From the Deputy Head of Junior School – Wellbeing

Parents – The Friendship Coaches

Recently the Junior School hosted a URSTRONG parent/child workshop was held in the Daphne Line Hall. It was fabulous to see so many of mums and dads as well as MLC girls and siblings come along to learn about the up and downs of friendships. URSTRONG provides families and schools with kid-friendly concepts that help kids establish and maintain healthy relationships, manage conflict with kindness, and increase their overall resilience.

Kids want to “fit in”, feel they belong, and know that their experiences with friendship, their struggles, their drama…is (you guessed it!) NORMAL. Last time I wrote about tricky friendship days because these days will happen and it is a normal part of life – just like we have conflicts at home.

There were a number of take-aways for me from the workshop:

– How to identify a healthy friendship. Use the Friend-o-meter to gauge this.

– Trust and respect are the two most important qualities in friendships.
– How to put out a friendship fire (problems) through the friend-o-cycle.

– How to manage mean on purpose behaviour with a quick come back and reporting to an adult.

MLC Junior School is a URStrong school. This means that not only can the staff access all the online resources, but so can you as parents. Use this link to access the URSTRONG website, sign up for free and make use of the wonderful resources and ideas there.

You will find topics such as:

– Think of yourself as a friendship coach
– Friendship break ups
– Friendship fires and mean on purpose advice
– When to step in and when to step back
– Friendship groups
– Keeping Kids connected
– Sending help from home … and so many more.

I hope you find this very helpful and it will certainly back up what we are teaching the girls at School.

– Joanne Sharpe
Deputy Head of Junior School – Wellbeing