systems that touch the lives of children in both positive and negative ways. Resilience work must be systemic work.

Clayton Early Learning, located in Denver, CO, took the third and fourth steps of the DECA Program into their own creative hands and designed what they call their “DECA wall.” In these photos, you’ll see how they used this wall to explain their use of the DECA, to provide definitions of the three core protective factors, to share the results of the completed parent assessments on a group/classroom level, and to provide a way for parents/families to access strategies to implement at home. Our team was elated to see such a beautiful and impactful way of sharing results and strategies. We hope it gives you and your program some inspiration and that it sparks your own creative minds!

Our team put together this collection of team-building activity ideas. There are many to choose from, so we encourage you to explore this resource and select ones that might be a good fit for your team, and maybe one or two that may seem out of your wheelhouse. Isn’t it healthy to try new things now and then? Give these activities a try during your next team meeting, perhaps even starting the meeting with an activity. These can serve as great icebreakers, and overall, can help you to create a culture of resilience in your team.