My child started secondary school. All Summer there's been excitement and countdowns, ending with the normal butterflies in the stomach in the final days of the holidays, before the big moment arrived. I'd prepared her, ironed her uniform, filled her shiny new pencil case with biros and batted away most 'what if' questions like a seasoned parenting pro. But what I wasn't prepared for, was the rearing of all my teenage high school trauma. It hit me out of the blue when tears fell from eyes after a long, overwhelming first day. What she experienced in those first 'rabbit in the headlights' days was normal. No one was mean to her. Nothing terrible happened. She even enjoyed much of it. Her highly sensitive soul simply needed to release built up emotions and process so much change in this huge milestone moment. But suddenly, whilst holding her, I stepped into the shoes of my awkward tween self and was flooded with feelings of self doubt, intense self consciousness and high anxiety. I remember the fear like it was yesterday and my heart broke. I thought it was for her. It wasn't. My heart broke for my teenage self. ​

To be at our best for our children, and support their experiences through their lens takes intuitive reflection and a level of self awareness. When we become emotionally reactive to our children's experiences it's helpful to ask ourselves why and be brave enough to go there. Even just being aware of why is an important and substantial step in itself. So, as I coach her through this challenging rite of passage, I'm also coaching my inner teenage self. These are some of the steps I'm taking:

• Working on some unhelpful beliefs that have popped up during this time and working on my own from that time too. For example, in this current era of my life, I can see that people can't connect with you when you don't believe you are likeable so I'm applying that to my inner teen self . We also work together on being OK with not being everyone's cup of tea.
• Asking my daughter what she needs when she feels overwhelmed with emotion and asking myself too. Acknowledging that much of what I feel in relation to my child's milestone moment is actually about my own experience of that moment (even though it was 30 years ago!) and allowing them to finally be free rather than suppressed, (what I did at the time) helps me to process them so that I'm less triggered when she has challenges.

• Using affirmations. A little self belief goes a long way! We've created affirmations to help both of us feel stronger and grounded. "Difficult moments help me become more resilient."

Finally, I've been reflecting more deeply on how difficult, awkward teen moments, helped me become who I am today so I can be at peace with them. It's a reminder that I don't have to take away my own child's pain as they can serve us in the future. But I can learn from them too and give her more of what she needs to grow from them. Things my tween self needed too. ​

As Maya Angelou says, "When you know better, do better." So it's OK. My early secondary journey felt difficult, but I'm at peace with that because the journey led to here. Today, where I'm parenting differently for my daughter. Where I've been guiding and teaching her for years so that she is far braver, stronger and more resilient than I was at this point in my own life. It led to now, where we're parenting a generation that will know themselves and what to do when challenges arise.

Anger can be productive. It can help us take action but the surge of energy can also be misplaced, especially when we aren't aware of our  triggers or don't understand them. 

We can support our children with anger by knowing what the most common anger triggers are. Taking a pause to assess the circumstances can give you the perspective you need to spot your child's trigger and understand what is charging up their angry energy.  Most common triggers are:

• a negative thought (e.g. I can't do this, everyone thinks I'm rubbish or I never get to do what I want to do). Our natural tendencies to look for the worst case scenario and avoid change can mean our brains filter information and lead to negative thoughts. We can react to these thoughts with anger because they don't feel good! 
• a worry. When the brain is experiencing fear, the flight or fight mode is initiated as a protective mechanism. This can look like anger because of the outward reaction, but internally the primary emotion differs from anger.
• a sense of injustice. Emotional hurt or a sense of wrong doing can trigger an angry response. In this scenario anger can be useful. For example, people who feel angry about animal cruelty can use the emotion to take action and create change. 
• basic requirements need attending to. We need to attend to our basic needs before we can  be emotionally stable or clear in thinking. Imagine brains are built from the bottom up. At the lowest level of the brain, the survival part needs to be fed and rested well to allow us to integrate the other, more complex areas of the brain. 
• a memory. Our brain stores away memories and the emotions attached to them. If a memory is triggered by a similar present moment, we can react to the present situation based on our previous experience. For example, if your child felt embarrassed last time they had to present in class, facing this experience a second time leads to the brain pulling up this memory as a reference for what to do. In this example, embarrassment is perceived as a threat which triggers the fight or flight mode! Even though the second presentation is an entirely new situation and might go brilliantly, the brains natural inclination to search for threat will kick in.

These are all normal reasons for feeling angry! And anger isn't an emotion to bury away completely. We need to feel all emotions. When we know what is triggering the anger, it's easier to find a supportive strategy. For example, if you know your child is angry because they feel a sense of injustice, you can help them take action. Or you can show empathy at the injustice, even if you can't change it.

Teaching our children to recognise anger and how to respond appropriately is key to emotional health, but at a young age they need our help to scaffold this process. Strategies for supporting children with anger include emotional education (teaching them what is happening in the brain), teaching them how to recognise anger before responses become difficult to manage and coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms include calming tools to soothe the nervous system, as well as ways of processing the emotion such as drawing, writing or using up the energy. Finally, connection with your child is a crucial element of support. Showing understanding and empathy calms the nervous system, whilst also developing your bond. Despite the intensity that comes with your child's anger, empathy and connection is a win win and your greatest tool as a parent. 

These questions are super useful during times such as homework stress, school anxiety and friendship issues.

These questions provide a variety of outcomes, such as helping your child identify what the problem is, creative thinking by encouraging problem solving solutions and helping them identify what they would like to feel instead which gives them a focus for moving forward. The questions also support your connection by helping your child feel heard and showing them that you empathise. Together they all help your child move through their emotional brain into their thinking brain, which is key to their overall emotional intelligence development.

We can help our children discover their inner superpowers and see themselves in a positive light. There's a few things that every superhero has: resilience, acceptance of self, a passion or purpose and growth mindset. Here's 6 easy to implement ways you can support your child to find their power within: 

• Embrace their uniqueness! Our children are not mini versions of ourselves. It's important that as parents we shake off expectations of what we would like our children to be and instead focus on helping them be the best version of who they are. This covers several parenting mistakes that come from a good place. First, ignoring or suppressing our child's traits or quirks because we have some discomfort with it. For example, sometimes parents can worry that their child will encounter challenges such as bullying, judgements or labels because of a unique trait, which they want to protect them from in the from. Secondly, deciding on the path our child's life should take can suppress their unique traits. There's a fine line between pushing our kids to be someone that doesn't align with who they are and seeing their potential and encouraging them along. We have life experience that they don't, so there are moments where of course, we have to guide them and set boundaries. But let's do so whilst allowing them to be comfortable with who they are.
• Help them hear their inner voice! As a society, we've become very good at silencing our children's inner voice. Kids seem to be very tuned into their wants and needs at a young age, but often we squeeze this awareness of out them during childhood. We can keep them tuned into their inner voice by recognising what they are feeling and what they desire whilst maintaining boundaries. Look out for what makes your child feel good and point it out them. If you see them in that 'zone', relaxed and at ease with themselves when they are reading, doing art, singing, in a sport etc, make an explicit connection by saying something like, "You look content when you're ...". We can also talk to slightly older children and teens about the things that are important to them and supporting these interests. For example, they may show an interest in climate change or animal conservation which you can support through charitable work, fundraising, learning more as a family etc. 
• Discuss challenges they've face and how they overcame them. Talking about challenging moments allows children to understand that they can do hard things and survive them. This builds confidence. Taking the conversation on to HOW they overcame them enables a deeper understanding of self, and shows your child that they are powerful. For example, this could involve using patience, determination, courage, kindness or communication skills. Children don't always make the link between overcoming a challenge and how they achieved it, but a simple chat about it can help them wire that experience in their brain and encourage a positive belief about themselves.
• Reframe their thoughts. Helping children reframe unhelpful thoughts can really prove to them that they have inner powers they didn't realise were there. This may involve reframing a label they've been given or have given themselves. For example, turning "I'm shy" into "I'm observant and like to listen to others" will be far more beneficial and encourage children to see themselves in a positive way. Not everyone is observant or a good listener, so these are good thing people to have in society! 
• Use affirmations. Powerful statements can support children to believe in themselves and find their confidence. Affirmations counteract the automatic negative thoughts that our brain likes to try and protect us with, but they can keep us small and stop us from being our best selves. Consistently using affirmations is an easy way to build self esteem and positively frame their unique traits as strengths.
• Help your child take responsibility. When we take responsibility for ourselves, we feel strong and empowered. It's the same for our kids. In child appropriate ways, we can help our kids take on responsibilities that help them feel good about themselves. This could includes child friendly  household responsibilities, managing pocket money or supporting them to undertake and complete a project. On an emotional level, we can support them through difficult things, rather than fix or remove,  such as starting a new after school club or speaking in class.  

Enjoy the confidence you see your child find, when you guide them to discover to their inner powers.

4. Be OK with allowing some failure
We've already touched upon overprotection being potentially disempowering, and this one adds to this message. Again, our protective instinct can kick in and we can have a powerful urge to fix things for our kids. This is especially true when we see them hurting. But there is another path that is empowering, as well as supportive. When we see our children fail, we can give them the scaffolding they need to learn how to bounce back from those experiences. This builds resilience, a key trait for overall wellbeing and mental health. We can teach our kids that failing doesn't make them a failure. How much more confident would you have felt if you'd been given this message as a child?!

5. Focus on effort and perseverance
This supports our children in developing a growth mindset. Again, this builds resilience. But having a growth mindset will also mean our kids are accepting of themselves and don't value who they are based on things such as grades. Instead, they value effort and know that they can always improve and learn more. In fact, knowing this means they have increased confidence because they understand the control they have over their ability to achieve. 

ACCEPT ALL FEELINGS
Choose to create a home environment that accepts all feelings. Our children need to know that emotions fluctuate between comfortable ones and uncomfortable ones! Despite being well intended, our approach to our child’s uncomfortable feelings can create a subconscious belief that they should feel happy which in turn can create feelings of shame or guilt around emotions such as anger, sadness, embarrassment etc. There’s an important distinction between accepting behaviour and accepting feelings and it’s important to find the middle ground, so that children understand that happiness is not destination to arrive at. 
 
RESILIENCE 
Resilience is the natural progression from accepting all feelings. If we can support the development of resilience, our children will be able to bounce back from failure, hurt, upset and anything that challenges them. Life isn’t always fair and there are always going to be things that happen that are outside of our control. Being able to ‘brush’ themselves off after a setback is key to building inner contentment. There are several ways to go about supporting resilience including teaching coping strategies, but conversations that develop self-awareness and emotional intelligence are also crucial. Children who know themselves well, understand their likes and dislikes and have a growing knowledge of how the brain works, will feel more empowered.
 
GROWTH MINDSET
Growth Mindset is a resilience building, coping strategy but also a way of living life! If we can support our children to develop a growth mindset, especially in areas of life that challenge them (for example, a school subject they find hard or a hobby they want to make progress with) we can gift them with the attitude they need achieve things that make them feel good, boosting their self-esteem and confidence. 
 
GRATITUDE
There’s been much research into the effect of gratitude, showing that it can change the brain making a more positive mindset. Gratitude practise can become part of your family life, helping your child understand that they can find good things in bad days!
 
KINDNESS
Kindness doesn’t just make other people feel good! Being kind feels good for us to as it leads to the release of chemicals such as oxytocin and dopamine, which contribute to wellbeing. Being kind gives children something to be proud of which contributes to their self-worth. Kindness is a natural default for humans (it’s usually when our thoughts impact our emotions and behaviours that we see unkind behaviour, not an unkind person), so encouraging your child to show kindness promotes happiness. Self-kindness is also important. Being able to forgive themselves, soothe themselves and look after their wellbeing will mean our children will know how to ensure the release of those chemicals for themselves.
 
MINDFULNESS
Our world has become so busy and distracting. Finding mindfulness activities that suit your child (it isn’t all about meditating), will encourage them to be present in the moment and with their thoughts. Mindfulness activities for kids could include nature, body movements such as yoga or activities such as art, craft or colouring. With high levels of screen time, carving out mindful moments has become important. 
 
EXERCISE
As for everyone, exercise supports health and also emotional wellbeing. For children the benefits of exercise include the release of serotonin (one of the brains well-being chemicals), improved mood, improved confidence, increased body positivity and it can break negative thinking through distraction and socialising.
 
SLEEP
Research shows that good sleep has a strong correlation with happiness. Lack of sleep activates the amygdala and impacts regulation skills, which in turn can lead to decreased self-worth because of how they feel about themselves because of the way they behaved, as well as how the consequences of it impact them. A bad night’s sleep can be the start of a vicious circle, where tiredness impacts decision making and impulse control, followed by the forming or consolidation of subconscious beliefs that can be formed by the outcomes of behaviour, such as punishments, tension between them and others etc. Which in turn then leads to a repeat of the cycle. 
 
FOOD
Good nutrition is clearly linked to overall health and increased wellbeing. High sugar diets tend to lead to energy peaks and troughs that can impact children’s mood. Our busy lifestyles can make it easy to slide off track with healthy eating, so it’s helpful to undertake regular check ins to keep your family values for health accountable. 
 
BODY POSTURE
A super simple, but effective technique to shift the way your child feels instantly. Emotion is held physically. We feel it in our bodies, hence the butterflies in our belly when we are nervous or the tight burning in our chest when we are angry etc. If your child is feeling unhappy, unconfident or nervous, get them to hold their head up, push their shoulders back and stand tall. Talk about the small but significant shift in how they feel.
 
 
And a little extra tip … release the idea that your child’s happiness is your responsibility. You don’t have to make your child happy. This means you can release the pressure to take away difficult emotions, or place importance on material things to make them feel better. What is your responsibility is laying the foundations and building the scaffolding which nurtures their emotional intelligence and teaches them to know how to be happy. This is subtly different from their happiness being your responsibility. Our children are small, but they are individuals who will grow up to be living a life beyond us. As our children grow up, our aim is to be able to remove the scaffolding a bit at a time, revealing a stable, resilient and happy person. 

Emotion coaching is process by which we can support our child's emotional intelligence. It's a fabulous parenting tool with proven benefits for emotional health.

Emotion Coaching isn't magic wand! It takes time to see the results and effort from parents to implement. However, working on our personal development and growing as a parent so that we can become our children's emotion coaches brings huge positive outcomes for the whole family. Not only do we heal and become happier, but our children are more likely to be successful, resilient and emotionally intelligent individuals. Furthermore, our connection with our children is stronger and our relationships benefits. 

This week marks Children's Mental Health Week, an awareness week organised by mental health charity Place2be. The theme is Express Yourself, which is such a great theme and easy to explore at home with your own children. Supporting our children to express themselves involves both implementing parenting strategies and developing an awareness around why it's an important area of emotional health.

Emotional Expression is key to emotional health and yet traditionally, children's voices have been quietened when it comes to showing their feelings. Generational patterns have created adults who feel discomfort when confronted with an overwhelmed child, though things are changing rapidly in the modern parenting world. Many of us are more aware of the importance of emotional health and are trying to break those old patterns. But, it's tough. Even though we KNOW emotional expression is important, holding space for it can be HARD! The crucial thing here is to know why it's important, which will support empathy and how to approach it in a balanced way which works for parent as well as child. 

When we allow our children to express themselves emotionally, we support their brains to process emotions, make sense of them and prevent them becoming "stuck" in their feelings. Unprocessed feelings can become suppressed and rear themselves throughout our lives when we are triggered. Ironically, it's those unprocessed and unexpressed feelings from our own childhood (because they were suppressed by parenting approaches) that are triggered by our own children's big emotions and can cause the cycle to repeat.

So, how can we work on making the changes to allow emotional expression? Well, first of all it takes a parenting mindset shift. All feelings are OK. Secondly, it needs a realistic expectation of how emotional expression should look in your household. The younger the child, the more understanding and support they will need around their ability to regulate themselves when expressing their emotions. It also means being kind to yourself; you're human and it won't always be easy to hold space for the big feelings of a dysregulated child! Finally, it takes regular role modelling of emotional expression and implementing activities into your family life that encourage children to creatively express themselves, releasing feelings and promoting communication with you. 

Here's a few ideas  for ways you can encourage your child to express themselves. You can download this prompt sheet for free! Just click on the image.

It's important to recognise that holding space for emotional expression does not mean condoning unacceptable behaviours. Over time you can guide your child to express themselves in healthy ways. These phrases will encourage your child to open up and talk about how they feel:

• Tell me more
• Describe that to me.
• How did that feel?
• What did that make you feel?
• What is your opinion?

We've got some great resources for young children that will encourage them to express themselves and open up conversations about how they feel in our shop. Click here to see our range!

Home schooling our kids during a pandemic. Yeh, that. 
 
Schooling our children at home when it’s not our lifestyle choice is a huge challenge for everyone involved. Teachers, parents and children are all trying to wade through the treacle and find an imperfect way to make this work. We are basically trying to squeeze a square peg through a round hole. Parents aren’t home schooling in the true spirit of home education, because the values that underpin that are entirely different from mainstream education. Parents are effectively a link between teachers and their children, facilitating what the children would be normally be provided with in person. We are basically the hook trying to hold on to the progress our children would be making if the situation was normal. 
 
There are a few key issues that makes this pandemic home schooling situation precarious for families (and I’m not saying it shouldn’t be happening at all, we’ve got a medical system and lives to protect, but just acknowledging the challenge) and why so many parents are finding it overwhelming:

• Parents are not trained in educating children. They don’t know the maths strategies or how to help children develop recall information, word build, spell etc. Sure, they can google this stuff, but for many, that will be the thing that’s added to the to list that breaks the proverbial camel’s back. 
• Children respond differently to teachers than they do to parents. Let’s make this very clear … mainstream educated children are not used to viewing their parents as they do their teachers. So, when we have to suddenly step into this role (within the home, usually a place for relaxation, play etc) this is unsettling for our children. Homes are bordering on battlegrounds at times. How do we motivate our children to stay focused on mainstream education tasks at home and not make it feel like we’ve turned from loving, fuzzy mum into a cold-hearted sentinel? 
• Children are far more likely to express their emotions related to schoolwork at home than they are in school. Frustration boils over regularly, impacting the atmosphere of homes around the country.
• The remote learning set up places pressure, unintentionally, on parents. Younger children especially need so much support and intervention to complete tasks that teachers set or suggest. So, although the worksheets and activity suggestions leave headspace for parents (thank goodness we don’t have to find out what our children should be learning and research ideas), but the implementation takes time, which for working parents means an impossible juggle, and for any parent extreme stress. See above two points! 
• Recreating the school day at home is intense for children. Routines help but strict timetables make home schooling intense for younger children, who are used to interspersing their school tasks with chit chat with their friends. Images of children sat at their laptops completing hours of work, normally expected of teenagers, is heart-breaking to see. Online sessions held with their teacher helps. During my daughter’s daily live lesson the teacher brings children in to interact with the group, albeit one at a time so the call can cope. 
• Parents are now more than their usual, herculean role of parent. They’re also now friend and academic teacher. Parents are dizzy from tall the plate spinning. 

 
So, what’s the solution? Well, I honestly don’t think there is one. The saving grace is that this is temporary. The positive to take is that we are all doing our best. 
 
There are some things though that can help relieve this pressure cooker situation. 

• Choose connection. This time will pass and the progress your child makes academically during this time will never outweigh the impact on your relationship.
• Flexibility. Routine over timetable. Game based learning over worksheets. Changing direction over bulldozing through stress invoking tasks.
• Short, sharp bursts of work. Take regular brain breaks. This doesn’t have to involve leaving the workstation if you think that will mean your child falls off track altogether.  Just a stretch, a pause for a drink of water or a quick self-hand massage will help. 
• Keep expectations for the day on the lower side. Prioritise just a few things for the day.
• Pause all tasks if necessary.
• Permission to home-school imperfectly. Coming out of this still communicating as a family is winning. 

What if the fear of your child lacking self-esteem is leading you to a response that tries to make your child feel OK by telling them they’ve done well, rather than guiding them to discover and believe that themselves? A response that helps you feel better in the moment but doesn’t build foundations of resilience for your child. 
 
It’s easily done. And it ‘feels’ like the right response in the moment. But what if I told you that you didn’t always have to panic respond with a, “but that’s brilliant, darling” when your child clearly doesn’t think it is? How would that feel? Liberating? 
 
We need to accept as mothers, that there will be times our children lack confidence in themselves and that our job is to teach them resilience skills and guide them, not fix it for them. To do this we need to free ourselves from using our children’s emotional ups and downs as a measure of how good a job we are doing. A good mother and a child with emotional struggles are not mutually exclusive. When we instinctively react to smooth the moment over, we're actually reacting to soothe ourselves under the illusion we're helping our children. Like a mama bear in protect mode, hearing negative words that sound destructive and damaging coming from the mouth of someone we love more than life itself, feels like facing our worst nightmares. It hurts. 

Taking a moment to read the situation is a skill, but one we can all learn. And those moments of pause can reduce our parenting anxiety and support our child at the same time. Let me tell you what I mean ...