Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. In March this year I was delivering a seminar as part of the Twins Trust annual Volunteer Day.  It was on the topic of anxiety in children but little did I know that when I delivered this talk that we would be heading into a pandemic and that anxiety in not only our children, but also in adults would increase dramatically over the following weeks. 

Anxiety is a word that very few people want to associate with children as we want our children to be carefree, happy and certainly don’t want them to worry or have anxiety over anything. We need to be aware that anxiety can span over a significant range from mild worry which can be absolutely natural such as doing an exam or going to a new place for the first time, through to something that can be extremely worrying and can have impact on both physical and mental wellbeing.

Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. In recent weeks there are has certainly been much more opportunity for us all to have family mealtimes.  For many families this has been a really positive thing to have come out of this difficult situation, having more time to cook, but also being able to sit at the table all together. 

As it is National Weaning week this week, we have decided to have a look at the things that you can do with each age group to enhance the family mealtime experience.

Written by Amy Frankcom. During this time of lockdown it is not surprising that many teenagers are turning to social media both as a form of escapism and to keep in touch with their friends, but is it making them anti-social?

As part of her online school work Amy participated in a BBC Bitesize lesson all about creating an argument and this was the result of the exercise she did creating an argument against the statement that ‘social media is ‘antisocial’.

Written by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. Any behaviours that we see in either children or adults are a bi-product of the emotions and feelings that the individual is feeling at this time.  As adults we are tend to have greater control over managing our behaviour, however when we are at heightened times of stress or anxiety we often struggle to do this and can to react in different ways, saying things that we don’t mean, getting cross with people or feeling sad or upset when we don’t really know why.  I am sure that lots of adults have been feeling a range of emotions over the last few weeks and will continue to over the coming months; this is the same for our children but their triggers might just be different.