This is Small family fun

  The importance of emotional intelligence. Many researchers over the years have emphasised the importance of emotional interactions in the parent-child dyad and the great impact it has on a child's well-being. Parents need to take an active role in teaching their children key skills in developing emotional intelligence. The consequences of failing to learn the basics are intermingling dire, for example, an inability to handle anxiety or depression can increase the chance of children abusing drugs or alcohol later on in life. However, children who are taught by their parents to be emotionally intelligent are more able to regulate their own emotions. They were better at focusing their attention, and could relate more to other people and performed better academically in school. Parents who offered empathy in the face of their child showing negative feelings such as anger, sadness or fear, actually built bridges of loyalty and affection between themselves and their child. For years th

  This post will be about resilience and how children can use it to help them when they face adversity. Gilligan, 2009 cited in Leverett, 2016 says that resilience is used to describe the capacity of someone to prevent, minimise or overcome any damaging effects of adversity.  Adversity can be anything challenging in a child's life, for example, the death or illness of a family member. How they react and adapt to these events is based on how resilient they are. Resilience can be built up through supportive relationships. A child’s feeling of security and the quality of the parent-child relationship and so a positive and engaging parenting approach can help promote your child’s resilience from birth. Werner and Smith, 1982 cited in Punch, 2013 show how risk factors affect children differently, they found that the group of resilient children were securely attached to their main caregivers. There was also a larger support network of adults who they trusted. Positive role modelling can

Up to 40% of children will experience sleep problems, such as difficulty with falling or staying asleep, (Mindell et al, 2006 cited in Williamson et al, 2020).   Carrying on with the theme from my last post I would now like to discuss how sleep problems can affect a child's well-being. Research that consisted of a longitudinal study of children in Australia has demonstrated how having sleep problems in early childhood can cause multiple impairments in a child's well-being at age 10-11 years old, (Williamson et al, 2020). The study examined five different sleep trajectories. They found that the children that had limited sleep problems in infancy or preschool only showed small impairments with internalising symptoms such as anxiety or low mood. However, children who demonstrated persistent sleep problems and sleep problems in middle childhood had moderate impairments in their ability to self-control. Goldstein and Walker, 2014, cited in Williamson et al, 2020, showed