From the school psychologist

Supporting your child’s wellbeing at home 

Supporting your child’s wellbeing and mental health is important for healthy development. It also helps boost your child’s self-esteem and helps them feel loved, supported, safe, and secure. Importantly, it doesn’t require big changes or complicated routines. To support your child’s wellbeing day to day, it can be helpful to focus on the small, consistent moments at home that help children feel safe, connected, and ready to learn. Here are some ways you can nurture wellbeing at home in everyday life.

Make time and space for emotions and feelings. 

It is important that children feel safe to express their emotions. This helps them build emotional vocabulary and confidence in expressing themselves. Having safe and calm conversations with your child about their emotions helps them feel heard and validated, and supports them in developing emotional literacy. Families can support this by: 

• Checking in with your child with questions like “How was your day?” or “What was challenging today?” 
• Naming observable emotions (“It looks like you’re feeling frustrated”)
• Encouraging self-identification of emotions, it could be handy to have a feelings wheel to facilitate this (https://mentalhealthcenterkids.com/blogs/articles/emotion-wheel-for-kids )
• Encouraging children to use “I feel…” sentences

Establish and maintain calm and predictable routines. 

Routines give children a sense of safety and control. At Auburn South Primary School, our teachers establish predictable and safe routines as part of the Berry Street Education Model. This helps our students understand expectations within the learning environment. Predictability reduces stress and helps children transition more smoothly between activities. At home, helpful routines might include a consistent morning and bedtime routine, a predictable after‑school wind‑down, and visual schedules.

Build connection through micro‑moments. 

Connection doesn’t need to be lengthy or elaborate. Sharing a micro‑moment with your child where you can connect helps improve their sense of belonging and supports them to feel emotionally secure. Some ideas for micro‑moment connections include reading together, playing a quick game, sharing a snack or mealtime, or talking about something they enjoy.

I hope these strategies provide some ideas for how you can support your child’s wellbeing at home. In the next newsletter, I will share additional strategies to assist in supporting wellbeing.