We are all aware that anxiety is a growing problem amongst our littlies, our tweens and our teens, and a recent Bristol University Longitudinal study ( ALPSAC) has identified that anxiety amongst our young people, children and teenagers has risen over the past 3 months of the pandemic from 13% to 24% during the crisis. So this podcast helps parents understand it and most importantly gives some top tips re what can be done to manage anxiety, reduce stress and how to respond to it.

Our guest today is Juliet Richards, who has been part of the facilitation team here at The Parent Practice since 2008, after taking our Positive Parenting Course in 2004 and then the Train the Trainer course in 2008. She's also a school governor and is the safeguarding lead in a private girls school in London.

After her training with The Parent Practice, she realised what an impact the techniques and ideas were going to have on her family and others. Creating a positive atmosphere, and seeing how she could help them behave well and find their way in the world, was very different to feeling her responsibility was simply to keep them out of trouble. As her sons have grown, the parenting skills have continued to enable her to feel that she is on the same side as her boys and her and her husband are able to actively pass on the values that they feel are important

She leads our HARMONY AT HOME 6 week course and Zoom webinars on a variety of topics and is an adept facilitator with a clear, empathetic and humorous style.

In this episode we look at how to spot anxiety, how to understand it and most importantly how to teach your children to deal with it

Listen to this episode with Juliet if you want to learn:

• How challenging it is to parent, and how easy it is to feel isolated and scared when you as a parent may be anxious.
• How parents can empower their children by starting to understand themselves and equipping themselves with positive parenting skills
• What anxiety is? What is developmentally normal?
• How to deal with anxiety and know when to intervene and not escalate and catastrophise and heighten the situation.
• The idea that prevention is better than cure
• The importance of modelling and how contagious anxiety is
• How important it is for schools to support parents by delivering parenting workshops on topics such as anxiety
• How our brain works in terms of the 'Worry Brain' and the 'Smart Brain' as defined by Tamar Chansky
• The importance of being an emotion coach for our kids and enabling them to talk to us about their fears and worries
• How useful a worry box can be for children to download their negative thoughts and how to set up chatty time on the sofa as a daily ritual to allow children to worry openly
• The importance of teaching your children calming techniques as part of everyday life

Juliet shares huge vulnerability with one of her low parenting moments where she says to her boys, she no longer wants to be their Mummy and she shares that the greatest gift we can give our children is to look after ourselves and our own happiness.

If you are interested in doing a 6 week Harmony at Home course or a webinar on anxiety or booking a school workshop, check out the links below

Links

Harmony at Home Course and Webinars with The Parent Practice

https://www.theparentpractice.com/events-calendar

School workshop to support parents

https://www.theparentpractice.com/programmes/parenting-workshops-in-schools

Books

Alicia Eaton -First Aid for your Child's Mind

Tamar Chansky - Freeing your Child from Anxiety

Lawrence Cohen - The Opposite of Worry

Resources

Place to be -https://www.place2be.org.uk/

Young Minds - https://youngminds.org.uk/

Child Mind institute -https://childmind.org/

Anxiety UK -https://www.anxietyuk.org.uk/