Blog
Resources
Blog
Supporting our Children with Climate Change Worries
Supporting our Children with Climate Change Worries With the extreme weather that has been happening around the world including what is already the worst wildfire season ever in BC, and subsequent attention on climate change, you might find that your pre-teen or teen...
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation 2022
September 30 is Orange Shirt Day and National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This is a day to honour residential school Survivors and their families, as well as those children who did not make it home. We can honour those children, adults and families by learning...
Checking In on the Mental Health of BC Youth
Checking In on the Mental Health of BC Youth May 7, 2021 was National Child and Youth Mental Health Day. In honor of the day, I co-presented a webinar with McCreary Centre Society called Checking In on the Mental Health of BC Youth. McCreary presented the data from...
My Five Favourites – Four Apps and One Website
This list of apps (and one website) covers the three areas that people most often are looking for support in: anxiety, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence. These are the apps that I recommend; a couple of them I use myself. My suggestion to you would be to play...
Compassion & Forgiveness
Compassion and Forgiveness I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion throughout this pandemic. How we all are quicker to become dysregulated and how it is also taking longer to return to a state of regulation. How this means that we need to have compassion for others...
Supporting Your Child with School Reopening
During this transition to Phase 2 as schools being to reopen their buildings, it can be challenging to support our children when we have so many questions and feelings ourselves. Some of you may choose not to send your child(ren). If your child(ren) will...
Mental Health Week
May 4 - 10, 2020 is Mental Health Week. During this time of shelter-in-place, looking after our mental health is more needed and more challenging than ever. I created this infographic as a simple visual reminder of four ways we can support our well-being. If you find...
How Are You Doing?
How are you doing? How are you and your family in this time of COVID 19? How I am doing is a pretty mixed bag to be honest. Short answer is, I’m okay. The longer answer is more complex – I’m feeling grateful, worried, nervous, unfocused, unsettled, content, peaceful…...
My Family’s Favourite Board Games
I hope you and your family are well and managing with this new world as it emerges. The unknown and unpredictable nature of our current world is creating lots of anxiousness. You may be trying to comfort your children, find activities to keep them occupied and make...
Resources
Below are some websites, resource books for parents, children’s books, and other resources that I have used and recommend.
Websites
Heart-Mind Online is a website developed by the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education offering social and emotional learning resources for parents and professionals. Has activities that you can do with your family or students.
Kids In the House is a site for parents and caregivers with over 9000 videos from over 450 experts including doctors, psychologists, therapists, authors, parents, and caregivers, offering tips and advice on raising children. Most videos are about 2 minutes long. Covers ages birth to post high school.
This is the website of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning which was founded by Daniel Goldman, Linda Lanetiri and in 1990. CASEL is the leading authority on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). According to CASEL, “Social and emotional learning (SEL) enhances students’ capacity to integrate skills, attitudes, and behaviors to deal effectively and ethically with daily tasks and challenges.” The SEL framework that CASEL uses has five competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
This is Dr. Kristin Neff’s website. Dr. Neff is one of the leading experts on self-compassion. There are guided meditations that you can download as well as self-compassion exercises on her site.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu
Greater Good is the online magazine of The Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) which is based at the University of California, Berkeley, Bringing together research and practice, GGSC studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills to encourage and thriving and resilient society.
http://mindfulnessforteens.com
Dr. Dzung Vo, the author of The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a Time (New Harbinger, 2015), offers an introduction to mindfulness that is youth-friendly. Dr. Vo is also a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at British Columbia Children’s Hospital, and clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, Vancouver, Canada.
Books for Parents
Brainstorm, Dr. Dan Siegel
Permission to Feel, Dr. Marc Brackett
Self-Compassion, Dr. Kirstin Neff
The Gift of Failure, Jessica Lahey
The Mindful Child, Susan Kaiser Greenland
The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a Time, Dr. Dzung Vo
The Whole Brain Child, Dr. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
Books for Children and Youth
Some of these books are on practices you can do with children and youth while others are fiction books that provide opportunities to discuss emotions, perspective-taking, identity and other social and emotional skills.
A Boy and A Bear, Lori Lite
A Fish in a Tree, Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Guts, Raina Telgemeier
Mindful Games, Susan Kaiser Greenland
Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda by Lauren Alderfer
Peaceful Piggy Meditation, Kerry MacLean
Sitting Still Like a Frog; Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents), Eline Snel
Smile, Raina Telgemeier
The Mindful Teen: Powerful Skills to Help You Handle Stress One Moment at a Time, Dr. Dzung Vo
The Way I Feel, Janan Cain
Walter Was Worried, Laura Vacarro Seeger
Wonder, R. J. Palacio
Other resources
Sarb takes amazing and authentic family photos. Her mission is “to help you preserve the way you love, the way you laugh, and capture the best version of you today so that the images we create together will mark this incredible stage in your life forever.” Sarb also donates 5% of your session purchase to Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders (MSF).
Get the Becoming a Truly Compassionate Parent Workbook
Download your free guide and workbook to learn what it means to be a truly compassionate parent. Use the workbook prompts and reflection questions to identify how you can apply this to your life and unique circumstances.
