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Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. As parents and carers we can often see our little ones have a meltdown after a day at nursery or school. This is known as ‘after-school restraint collapse’ and happens when children, who have been holding it together all day, finally let out all their pent-up emotions when they return to their safe space at home or when they see you and feel safe to relax and show how they are feeling.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. Navigating life with a toddler after a C-section can be challenging, especially when it comes to helping them understand your recovery. Here are some practical tips to make the transition smoother for both you and your little one.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. When your child uses a swear word for the first time, it can trigger a range of reactions. Some parents may find it funny, while others might feel shock, disappointment, or embarrassment (or a mixture of all of these feelings). However, it's essential to understand that children often experiment with language as they learn and grow.
Read MoreWritten by Kate Burgess, Speech and Language Therapist. Language and Communication development in children is a phenomenal process. Babies go from having an instinctive, reactive cry to being able to use hundreds of words in short phrases by the time they are three years old. And it continues to grow and develop well into primary school and beyond.
For some children, this process happens smoothly without parents and carers feeling like they’re doing anything ‘extra’ or ‘special’. Just chatting along to your child, reading books, singing songs and hey presto! Language is developing.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. Are you finding that you are asking your child questions or giving instructions to only be told “no”? Does this make you feel like everything is very hard work? When your child finds their voice and the word ‘no’, this can often create times of frustration and annoyance both from the child and from the adult receiving this response!
‘No’ is a very powerful word - it can often really stop us in our tracks. Our children see this and then use the word in order to fully understand its meaning. Our children very quickly realise the power that the word ‘no’ has and use this to assert themselves and their thoughts and feelings.
Read MoreWritten by Katie Crouch, Senior Lecturer, Researcher and Consultant in the Early Years. Due to Covid and subsequent home-schooling, we have all become aware of the pressures faced by families when trying to support learning in the home. Now that schooling and home learning are becoming separate entities again, we look at how we can build healthy routines and home learning habits.
How can we as adults help our children to develop a love of learning outside of the school environment? In fact, the learning which takes place outside of the school can often hold a deeper sense of meaning and understanding for many of our children and this leads to question why this could be the case?
In my experience, it is down to just a couple of simple factors;
Learning away from school can have fewer boundaries, such as time constraints.
Children are also more likely to feel emotionally safer with their significant adults and fewer opportunities for self-comparison with peers.
In this blog I will look at how we can maximise children’s learning potential within these circumstances.
Read MoreBy Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. When our little ones have meltdowns / tantrums / outbursts it can be extremely triggering for us. It can mean that we respond emotionally and not always in the way that we would want to. We need to be kind to ourselves and understand we are only human and that sometimes our emotions can go into overdrive and make us respond to situations in ways which we don’t expect or plan for.
Read MoreWritten by Charlotte Hall, Speech Therapy with Charlotte. Speech and language development is so important because it really underpins everything else. If a child is unable to express themselves or understand what others are saying, they will find it difficult to thrive academically, form meaningful relationships and achieve positive mental wellbeing.
But what can we do to support young children’s speech and language development?
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. Has your child recently moved from a cot to a bed, and now keeps getting up to come and find you? This can be a very common situation that parents find themselves in and often a child can go from sleeping well in their cot to being awake several times per night and refusing to stay in their bed!
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