Video Library
Short, expert-led videos exploring child development, brain science, play, connection, and HOPE-informed strategies — organized by theme and ready to share with your team, classroom, or family.
A Way of Being with Children
CEO Renée Layman explains the importance of the child-facing adult's ability to regulate and create safe relationships — and how A Way of Being gives adults the tools to interact differently with a child in the moment.
Brain Science & Regulation
Understanding how the brain responds to stress, how children develop self-regulation, and practical techniques for helping children find calm.
How the Brain Responds to Stress: Hand Brain Model
Learning to self-regulate is a key milestone in child development. Children who have learned to regulate their emotions can better handle and bounce back from adversity — with a higher tolerance to stress and more resilience.
Pizza Breathing: Helping Children Calm Down
When we feel upset, angry, worried, or afraid, we take quick, shallow breaths. By shifting to longer, deeper breaths, we bring calm to our bodies and minds. Even very young children can learn and benefit from deep breathing exercises like Pizza Breathing.
What It Means to Be Emotionally Self-Aware
Emotional self-awareness is the foundation of self-regulation. Understanding our own emotional responses helps us show up more intentionally for the children in our lives.
Impulses and Delayed Gratification
Executive functioning skills like impulse control and delayed gratification develop gradually in young children. Understanding this helps us set realistic expectations and respond with empathy.
Play & Connection
Play is how children learn, heal, and build the relationships that protect them. These videos explore play themes, child-centered techniques, and ways to strengthen the caregiver-child bond.
Putting Children's Play Themes into Action
How to recognize relationship themes in play — connection, trust, approval seeking, and cooperative play — and tailor your responses to validate children and support their emotional growth.
9 Ways to Build Acceptance Relationship Skills
Acceptance is the key to positive relationships. Learn nine strategies: accept the child, suspend judgment, don't assume feelings, allow the child to be the teacher, focus on what is, and believe in the child's potential.
Encouraging Withdrawn Children
Withdrawn, shy, or anxious children are often apprehensive when trying something new. Learn how to create an accepting, warm environment that helps children feel comfortable to challenge their limitations and connect with others.
How to Create a Calm Down Corner
A calm down corner is a designated space designed with the sole intention of being a safe place for children to go when they need to regain emotional and physical control — at home or in the classroom.
Everyday Strategies
Practical, in-the-moment strategies for parents, teachers, and caregivers — from setting effective limits and navigating transitions to helping children make positive choices.
How Attitude Influences Your Response
Attitude governs how we see the world and what we expect of ourselves and others. This video explores how our attitude determines the nature of our response to children.
Using ACT to Help Your Child Make Positive Choices
Help your child make positive choices without yelling or punishment using ACT: Acknowledge the feelings, Communicate the limit, Target an alternative.
Giving Orders vs. Setting Effective Limits
Many of us think we are setting effective limits when we are really giving orders. Reserve orders for when you need immediate action — and use the ACT system for everyday limit setting.
Tips for Helping Children Transition
Change is hard for adults and children alike. Children struggle with transitions because they don't have a concept of time. Ten practical tips for helping children move from one activity or place to another.
Teachers: A Way of Being with Children
A teacher's role is vital to not only academic success, but social-emotional development. Between tasks, demands, and deadlines, this video reminds educators to make time to connect and check in with students.
Navigating the Holiday Season with Children
Holidays can be stressful due to routine changes. Tips include sticking to routines, encouraging structured play and outdoor time, managing balanced diets, and focusing on gratitude and kindness.
How to Get Your Child to Go to Bed
Helpful parenting tips for bedtime: make the bedroom fun with favorite character bed sheets and a night light, create a routine, and address fears of monsters with a creative "monster spray."
Parenting Tips to Mitigate Sibling Rivalry
Sibling rivalry is real and challenging. Tips on setting firm rules with clear expectations, planning ahead to prevent fights, and teaching skills to help children problem-solve and communicate.
Attachment & Development
A parent's love, support, and connection has the most powerful impact on a child's brain development, relationships, and lifelong well-being. These videos explore attachment, secure base, and the building blocks of positive development.
Importance of Parent Attachment
A parent's love, support, and connection has the most powerful impact on a child's brain development, later-in-life relationships, and professional success.
Importance of Secure Attachment: An Overview
An overview of why secure attachment is the launchpad for resilience, empathy, and lifelong well-being — and how caregivers build it through consistent, warm, predictable interactions.
Importance of Secure Attachment: Characteristics
What does secure attachment look like in everyday interactions? Understanding the characteristics helps caregivers recognize and strengthen the bonds that protect children.
Six Core Elements for Positive Development
The six core elements that create positive developmental experiences for a child — building the foundation for healthy growth, resilience, and connection.
How Every Child Can Thrive by Five
Seven-year-old Molly Wright shares research-backed ways parents and caregivers can support healthy brain development — proving a game of peek-a-boo can change the world.
Want to Go Deeper?
Explore our tip sheets, workshops, and the A Way of Being manual — or visit our early childhood campaign for the full multimedia experience.
How You Show Up Matters
Every video, every tip sheet, every strategy on this page exists because of the generosity of people who believe in the power of positive childhood experiences. Your support helps us put these tools in the hands of the parents, teachers, and caregivers who need them most.