Meet Krista
I am trained in child development, worked as a teacher for over 25 years and left my job as a headteacher in 2019. In 2018 I trained as a coach, which included an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology. So it’s fair to say that everything about childhood matters to me!
These are things that I recognise:
Children can make us feel like we are on top of the world, or like we have the weight of the world on our shoulders.
As parents we feel under a lot of pressure to be perfect, we want to get everything right for our children, but we don’t always feel confident that we are. This can make us feel overwhelmed and guilty about not doing or being enough.
Children don’t come with a manual and it can be hard to know why they behave as they do, and how we should respond.
But I learned
Children’s behaviour is the ‘manual’ that we are all looking for
If we understand the behaviour our children display, we then know how to respond in a way that meets our children’s needs fully. This significantly and positively impacts the way they behave and how we communicate, as they feel heard and seen.
Developing a close relationship with our children is key
Really growing our relationships and ensuring we have secure attachments with our children, leads to better behaviour, better lifelong relationships for them and us, and improved outcomes overall.
We only have to be ‘good enough’ parents
There is no need to be perfect as a parent, so relax! Research shows that fully responding to and meeting our children’s needs just 30% of the time is good enough. By modelling putting things right and not always being fully available, children learn more from us.
Learning to really listen and see what is being said allows us to be stronger, wiser and kind.
Being fully present with our children allows us to be strong, wise and kind, supporting them by setting boundaries when they need us to, and being with them and their emotions when we recognise that is what they need. When we are not fully present and aware, we can respond inappropriately, being weak, giving in and then feeling resentful and being mean.