Colorado Academy‘s first lecture in the SPEAK series is coming up next Thursday, September 24, with Dr. Madeline Levine, clinician, author, educator, and consultant. Dr. Levine is the co-founder of Challenge Success, a project of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, which provides families and schools with tools to create more balance in the lives of children. Dr. Levine has had a large clinical practice, with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues, and has taught child development classes to graduate students at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
Her newest book Ready or Not: Preparing our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World is timely. Although she wrote it pre-pandemic, the lessons are relevant for this unprecedented time. Levine focuses on the skillset children need most going forward in a rapidly changing world. She will help parents understand the high levels of anxiety that children and teens face while navigating change and talk about the “new tool” that we need to make sure our children use to build resiliency and lasting happiness.
Whether one is an adult or child, this is a challenging time. I know for many parents—myself included—we have deep empathy for our children in this moment. We feel for them and wish they could return to normalcy. But, we need to remain strong and model the resiliency our children need, not only in this moment, but in their lives. In a New York Times op-ed that Levine wrote last spring, she wisely advises, “[A]s parents, our first order of business must be to calm ourselves. This does not mean sticking our heads in the sand, but it might mean limiting our own exposure to frantic and frightening media. For many of us, it will require pulling out those behaviors that serve us well in other times of stress—meditation, gardening, exercise, nature. We are showing our children what it means to tolerate emotional discomfort. This is not the last time in life we will face a global threat. And it certainly is not the last time our children will.”
You can register for this event here. I hope you can take time out to gain some insight from one of the nation’s foremost experts in parenting.
Best,
Mike Davis, PhD
Head of School