We know parenting isn’t always easy. Although it’s often amazing and rewarding to watch your children grow up, and to help them learn to be independent, it can also be really hard work. It can feel especially hard if your child’s mood and behaviour seem different and you’re not sure why, or what you can do to help.

Young Minds offer three different services to parents and carers who are concerned about their child’s mental health, up to the age of 25.

Parents Helpline on 0808 802 5544, Monday – Friday 9:30am – 4:00pm.
Parents webchat is open 9:30am – 4pm, Monday – Friday.
You can email the team outside of webchat hours between 4pm – 9:30am Monday to Friday, or over the weekend.

https://www.youngminds.org.uk/parent/parents-helpline-and-webchat/#ParentsWebchatandEmailservice

Parenting Children

Parenting can be difficult when child struggles expressing their emotions and needs or displays distressing behaviours. Parents themselves need to experience empathy, acceptance and understanding. It is understandable to sometimes feel exhaustion, worry, self-doubt or shame. If this happens for a long time, sense of joy and reward can diminish and parenting can start to feel like a job. It can become progressively more difficult to feel empathy towards the child or young person. Parent/carer can start feeling powerless, stressed and like a failure. If not addressed and not supported, these emotions can eventually lead to burnout or ‘blocked care’. When experiencing blocked care, caregivers might struggle experiencing joy and fulfilment in parenting and might find it hard to have compassion and understanding for the child/young person. Feelings of anger and frustration may arise. It is therefore very important to ask for help and support from family members, friends and professionals. It is also important for parents/carers to access respite and have an opportunity to engage in self-care activities.

Parenting a child that relies on distressed behaviours to communicate how they are feeling can sometimes result in some carers feeling ashamed and judged. Parents can feel alone and misunderstood. Over time, they can become isolated as they try to avoid situations and places that may overwhelmed the child and result in difficult behaviours. It can be helpful to see what peer support provision or groups are available online or in community to the parent has an opportunity to be in contact with others who are experiencing similar challenges.

Parenting a Child with Emotion Dysregulation

If you are a parent of a child who struggles with emotion dysregulation, you might be wondering what you can do to support your child. It is true that children learn emotion regulation skills from their parents. You have the ability to teach your child how to manage emotions rather than become overwhelmed by them. Here are some ways you can support them:

Your child also needs to know that they can reach out to you for help and comfort when needed. Having a supportive and reliable parent figure in their life will help to protect them against problems with emotional dysregulation.

Recognize your own limitations. Do you have a mental disorder or have you struggled with your own emotion regulation skills? If so, you and your child might benefit from you receiving treatment or therapy to build up your own resilience. When you are better able to manage your own distress, then you will be able to offer the most support to your child.

Lead by example. In addition, the best way to teach your child how to manage their emotions is not to demand that they behave in a certain way or punish them for acting out. Rather, the best option is to model the desired behavior yourself that you want them to adopt.

Adjust accordingly. It can be helpful to start to recognize triggers for your child’s behavior and have a back-up plan of effective ways to deal with acting out. For example, if your child always has a tantrum when you take them to buy shoes, try picking out a pair in their size and bringing them home for them to try on.

Maintain consistent routines. Children who struggle with emotion dysregulation benefit from predictability and consistency.5 Your child needs to know that you will be there for them when they need you and that they can rely on you to be the calming presence. When your own emotions are out of control, then it is much more likely that your child will be unable to manage their own emotions.

If your child is in school, it is also important that you talk to their teacher about their problems with emotion regulation. Talk about the strategies that you use at home and how your child might need extra help in the classroom or reminders on how to calm down. If your child has a diagnosed disorder, they may be on a special education plan that allows accommodations or gives them extra help. Be sure to take advantage of that.

Reward positive behavior. If you see your child acting in ways that are positive for emotion management, comment on those positive behaviors. Find ways to reward emotion management successes so that they will become more frequent.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-dysregulation-5073868

For parents and carers including links to the Solihull parenting programmes free to parents in COIS: https://www.headstartkernow.org.uk/parents–carers/

Parenting Teenagers

Teenagers’ behaviour can be baffling, stressful, hurtful, and often worrying. But in most cases, it does not mean there is anything more serious going on than the natural process of becoming an adult.

Many of the common behaviour issues that parents find hard are an essential part of puberty and growing up.

Surges of hormones, combined with body changes, struggling to find an identity, pressures from friends and a developing sense of independence, mean the teenage years are a confusing time for your child.

It can mean they, for example:

• become aloof
• want more time alone or with friends
• feel misunderstood
• reject your attempts to talk or show affection
• appear sullen and moody

Your feelings about your teen’s behaviour

Teenagers can challenge even the calmest of parents. When you have further pressures in your life, such as other children, work, relationships, family commitments or illness, it can feel as though your teenager is going to push you over the edge.

Try to step back from the situation and remember your child or young person may have physiological reasons for behaving in ways that can be difficult to live with. They’re probably not enjoying it either.

You’re the adult and you will feel that it’s your responsibility to guide them through the difficult times, but that is not always easy. Do not expect to enjoy your time with them all of the time and remember to look after yourself.

How do I cope with the stress?

Parenting a teenager can be exhausting, so it’s important to look after yourself, too. Family Lives, a charity dedicated to helping families, offers the following advice: 

• make sure you set aside time for yourself
• give yourself permission to relax or even treat yourself occasionally
• talk about your concerns to your partner or friends, or join a support group or forum
• learn techniques for coping with low mood, sadness and depression or anxiety. If you’re concerned that you’re depressed, anxious or stressed, talk to a GP

How should I act with my teenager?

Teenagers can be largely emotional rather than logical because of their hormones. It is not necessarily pleasant for them, and it can even feel frightening. Although it might be hard for you, they need you to maintain a calm consistent presence.

Follow these tips:

• decide what the boundaries are and stick to them – teenagers may object to these but know they’re a sign that you care about them
• listen to them when they do want to talk and try not to interrupt until they’ve finished speaking
• allow them to learn from their own mistakes – as long as they are safe – and accept they might do things differently to you
• do not bottle up your concerns – if you’re worried your teenager may be having unprotected sex or using drugs, try talking calmly and direct them to useful information
• allow them to have their own space and privacy

Help your young person to identify what values are important to them in life. Discuss their hopes, fears and expectations of topics such as relationships, academic achievement, health, career, education, creativity, community, art, leisure and fun etc. Help them to connect with these values and think about how they can be reflected on their short-term and long-term goals and actions.

Discuss how your young person can work on keeping themselves safe, discuss online safety, home and community safety.

Discuss body autonomy, health, relationships, including intimate relationships and boundaries. Easy read materials and visual materials can help with developing understanding. Some schools can help with social stories to help young people to understand puberty, changing bodies, sexuality and boundaries.

•       Avoid patronising, even inadvertently! 
•       When producing an easy read visual, check preferred style – pictures/symbols can be perceived as childish.
•       Check for preferred pronouns.
•       Ask the teen what they call their emotional dysregulations, and use their language eg meltdown, shutdown, breaking point etc.
•       Validate special interests: they are enjoyable and help self-regulation.
•       Emphasise the positives of intense focus and attention to detail – these are sought-after life skills.

Looking after yourself

It’s not uncommon for parents, grandparents, and other family members to have health problems, and then learn they also experienced ACEs as a child before the age of 18.

ChildhoodTraumathBrainSocialWorldv1.0.pdf (uktraumacouncil.link)

Toxic stress happens when ACEs repeatedly trigger a child’s fight-or-flight stress response. It occurs when emotions associated with coping with ACEs, like anger, fear, frustration, shame, humiliation, anxiety, as examples, keep triggering the fight-or-flight stress response.

This, in turn, changes how a child’s brain develops and how their brain and body works.

When a parent experiences ACEs as a child but does not get the help they need to counter the impacts, they carry these ACEs-related toxic stress impacts into adulthood and parenthood.

Resilience is the way a person who has been (or is being) knocked down by ACEs comes back stronger than ever. Basically having resilience helps a person treat and/or prevent toxic stress. In other words, resilience helps a child (or adult) not let their ACEs “win.”

As an adult, you may still feel the effects of your own Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). What does this mean for your own health? This depends on how many ACEs you experienced as a child. It also depends on whether you’ve had certain positive experiences that help reduce the effects of stress. These positive experiences are known as “protective factors.” Did a friend, family member, or mental health care professional provide support during your childhood? Do you have a good support system in place now? These experiences help reduce the effects of ACEs. The impact of ACEs also depends on factors such as how you personally manage stress.

Parenting is demanding, and it can easily trigger this stress response. Very simply, because of how brains and bodies react to stress, it is harder to process information when stress levels are too high.

You may experience feelings of stress overload such as:

• difficulty calming down
• a quicker-than-normal temper and feelings of impatience
• difficulty thinking logically
• a limited ability to “read” others and judge the needs of your children
• difficulty modeling good skills and behavior for your children.

The good news!

Although people with ACEs may be at higher risk for many health issues, it’s never too late to get support! Because bodies and brains are constantly growing and changing, things you do to improve your health today can make a big differenceover time! Learning healthy ways to cope with stress and build resilience can help. This skill-building means developing healthy habits for stress management now that improve your ability to handle difficult situations in the future. Also, learning about what’s age-appropriate for your child can give you perspective when his behavior is challenging.

How to reduce the effects of ACEs

Many lifestyle changes can help reduce the effects of ACEs. Relationships with other supportive adults can help your brain and body turn down the stress response and build resilience. Making time to relax, engage in a fulfilling hobby, or participate in a fun activity can help a lot, too! Good sleep habits, healthy eating, and regular exercise are other important tools to manage stress. Mindfulness practices can also help. Some parents find it helpful to seek out mental health professionals for their own exposure to ACEs and trauma. Talk to your own doctor about the health risks associated with ACEs at your next medical visit. Together, these protective factors can help improve the health and well-being of your whole family!

https://www.cornwallft.nhs.uk/talking-therapies
https://clearsupport.net
https://www.acesaware.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/10-Parenting-with-ACEs-English.pdf
https://www.headstartkernow.org.uk/parents–carers/parents-and-carers-wellbeing-series

Raising a child with SEND

When parents are told their child has a disability or additional need they undergo much emotional turmoil and can experience a whole range of emotions; upset, feelings of grief and loss, fear for the present and the future, relief, joy and overwhelming love.

Each parent is different and it is the beginning of a new journey for them. A journey that has unique experiences, one which brings parents in contact with many practitioners, one which can have great challenges to the whole family, including siblings and grandparents.

Parent Carers Cornwall

All family members are the experts on their children with additional needs; which is why parent participation in service development is so important and why the Parent Carers for Cornwall was formed – to ensure all parents have their voice heard. The collective impact of many individual voices can make long term constructive change in service delivery.

Parent Carer Cornwall gather information from Parent Carers and using these unique shared experiences, we take part in consultations and participation work which helps us to shape the development and delivery of services to our children. We also pass on information to families via a newsletter enabling parent carers to gain greater knowledge and understanding of the services available from health, education, local authority and the voluntary sector.

Parent Carers Cornwall (PCC) is the recognised Parent Carer Forum for Cornwall. Nationally funded to support families with children with SEND, endorsed locally by Health, Education and Social Care.
https://parentcarerscornwall.org.uk/

For Parent Carers on the Isles of Scilly
Contact email:  ios-pcf@outlook.com

SENDIASS- Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly

Cornwall’s Information, Advice and Support Service is a statutory service which is run at ‘arm’s length’ from the Local Authority and provides free, confidential, impartial advice, guidance and support to parents of children with special educational needs and children and young people with SEND from 0-25.

It aims to promote good working relationships between children, young people, parents, education settings and the LA, whilst seeking to empower them to play an active and informed role in their child’s education.

We can support parents, carers, children and young people in a number of ways. We provide a range of flexible services which include training, referral to other statutory and voluntary agencies, access to local and national support groups, telephone support and face to face meetings depending on need.

https://cornwallsendiass.org.uk/