In July 60 children aged 10-13 finished the pilot programme of the socio-emotional training for teenagers which is based on positive psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy – SPARK Resilience.
What is SPARK Resilience
The project SPARK Resilience is a programme of 10 lessons for teenagers aged 10-13. The foundations of the course are scientific and evidence based. The programme was developed by the British scholars Ilona Boniwell and Lucy Ryan. It is universal, can be used by participants from different countries. The training has been tested and adapted in various countries.
The materials for the training were provided by the British civil society organization Partnership for Children.
The course contains exercises and techniques on:
- cognitive behavioural therapy;
- positive therapy;
- mindfulness-based psychology.
SPARK Resilience was designed to develop stress resilience of teenagers and teach them stabilization techniques, positively influence their self-esteem and social interaction skills.
Those teenagers who participated in the programme were reported to have their depression levels decreased, while their self-esteem and efficiency improved. So, considering the current conditions for Ukrainian children, SPARK Resilience was selected to teach the children how to be more emotionally resilient.
What SPARK Resilience lessons are
60 teenagers were registered to participate in Smart Osvita’s project. They studied every week in small groups of 12-15 students online. The components of the work with children included:
- working with emotions;
- negative automatic thoughts;
- development of assertive behaviour skills.
The classes were practical, and the students actively participated and completed the tasks. The teenagers really liked the breathing exercises. For example, during mindful thinking, teenagers work with their imagination: they mentally travel to a place and thus learn to stabilize their psycho-emotional condition.
“After the programme the parents have noticed changes in their children’s emotional condition, and say that the child has become less emotionally explosive. We often hear that children prepare to socialize with their peers. This is especially the case for the children who were forced to leave Ukraine or are now making a transition from online learning to onsite learning. The most common requests include: difficulty feeling emotions, difficulty socializing, excessive emotional sensitivity, living through the experience of the war and relocation to another country,” – says the programme psychologist Tetiana Shyriayeva.
During the adaptation of the programme for Ukrainian teenagers, Smart Osvita experts made some additions to the lessons and study materials, namely, they developed complementary guidelines for the parents.
It will enable adults to understand the essence of the programme in which their children participate, and also offers some exercises that could be done at home with the family. Parents can receive these guidelines together with the student’s record book.
“We hoped it would be a good idea to tell the parents about the exercises that we use in class. Moreover, family is a system where the emotional condition of one link has an impact and depends on the condition of another link. That is why in case parents are interested, as this is definitely a beneficial activity, all the family can practise mindfulness techniques,” – says psychologist Tetiana Shyriayeva.
SPARK Resilience does not cover the in-depth work on traumatic experience in a group, although a psychologist is always present at the lesson. Yet, if a child needs to work on difficult life experience, they can have an individual session (face-to-face with an expert).
Development of stress resilience in teenage years is the right strategy for the psychologically healthy coming-of-age process. Currently the experts are finalizing their work with the previous group and are collecting feedback about the course. There are also plans to conduct training in other groups, where we have already received 90 applications.
This material has been prepared especially for the psychological platform Resilience.help.
Resilience.help is a free of charge psychological catalogue platform that combines the best global and national practises of psychological aid to all stakeholders of the educational process and recent training programmes from NGO “Smart Osvita”. Project Resilience.help is created by NGO “Smart Osvita” with the support of the “Renaissance” International Foundation.
