The MentalSpace School Podcast

What is the "3 3 3 rule" for children with anxiety? The 3-3-3 rule is a simple grounding technique. When a child feels anxiety rising, they look around and name 3 things they see, listen for 3 things they hear, and move 3 parts of their body, like wiggling fingers, rolling shoulders, or tapping fee Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #Mental...

How to punish a child with conduct disorder? Tired parents and teachers ask us this all the time, and the honest answer surprises people: punishment alone rarely works. Stricter, louder, longer consequences tend to feed the cycle. What helps is structure the child can count on, plus far more attent Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...

At what age can a child remember trauma? Most children start forming lasting memories they can describe around ages 3 to 4. But trauma can affect a child much earlier than that, even when there's no memory they could put into words. This surprises many parents and teachers, so it's worth explainin Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalS...

What are some common signs of ADHD in children? The most common signs fall into two clusters: trouble sustaining attention, and hyperactive or impulsive behavior. A child might show mostly one, mostly the other, or a mix of both. Picture a composite third grader. Bright, funny, liked by classmates Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool...

How to manage ADHD in a 3 year old? With routines, clear directions, and support for the adults, long before anyone reaches for a label. The guidelines pediatricians use to evaluate ADHD generally start at age 4. A three-year-old who climbs everything and melts down at transitions may simply be thr Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...

How to help a teen with severe depression? Start by taking it seriously and getting a licensed clinician involved quickly. Severe depression is not something a parent or a teacher can manage on love and patience alone, and safety has to come first. If a teen mentions suicide or self-harm, call or t Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...

Educators and parents: some of the most responsible kids in your building are also the most tired. Students who help raise younger siblings often don't think of themselves as caregivers. To them, it's just what the family needs. But the load adds up: early mornings, missed after-school activities, Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalS...

A student with epilepsy can be fully prepared to manage a seizure and still spend every class worrying about having one in front of classmates. That worry is easy to miss. Health plans cover medications, emergency steps, and nurse visits. They don't always cover what it feels like to be the kid who Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpace...

Progress reports went home this week. If things got tense at the kitchen table, you're not alone. Parents, a few ways to make the conversation useful instead of scary: Start with curiosity. Ask 'What do you think happened in this class?' before you share what you think. Find the one fixable thing Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #Men...

What does a school mental health partnership actually change day to day? Fair question, and it deserves a concrete answer rather than a brochure. Here's the honest before-and-after. Before, a counselor identifies a student who needs more support than a school building can provide. She gives the fa Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceS...

There's a word that gets used too easily in school mental health: resistant. A student comes to sessions, answers in three words, doesn't open up. Somewhere along the line that becomes 'not ready for counseling,' and the case quietly closes. But sit with what that student might be carrying into th Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guid...

To the parent who got a call from the school this week and felt your stomach drop: That call is usually not what you think it is. When a counselor reaches out about your child's mood, or attendance, or something a teacher noticed, they are not telling you that you've done something wrong. They're Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #Men...

Most student disclosures don't happen in the counselor's office. They happen to whichever adult the kid decided was safe — the third-period teacher, the coach, the paraprofessional who says good morning every day. That adult usually has about five minutes and no training for this exact moment. So h Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #Mental...

A student loses a parent in September. Week one, the building does everything right — a card, a quiet room, a check-in from the counselor. By week three, everyone has moved on. Except the kid. That gap is where school grief support usually breaks. Not from indifference. From not having a plan past Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool...

There is a note that shows up in student files everywhere: family declined services. Sometimes that is exactly what happened. Often it is shorthand for something more specific that nobody wrote down. A composite example. A family is referred, they go once, and they do not return. The file says dec Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool...

When a parent says no to counseling for their child, they are almost never saying no to counseling. They are saying one of these, and they usually do not say it out loud: What is going in his record? Fair question, and the answer matters. Counseling notes are protected health information. They are Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool...

A crisis plan you have never rehearsed is not a plan. It is a document. Here is the honest test for any school building. A student discloses something serious to a teacher at 10:40 on a Tuesday. Can every adult in your building name, without looking it up, who they contact, who stays with the stude Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...

Parents, let's take the awkward part first: what does this actually cost? When a school counselor suggests counseling for your child, that suggestion usually arrives with no price attached. So most families do the reasonable thing and assume the worst, then quietly let the referral die. We would ra Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpace...

A question for principals: who is holding your holders? In most buildings there is one adult students gravitate to in a crisis. It is rarely the person on the org chart. It is the teacher whose room feels safe, or the paraprofessional who has been there eleven years, or the front office staffer who Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...

Educators, you already know this student. He is not defiant. He is not skipping. He is the one in the nurse's office at 8:15 with a stomachache that is completely gone by 10, three days a week, since the second week of school. School refusal is avoidance driven by distress, and it tends to announc Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceS...

To the principals and assistant principals still in the building tonight: You absorbed a bus incident, a crying first-year teacher, a hard family call, and a district deadline, and you did it without letting any of it show. Then you stayed late because the quiet hour is the only hour. Burnout at y Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool...

A question we get from assistant principals more than any other: what do we do when it happened online, at night, off campus? The honest answer is that the location of the phone is not the location of the harm. A group chat at 11pm becomes a cafeteria at 11am. The building inherits it either way. Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool...

Fall break re-entry has a rhythm to it, and most buildings feel it on day three rather than day one. After a week off, sleep schedules slip, peer groups reshuffle, and academic demand comes back all at once. In a real school that shows up as clinic visits for stomachaches with no clear cause, tardi Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...

Two-a-days are underway. Something else started at the same time, and nobody's charting it. Fall sports stack a lot onto one teenager: a body that's constantly sore, a coach's approval that starts to feel like identity, a roster spot that never feels secure, and six hours of practice on top of a fu Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #M...

How many students in your building are on their sixth school? Near a Georgia installation, the number is usually higher than staff expect. Military-connected students move on orders, not on the academic calendar. They arrive in November, in February, sometimes the week before state testing. Every m Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchoo...