How the Incredible Years (IY) Child Dinosaur Social, Emotional and Problem Solving Curriculum Prepares Children to Cope with Trauma

Abstract

In this article we will briefly describe the Incredible Years Dina Dinosaur’s Social, Emotional, Academic and Problem Solving Curriculum for Young Children (4-8 years) and how trauma-informed cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements are woven throughout the IY child programs and tailored according to the developmental and cognitive status of young children and their particular experiences. The child dinosaur program (Webster-Stratton 1990) was originally designed for use by therapists as a small group treatment program for children diagnosed with conduct problems and subsequently revised into weekly lesson plans for use by teachers as a prevention classroom-based curriculum. With the help of large child-size puppets, teachers and therapists help children to learn and practice emotion language, to manage their anger, fears, guilt, and depression through self-regulation strategies such as deep breathing, positive self-talk, and positive imagery (happy places), to develop social skills in order to build supportive friendships and to problem solve using prosocial solutions in order to persevere in fact of difficult circumstances (Webster-Stratton and Reid 2005, Webster-Stratton and Reid 2008). When possible, it is recommended that the child dinosaur program be offered in conjunction with the IY parent program so that the emotion communication, problem solving steps, self-regulation methods and resilience coaching used in the child program can be reinforced at home by the parents to help their children cope with a range of emotions in regard to trauma related experiences.

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