Wellbeing

Dear Killester Community,

A new group of Year 7 students have started the Empower Me Program this term. This involves unpacking what it means to be empowered and focusing on how to navigate the challenges that Year 7 presents. This term is facilitated by our school counsellor, Madeleine Williams. 

Sadly, Ms Sinead Timlin will be taking some personal leave and will be finishing for now as our Year 8 Student Development Leader on Friday 13th Aug.  Ms Timlin is returning to Ireland, and so we wish her safe travels and look forward to welcoming her back to our College community soon. We want to acknowledge her commitment to the College and thank her for her care of our students, particularly in these challenging times of lockdown.

Emma Neville and Peter Harte

AP - Wellbeing

How 15 minutes can help children find purpose in a pandemic

Published on May 19, 2020

Author, Coach and Speaker at Learning Curve Positive Education and Wellbeing Program

I would like to share an article that I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald, to help families during these uncertain times. May 14, 2020

As a parent and educator, parents ask me all the time how to build resilience in children. This feels like a particularly pertinent question right now, when most parents who have held onto their jobs feel like they’re going to war every day in a casualty-strewn home schooling v working from home battlefield. The casualties? Me time. Sleep. Sanity. Sometimes, sobriety. Screen-free time. Housework. Curriculums. Felled by the forced family closeness and unprecedented demands of COVID-19.

But, still, amid the unwashed dishes and the demands for a fourth lunch and the seventh rendition of Baby Shark in the background of a Zoom conference call, I see the opportunity. An unmatched chance to connect and build resilience while engaging as a family. It feels like there is a new purpose in the midst of the global pandemic, one of family connection, reflection, creation and joy. 

Research has shown that building personal and family wellbeing is embedded in the frequency of positive emotions, rather than the intensity of them. It means doing simple, fun and meaningful activities together often, in short bursts. It's about conscious moments of connection in the corners of the everyday, rather than the big events on a weekend or during the holidays. Now, I get it.

It’s tempting to reach for the iPad and the smartphone to plug the gaps and create some space. To occupy children, rather than play. We do it during normal times – why wouldn’t we during a global pandemic? We used to do it when sitting in a café with friends, handing over the phone to the kids for a few blessed moments of peace to chinwag over our cappuccinos. In car trips. On planes. In our living rooms. Now we do it so we can get 30 minutes of work done, or use the bathroom alone.

It doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. It means you’re human. But it can have consequences. Occupying rather than playing means some children can lack a sense of purpose in their lives.

They can seek instant gratification not from you, but from screens, social media and gaming. A symptom of 21st-century parenting which is not your fault. But right now, there’s a chance to introduce a new way of doing and being.

I think now is an extraordinary chance to try to model ways to encourage your children to find meaning in their lives, creating a strong sense of purpose. The Japanese call this their Ikigai, their reason for getting out of bed every morning. Iki, meaning life, and kai, meaning the realisation of hopes and expectations.

And it turns out, you only need 15 minutes of "doing stuff" together, every 90 minutes or so, to create self-generating positive emotional experiences. That's only 15 minutes of getting the serotonin and oxytocin flowing in all family members, for the afterglow of connection and meaning to remain.

You can fill these 15 minutes any way you like. It could mean making scrambled eggs. Doing a crossword. Sweating through a quick circuit of star jumps, sit-ups and push-ups. Power dancing for TikTok. Throwing a Frisbee or colouring in. Calling the grandparents on FaceTime. Practising deep breathing or running around the block. Creating a collage or playing snap. Fifteen minutes of play, play, play, before settling back to another 90-minute slab of work and school, knowing another 15 minutes is only an hour and a half away.

These are moments of purpose, building resilience, studded throughout the day. And you may find that this exercise, designed to raise the sense of wellbeing in your children, can in turn help you.  

All the best, Mick