1. Supporting Your Teenager
Aims:
To show how parents can support teenage wellbeing
To offer ideas that parents can implement

2. Understand The Teenage Brain
We now know that the brain is continuing to develop during the teenage years and into their early 20’s.
The last area of the brain to go through this process is Pre-Frontal Cortex, which is where: planning, decision making, impulse control, strategic thinking, and weighing up consequences all take place.
Synapses that normally go through the prefrontal cortex go through the amygdala – the emotional centre of the brain. So things are experienced in a much more sensitive way
Teenagers find it harder to make decisions, plan and weigh up the consequences. They are also more emotional.

3. Understand what Worries your Teenager
Identity
Reduced Family time
friendships
Social Media
Anxiety
School
Peer Pressure
What worries your child?

4. 5 Ways To Support Your Teenager
Encourage a positive mindset
Nurture resilience
Promote a healthy lifestyle
Help them to manage stress
Connect with your teenager by listening, talking and setting boundaries

5. ‘Happiness is not ready made
‘Happiness is not ready made. It comes from your own actions’ Dalai Lama
Everyone has significant control over their our own happiness

6. Action for Happiness
See Action for Happiness website – Ways to achieve wellbeing and happiness – YR 7 in tutor time Link to Gradu8

7. SpongeBob Squarepants 2 | Thank Gosh It's Monday | Music Video | Paramount Pictures International
Encourage positivity

8. Nurture Resilience
Gently help your child to shift their reliance on support from others (I have the resources)
Help your child to use their internal skills ( I can do/try this)
Nurture Resilience
Build positive attitudes and feelings about themselves (I am good/I am able/ I am kind)

9. Encourage A Growth Mindset
fleas in a jar.mpg
Lesley Crawley

10. Nurture Resilience
If a parent is worried about their child's resilience they can talk to us and request support via a resilience programme
“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say ‘so what’”.
Andy Warhol

11. Promote a Healthy Lifestyle
Time to sleep – without technology
Time in - to eat healthily with the family, to share your day and to offer support and set boundaries
Time to focus - to do school work
Time to exercise – to be happy and healthy
Downtime - to listen to music, relax
Time to connect – with friends, family and loved ones
Talk about each one

12. Managing Stress
A degree of pressure and stress is not only inevitable, it can be a helpful way of motivating people to perform at their best and achieve more. It is when that stress become excessive that it can create a state of anxiety and ‘flight, fright or freeze’.
Stress is not all bad

13. Managing Stress
Practice 7/11 with your child

14. Managing Stress
The Headspace App can be downloaded free

15. Connect With Your Teenager
Contacts for support and page 11 of planner