The Upsides of Enforced Slowness in Lockdown with Carl Honoré TPPP36
The Parent Practice Podcast
If you’re feeling really over the whole pandemic thing this episode will lift your spirits. The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly changed our lives. We’ve been forced to accept changes to the way we live in order to try to control the disease, some of which have been inconvenient, to say the least. Some families have found the enforced lockdown extremely difficult and for some isolation has really affected their mental wellbeing. But it hasn’t been all bad. Carl Honoré has written extensively about the benefits of slowing down –he calls it embracing our ‘inner tortoise’ - and...
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Juliet Richards - Navigating Anxiety TPPP35
The Parent Practice Podcast
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...
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Louise Treherne - Helping Children Cope with the Return to School TPPP34
The Parent Practice Podcast
Some of you will have children who have already returned to school, albeit part time, and some of you will have children who will be returning for the first time in September, so this episode has relevance for everybody whatever transition you are going through. Some children are terribly excited about going back and some are quite apprehensive. And parents may have mixed feelings too. Our guest today is Louise Treherne who is Head of Character Education at ‘Role Models’, an organisation which supports children to be resilient and creative problem solvers. Louise has a degree in...
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Michele Borba - Raising empathetic children in an all-about-me world TPPP33
The Parent Practice Podcast
There is no doubt that in this era of the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a huge amount of uncertainty and with that some anxiety. You may be feeling some anxiety yourself and perhaps your children are too. Well, the antidote to stress is empathy and our guest today has many, many ideas about how you can build empathy in your children. Dr. Michele Borba is an educational psychologist and former classroom teacher who is recognised globally as a parenting, bullying and character expert whose aim is to strengthen children’s empathy and resilience, and break the cycle of youth violence. She is...
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Alex Webb - Understanding self for future happiness and success TPPP32
The Parent Practice Podcast
Alex Webb is an experienced coach and facilitator, working with young people on an individual basis and in teams to become resilient leaders. Alex focuses on behaviour change, self-awareness and the understanding of self. Her belief is that if you understand yourself, you can then understand others, allowing you to adapt your behaviour to improve relationships. Her business is called Flying Start and she has been working with The Princes Trust to help young adults with leadership skills and confidence in their Future Leaders Programme. They help young people understand the future of work and...
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Dr Laura Markham -We need to talk about racism - TPPP31
The Parent Practice Podcast
You may have been provoked by the recent death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minnesota or by similar events in the UK and Australia, and elsewhere, to think really hard about racism. Were you galvanised into taking part in a protest against racism and against police brutality? Are you wondering how to bring up your children not only to not be racist themselves but to be outraged by discrimination on the basis of skin colour and to speak out against it? If you want to raise children who are going to be kinder, more tolerant adults who will create a better future for...
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Victoria Bagnall -Executive Functioning - TPPP30
The Parent Practice Podcast
Do you have a child for whom there is a disconnect between level of intelligence and academic performance? Do you have a teen who has issues with time management, who can’t get up in the morning? Maybe you’ve even got a young adult who is struggling now that the scaffolding of school has been taken away and they’re trying to manage on their own at university. Do you have a child with a diagnosis of ADD or ADHD or any other neurodiverse condition? Chances are he has executive function challenges. To function in the 21st century with everything we’re juggling we need to have finely tuned...
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Pam Custers - The Primary Relationship is with the Parents not the Children TPPP29
The Parent Practice Podcast
Conflict is normal in a healthy relationship, and relationships have definitely been feeling the strain in lockdown as we’re in each other’s company 24/7 and the division of responsibility in the family around childcare, supervision of schoolwork and domestic duties becomes strained. Parents are used to putting the children first but our guest today believes that the primary relationship is between the adults. The couple relationship can get lost if parents become a child-rearing unit. This episode looks at how we can communicate our needs in an effective way, Pam Custers is an experienced...
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Elizabeth Fletcher - Parenting Apart in Lockdown TPPP28
The Parent Practice Podcast
Right now every couple relationship is being stress-tested. Being forced into close proximity with your other half 24/7 and with other possible anxieties around work and finances and child care and education and concerns about your own and others’ health may mean that cracks are developing. If your relationship was already under strain before the arrival of this coronavirus it may have reached breaking point now. If you’re listening to this particular episode presumably you have an interest in helping children deal with the breakdown of a relationship, whether that is something that...
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Sharon Charlton-Thomson - Radical Self care for the real world we live in TPPP27
The Parent Practice Podcast
Those of us working in the coaching space right now know that many parents are feeling overwhelmed, stressed and depleted as our expectations of ourselves are through the roof. We’re supervising learning at home and many of us are working from home too; we’re getting the kids off electronic devices and coaxing them to take some exercise; we’re sorting out sibling squabbles and getting them to make their beds and put their clothes in the laundry basket, while also cleaning, shopping and cooking, all in closer proximity to our partners than usual. Never before has the phrase “For better,...
info_outlineIf you are a parent of a child who is differently wired, whether of an intense temperament and more emotional than other kids, or is neurologically atypical, you will want to listen to this episode. If your child is in an environment where he or she gets into trouble a lot and feels as if they are a bad person or if you feel that you are failing as a parent the wisdom contained in this conversation between Elaine and Debbie Reber is just what you need. When Elaine’s book My Child’s Different came out we wondered if it was a bit niche but at The Parent Practice we have been amazed at just how commonplace Elaine’s son’s experiences were. (I don’t know why we were surprised since each of the facilitators on the TPP team has a child who has been labelled ‘atypical’ – not that atypical then!)
Debbie is a parenting activist and the author of DIFFERENTLY WIRED: Raising an Extraordinary Child in a Conventional World (2018), amongst other books, and she’s a mother to a son who has been diagnosed with ADHD and being on the autistic spectrum and is also highly gifted. She founded TiLT Parenting in 2016 as a podcast and online community aimed at helping parents raise differently-wired kids with confidence, connection, and joy. Debbie is passionate about the idea that being differently wired isn’t a deficit —it’s a difference. She hopes to change the way difference is perceived and experienced in the world so that these exceptional young people and their parents, can thrive.
Listen to this episode with Debbie Reber if you want to learn:
- That you are not crazy for thinking that there is something different about your child
- How to accept the child you’ve got, understanding their temperament, getting fluent in the language of that child and adapting our responses to help to unlock their potential (see module 3 of our positive parenting course and module 6 of our online course)
- How to reframe what appears as ‘difficult’ behaviour as a child whose needs are not being met and who may be highly stressed (we look at this in our modules on temperament and positive discipline and in our Calmer Parent workshop)
- How big changes can open up big possibilities
- Whether home-schooling is an option for your family
- About the possibilities and limits of diagnoses
- About the toll on a couple relationship of living with a child with different needs, the different ways individuals deal with the stresses involved and how you can resolve underlying resentments
- How to recognise your own parenting style which will be exacerbated in dealing with a child with different needs
- About various therapies or activities which can make a real difference
- How to plan for potentially stressful situations and tune out the judgments of bystanders to focus on getting the child back to calm
- About the techniques that Debbie learnt to get herself and her child to calm down
- How ‘tilting’ helps us to shift our thinking and challenge our beliefs about raising differently wired children including respecting the individual child’s timeline of development
- How important it is to find ‘your people’ who allow you to parent authentically and lovingly and ditch the rest
- Why self-care for parents of differently wired kids is not optional or indulgent and can be redefined in ways that make it easier to achieve
In our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Debbie shares with us a Low Parenting Moment of her own. Like Debbie we encourage you to ‘shed the should’s’ if you find yourself losing it and saying the things you know don’t help but you can’t stop yourself. She gives a great example of how to repair when things go wrong which is such great modelling for our kids.
And Debbie also shares her top tip for raising children to be confident, happy and successful.
Links
To get in touch with Debbie:
https://www.facebook.com/tiltparenting/
https://twitter.com/DebbieReber