Thriving Together: What’s going on inside your child’s brain
Everyday parenting involves navigating refusals, meltdowns and sibling fights. We often just hope to survive these moments. But these are also the very moments in which a child learns to thrive: to regulate themselves, think when upset, understand what they are feeling and stay in a relationship through difficulty. The workshop focuses on understanding what happens in difficult moments and how those moments can support a child’s emotional growth.
Drawing on Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s The Whole-Brain Child, this workshop explores how different aspects of the brain become integrated over time.
We will look at what happens in a child’s brain when feelings and impulses take over, why reasoning sometimes stops working, and what helps a child return to thinking and choice. We will also look at how children gradually learn to recognise and make sense of what is happening inside them, and at the role adults play in helping them regulate. The same processes are at work in us too, so part of the workshop is about noticing what happens in the adult when a child is overwhelmed.
What you will take away
A simple understanding of what happens in the brain during difficult moments
How to recognise when a child needs help to settle before they can listen or think
Ways to use words, stories and movement to help children regulate
Simple language for helping children understand their own feelings and reactions
SIFT — Sensations, Images, Feelings and Thoughts — as a way of making sense of inner experience
Greater awareness of what happens in you when your child is distressed
The session will include reflection questions, small-group activities and handouts for adults and children.
Who this is for:
Parents, teachers, caregivers and counsellors of children from birth to twelve. The material sits closest to toddlers, primary-school-going children and preteens.
About the Facilitator
Namrata Pai
Namrata is part of The School of You team, where she wears multiple hats across growth, marketing, program design and facilitation. She is a student of Transactional Analysis, which is the lens she brings to most of her work, including how families talk, argue, repair and repeat. Alongside this, she has spent over 12 years as an HR professional across industries and cultures. She comes to parenting work as a fellow parent rather than an expert, more interested in complex questions and honest answers. She is mother to a five year old curious-cookie who keeps her humble and teaches her to stay in the present.
