With SATs approaching...some resilience building ways to respond to our children's worries

SATs will no doubt be on the minds of our pupils and children. Rather than dismissing their worries with, "you'll be fine," perhaps replace their worries with some positive self talk! Practising this regularly is a great life skill and resilience booster. Something as simple as teaching children to notice a worry or critical way of talking to themselves, e.g, "I can't do this, " or "I'm not going to do very well," and replacing with positive self talk e.g, "I can do this," can be a practical way of supporting our children and pupils. What would their response be to a friend if their friend said they couldn't do something? Or if a friend was speaking negatively about themselves? They would say something supportive, not join in with the criticism! If somebody else said to them, "you can't do this," "you will fail,'" they would not think it was ok. But this is how the script inside our head reads.

How about coming up with a mantra or motto that your child can repeat when they are being hard on themselves? "I can get through this,'" is a helpful example and can be accompanied by the child squeezing each finger as they say each word. Using touch in this way helps to bring them back into the present to focus on the here and now, not worrying about what will happen tomorrow or in a week's time.

You can find more useful ideas in the article below:

https://childmind.org/article/how-to-help-kids-who-are-too-hard-on-themselves/