Top tips from Chance UK: Recent Episodes
laura
Chance UK supports children aged 5-13 and families to develop social and emotional skills, building resilience to flourish in a changing world. We want every child to feel happy about themselves, realise their potential and be confident in their ability to build a bright future. We put the child at the centre of what we do and why we work with the child, their family, school and wider community to make sustainable, long lasting impact on their lives.
Being asked to attend a meeting with your child's school or with other professionals who are involved with supporting you and your family can be a little intimidating. It is not unusual to feel a bit worried or anxious about what might happen at the meeting, who is going to be there and what they might say. You might also feel nervous at the thought of talking at the meeting and getting your views and needs across. Many parents and carers feel this way before meetings and so you are certainly not on your own in having thoughts and feelings like this.
In these short session I am going to give you some things to think about and some top tips for getting yourself ready practically and in the right head space mentally so you are well prepared for attending any type of a meeting about your child.
Attending meetings is something we all have to do from time to time and the key to getting the most out of any meeting is to make sure you go into the meeting well prepared. so, if you haven’t already listened to the session around preparing for a meeting then pause this now and go and do that first.
If you have however listened to that session then you are in a good place to now start thinking about the actual meeting in a bit more detail.
Amongst other things this episode will look at how to get your views across in a meeting and how to manage situations where you don't agree with what someone else is saying
In this episode we will build on that theme of self care and encourage you to celebrate the small wins, notice the things you are managing well and shift your focus a bit more on to your accomplishments (no matter how small they are) and away from your perceived failings.
We all take the role of being a parent or carer very seriously but we tend to spend a lot of time convincing ourselves that we are making an terrible job of it all. We are often plagued with feelings of self doubt, guilt and failure. All parents and carers feel like this from time to time and all parents and carers are just out there trying to do their best.
Our brain naturally focuses on negative aspects of our lives and so it is important to practice acknowledging your strengths, achievements, successes, and daily wins, so here is your ten minute long reminder of how to acknowledge and celebrate the small wins.
There is nothing worse than knowing that your child is feeling anxious. As parents and carers we want to do everything in our power to make sure that our children don’t become overwhelmed with anxious thoughts or worries. We want to be able to remove those worries, take away that anxiety and make everything better – but its just not always as easy as that. In this episode I am going to give you some strategies and ideas to think about trying out at home in times when your child is experiencing anxiety or worry and they are becoming very upset or agitated by those thoughts and feelings.
We have all heard about the 5 a day. How important it is to eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day to support our physical wellbeing well what about if we thought about our mental wellbeing in the same way? What about if we committed to finding 5 things a day that we could do for our emotional wellbeing?
In this episode I want to remind you of the importance of self care. I want to gently challenge you to think about how well you are looking after yourself and see if there are any little changes you can make to help ensure you are taking good care of YOUR emotional wellbeing.
In this episode we shall be spending some time focusing on how to navigate a conversation and provide reassurance and support to a child who is feeling worried or anxious. Remember, it is difficult to have a conversation with a very upset and panicked child and the first thing we need to do is calm them down somewhat before we are able to have more of a conversation, so if you haven’t listened to the 'soothing strategies' episode yet then I encourage you to go back and give that one a listen first.
The episode will look at 3 top tips for offering support and help to a worried child -
1. How to offer true empathy
2. The importance of validating and normalising the child's feelings
3. The Miracle Question - a solution focused strategy that can motivate a child to start to think of how they can manage the worry in a different way
Helping our children build resilience and confidence is one of the most important gifts we can give them. Even as loving and caring parents with all the superpowers we have, we can’t fully shelter our children from challenges and hardships that life will inevitably throw at them. One thing we can do however, is help them develop the skills and the resilience to weather the storms of life that will come along. Resilience is about being able to manage stress, challenges, trauma or adversity that life brings and bounce back from it.
This first episode will outline 3 top tips that parents and carers can incorporate into their daily interactions with their children to help raise self esteem and build greater levels of resilience.