The past 14 months or so have been hard on everyone. For most of us the mantra has been ‘we just have to get through this’ as our lives have been reshaped by multiple losses and worry. Many children have become so used to the lockdown way of life that re-joining their community may be difficult and sometimes scary for them and a fearful world has taken its toll on their confidence and security.

This two hour workshop is not about how awful it has been, it is about how we can now move forward to create or renew a strong sense of family unity and a shared resilience. How can we adults support children to be brave in a scary world? Simply by being brave ourselves – and that means facing up to our fears and working through them not pretending they don’t exist. We all have a unique opportunity to teach children how to overcome worry, anxiety and fear and to move through grief and anger. Learning to talk and to listen isn’t easy when you don’t know how to do it but we can all change when we want to. We’ll explore how to encourage reflection and to help children manage difficult emotions without feeling ashamed of them. We’ll look at how to encourage everyone in a family to accept each other without ‘fixing’ feelings or shouting to be heard in a sea of neediness. We’ll consider what to say and how to manage a child who pretends everything is OK when it clearly isn’t as well as a child who bombards us with their every woe and worry. Emotional resilience grows in an environment where we feel safe from ridicule or having our feelings dismissed – but that doesn’t mean we have the right to expect others to manage them, cope with them or suffer from them. Creating a safe space for all to be themselves, to support each other and to grow in confidence and self -awareness is what a resilient family is all about.

Zoom workshop on Thursday 13th May, from 7.30 – 9.30pm