 Bullying is a topic that has recently been in the news headlines. The Education Review Office published a study in May this year based on evidence gathered from 136 primary, secondary and composite schools in terms 1 and 2 in 2018. The results were sobering with high rates of bullying being reported.
It is key to have a clear and shared understanding of what we are calling bullying. The bullying free NZ website, defines bullying as having four clearly identifiable factors:
https://www.bullyingfree.nz/assets/Uploads/Tackling-Bullying-A-guide-for-parents-and-whanau.pdf If your child comes home from school and talks about either a bullying incident they have seen or themselves experienced the first action should always be to provide empathy and understanding. Once you have assured your child that their emotions and feelings are important and valid it’s helpful to clarify what the incident involved. Did the incident your child is talking about meet the definitions provided above? You could talk through each criterion and consider an alternative explanation if there is one. Young people are learning the skills of managing increasingly complex social interactions and it is easy for them to become unsure or confused about how to proceed. Being clear about the behaviours your child is experiencing at school is the best way to begin to create solutions for managing them.
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 Eye contact can be a feature of social communication. Some people can find this very difficult. The following article suggests that just generally looking at the face of the person you are talking to is an ok substitution for eye contact. Read on for more information.
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/03/07/heres-a-simple-trick-for-anyone-who-finds-eye-contact-too-intense/  Sleep is important to us in terms of our ability to function well while we are awake. More recent studies have confirmed that sleep is a time when our bodies repair and our minds consolidate what we have learned during the day. It is not unusual for me to be asked by parents about how to support their children and young people to establish good sleep habits. I thought I’d write a blog about my top tips for doing this.
Create a consistent daily routine: Actually this starts in the morning. Make sure your child is waking up at the same or similar time each morning. Provide them with plenty of opportunities for exercise and fresh air during the day. Any focused or busy activities such as homework should be completed by the early evening. Provide your child with a predictable bedtime so that they know when they will be going to bed. Create a food and drink plan that supports sleep: Dinner should be finished at least an hour and a half prior to bedtime so that a full tummy won’t keep your child awake. As the evening moves on reduce consumption of liquids so that getting up to go to the toilet isn’t a problem. Create a going to bed routine in the evenings: Soon after dinner homework should be completed if it is not already done. A warm bath or shower and a change of clothes into sleep attire, brushing of teeth and so on will provide cues to everyone that it’s time to wind down and move into a different phase of the day. The warm bath or shower will elevate body temperature in anticipation of a drop of body temperature which signals sleep in our bodies. Following this should be a mixture of quiet and calming activities which could include some TV watching depending on the age of your child. About 30 minutes prior to lights out your child should be in bed and this is a time for a parent to read a story or for older children to read to themselves. Create a bedroom environment that is conducive to sleeping: Cover windows with curtains or blinds that block out as much light as possible. Remove or cover any devices which emit light. You may need to check after lights out as it can be hard to see illuminated buttons or switches during the day time. Ensure that their bedroom is cool and dry. If a room is too hot this will impact sleep quality. This is a personal issue so may require some experimenting with a range of temperatures and bed coverings. Keep bedrooms quiet in the evening. An exception to this might be a white noise creator. Some children find this will help them to fall asleep and may cover other noise which cannot be removed such as traffic noise from a nearby street. My absolute top tip is this - keep devices out of the bedroom, and remove access to them at least 30 minutes prior to getting into bed. The blue light emitted by any device such as a laptop, TV, Ipad or phone stimulates our minds and will slow down the approach to sleep. Additionally the games children play on these devices are often very stimulating and will increase their arousal when they need to be reducing arousal. Older children may need to be able to access their devices to complete homework but parents should have discussions with them about developing good habits in relation to use of devices. Parents will need to model this behaviour themselves in order for their advice to be taken seriously by older children! A website that I often recommend which has a treasure trove of resources to manage and understand anxiety is Hey Sigmund which is run by Karen Young, who is very active in providing support in this area.
https://www.heysigmund.com/ A reminder that everyone has moments of sadness and anxiety.
The link is to a fantastic youtube video that talks about emotions and helps children/young people to understand that mental health is similar to physical health and that everyone experiences difficult emotions at times. There are lots of great ideas for support. This one would be great to watch with your child/young person. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxIDKZHW3-E&w=840&h=473 When children find they are overwhelmed by emotions this poster gives some great ideas for managing them well. This is a great visual for supporting children with self-regulation.
https://3ppsychologies.com/2018/11/08/resource-diary-entry-35-regulation-coping-strategies/  Growth and fixed mindsets seem to be buzz words of the moment. From business to education conversations about mindsets seem to be popular. Carol Dweck is the researcher credited with bringing this new way of thinking about success to our attention. She literally wrote the book on it, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Carol Dweck first published this book in 2006 and updated and republished in 2016. I spent some time this past summer reading Carol’s book and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in finding out more about mindsets. Mindsets are either growth or fixed and most people are a mixture of both growth and fixed mindsets depending on circumstances. A person with a growth mindset is much more likely, according to the research, to be successful and resilient in the long term than a person with a fixed mindset. A person with a growth mindset believes that if they engage with learning and work hard, they can be successful. A person with a growth mindset views mistakes as an opportunity to learn and develop while a fixed mindset person believes that they were born talented and therefore don’t need to work hard to learn.
Some key ideas are:
Check out the link below to view Carol herself speaking about mindsets in a Ted Talk. https://www.ted.com/speakers/carol_dweck  To finish up my series of blogs on anxiety I’ve created a list of tried and true resources for you and your child/young person.
As an educational psychologist, I've used a number of resources to support my work and these are a few that I am happy to recommend. Not every resource will work for every person. If you don’t find it helpful or your child doesn’t seem to benefit from it then try something else.
 What can parents do to help their young people to become better able to manage anxiety? Strategies to support your young person follow:
  Let’s talk about anxiety. Today’s article will discuss the typical experience of anxiety, fear or worry that everyone encounters. If you are concerned that anxiety is more than every day, I have some further information at the end of this article.
First up let’s get our minds into anxiety mode. Think about a near miss situation when you were driving a car. How did you feel during and immediately after this situation? Did you get back in your car the next day? Did anything change in your driving behaviour? Anxiety is something that our thinking mind creates which is reflected in our bodies. From an evolutionary perspective anxiety is a useful adaptation because it helped to keep us safe from sabre tooth tigers and other hazards in the environment. The anxiety helps us to consider, plan and strategize how to keep ourselves safe. In our modern world there are certainly things which anxiety legitimately helps us to negotiate safely. The picture above illustrates the typical pathway for anxious feelings. We start at a baseline of feeling confident and able to manage a situation without concern. Something triggers a rise in anxiety which will reach a natural peak and then begin to subside until we reach baseline again. Problems commonly occur when we interrupt the process of:
When should parents seek professional help for anxiety? · If your child’s worries/anxiety significantly interfere with the child or family daily functioning and routines. · The worries/anxiety are not age appropriate. · The worries/anxiety persist across an extended period (longer than 6 months). Questions to ask about your situation to help decide whether further support is needed. · Is anxiety stopping my child from doing the things they want or need to do? · Do most children of the same age also have the same fear or worry? · How severe is my child’s reaction? (sourced online from the Macquarie university centre for emotional health). Next month I’ll talk about some of the helpful things parents and teachers can do to support young people to manage anxiety. |
AuthorRobyn Stead, Child Psychologist and Educator, lives and works in central Auckland. Archives
May 2019
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