Weekly Wellbeing 

The Business of Being….

Something took my eye over the weekend when perusing Saturday’s Herald Sun.  On the front page in the right-hand corner the headline read “The Business of Being Emma.”  For those who have young children, the title was referring to, that’s right, Emma ‘Wiggle’.  The subsequent ‘Weekend Liftout’ article was all about getting to know the real ‘Emma’.  This got me thinking about what I do on a weekly basis and gave me an idea of what you, as parents and caregivers might like to do with your children this week.

In my role, I have the privilege of meeting new children every week.  The first session that I have with any student that I meet for the first time involves going through my ‘About Me’ book.  Why?  Because I have a belief that it is unreasonable to expect children to feel comfortable to talk (and play) with an adult that they don’t know.  I know I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing this and don’t expect them to either.  My ‘About Me’ book is a photobook highlighting some key things about me like: 

• Who is in my family
• My pets
• My favourite ‘sometimes’ food 
• Things that I like to do
• Things that I don’t like – silver beet, scary movies and dishonesty
• Things that I value
• My favourite place
• My favourite wild animal - Turtle
• My values
• My favourite superhero and why
• Who I barrack for in AFL..  Go Tiges (I am not shy to say this…anymore!)
• Things that I do when I feel overwhelmed (because it is normal to feel like this sometimes)
• People who inspire me

Often, I read the headings and ask the children to guess the answers by looking at the pictures on each page.  I love this process because it not only helps children to get to know me, but as we go, I ask them the same questions and learn so much about them.  By the end of the session, students appear relaxed and want to come back to visit me again. Ironically, it also turns out that to this day, I share something in common with every child that I have seen.  Although we are unique, we also aren’t as different to each other as we often think!

Interestingly, although I do this every week, it dawned on me that I haven’t recently sat down with my own children to not only explore the ‘Business of being Julie’, but to learn more about them too.  I get so busy making sure that they are out of bed on time, have their bags packed, are at sporting practice, have the right money for the right school activity etc that sometimes I forget to have the deeper conversations with them, to actually get to know more about them as people and to give them the opportunity to get to know me more too. 

I challenge you this week to do the same.

Until next time,

Julie Reid, on behalf of the Wellbeing team