And would you like to do all of that from the convenience of your own home with a Skype call (there’s no cost for the call) which means that everyone can talk as though they are in the next room?  Or perhaps both parents would also like to be part of the consultation with a series of weekly consultations to provide support to your child and to celebrate their gains and new skills – easy to organize.

Because all of that is now possible – thanks to the wonderful world of technology that we live in – and it means that without having to negotiate traffic, find parking and take your child out of school or squeeze in a consultation before after school activities, I can schedule a time – at your convenience – including Saturdays and evenings – and all of that for approximately 50% less than the fee charged by a health professional consulting from an office.

Sound too good to be true?  Well not so long ago, we would have said ‘Absolutely!’  But now such convenience is inside your own home – which is only fair that kids and parents are able to share in something that makes life easier.

So this is how the Skype or telephone consultations work:

• You contact Helen Davidson through the website (this new page is currently under construction – and will be available within 7-10 working days)
• You nominate a consultation time that is convenient for you and your family – using either Skype or the telephone
• Consultation times available will include after school, evenings and Saturdays
• If you don’t have Skype, this can be downloaded for free – and I gaurantee you it is NOT complicated.  If you would prefer a phone consultation, that is fine too
• To pay for the consultation you choose the time frame you wish to book – 30, 45 or 60 minutes or a package of 6 sessions at a 10% discount
• You add the consultation package to your Shopping Cart and send directly to Helen Davidson
• And that’s your part of the organizing finished
• We then link up – and your help and support begins

Fees:  

• 30 minute consultation                          $ 60.00
• 45 minutes                                           $ 90.00
• 60 minutes                                           $120.00
• Series of 6 consultations                     10% discount

Payment is by PayPal or internet banking.  If you would prefer to submit your credit card details without going through PayPal, please advise of this in your contact, and we will call you to arrange

Please be advised that Skype or telephone consultations are not eligible for private Health Fund rebates

If you would like notification of when this unique consultation service becomes available, please send an email to admin@kidzmix.com or click here to contact us

I look forward to talking soon and beginning the path to helping you build skills and positive mental health and happiness for your child.

There are 5 pillars of social and emotional competence:

• Self-awareness: Understanding your own emotions
• Other-awareness: Understanding how others feel – even when different from yourself
• Emotional self-management: Managing your emotions so that positive rather than destructive outcomes occur – particularly in relationships
• Self-direction: Having the initiative and motivation to pursue goals that bring positive outcomes
• Optimism: Developing a life philosophy that is based on hope (“I can”) rather than pessimism (“I can’t, and never will be able to”)

How Does Social and Emotional Competence Develop?

One of the key factors in developing social and emotional competence is being able to manage emotions – those powerful driving forces that every day shape our responses to a multitude of events; those feelings which determine our moods and shape how we express our personality.  Like any driving force, however, emotions require management and direction, which may sometimes mean applying the brake, at other times the accelerator, or perhaps taking a total change of direction altogether. The best person to give this emotional direction, is  the ‘owner’ of the emotions, but as everyone has experienced, it isn’t always that simple.

 Managing or regulating our emotions is not a skill we are born with – it takes years to develop – beginning with the myriad of daily interactions an infant has with parents and caregivers; by being soothed when upset, motivated when lethargic; calmed when excited and reassured when anxious.     

On each occasion that an adult calms a child with touch, reassures with soothing words, empathizes with understanding, or motivates with their own energy, the adult is teaching emotional self-regulation.  They are showing the child that emotions wax and wane; that it is possible to recover from feeling distressed or to generate some energy even when tired, and most importantly, the adult is demonstrating that it is the individual who needs to take ownership of that process. 

The ability to self-regulate emotions is one of the cornerstones of emotional competence and positive mental health, and it is adults who play the biggest role in helping a child to develop it.

Why is there an emphasis today on the early development of social and emotional competence?

A child with well developed social and emotional skills is more likely to experience positive mental health throughout childhood and beyond.  Relationships will also be more satisfying and their potential for academic achievement greater, in contrast to the child who is frequently caught up in peer conflict or returns from the playground emotionally upset.  Simply put, a brain that is emotionally stirred up, can’t soak up.Social and emotional competence means having the skills to:

• Share
• Co-operate 
• Regulate emotions
• Have empathy for others
• Resist impulsive behaviour
• Form positive peer relationships

The 5 Pillars of Social and Emotional Competence:

• Self-awareness
• Other-awareness
• Emotional self-management
• Self-direction
• Optimism

As children mature and are able to hold increasingly sophisticated conversations, our relationships with them will be enriched and deepened through shared knowledge of each other.  But those opportunities for such conversations don’t necessarily come up every day; they may need your planned efforts and commitment to bring them about.

Here are 10 questions to ask your child about themselves, that will lead to deeper and more intimate conversations: 

1.   Do you have a goal for yourself this year; something that you would like to achieve or learn?

2.   When you have achieved that goal, how will it make a difference to your life?

3.   What can I do to help you achieve that?

4.   What have been 3 times this week when you’ve felt happy?

5.   What about when you’ve felt unhappy?

6.   How do you think you are I get along with each other?

7.   What do you think we could do to improve our relationship?

8.   How do you think you’re getting along with other kids at school?

9.   Is there something that you would like me to teach you?

10.  Do you like us having these conversations?  Why, why not?

Hearing The Answers:

But asking the questions of course, is only part of the process; hearing the answers – and trying to understand them – is even more important.  Being able to listen with ‘your third ear’ or listening ‘with your heart’ is one way of describing this process, and it’s a skill common to good counsellors and therapists.  Because this form of listening is more than hearing, it’s communicating to the other person that the facts and also their emotions and beliefs about those facts, have been heard;  it’s trying to understand, to place yourself inside the shoes of the other. 

The opposite of listening with your ‘third ear’ is preparing your response whilst the person is still talking; having an attitude of ‘I already know this’; being impatient for the person to get to the point and finding fault with how they are expressing themself.  And of course, you might not agree with the answers, which means that your first response is to disagree and point out what you see as where they’ve made a misjudgement or mistake.   For many parents this can be difficult, to hold their judgement and truly stay with the moment and truly hear what the child is saying.  But like many interpersonal skills, it is something that can be learned with practise, practise and practise.  And it will be worth it, because the enriching of your relationship with your child will have outcomes for ever.

So take the time to create that connection, to make a conscious effort to deepen and enrich your relationship with your children using real conversations that place them at the centre of your interest – whether they’re aged six, sixteen or twenty-six; don’t leave it up to chance, because the chances are that it might not happen - or not as frequently as both of you would like, or benefit from.  

 And above all, don’t forget that asking the questions is only a small part of the exercise – hearing the answers by truly listening - is what  makes a true conversation and connection.  Make a promise to your child at the beginning that you will truly hear what they have to say, and tell them, “Even if I don’t agree with your answer, I’m going to listen and really try to understand what you’re saying”.   And don’t be afraid to use reflective listening – where you reflect back what you think your child is saying and feeling.  Start with a comment like: “I think you’re saying that you wish we spent more time together when we were just trying to have fun and to enjoy each other’s company, and that sometimes you feel a bit lonely in the family?”

Here’s 10 questions that will help you to begin a conversation with your child that will perhaps take you to a place that you may not have ever reached, unless you’d purposefully spent the time to enquire.

1.  What is the thing you like most about our family?

2. What is something that you would like to change about our family?

3.  If our family had a motto, what would you like it to be?

4.  Who do you think you get on best with in our family?

5.  Who would you like to get on better with in our family?

6.  What’s been the happiest time you’ve spent with the family?

7.  What do you think other people say about our family?

8.  What do you think our family could do more of, or less of?

9.  What would you like other people to remember about our family?

10. What’s been the biggest achievement of our family?

Hearing The Answers:

But asking the questions of course, is only part of the process; hearing the answers – and trying to understand them – is even more important.  Being able to listen with ‘your third ear’ or listening ‘with your heart’ is one way of describing this process, and it’s a skill common to good counsellors and therapists.  Because this form of listening is more than hearing, it’s communicating to the other person that the facts and also their emotions and beliefs about those facts, have been heard;  it’s trying to understand, to place yourself inside the shoes of the other. 

The opposite of listening with your ‘third ear’ is preparing your response whilst the person is still talking; having an attitude of ‘I already know this’; being impatient for the person to get to the point and finding fault with how they are expressing themself.  And of course, you might not agree with the answers, which means that your first response is to disagree and point out what you see as where they’ve made a misjudgement or mistake.   For many parents this can be difficult, to hold their judgement and truly stay with the moment and truly hear what the child is saying.  But like many interpersonal skills, it is something that can be learned with practise, practise and practise.  And it will be worth it, because the enriching of your relationship with your child will have outcomes for ever.

So get asking – and listening – and you will find that new avenues open up between you and your child.

Coach your child to respond in a loud voice, with a smile and confident body language with comments such as:

“If you change your mind, I’ll be over there”

“Have fun, ciao for now”

“Too bad, it looks so much fun”

And then look for someone else who might want to play a game.

What To Do If The Kids Say ‘No!’ is Skill 3 in Helen Davidson’s book The 4th ‘R’ Relationships As Important As Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, a self-help manual for children and parents about the 13 essential social and emotional skills every child needs to develop psychological resilience and to not only survive the playground, but thrive in it.  To read more about The 4th ‘R’ click here. 

The standard question most children ask is: ‘Can I play?’ which, let’s face it, is pretty boring, and certainly does little to promote the child as being a potentially fun and interesting play mate.  To help your child feel more confident about asking to join in, do some role plays and suggest they ask the following questions:

• ‘Hey that looks fun, any room for me?’
• ‘Do you need anyone else to be part of that game?’
• ‘That game looks great; can you teach me?’
• ‘If you teach me that game, can I show you a great one I know?’
• ‘If you need any more players for that game, can you let me know?’

Body language is also important, so coach your child to stand tall; hands by their side and use a loud-enough voice with a big smile – because that makes them look energetic, enthusiastic, confident and fun – the ideal playmate.  Do some role plays of joining in with your child and include other family members to give it more of a ’playground feel’.   Role plays don’t need to be more than 5 minutes, but it’s a 5 minute skill practise that really can make a difference on the playground.

How To Join In is Skill 2 in Helen Davidson’s soon to be published book The 4th ‘R’- Relationships, As Important as Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.  This supremely practical children’s and parent’s self help manual about helping develop social and emotional competence will be available for purchase in June 2011. Contact us to pre-order.

The next Kidzmix program is schedule for the April school holidays and details can be found on the website.

For those parents who are seeing their first child off to school, it probably represents the biggest life transition for the family since that new baby spent the first day under the new family roof, and it’s the rare parent who doesn’t deliver their child to the school or wave them off at the gate without a thought to the past and how those days have somehow flown by.

Interestingly, the question that most parents want to ask their child who returns from school on that first day, is not about what they learned in the classroom or whether their printing is somehow neater,  but rather what they did on the playground; who were their playmates and did the other kids seem nice.  Because these matters are at the core of most parents concerns – to know that their child fitted in; that someone wanted them for a friend; that they were invited into games -and that they had fun.  And most kids will have those experiences, but of course, the playground won’t always go smoothly and there’ll be lots of ups and downs – of misunderstandings, rivalry, churlish behaviour when games are lost; cheating at the rules; making fun of someone’s lack of ball skills; getting annoyed at the kid who always drops the ball.  The playground: it’s a huge learning curve in itself – some call it a ‘jungle’.  I like Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher’s comment : I pay the schoolmaster but it is the boys on the school playground who educate my son.  How true.  Food for thought. 

So what will you be asking your child about their first weeks at school?

• Increase mental health funding for children 0-12 years
• Invest in prevention and intervention early in life
• Establish Kids Life Centres

And the goal is very clear: To give Australian children a better start in life by ensuring access to mental health services from early childhood.

As Professor Louise Newsman, Convenor of the Children’s Mental Health Coalition and President of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists says in the report, “We know that on average 20% of kids in modern societies experience mental health problems and 9% of Australian children have long term mental health problems.  However, less than 9% of mental health funding is spent on childhood mental illness, even though 0 to 14 year olds represent 19% of the population and 50% of mental illness start before the age of 14.” 

Professor Newman continues:

“One of the weakest aspects of mental health funding is currently in infants and childhood.  It is vital that we intervene early in life and have targeted mental health services available specifically for infants and children, as well as adolescents.  Investment in prevention and early intervention for children’s mental health will produce an economic dividend through reduced pressure on justice, hospital and child protection services. 

Many mental conditions that start in childhood, such as autism, attachment disorders, ADHD, conduct disorders and anxiety disorders have affects into youth and adulthood.  Up to 30% of the burden of adult mental health problems are related to adverse early experiences in childhood including child abuse and neglect”.

Professor Newman proposes that the funding for children aged 0 to 12 years is increased to 15% of the mental health budget as prevention and intervention early in life can address risk factors more effectively and reduces the adverse impact on children’s development.  Untreated mental illness in infancy, childhood or adolescence can have lifelong consequences that lead to reduced educational and occupational opportunities, increased risk of substance abuse and other mental disorders as well as increased family conflict, breakdown and homelessness.

A copy of the report is available at: http://ranzcp.org/images/storeis/ranzcp-attachments/Home/Our children our future final.pdf

Kidzmix proudly acknowledges that since 1995 we have been continuing to develop a mental health therapy service for children aged 4 to 12 years from which over 2,000 children have benefited.  Kidzmix was one of the pioneer programs in Western Australia and in fact nationwide, to recognize the mental health benefits of providing group programs that helped children develop their social and emotional skills and hence their psychological resilience.

We look forward to the re-launch of the Kidzmix programs and associated parent seminars in 2011.

Spot on

I like it

Super stuff

Really great

What a good try

Brilliant

Clever (boy/girl)

I’m impressed

What a brainwave

You do work well

Very imaginative

Nice try

That’s good work

Superb

Well remembered

Good logic

Excellent work

Good thinking

You’re a star

You are doing well

Great try

Quick thinking

Well done

Well figured out

I like that

Congratulations

You are doing great

You’ve done really well

Keep on trying

You show real promise

You have great ideas

You’ve mastered it

Well thought out

You’ve fitted a lot in

How imaginative you are

Good problem solving

What a perfect example

Well worked through

I’m very proud of you

I’m proud of your work

You are really tuned into work today

It’s a pleasure to see you work like that.

One more attempt and you’ll be there

You’re work is improving

You are a pleasure to teach

Beautiful job

That’s good thinking

A very good try

You learn quickly

You’ve got the hang of it

You’ve done better than ever

That’s a fine attempt

You’re a problem solver

I couldn’t have done better myself

You soon mastered that

You really stuck with it

You don’t give up

You’ve got that down to a fine art