Guides for Parents and Carers

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Watch this video to understand why resilience is important to young people’s health:

Building Resilience

Resilience is the ability to overcome adversity, ‘bounce back’ during difficult times and get back to feeling good. It is about having the capacity to adapt to difficult circumstances, and using tools and resources available to do so. The Institute of Health Equity suggests that resilient individuals, families and communities are more able to deal with difficulties and adversities than those with less resilience. Building resilience is fundamental to teenagers becoming happy and functioning adults. Young people who are not resilient will be more likely to respond to stress by developing anxiety and depression.

Evidence suggests that promoting resilience can help young people sustain good relationships, develop personal life skills, overcome challenges, cope in difficult situations and help them to achieve their potential. Human brains develop and change more during the teenage years than most other times in their life. This means that this is a time when there is huge potential for the development of new skills and capabilities.

What you can do

Help your child navigate their ups and downs by encouraging them to carry out resilient behaviours. You can be a building block in helping them build healthy habits, such as looking after their mental health, getting enough sleep, doing exercise, eating healthy food, hobbies, socialising or relaxing.

Staying connected with different people in our lives is the basis for building resilience. Help your child to understand who is in their support network when they face difficult situations. This may be a grandparent, friend, teacher, sibling or sports coach etc.

Encourage your child to make time to build relationships, speak to friends, have fun, take part in hobbies and connect with others regularly.

Encourage your child to build resilience by stepping out of their comfort zone and taking on new opportunities, challenges and goals. This will help them to develop self-respect, be organised, promote positive thinking and to build confidence to deal with different situations.

Growth Mindset

Most of us have a strange relationship with failure as adults, but young people can also find the idea or feeling of failing really difficult to handle. Sometimes their thoughts can become a pattern that holds them back from being able to move forward. You may have heard these kinds of thoughts already:

No one in my family is any good at maths.
My sister is the one who is intelligent, not me.
I can’t do creative things.
I’m not really any good at anything.
I never understand things.

At secondary school, sometimes these thoughts can become more prominent as they are in bigger year groups and are working out who they are. Young people can often adopt something called a ‘fixed mindset’, made famous by the work of Carol Dweck. This is when people put limits on what they can and can’t do, believing that intelligence, amongst other things, is fixed. The opposite is a ‘growth mindset’ and is one of the biggest secrets to success.

What you can do

Your child will be exploring all kinds of different things at secondary school, including studying subjects they haven’t had much exposure to so far in primary school. It is easy for them to give up at the first challenge or to assume “I can’t do this”. At home, it is good to start to slowly change that narrative.

Here are some pointers that may be helpful to use when talking with them:

Ability can change with practice. Your talents, gifts and skills can be developed.
It makes sense to have a go at anything. Putting effort in is the only way to get better at things.
Mistakes happen, they are nothing to be ashamed of and they show you exactly what you don’t know so that you can work on improving your skills.
Feedback is good – you can’t improve without it!
You should welcome new challenges; trying is how you learn. If you don’t get it right first time, try again and again and again.
Discuss with your child how they have achievedgoals before. Ask them to think about what they did and what they could learn about how to achieve success.

(Material adapted from ‘You Are Awesome’ by Matthew Syed)

Helping your child get into good habits

Healthy habits are essential to living a long and happy life, and they are important to instil in children from a young age. If you help your child to form these habits now, you will be giving them the tools to navigate any obstacles they may face as they grow into adulthood.

Research highlights that the late teenage years have been identified as the peak age for exposure to health risks with lifelong implications. The report, by the Association for Young People’s Health (AYPH), revealed teenagers eat eight times the recommended sugar allowance and almost half have tooth decay. This worrying research also found out that most smokers start by the age of 25.

Research reveals that there is a strong link between healthy habits and pupil achievement. Poor health habits add up to poor grades, and research suggests that healthy habits and good health-related decisions can lead to improved academic performance. For instance, research has shown that students who eat breakfast exhibit improved concentration when compared to their peers who skip it.

What you can do

Cultivate healthy habits by being a role model to your child. Try to exhibit good habits, offer health advice and build fun healthy activities into your family life. Examples include being active as a family, having evening and sleep routines, providing a water bottle to encourage hydration, or making family meals together.

Good nutrition can help improve concentration, so pay attention to the food you buy for your family. Provide a healthy balanced diet of meals which include fresh vegetables, fruit, proteins, good fats and whole grains.

Encourage your child to snack on low sugar foods and drinks, which you could make together.

Help and encourage your child to get enough sleep, live a physically active life and feel good about themselves. Work with them to map out their week to include healthy habits such as exercise, relaxation and seeing friends. Set some healthy lifestyle goals together, and keep each other motivated to stay on track.

Transition into Secondary School

The move to secondary school brings lots of change, such as different classrooms, different teachers for each subject, bigger buildings, new travel arrangements, unfamiliar environments and mixing with new pupils. Studies suggest that when pupils are supported well, it increases attendance, academic progress, school engagement, confidence and self-esteem, and decreases symptoms of anxiety. This is good news as you can help with this, and your secondary school staff will be keen to help make this transition as smooth as possible, even in the current situation with COVID-19. Research also suggests that pupils’ concerns about transition to secondary school generally involve issues such as:

Losing old friends.
The size of their new school and getting lost.
Rules, discipline and detention.
Finding their way around.

Research highlights that children who kept the same friend during the transition period between primary to secondary school tend to do better. Supporting and encouraging friendships during the transition period and beyond may help pupils to improve attainment and behaviour.

Research also shows that the transition to secondary school can potentially be as difficult for parents as it is for their children.

What you can do

New experiences, coupled with your feelings about leaving your child in a new place, can be a stressful time in a family’s life. It is normal and acceptable to feel anxious as a parent/carer, but it is important not to pass these feelings on to your child. Support your child and encourage them to keep in touch with their group of friends.

Talk about up and coming change with your child and approach transitions in a positive and exciting way. Help your child express their feelings, worries and emotions about the change and acknowledge their feelings.

Watch the video from Young Minds and discuss its content. It reassures children that they’re not alone when it comes to their worries about secondary school, that there are ways to cope with change and there are people to talk to when things get difficult.