Healthy Waterford Wellbeing Campaign - Children and Play

Healthy Waterford Wellbeing Campaign - Children and Play

Hello to all parents/ carers & children in Waterford from the staff in the Barnardos Family Support Services in Waterford and Dungarvan. While we are lucky to live in the beautiful Deise, the staff in Barnardos know that this can be a stressful and confusing time for everyone.

For parents the ‘groundhog day’ feeling of the endless entertaining, educating and looking after our children can be overwhelming, especially if a trip to the beach or playground or the usual things you do is not an option to help you and your kids run off some energy or built up anxiety.

Remember Anxiety is normal reaction in these challenging times. Anxiety can present itself as follows for all ages from the small toddler to teenage years. As a parent/carer it is important to remember that children look to adults for guidance on how to react to stressful events. If the adult seems overly worried, this can raise the anxiety for the child.

Remember children are very good at reading body language, so be mindful of managing your own anxiety first before trying to answer your child’s questions.  Give regular reassurance, lots of cuddles and generally just doing the best that you can to get through the days is a fantastic support to your children. You might need to repeatedly give reassurance but that is OK, and they will be OK.

Barnardos service in Waterford have some simple activities that might help. We want to provide you and your children with the opportunity to check in with your Heart, Body and Mind regularly throughout this situation.

There are lots of fun activities listed in our website on www.barnardos.ie /hbm on how to keep your children engaged, and activities that the family can do together.mIt is important to remain positive and engage with our children every day in a positive way.

Some ways that you can help your child’s heart body and mind are as follows:

Heart Activities

• The heart activities focus on understanding and managing feelings. These activities will support your children to foster feelings of kindness for themselves and others. Together you can help your child to learn more words to describe their feelings and support the daily practice of recognizing how things make us feel.
• Draw what you love – Ask your child to draw some of the people/places/things that they love. Talk to them about what makes them love them so much? Encourage your child to tell those people how much they love them today. Recommended ages 6+
• For younger children parents could use pictures from magazines or photos that children could stick onto the sheet.

Body Activities

• The Body activities are divided into breathing activities - activities to provide children with an opportunity to focus on the body and connect with the present,  and muscle relaxations – activities to help children release tension from their bodies to increase their sense of calmness. (TIP: The best time to teach a breathing technique is when the child is calm.)
• Dance like nobody is watching! Here’s an activity that’s sure to get our bodies moving, all you and your child need is a tissue and some music. Give it a try! Recommended for all ages (See adaptations below for younger children). This activity can be done on your own or as a game with other family members.
• Materials needed: A tissue, music.
• Instructions: Have everyone put a tissue on their head before you play any music. Then start the music and begin dancing, but don’t let the tissue hit the ground. If you are trying this activity on your own, see if you can dance to a whole song before the tissue falls. If you are playing as a family and the tissue starts to fall, you can put it back on your head. However, if you miss and the tissue lands on the floor, you are out! Last one with a tissue on their head wins!
• Adaptations for babies and toddlers – The movement element of this activity is the most important part. Having music playing, dancing and encouraging children to move is the key. For young children, clapping hands to the beat or making different musical sounds is a sure way to get them moving.
• Remember, dance like nobody is watching!

Mind Activities

• The Mind activities will support children to have an awareness of their own thoughts and learn how to increase positive thoughts. They will help the whole family be more present with each other.
• Monkey Mind meditation – This is a guided meditation from Louise Shanagher’s Children’s meditation series. Explain to your child that sometimes our minds can be like busy monkeys, jumping around and with lots of thoughts. Encourage your child to follow along with this Monkey Mind Meditation and help calm our monkey mind when it is bouncing around. Recommended ages 6+.

Listen to the story here.

These exercises are good for you too. Remember don’t be too hard on yourself, you are doing the best that you can do in these strange and challenging times!

If you need support you can contact the helpline and you will be linked to a Barnardos staff member in the South East area. You can also contact Barnardos in Waterford on 051 844140 or 058 64605 (Una Conroy Project Leader).

For more information on Healthy Waterford and other services listed on this page, see waterforddirectoryofservices.ie.