Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is now a way for group therapy sessions to be held inside your child’s classroom. We already know that this is happening in Greenland, but what does this look like?
It’s. hard to say exactly what this looks like in your child’s classroom because it will depend on who is providing the group therapy and what program they are using. Either way, did you sign your children up for mental health services when you handed your child their backpacks this morning?
Isn’t it interesting that after COVID-19 and all of the damage done to children academically and emotionally, school administrators now think it’s their duty to provide children with mental health services? In other words, the organization that damaged your child emotionally has now decided it can fix them.
In this video, you will see the counselor in a “community circle” with children administering a dose of SEL. Some of it may actually sound good to parents. What’s wrong with teaching good characteristics? In some ways, that’s not a bad idea but listen closely to what the counselor says about not sharing what is said in the circle.
Since this is a promotional video to sell an SEL product to your school, they will certainly make it sound wonderful. They won’t show you what happens if a child decides to share a traumatic experience with the circle. What does the counselor do, then? Most counselors, unless they have a Ph.D. in Child Psychology, do not have the education or clinical training to handle a situation like that.
By telling children not to reveal what is said in the circle, most, if not all, will keep that information from their parents too. They are being taught by someone who is supposed to be educated in group therapy with children to do something dangerous. As one parent said after she saw the video, “I absolutely don’t agree with that, it is dangerous and contrary to teaching and maintaining and manage health. Especially for families like mine with Autism, physical disabilities that require mediation and mental health issues. I’m giving the benefit that it was poorly done and meant to point out the should gossip. I think it should be addressed to see if it can be changed or the lesson removed.”
This video came from Character Strong. Character Strong is selling school districts a product that can be dangerous if you follow their instructions. While they are supposed to be meeting the social and emotional needs of your children, you can see that this kind of mental health treatment comes at great risk to your child’s well-being.
This is the danger when local schools decide to offer mental health treatment to your children. They have enough trouble teaching children to read, write, add and subtract.
We know two New Hampshire schools that gave two children a vaccine that their parents said they did not want given to their children.
They struggle to teach academics, now they think they can handle medical treatment and mental health treatment too.
They couldn’t even get their promotional video right. Now they want to sell your district a program that doesn’t train the teachers or counselors properly.
It’s time to stop expecting our local schools to provide all of these services to children. They need to focus on teaching academics to leave mental health treatment to professionals outside the school system.
