Child and Educational Psychology Dr Kirstie Rees 'Unfolding Potential'

02/03/2025

WEBINAR: Achieving Balance & Reducing Anxiety in Pupils with SEND

🗓 Wednesday, 26th March 2025
⏰ 12:00 - 1:30 PM
📍 Online – Access available for 2 weeks

Calling all teachers and educators. Sign up got a practical and insightful webinar on supporting the mental health and wellbeing of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

* Discover effective strategies to reduce anxiety and promote balance in pupils of different ages and with a range of needs
* Learn how to tailor approaches to individual needs
* Gain tools from Dr Kirstie's book: The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People with Learning Difficulties: A Guide for Educators
* Access the webinar for 2 weeks
Sign up on the link below:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/achieving-balance-reducing-anxiety-in-pupils-with-send-tickets-1265545052319?aff=oddtdtcreator

23/02/2025

Children and young people with SEND/ASN face more anxiety and stress than their peers.
What can you to reduce feelings of stress?
🪑 Adapt the environment
⭐️ Balance universal approaches with targeted strategies
🧘🏼‍♀️ Provide opportunities for breathing, relaxation and movement (children often need more movement to achieve a sense of balance!)
😊 get t know them well- so that you can work ut what they might find challenging

16/02/2025

Try the Big Feelings Square: ask your child if what they feel is ‘good or bad’ and if they want to ‘move more' or 'move less.’ Linking how they are feeling to their energy level helps them to work out what they can do to feel better.

15/02/2025

I've found it helpful (and quick!) to use it to create Ai images when working with children and young people:
* Storytelling: Helping a child visualise their “grey cloud” thoughts and what helped to blow them away.
*Social stories and cartoons: to help children to process events, and to understand thoughts and feelings
*Generating images to help a children recall activities they have done.
* Creating grounding exercises and safe spaces.
kirstiereespsychology.com

14/01/2025

It can be hard to work out 'what works' when we're trying to support the wellbeing of pupils with learning difficulties. In my book, I have included lots of practical assessment tools and strategies to support the mental health of the children and young people you support. These are all tools you can use in the classroom.

Some of these tools are available to download at the link below;

Link to book:

https://uk.jkp.com/products/the-mental-health-and-wellbeing-of-children-and-young-people-with-learning-difficulties

Resources to download:

https://hachette-extras.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod/44513927889146/download/Rees%209781839975486.pdf

**Webinar on understanding the mental health of children with learning difficulties available in February.**

18/12/2024

What does progress look like for a child with a learning/developmental disability...?
In our society, we tend to think about children’s development as a series of steps – like the rungs on a ladder. We talk about ‘milestones’ they have reached, and their ‘next steps.’
For children with developmental disabilities, progress is unlikely to be linear:
• They may have strengths in some areas and real challenges in others.
• They may have physical or health needs which mean that they have periods of plateau – or even regression.
• they may find it hard to transfer the skills that they have learned from one environment to another.
So how do we work out what progress looks like for a child we support? Start by asking the following questions:
1. How do they communicate their likes and dislikes?
2. What are their strengths, and what motivates them
3. What environments do they enjoy and manage better?
4. Who or what helps them to show their skills?
(We’ll talk about key areas of progress in the next post.)

Practical and supportive guidance for parents & teachers of children with developmental disabilities

24/11/2024

Talking about the mental health of children with learning difficulties and disabilities can be a little overwhelming. 🤔🤨Both terms are used differently in different contexts. My book 📙aims to clarify what we mean by mental health and provides practical tools, strategies and resources 🛠️✅that you can use to support children and young people with a range of needs 🫃🤰🫄🏾👩🏾‍🦽‍➡️, from nursery all the way to the end of secondary school, and in both mainstream and specialist establishments. Would love to hear what you think. 💡You can currently get 20% of my book if you buy through the publishers, Jessica Kingsley. Just add the code: MHLD20 https://uk.jkp.com/products/the-mental-health-and-wellbeing-of-children-and-young-people-with-learning-
Lots of the tools and strategies are also available for free 🤩🌟to download on the following link:
https://hachette-extras.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/prod/44513927889146/download/Rees%209781839975486.pdf

23/11/2024

We talk about children's mental health lots these days- which can be so helpful. ☺️Yet the different terms and diagnoses can be overwhelming too- and a double edged sword. ⚔️It's great that we're so aware of mental health, but at times the ups and downs of life can be pathologised. We're all human and the range of emotions we feel can vary from hour to hour, day to day, month to month. 🎢Sometimes it can be helpful to think of mental health being on a continuum, from chronic and enduring mental health difficulties at one end of the spectrum, to feeling content, engaged and a sense of belonging at the other end. 〰️My job is often to work with families 🧑‍🧒‍🧒, schools 🏫and other organisations to work out where a child is on the mental health continuum, and to explore ways that we can - and the child can- move up or along the continuum. This involves exploring a child's environment and experiences 🏡, their sensory needs 👀👂✋🏼🏃 , their communication and social communication 👭their physical skills 👩🏾‍🦽‍➡️and their strengths ✅ and motivators ✅. This allows us to develop a holistic understanding of their strengths 👍 and needs. What helps you to make sense of a child's mental wellbeing?

13/10/2024