Discussions Around the Kitchen Table with South West Family Values: Recent Episodes
Bianca Robbins
Timid to Tiger podcast
From Timid to tiger is a positive parenting-based approach to managing anxiety in children. It is based on evidence that anxious children benefit from a parenting style that is clear, calm and consistent whilst being sympathetic to the symptoms that children feel as a result of anxiety.
Many children struggle to articulate their thoughts, feelings and sensations. It can be very frustrating and exhausting to try to encourage your child to manage their anxiety and the impact this has on family life.
From Timid to Tiger aims to explore the role of anxiety within a family, how it develops and how parents/carers are well placed to support children who frequently feel anxious. The sessions offer practical tips and advice onthings that parents can do to help their child cope with their anxiety and overcome challenges they face.
Aims of this 10-week parenting intervention will be:
Support/develop child’s motivation to address anxiety.
Provide effective techniques to support your child.
Gain knowledge to tolerate and contain your child’s anxiety.
Working with Parents to develop relationships
Understanding anxious child’s behaviours and emotions
Supporting families to find solutions
Our podcast focus this week is on Military families.Whilst doing research for grants and in our daily work we have encountered several families who for a variety of reasons have struggled with issues relating to a member of the family being in the military.When hearing people’s stories, it really brought home the huge impact on family life of either being a current serving member of the armed forces, or being the spouse, partner or child of someone who is.The impact of being ex-military personnel was also another contributing factor to personal and family problems, as many people leaving the forces struggle to adapt to civilian life or may even suffer from post-traumatic stress. As part of our new project to help support military families and raise awareness of these issues, we felt a podcast on the topic would be a good start, and where better to start than hearing from someone who has been there!Earlier in the week Tracey, one of our parent therapists interviewed Rob who is an ex-soldier in the British Army. Tracey has been supporting Rob and his family. Rob bravely agreed to be interviewed for our podcast. Despite equipment failure at the scene we were able to adapt and used the trusty smart phone to capture some of Rob’s story.He talked very frankly to us about leaving the army and the impact of PTSD on him and his family. We would like to thank Rob and his family for agreeing to help us out. We have now put Rob in touch with Combat Stress who provide counselling and support for veterans in various locations. He has found this support helpful and he wants to use this opportunity to tell his story, raise awareness of some of the issues, and perhaps make others in the same situation seek help or speak out.Have a listen as Tracey interviews him at home about his experiences……
Tearing your hair out as your teenager takes you for granted? Wondering where that lovely little child who chatted away all day disappeared to - and how they turned into a large grunting teenager?Mark’s podcast tells you how he brought hope and some useful techniques to parents just like you!Credit: Interviewer: Tracey Brennan, Editor: Craig Brennan-Osment, Music Composer: Mark Kime
There has been much coverage in the media lately regarding CSE (child sexual exploitation) - from the Child Sex Ring in Rochdale, the case of Barry Bennell, ex-football coach at Crew Alexandra and Manchester City to the recent allegations of a grooming gang in Telford - so how can we keep our children safe, recognise when someone is at risk of child sexual exploitation and what can we do about it?
Ann Penwell is the C.S.E. Project Worker (Training) for the ‘Checkpoint’ Children’s Society project. We were delighted that Ann agreed to take part in South West Family Values’ first ever podcast to talk about the difficult subject of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE).
During the podcast Ann gives a definition of CSE. She explains some of the risk indicators, who we can report our concerns to and when this needs to be done.
Around half of the SWFV team have the experience of parenting teenagers, and we found the information Ann gave to be accessible and very helpful and informative.
We hope you enjoy this podcast and watch this space for more in the future and if you would like to suggest a topic that supports parenting please do!