Victoria Bagnall -Executive Functioning - TPPP30
Release Date: 06/12/2020
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_outlineDo 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 executive functions; we need to be able to manage our time, to control our emotions and we have to keep track of our belongings. Just now when everyone has been having to adapt to lockdown and deal with anxiety we’ve had to call on cognitive flexibility and we’ve had to really reign in our limbic systems. We need to slow down and give ourselves a break and let our executive functions help us out.
Victoria Bagnall is an education professional passionate about improving opportunities for people with executive function challenges. She is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Connections in Mind. She has recently launched an online learning platform www.cimlearning.com as part of her EVOLVING MINDS, EVOLVING TIMES initiative.
As a dyslexic Victoria was challenged with her executive functions and so her mission to help with this is a personal one. She trained as a teacher and then in SEN teaching. Victoria is also a mum of 3.
Listen to this episode with Victoria if you want to learn:
- What executive functioning is and how it operates like an air traffic control system for our brains, being responsible for executing tasks all day and controlling our instinctual responses to the world
- What is grit or goal directed persistence or resilience
- How executive functioning can help with organising thoughts on paper and writing essays
- How before neuroscience had really developed in this area deficiencies in output were attributed to character flaws like laziness or not being willing to try
- What are the signs of challenges with executive functioning – eg differences between verbal abilities and what the child can get down on paper
- How academic challenges can really affect a child’s identity
- Where executive function challenges come from and what role environmental factors like sleep, nutrition and stress levels have
- What parents can do to help children with EF challenges like initiating a task and sustaining attention
- Task initiation difficulty can be to do with fear of exposing a lack of ability so parents can help a child feel more relaxed about failures
- What role routines and expectations play
- Being able to sustain attention is to do with motivation and parents can help to motivate their children through breaking tasks down and using rewards and acknowledgments and using praise effectively (see TPP’s module on DP in our positive parenting courses)
- How important it is to give children autonomy in developing EF
Victoria really recommends Smart but Scattered Teens by Richard Guare PhD, Peg Dawson EdD, and Colin Guare.
Victoria finishes with a very profound tip for parents in raising happy and successful children, whether they’ve got EF issues or not. She also shares a Surprising Uplifting Moment with us as she has turned to gardening to cope with the stresses of lockdown and what she has learnt from that.
Links:
New online learning platform www.cimlearning.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/connectionsinmind/
Linked in: www.linkedin.com/company/connections-in-mind-ltd
Have a look at Victoria’s free questionnaire about executive functioning together with some suggestions for what to do about it.
Parents https://su.vc/executivefunction
Children https://s.surveyanyplace.com/dczybljg