Halloween’s Scary Images

Halloween gives all of us the opportunity to understand what kinds of scary images are manageable and fun for children and which ones hijack their nervous systems and leave a lasting negative impression. In a study of 1,500 college students, one in four reported they still have residual effects from scary TV or movies they saw as children. Preschool teachers often observe the way programs that show fighting promote aggression on the playground and an obsession with images like Power Rangers.

Halloween gives us the chance to discriminate between the kinds of experiences that help children to build courage and resiliency and those that overwhelm them. Our annual Halloween parade, where elementary students showcase their costumes through the preschool yards, includes cautions about masks and images that might upset our youngest students. Thinking ahead about the parade promotes empathy in older students by giving them the chance to select a costume that’s fun for others to see but not unnerving.

Right now in the lead-up to Halloween, there are countless ads for horror movies on TV. Suddenly the screen erupts with blood dripping down a zombie’s face or a vampire emitting horrible sounds. It can be confusing for parents when children seem excited about these or other scary images, just as they often react to scenes of fighting with stimulation and attraction. Yet again and again, parents report disturbance and anxiety in children as a result of something they have seen, perhaps only for a minute.

At the preschool level of thinking, what you see is what’s real. That doesn’t mean not exploring imagination. On Halloween we get to play with fantasy and fear that is manageable. Part of the process of going trick-or-treating is an adult offering their loving presence as children look at costumes and enjoy them, without feeling overwhelmed. “Look, there’s a ghost!” or a pirate or a superhero.

During our Halloween parade, it’s the preschool teachers who provide that supportive presence. “Look it’s a ghost – isn’t that fun?” Being helped to manage fear can be transformative. We have a favorite phrase at our school that captures the process of being helped to overcome fear: “Love and light make fear take flight.” You might try chanting these words when a child is trying to be brave in the face of something that feels scary.

Dealing With Children’s Stress, Anxiety, Frustration

Imagine finally making the long trip to a grandparent’s house after months away, then within hours having to leave because your child’s nose starts running. What a heartbreaking disappointment for the whole family. It’s been a year of jarring losses, frustrations, and isolation.

That’s why it shouldn’t be a surprise for teachers to observe that our students of all ages are having heightened reactions to disappointment and frustration and more anxiety. There are stories of children falling apart because they didn’t make first in line or when they get tagged out in a game. A younger child might throw a tantrum because they can’t have another child’s toy or when asked to stop breaking a rule.

In these times of increased anxiety and stress, it’s important for parents and caregivers to spend time comforting and taking care of themselves. It takes extra energy to respond to children who are needy when our own inner resources are depleted. This is not the time for adults or children to overbook activities. Instead, spend time in soothing activities with children. Having intimate play times together will lower everyone’s stress. Have family meetings to talk about feelings.

With students having outsize reactions to small situations, trusting relationships between parents and teachers are more important than ever. Teachers want to hear about what’s happening in a child’s life, especially difficult circumstances that may be causing stress.

Teachers understand that after a year of isolation, their students aren’t used to the everyday social demands of being with other children. In some ways, many preschool and elementary children seem younger than their age, because they’ve missed out on a year of socialization. If children come home with a story of how they were treated unfairly at school, it’s helpful to check in with the teacher to get a fuller perspective.

Children may not be as used to following directions and complying with requests when asked, or they may have learned they can get what they want by throwing a tantrum. The Nurtured Heart Approach offers helpful guidance on the difference between comforting a sad child and giving attention to a child throwing a tantrum and inadvertently encouraging acting out. Parents provide helpful information about a child’s temperament, while teachers can paint a picture of how to gently move children toward what they will need to be able to manage at the next grade level.

As one wise teacher put it, the partnership between teachers and parents can provide a much-needed equilibrium.

The school is planning a Zoom conference to help parents and teachers work successfully with children’s anxieties and stress. We’ll be sending more information shortly.

Mysteries of the Rock

Just off the Tier 3 driveway, behind a storage shed in a fenced-off area that was once our “Beetopia” garden, lies the largest rock on our campus. Measuring about 18 by 20 inches and 11 inches high, it’s studded with seashells. What is it? How old is it? How did it come to be here?

For answers to these questions, we turned to Ashley Dineen, PhD, who is the senior invertebrate scientist at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology. We sent her the photo above.

The rock, she explains, is sedimentary, meaning it was formed on the earth’s surface (rather than deep within the earth) by deposits of minerals or organic matter that hardened over time.

“The shells are clam, oyster, and pecten (scallop), and probably some gastropods (mollusks), all clumped together in what we call a ‘shell hash,’ which is usually created by very-high-energy marine environments, like large waves or storms.”

How did it come to be on our campus? Ashley says it may have been here all along, having formed when the area was under water, ages ago. “Your piece was very likely part of a small outcropping of this rock near your school that was dug up or destroyed by development in the area. If this is the case, that would likely make it part of the Briones Formation, from the Late Miocene age – roughly 12 million years old.” (By contrast, the first humans, Homo sapiens, appeared about 300,000 years ago.)

For years our students have been excited to discover fossils in the area behind the school that’s now the Seven Circles Garden.

Our rock, Ashley says, “looks similar to what I've seen at Shell Ridge Open Space,” east of Walnut Creek. She sent us this link to share with families who might want to go fossil hunting at Shell Ridge or nearby Lime Ridge.

Years ago the rock was in the yard behind Room 10. We asked current and former staff members and current staff who went to school here if they remember it. Most have only a vague recollection of it or don’t remember it at all, though one recalls trying to pry shells loose. No one we talked to knows why, when, or how it was moved to its current location.

If you’d like to visit our rock with your child after school, you'll find an opening in the fence behind the shed. Please be extra cautious when walking through the parking lot or on the driveway to reach it.

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This interactive map of the globe from DinosaurPictures.org shows what our area – or any area on earth – looked like from 20 million to 750 million years ago. That’s not quite recent enough to show how it looked when our rock was formed, but in geological terms, it’s pretty close!