PROJECT: UNDERSTANDING
"Helping children starts with understanding them."
Project: Understanding is Silent Love Protocol’s child- and youth-centered education and outreach pillar.
It was created to help children and teens feel more understood while giving parents, educators, counselors, and helping professionals practical tools for looking beyond behavior and considering what a young person may be carrying, feeling, or trying to communicate.
Project: Understanding may include:
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Age-focused books and student resources
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Social-emotional learning materials
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Social stories
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Coping and grounding tools
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Emotional-awareness activities
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Visual supports and routines
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Resources for educators, families, counselors, FRYSCs, and helping professionals
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School and community resource partnerships
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The Student Voice Contest
Resources by Age
Elementary School
Resources designed to support younger children with emotions, coping, boundaries, communication, grounding, and feeling understood.
Middle School
Resources designed for growing independence, emotional awareness, friendships, boundaries, coping, and self-advocacy.
High School
Resources designed to explore stress, masking, survival responses, overwhelm, identity, self-advocacy, relationships, and the pressures teenagers may carry beneath outward behavior.
Free Educational Resources
Selected Project: Understanding resources are available at no cost for individual educational and supportive use.
These may include:
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Feelings and emotional check-ins
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Coping-skills activities
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Social stories
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Visual supports
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Routine tools
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Conflict and problem-solving resources
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Grounding activities
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Social-emotional learning materials
Many of these materials grew from resources created through real teaching experience and are now being adapted for Project: Understanding.
Student Voice
Project: Understanding also creates opportunities for young people to speak for themselves.
The Student Voice Contest asks:
"What do you wish adults understood better?"
Students are invited to share their perspective through an original social story while retaining ownership of their work.
Schools & Community Partners
Project: Understanding may provide free physical and digital resources to schools, FRYSCs, youth-serving programs, families, and helping professionals as outreach capacity allows.
Understanding should come before judgment.