{"id":78190,"date":"2023-09-15T08:38:31","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T13:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casel.work\/?post_type=blogposts&#038;p=78190"},"modified":"2025-10-16T11:55:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T16:55:45","slug":"im-an-adult-sel-leader-at-casel-but-my-aha-moment-came-as-a-parent","status":"publish","type":"blogposts","link":"https:\/\/casel.org\/blog\/im-an-adult-sel-leader-at-casel-but-my-aha-moment-came-as-a-parent\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m a CASEL Leader. But my Adult SEL &#8220;Aha\u201d Moment Came as a Parent."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"key-points\"><strong>Key Points<\/strong><\/h2><a class=top href=\"#top\">Back to top<\/a>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Applying what she knows about social and emotional learning at work to her experiences at home, a CASEL leader learns so much more about her kids and herself.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In heated moments, it&#8217;s important to take a &#8220;meta moment&#8221;; that&#8217;s the moment when you choose how you&#8217;re going to respond.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>During conflict, the key is to be curious, to express warmth, to be an \u201cemotion scientist\u201d so you can understand what\u2019s behind the behavior rather than just reacting to it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>As a leader at CASEL, it\u2019s not surprising I\u2019m an advocate of social and emotional learning (SEL) for adults. But this insight was really \u201cbrought home\u201d not solely through my professional work, but rather when I intentionally engaged in adult SEL as a parent.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201caha\u201d moment came during my first year at CASEL. One of my first tasks was to attend a training led by Marc Brackett, an important voice in the SEL field.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his training, Marc advocated for the importance of understanding our emotions. In his words, we all\u2014children and adults alike\u2014must be \u201cemotion scientists,\u201d striving to recognize and understand our emotions, instead of being \u201cemotion judges,\u201d who attach value judgments to what we feel.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the strategies he highlighted was the opportunity to stop during heated moments and recognize the \u201cmeta moment.\u201d He included Viktor Frankl\u2019s famous quote: \u201cBetween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take that pause, he told us. Focus on the response you want to give. Think about your best self, and how you\u2019d want that person to act in that moment. It\u2019s a small breather, but a powerful one, when you make an intentional choice rather than flying&nbsp; off the handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the training, I went straight to my kids\u2019 school in hopes of a welcome surprise when I picked them up from after-school care a little early. I have twins, a boy and a girl, and they were around seven years old at the time. I was so excited to get to see them earlier than usual. Maybe we\u2019d go for ice cream or find some other way to enjoy this \u201cbonus\u201d time together.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The greeting I received wasn\u2019t what I expected. My daughter was excited, but my son \u2026 he wasn\u2019t on board. More than that, he was angry, screaming and stomping away. He said he was in the middle of playing with friends and didn\u2019t want to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was pretty deflated, maybe even a little angry that I was taking this time and he didn\u2019t even appreciate it. Worse, he was angry and I thought disrespectful towards me in how he behaved when I showed up. I wanted to yell at him, \u201cJust get in the car!\u201d and also tell him, \u201cI was planning on ice cream but not anymore!\u201d But thinking about the adult SEL training I\u2019d just been to, I decided I wasn\u2019t going to react or say anything about it just then. I would take my meta moment. I would wait until we got home and I had a chance to calm down and think about how I wanted to address this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once we were home, I sat with him on the couch and touched him on the arm to make a connection and communicate warmth. I said, \u201cI understand it was frustrating that I showed up unexpectedly while you were in the middle of a game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t even know you were coming!\u201d he answered, distressed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Putting on my emotion scientist hat, I asked, \u201cWhy do you think you&#8217;re so upset about this?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, he started bawling. \u201cI know my teacher called you today, and I thought you were coming early because I was in trouble.\u201d Of course, I hadn\u2019t even gotten that call because I was in the training that day. I realized that his reaction was not really about me coming early. He had something else in his head that was really upsetting him. He was lashing out because he was scared and nervous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Knowing this, I was able to calmly talk with him and hear about what happened at school, so that I knew what I might expect when I listened to that voice mail. In the end, it was a really productive conversation about what happened at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So my big takeaway was that his anger and frustration when I picked him up wasn\u2019t about me. It wasn&#8217;t about coming early, or him not wanting to spend time with me. It was about something totally different. Had I not stopped to calm down, the situation would have escalated, and I may have never understood what it was truly about because I hadn&#8217;t taken the time to be curious and supportive even in the face of his disrespectful behavior. It was triggered behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This episode was such an immediate application of all I had learned in the adult SEL session, and the lesson has stuck with me to this day. I still look for opportunities to take that meta moment, to be curious, to express warmth, to be an \u201cemotion scientist\u201d so I can understand what\u2019s behind the behavior rather than just reacting to it. It\u2019s better for adults, and it\u2019s better for the kids in our lives, and it helps build trust in our relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Related Posts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/casel.org\/blog\/learning-about-sel-for-and-from-our-children\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Learning About SEL\u2014For and From our Children&nbsp;<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/casel.org\/blog\/my-sel-journey-as-a-student-parent-and-educator\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">My SEL Journey as a Student, Parent, and Educator<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/casel.org\/blog\/how-a-trip-to-the-grocery-store-showed-me-the-power-of-sel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">How a Trip to the Grocery Store Showed Me the Power of SEL<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"write-for-us\"><strong>Write for Us<\/strong><\/h2><a class=top href=\"#top\">Back to top<\/a>\n\n\n\n<p>Are you interested in writing for CASEL\u2019s blog,&nbsp;<em>Constellations<\/em>?<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/1zSZFveKA8xsmlCADpfDP8t-y9emN0qswHQh1MnfmqBI\/edit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Learn more<\/a><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>about what we\u2019re looking for and how to pitch your idea!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Points Back to top As a leader at CASEL, it\u2019s not surprising I\u2019m an advocate of social and emotional learning (SEL) for adults. But this insight was really \u201cbrought home\u201d not solely through my professional work, but rather when I intentionally engaged in adult SEL as a parent.&nbsp; The \u201caha\u201d moment came during my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26603,"featured_media":78769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","theme":[202],"class_list":["post-78190","blogposts","type-blogposts","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","theme-sel-to-me"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogposts\/78190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogposts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blogposts"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casel.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/theme?post=78190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}