How to Feel Happier and Less Exhausted as a Parent / Carer

There is no point sharing great strategies with you as parents/carers which will help you to support your SEND children if you are too exhausted, crushed and broken to be able to implement them consistently. Often, by the time you come across our series of webinars, you may have had years of coping with very difficult behaviour which may have resulted in numerous injuries, and it is hard not to lose hope.

Finding appropriate services to help your child with their difficult behaviours sometimes feels almost impossible. The reality is that there are far too few services in place to respond to the needs of children who have both an additional need and extreme behaviours. There is also very little training about why SEND children can develop challenging behaviour, so instead of being able to offer help, sadly the situation is often misunderstood, and parent/carers feel blamed, judged, or shamed instead of given the robust help, support and understanding that they so desperately need. Challenging behaviour in children with an additional need is not caused by poor parenting skills; on the contrary, most parents coping with these challenges every day are highly skilled, responsive, and exceptional parents.

The cumulative effect of relentlessly coping with the unpredictability and fear of a child’s challenging behaviour, whilst also often being blamed for being the cause of it takes a huge toll on our resilience, emotional well-being, and mental health. This webinar is designed to help you start to build yourself back again, working towards regaining your self-esteem, self-worth, and self-belief.

If you are going to be able to lead your child beyond their violent or otherwise extreme behaviours, you will need to believe in yourself, and be mentally strong enough with consistently high enough energy levels to keep going and not to give up. You will need to be able to dig deep to find inner resources you never knew you had, because you will need to be emotionally resilient enough to withstand the inevitable setbacks and disappointments along the way.

This session is all about empowering you to feel good about yourself, and to be the very best possible version of yourself.

During this webinar, you will gain a better understanding of the negative impact of the on-going traumas you have experienced from your child’s behaviours, and the drip-drip cumulative effect of the negative judgement and the lack of support that you may have endured.

Some of the issues that this session covers include: –

• How to manage guilt and worry
• The effect of shame
• How to reset your inner critical voice so it becomes your best friend.
• The importance of regular self-care
• How to self-care so that it isn’t yet another chore on the to-do list.

Malcolm’s contributions to this session have been invaluable. He has devised several self-calming strategies that each take less than two minutes to do, due to his own first-hand understanding of the relentless unpredictability of living with a violent child who also has very high care needs. You will be led through a series of these strategies, with explanations along the way of how the body’s stress response lowers our natural immunity and the importance of self-care to overall well-being and our ability to cope.

The session ends with a 10-minute deep-relaxation exercise devised by Malcolm, which for many parents is the first opportunity they have had to completely relax and unwind in a very long time. You will leave the session with an effective toolbox full of strategies that will help you to relax and recharge in a matter of minutes.