Like a Duck to Water

19/09/2022

Book Free Autism/ASD training for parents of children in Year 2-7 on Zoom. We have 19 years of experience, specializing in helping children with Autism/ASD.

16/05/2022

Feelings are like rain - part of the ever-changing weather.

R - recognize. What is this feeling?
A - accept. This feeling is already here.
I - investigate. What is the feeling wanting me to know?
N - non-identification. I can experience a feeling without it defining me.

(P.S. You can buy awesome prints from this artist at https://www.etsy.com/nz/shop/JourneyToWellnessNZ)

27/04/2022

It’s a little different for people that don’t understand love the way some people do. Here’s a few tips that can help

12/09/2021

08/09/2021

A checklist on physical and emotional needs. What are you strong with and what are you lacking in. Personally number 9 for me is lacking because lockdown causes everything to slow down achieving things.

I am sharing TOOLS I LIKE all week. Why? Because I like sharing things I find helpful and useful. There's lots of great free resources out there in the world but if you don't know about them you can end up reinventing the wheel all the time.

This one is an Emotional Needs Audit from the Human Givens Institute. This one is better for use with adolescents and adults because of the language used, but the underlying premise holds true for younger children too.

The big idea here is that when we don't feel well emotionally and are not doing okay it's because we have an unmet emotional need. This tool looks at some different emotional needs that we have as humans to start exploring what might be going wrong.

It can be really helpful because often when people are struggling with the way they feel it can seem completely random so that they don't have a sense of cause and effect, or perhaps the only cause they can find is that there is something fundamentally wrong or faulty with them. This little assessment can be a great way of helping people to see that their feelings DO make sense.

(and it's great to use for a bit of a self-care check-in for practitioners too!)

PDF Link:https://www.hgi.org.uk/sites/default/files/hgi/Emotional-Needs-Audit.pdf

01/09/2021

01/09/2021

✨Every child has the RIGHT to feel whatever they are feeling, whenever they are feeling it ✨

As parents and caregivers our job is to ACCEPT that this is how a child feels at any given time.

🤯This doesn't mean we need to agree, understand or like what they are feeling but accept that in that moment this is what they are feeling.

⛑️Fight the urge to jump in with a 'fix it' statement.
A simple 'that's a really hard emotion to deal with' can do so much more than 'you've nothing to be worrying about'

✨Validating statements allow children to feel heard, seen and listened to ✨

They feel safe to feel and share their emotions which then sets a solid foundation for supporting them in ways to deal with the emotion.

30/08/2021

Friday thoughts

04/08/2021

Not only these things. Grief is messy and unpredictable too.

13/07/2021

Practicing their Jedi skills learnt from Knights of the New Republic Jedi school

13/07/2021

Knights of the New Republic do such amazing work teaching the boys about swinging their lightsabers and how to perform theatre combat. It’s so much fun and looks awesome to do in low light. Hit them up and book in to start your Jedi training and choose your path.

20/06/2021

A quick guide to help build connection between when asking if someone is doing ok.

12/06/2021

Anxiety can be hard to spot for the person that has it let alone anyone that is trying to help them, these are a few things that anxiety can look like.

27/05/2021

This sounds like a really good idea.

16/05/2021

Bringing things down a level when they get bad can be really hard at times. Here’s some techniques that you can use if you need to bring the situation down a level

Via xx ❤️

11/05/2021

A wise person once told me that you cannot pour from an empty cup. Meaning we need to ensure we keep our own mental health in check to be able to help others effectively.
These examples can translate to adults as well as our children and sometimes instead of getting frustrated we need to look at the other persons cup and see if it needs refilling.

Credit: Camhs professionals

09/05/2021

A great video on why we lose control of our emotions and how we can stop this and how we can help our kids manage their emotions. https://youtu.be/3bKuoH8CkFc

Simple, easy-to-understand whiteboard animation to help early Elementary-aged children gain an understanding of the way their brains work to recognize and ma...