St. Joseph's Newsletter

Peaceful Kids at St Joseph's

Dear Parents, 

Earlier this term I attended facilitator training for the ‘Peaceful Kids’ program with Georgina Manning who developed the program.  ‘Peaceful Kids’ is a Mindfulness and Positive Psychology based program aimed to lessen anxiety and stress and increase resilience in children. The program has been created to fulfil a need in schools to offer all children a developmentally appropriate program that gives children the skills, practice and support to utilise coping strategies that lessen the symptoms of anxiety and stress.   The program also involves parental involvement and commitment to supporting the strategies at home. 

I will be running small group sessions within school time over an 8-week period. Attached is some further information regarding this program. 

At this point we will be offering the program to Year 2 students upwards.

If you are interested in your child participating in the program or have any further questions, please send me an email with your child’s name and year level to georgina.carman@sjmalvern.catholic.edu.au

 

Kind Regards

Georgie Carman 

georgina.carman@sjmalvern.catholic.edu.au

 

 Peaceful Kids Information

 

Outcomes of the Peaceful Kids program:

  • Lessen symptoms of anxiety and stress in children
  • Teaches children to self-calm
  • Empowers children to manage their own anxiety and stress symptoms
  • Builds emotional resilience
  • Develops emotional intelligence skills
  • Teaches children life-long skills to manage stress and prevent stress build up
  • Supports children so they know that they are not alone with suffering from anxiety

 

Peaceful Kids is based on evidence based therapies and research: 

  • Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR)
  • Mindfulness-integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (MiCBT)
  • Positive Psychology
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

 

Program structure:

  • Peaceful Kids is an 8 week program for children
  • Sessions are for approximately 1 hour each week. 
  • Sessions include learning a range of mindfulness strategies and meditations and positive psychology exercises. 
  • Children are guided through meditations daily online via the Peaceful Kids website:  peacefulkids.com.au

 

 

Parental involvement: 

  • Each week the children learn a new mindfulness meditation and positive psychology strategy that they can share with you at home.  It would be great to give your child the time to practice these strategies at home so they learn to incorporate these into their daily lives. 

 

Program Content

Children learn about:

· Basic theory on Mindfulness and how it affects the brain and lessens stress and anxiety

· The different ways to practice Mindfulness and integrate it into their lives

· Their feelings and how this relates to anxiety and stress levels

· Understanding stress and how it relates personally to them

· Understanding triggers for stress and how to calm down when feeling stressed

· Physical symptoms of stress and learning to identify when they need to take time out to calm themselves

· Worrying and how it affects their happiness 

· Different types of thinking that increase anxiety or lessen anxiety

· Noticing their own self-talk and how this is affects worrying and stress levels

· Creating a balanced lifestyle including lots of chill out time and being in the flow

 

Children learn life skills of:

· A range of Mindfulness meditations

· Positive psychology exercises

· Techniques to lessen worrying

· A variety of coping strategies 

· A variety of problem solving strategies

· Journaling and expressing their worries

· Facing challenges and fears step by step

· Preventative strategies to help prevent stress build up

· Being attuned to their own bodies and minds

· Being in the flow more regularly and enjoying more of the present moment

 

 

Research:

If you would like to learn about Mindfulness and Positive Psychology and its benefits, the following links may be useful to outline the science and evidence based research that the program is based on. 

http://au.reachout.com/what-is-mindfulness

http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/research/

http://www.mindfulschools.org/about-mindfulness/research

http://www.mindful.org/the-science/medicine/the-science-of-mindfulness

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121144007.htm

http://www.actionforhappiness.org

http://mindfullearning.com.au/about-mindful-learning/authors/

http://www.mindfulness.net.au/what-is-micbt.html