This week is Children's Mental Health Week, and the theme is 'MY VOICE MATTERS!' How many of our children feel their voice matters? Sadly, I've heard first-hand comments like, "It won't change so what's the point in talking about it."
I've created some prompts to think through as we consider ways to help our children feel heard, seen, safe and empowered.
Listening
I wonder what your listening skills are like?
Often, we listen to respond, this is level-one listening. We are waiting for the gap in conversation to share our thoughts and feelings.
Level two listening is sometimes called active listening when we are curiously holding space for our child to explore their thoughts and feelings without being hurried, judged or interrupted. It's tricky I know!
Level three takes it to another level where we actively use our intuition to hear what is left unsaid.
What type of listening happens most in your house?
I wonder how developing your listening skills this week might impact your child's voice.
What do you need to ensure you can listen effectively?
2. Holding Space
Sometimes, we can shut our children down by jumping into problem-solving mode.
Sometimes, we can be too busy to hold space for the uncomfortable feelings or the messiness as our children process.
When your child brings something to talk about try:
Taking a pause
Instead of jumping in to fix it, let them talk.
Breathe
Often, when our children are talking through challenges it can be triggering for the adults. Breathing helps our nervous system to remember we are safe, there's no emergency and our child needs our calm and curiosity.
Get curious
Asking questions can increase our children's self-awareness and help scaffold our children to find their solutions to a problem.
You might try:
So what does that make you think?
What do you notice?
What have you tried before? What difference did it make?
What ideas do you have?
What might be a good first step?
What would you like to be different?
What help do you need?
How will you know this strategy is working?
3. Tuning into the body, building awareness and emotional literacy.
Our bodies are amazing, one thing they are excellent at is tuning into the environment and communicating this information to the brain.
Due to trauma, poor interoception or busyness there are times we tune out this information stream or can become dissociated from it.
Our unique sensory processing profile means that sometimes those signals get turned up very high and can be overwhelming or others are so faint we barely register.
Both being hyper or hypo-sensitive can cause challenges.
Taking time to tune into what the body is saying can be a really powerful skill as it can be unsettling and confusing to feel unsure or unsafe in our bodies.
How often do you check in with the sensations in your body?
What is different when you approach those sensations with curiosity?
After taking a moment to check in a client noticed, "I'm really tense, quite frustrated and resentful but I'd not even considered how my body felt and what that could reveal. "
Why not check in now
Is there a particular sensation somewhere in your body that you’re aware of?
Can you just sit and be with that sensation?
Can you describe the sensation?
What might it be showing you?
This can be a great first step with children holding space, validating and letting them experience those physical sensations and then trying to link them to words.
Brene Brown talks about the importance of being able to name it, sit with it, validate it and to shift it.
Ask them:
Have you felt like that before?
What helped change the feeling?
Books are another great way to support this curiosity and bodily awareness.
I wonder how bravery, sadness, pride, jealousy or happiness show up in your body?
Have you read some of my favourites?
Milo's Monster by Tom Percival
I am Brave by Carly Hart
Find Your Happy by Emily Coxhead
What would you add to my list?
4. Tuning into the self-talk
When you listen what do you notice about how your child views themselves and the world around them?
We all have a strong judge who will direct his critical gaze on ourselves, others and the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Often, accompanying the judge's criticism are some uncomfortable feelings and one most likely to be lurking is shame.
I wonder how tuning into your own or your child's self-talk could increase their voice, agency and mental well-being.
Judgement and shame hold us captive, but it doesn't have to be like that.
When we spot it, we can illuminate it, look at it objectively, find evidence and see the truth.
Explore the exercise below and try it with your child.
Notice, when you are feeling vulnerable and shame is starting to creep in, what does your self-talk sound like? Write down some of the recurring phrases.
What is the tone of voice?
Where have you heard it before?
There might be different situations or times of day where the judge might appear more frequently.
Then regulate, and ground yourself.
Take a few breaths or tight squeezes and get back into the present.
Stop ruminating about the past or catastrophising the future.
Notice what happens when you pause to regulate and be present.
Finally, speak self-compassionately.
Practice reframing some of the judgemental self-talk.
Instead of, 'I'm always the last. Why do I have a problem with this and no one else does? I'm always going to struggle and will keep failing. I'm just not good enough"
How could you speak more compassionately? "I found that homework hard as I was tired and hungry. My brain struggled to focus but I still managed to complete it. Next time I'm going to make sure I give my brain a break and get a snack before I start."
Notice the impact of speaking compassionately and acknowledging and holding space for the hard parts of the day without shame and judgment.
What is different?
I would love to know what resonates with your experiences. There might be several areas to check out. If there are, why not pick one to start exploring with your child? Which one would have the most impact, try not to do it all at once as it can easily become overwhelming.
If this is something you would like support to navigate, why not explore going deeper with my 6-month coaching package? Invest £900 and receive 12 coaching sessions, tools and email support to help you gain greater awareness of the situation, identify solutions and start taking action. Working together over 6 months enables you to get to the root, trial different approaches and embed and new way to be.
To book a FREE call to find out more get in touch, Jo@TheEarlyYearsCoach.com
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