Verena Dickson - Growing curious, mindful eaters TPPP26
Release Date: 05/15/2020
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’re a parent you will almost certainly have come across plenty of advice about feeding children, some of it from professionals and some from well-meaning family and friends. Some of that advice will probably have been conflicting and your best efforts to follow it may have left you feeling confused, frustrated and guilty. There is no more primal urge than for a parent to want to nourish their child and when that is challenging we can feel anxious and inadequate. Sometimes feelings of hopelessness can lead to us shouting at and nagging our kids with the result that mealtimes can become fraught and tense.
If that is you Verena Dickson has plenty of tips to help change all that. She is a registered nutritionist specialising in child nutrition and is the founder of Kinder Nutrition. Her aim is to dispel some common myths and replace some misplaced practices relating to children’s eating habits so that children develop a natural, relaxed relationship with food.
Verena has a very gentle respectful approach to feeding children that moves away from a coercive model to one based on enthusing children about food and trusting them to take in the nutrients their bodies need. Some of these ideas are very different to how most adults were raised.
Listen to this episode with Verena if you want to learn:
- Why it works to shift away from WHAT kids eat to establishing more positive feeding and behaviour based strategies, to raise curious, mindful eaters. In other words, we need to relax on WHAT foods we provide, while focusing on HOW we feed the family
- Why bribing doesn’t work and in fact any form of pressure, including threats or even over the top praise, backfires
- Why we shouldn’t try to hide vegetables in food
- How it works better to just present healthy foods and let the children decide what and how much to eat
- How it matters that the adults be seen to be enjoying the food themselves
- About the difference in tastes as children mature, particularly bitterness
- About presenting food in many different ways, trying different sauces or different textures, not to disguise the food but to make it taste good
- How difficult it is for parents to move away from the approach to food we were brought up with and how learned behaviours can overwrite our bodies’ natural cues
- About the Division of Responsibility in Feeding and how it works to solve many different kinds of eating challenges
- Why it matters to give children independence about food and make them responsible for what they eat so that they listen to their own fullness and hunger cues
- About the research that shows that children are in fact very good at self-regulating
- How it helps to take longer view of what your child is eating, not just looking at what they eat in one meal
- How to avoid power struggles at the dinner table
- How having regular family meals can make all the difference both to children’s eating habits but for social skills and even academic outcomes
- How getting older kids involved in the planning and cooking process can help them become more interested in food
- How to cultivate a kinder attitude towards bodies, whether our own or anyone else’s, especially in the language we use around food and bodies, focusing more on positive qualities and the body’s functionality than appearance and exposing children to diverse ideas about body types
And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It’s important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some Surprising Uplifting Moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Verena shares what she has appreciated personally about this time in lockdown and the fact that the families she works with have all appreciated having more time to eat together. Verena also shares her top tip for raising happy, confident eaters.
Links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_jmIg4FIDR/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kinder-Nutrition-110986073685384/
You tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwhcGN06vdUAqyUJaD0gZNg
Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kinder-nutrition/