You may have noticed that Chatterbox, my eldest, can be a little bit of an anxious child. Night-time seems to be when her worries come out the most; it’s when I process what has happened during the day and she is no different. Our resident parenting coach has offered some assistance on what to do if you have a worried child this week already. However, I came across a resource, which gave me an idea for something else that might work too…
Personalised posters to help you to give those worries form, and make them take flight.
Vertbaudet have a FREE resource that lets you create your own personalised posters using a number of different standard designs for your kids. Of course, you don’t have to create an anti-worry poster; that is just for my child, and their little nuances. There are five different designs which are all co-ordinated with the Vertbaudet butterfly collection.
You can choose your design, add your child’s name and birth date and a short, 25 character message on the personalised posters; just enough for my “Make Your Worries Fly” personal mantra for my daughter.
She now has this lovely poster on her wall, just by her bed. Every night she goes to sleep, she can see those little worries of hers flying away in the form of beautiful butterflies. She tells her butterflies the worries, and they just carry them off. The poster can also become a focus for you to chat about those worries, so that you can rationalise them more easily with your child. What is the main worry your child has? Why do they feel like that? What can we do to reassure them, or remove that worry.
For some reason, we have had a lot of concerns over people breaking into our house in the last few months. Undoubtedly cause by the increased awareness from an eight-year old that not everyone is a nice person. We have talked about why she thinks that might happen, what we can do to help her get over this, and most importantly, just cuddled to make her feel safe.
Visualising and talking through a child’s worries is a great way for children to be able to get those worries under control. Even to feel that they HAVE control of those fears and anxieties, making them less frightening, an overall, less, erm, worrying ;-).
These butterflies have given us a perfect solution to helping her visualise those worries; and keep them under control.
Do you think that this might work for your child? Why not give it a go?
This is a collaborative post with Vertbaudet.
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine! Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania. Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on. Get in touch TODAY!
monica wood
Friday 12th of February 2016
Hi every one... This is very informative article.I also would like to share my experience with my children.
1 Encourage your child to face his/her fears, not run away from them. When we are afraid of situations we avoid them. However, avoidance of anxiety-provoking situations maintains the anxiety. Instead, if a child faces his or her fears, the child will learn that the anxiety reduces naturally on its own over time. The body cannot remain anxious for a very long period of time so there is a system in the body that calms the body down. Usually your anxiety will reduce within 20-45 minutes if you stay in the anxiety-provoking situation.
2) Tell your child that it is okay to be imperfect.
Often we feel that it is necessary for our children to succeed in sports, school, and performance situations. But sometimes we forget that kids need to be kids. School becomes driven by grades, not by enjoyment of learning if an 85 is good, but not good enough.This is not to say that striving is not important.It is important to encourage your child to work hard but equally important to accept and embrace your child's mistakes.
You can also take the help from midwives . They also provide parental sessions and tech how to handle your children in a proper way.