Student Wellbeing

Welcome to Term Four! 

‘Tick-tock’ ‘tick-tock’ ‘tick-tock’!  Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future….

How many of you read this section of the newsletter I have often wondered? I would like to propose a ‘Like’ button for this section so I could feel better about writing it. It might boost my self esteem and in turn I might like myself better. Then again if nobody in the community hit ‘Like’ I would feel less valued or even unimportant and that might bring me down. If I based my value or worth as a person on this or on a larger scale my whole existence as a human being, imagine what it could do to me?

Unfortunately this is exactly what our children are facing! How can we help? The first step is to be the role model. Catch yourself before you reach for your phone. If you are at a sporting event or out anywhere with your child/ren watch them and engage with them. Not only take it in...soak it in!  Believe me it is fleeting...and precious!

I guess we all ‘like to be liked’. If all our decisions were based on this model we would try our hardest to be nice all the time. The trouble with this way of thinking is that nice wants to please everybody. ‘Nice’ likes to please and in turn this gets the ‘Like’. Think about it. We all try to post the nice photo, of the nice holiday eating at all the nice restaurants. We think if we are nice to our kids they will be nice to us in turn and I guess everything will turn out… well, NICE!

Ah, if only life worked like that! Instead of being nice I encourage you to be kind. When you are kind to your children you are enabling yourself to make decisions that may not be seen by them as nice. When you operate out of kindness your value and worth never comes from a place about worrying how many ‘Likes’ you have.

Out of niceness you might make a decision to give your children access to screens (phones, computers, i-pads). Out of kindness you need to involve yourself in screen time, how long they are in front of their screens, what they are doing and what they are looking at and being exposed to. 

Tic-Tok and Instagram are two apps that you may have heard mentioned which operate on this system of ‘Like’. You may not know about these but the link below will take you to an article written by Susan MacLean (Cybersafety expert) in last Sunday’s, The Age newspaper. It is certainly worth the read and will enlighten (may even frighten) you about some of the dangers facing our children.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8yUz9p94LK8b1hoTUxPOEpVQV9mTHB0OE1iX01TRTh5Rlp3/view?usp=sharing

Let’s spread the message to stop observing our lives through a screen and get back to participating in it!

Thanks for listening,

Guy