From the Leader of Wellbeing
Children are frequently exposed to distressing news through the 24-hour news cycle and social media. These experiences can provoke anxiety, especially in young minds still forming their worldviews. Parents and caregivers should be mindful of overexposure to such content as it can lead to symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. Children’s responses to trauma can vary, from being strong emotional reactions to being indifferent. It can leave an emotional imprint that can affect a child’s behaviour and perception of danger.
Children need reassurance about their safety as they navigate uncertain times. Tailor conversations to your child’s age and emotional maturity. Younger children benefit from simplified explanations focusing on peace, empathy, and cooperation, whilst older children can delve into historical events, root causes of conflict, and the complexities of international relations.
Before discussing these topics with your child, it is also important to assess your own emotions and comfort level. By staying calm and providing physical comfort will help your child regulate their own emotions. In challenging times, compassionate adults play a crucial role in helping children cope with anxiety and providing hope and understanding in our complex world.
This Special Report provides guidance on how to tackle this difficult topic and helping children understand there is still hope in our complex world.
We hope you take time to reflect on the information offered in this edition of SchoolTV and we always welcome your feedback. If you have any concerns about your daughter, please contact her Tutor Teacher or House Coordinator for further information or seek medical or professional help.
Here is the link to this special on DISCUSSING WAR & CONFLICT edition of SchoolTV: LINK
Each year many parents separate or divorce. Parents often worry about the impacts their separation will have on their children, but most young people adapt well with the support of their parent/s, family and community.
There are many ways parents can help their children adjust, cope with changes and keep thriving.
This resource is for parents who are currently navigating separation or have separated or divorced. It offers information about children’s experiences and reactions to parents’ separation and advice from other parents, health professionals and researchers about ways parents can lessen the impacts of separation on children.
- When parents separate or divorce it can be hard on everyone in the family.
- Most children cope well with the support of their parent/s, family and community.
- There are things you can do to lessen the impacts and help your child adjust to changes.
- Children make meaning of experiences and events around them. When parents tell children what’s going on and can be positive about changes related to separation, it helps children to understand and reduces their worries.
- While we know it can be challenging, how a parent handles separation greatly impacts how well their child manages it – so it’s important to look after yourself too.
- Children adjust better when they have a supportive relationship with their parent/s, and their parents are able to communicate and co-parent positively.
Understanding brain development | Emerging Minds Podcast
A thought provoking podcast on the importance of how we can help young people ‘Build’ their Brains.
What builds a young person’s brain?
- FOUNDATIONS:
- communication
- thinking about things
- making positive decisions
- responding appropriately to experiences
- SLEEP:
- “wake is for teaching and sleep is for learning”
- consolidates memory – orders and sets the learning of the day
- positive sleep hygiene supports
- effective engagement in learning
- Appropriate independent regulation of emotions
- POSITIVE AND CHALLENGING EXPERIENCES
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
- What opportunities do you create, or allow, your daughter to experience that challenges her and develops her brain?
- When have you obstructed her brain development in building resilience through challenges?
Social media offers a skewed view of the world – the view of one’s algorithm. What we are sent, what we search for, what we communicate, who we follow, the language we use, and what we like, is reflected like a mirror in the screen everytime we look at it. This becomes who we are.
I urge you to speak with your daughters, listen to them and find out what they think is funny, who they follow on social media, the amount of people in a chat they are connected to, like to listen to, enjoy doing, like feeling, how they talk about others, especially their friends.
Individuals can be unkind. Encourage and support your daughters to speak respectfully to and about others by living the Christian values or respect and dignity of all.
To be trusted by another is to be valued and loved by another. Support your daughter in developing an awareness that knowledge about someone else is not ‘power’ it is not ‘gossip’. Teach them that:
“Privacy is an inherent human right,
and a requirement for maintaining the
human condition with dignity and respect.”
Bruce Schneier
