How do we stay gracious and empathetic when our child is yelling and kicking off? In the face of anger, it can be helpful to remember that there is usually more to it than meets the eye. Just like the tip of an iceberg, anger is often only the visible face of more vulnerable feelings. Feeling hurt, disappointed, lonely, or scared can be very confronting to the person experiencing these emotions. Anger – while often destructive and unhelpful – feels like a much more powerful

Evidence has suggested that finding the time to show gratitude for what you have in life can improve the mental health of people struggling with mental illness and the general population as a whole. Regardless of whether or not you share your gratitude with the people around you, continued practice of gratitude has been demonstrated to change the way your mind works so that it is easier for you to be more sensitive to feelings of gratitude, and so that your mental health can

Kids will communicate in the ways that they have learnt naturally, but we may also need to strategically assist them in understanding how they are feeling and developing language to express those feelings in the most helpful way <3 If you feel your child would benefit from some assistance with developing emotional vocabulary and regulation, contact kids inspired and chat with one of our Psychologists, info@kidsinspired.com.au #psychologist #psychology #children #child #kids #

Art Therapy online - how does it work? Often we get enquiries from our parents asking how can you do art therapy through a computer screen? The structure and delivery of the session is not that different from an in-person art therapy session. It just requires a little bit more pre-planning before the session and a dialogue between the parent and therapist. Art Therapy online is also a terrific alternative for our out of the area families who don’t want to travel too far but a

Name it to tame it! Recognising emotions is the first step to emotional regulation. After all, how can we fix a problem if we don’t know what the issue is? Labelling our children’s emotions helps them to develop emotional intelligence by giving them the vocabulary to understand their experiences. It also shows them that we understand and empathise with how they are feeling. This can be as simple as saying “I can see that you’re disappointed” or “I get that you’re angry about

Have you been feeling lonely? It would be surprising if those feelings had not come up for anyone reading this post right now. Loneliness is a normal and adaptive emotion to have. It lets us know that we are not getting something that we need – that is a connection to other people. Unfortunately however, if we have to socially isolate, there is often less we can do practically speaking to combat those feelings of loneliness. We have all had to adapt to living quite different

Modelling after my family One of the newer exercises we have brought into our art therapy sessions at Kids Inspired is forming our family dynamic out of clay! The child is encouraged to create models of their immediate family members (and extended if desired!) and paint them in the second session. The clay evokes a calming and soothing feeling, providing just enough tension to get the fingers working, but not too much that the task feels daunting. We encourage the child to co