COVID-19, the psychological fall out for young people 

Valerie Bailey

COVID-19, at this stage, has definitely and thankfully not been as harsh to Torbay as to other localities in the UK in its current wave. Whilst we as a nation mourn losses to that dreadful virus, we endeavour to move from the stage of high alert and immediate danger to life, to a new future. We will attempt to create a new normal.
During and after lockdown, as a local teacher, I entered the homes of many of my students via the internet and witnessed a significant spectrum of learning arrangements that parents, and even we (teachers), scrambled to set up and endeavoured to sustain in order to protect all our lives. This felt quite safe and made the continuation of learning possible.
However, as we hear of a new type of physical scars borne by COVID-19 survivors, we also understand that our confinements may have created a new array of difficulty for our children and young people.
Among us, many will have suffered physical ailments and indeed lost loved ones, yet some will have suffered psychological wounds that did not take them to Torbay Hospital. We now learn that these inherent effects of a different kind will remain for potentially up to 10 years, including among our young people.
With Dr Maria Loades, Clinical Psychologist from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath we learn that: “There is evidence that it’s the duration of loneliness as opposed to the intensity which seems to have the biggest impact on depression rates in young people.”
Furthermore, a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry alleged that support services will need to be ready for a future increase in needs in our very locality, post pandemic. Hence, parents are now urged to be aware of the signs of anxiety, sadness or low mood as only some pupils have recently returned to school in the Bay.

Then what?

Without the regular face-to-face contact with teachers for 3 whole months, many children, teenagers and families may have “fallen through the net” of the highly skilled watch of educators.
Thankfully we can look to the local services in the Bay such as CAMHS, accessible via the GP Youngminds website, which offers online support and bears witness to young people’s statements such as: “My mood is low because of all the bad news”, “I struggle with social distancing”, etc.
Another local service is Checkpoint, a service funded by the Children’s Society normally operates drop-in services (although currently responding via email). Youth Genesis, in all localities of the Bay offers support at an informal level and is currently operating its services online for both young people and parents alike.
As aforementioned, since there is evidence that the length and the weight of loneliness (as opposed to the number of missed events) are what seem to be the main impact on depression rates in young people, we all need to be at the ready. For the return to school of our youngest children/pupils earlier in the month, headteachers and academy leaders should have highlighted the importance of play, in supporting their cohorts to reconnect with peers and readjust to their social life, ensuing this severe period of isolation. This does not pan out into secondary schools, as only students of Year 10 return to lessons, alongside keyworkers’ children.
Of course, the Mental Health concern for pupils and students is not a novelty born out of this pandemic; thus in 2015, it became schools’ legal responsibility to “watch out” for signs of such ailments in youngsters. Furthermore, in the last 15 years, the changes in the fabric of society have made children more anxious than ever before, notably with the development of social media.
in Torbay, in our schools and as teachers, we witness stress levels never before seen.

Then what else?

Fortunately, there is another resource that is often untapped in our new western society model; over which we all have power: RESILIENCE.
It is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or bullying. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.”

I carried out essential research on this subject in 2016 at Torquay Boys Grammar School, and found that students themselves were thirsty for such solutions of their own. Furthermore, recent evidence based on improvement results in the lives of children having suffered adverse experiences pointed to this inner/outer, natural/cultural quality that is resilience.

Watch out for next week’s article for a guide.

COVID-19, the fall out for young people (2) 

Valerie Bailey

Last week, we were able to consider the different options, within our reach, to support young people’s psychological state after the impact of isolation due to lockdown.
It only takes to be with a young person for a few minutes to realise how much teenagers are in need of socialisation, some usually even prefer to engage with their peers via screens rather than engage with parents.
However, a strange occurrence has taken place which will surely be worthy of sociological research… They have missed seeing each other despite their social network contact.
With the plans for localised lockdowns in England, the “brakes applied” to Leicester’s deconfinement and the release of Torbay Council’s Local Outbreak Management Plan to cope with such an event, there is no guarantee for our young people, neither for older folk that this Summer will be one to remember.
Wary of isolation, tired of sharing the momentum of their education with remote teachers and foreign online platforms, what is their escape?
As other schools in the Bay, my school worked tirelessly to continue to educate and support students when they needed it.

Do the young people hold resources that we have not yet been able to discover, let alone teach, train, neither establish as we all ran for shelter in March? The day our country went in lockdown the school was meant to be holding a special day on mental health awareness, how to access support, and most importantly learn to develop our own resilience.

More often than not, this word (resilience) will be associated with power, strength and images such as those displayed in programmes comparable to Channel 4’s “SAS: who dares wins” .
We could not be further from the truth.
During Masters’ research, at TBGS, we provided students with the following definition to assist their choice when rating their own resilience:
“Resilience”: It is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or bullying. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.”
“Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. “
We found out that a measurable proportion of our local students wanted to learn how to tap into this attribute but rather unsure how to do so.

While children are not born resilient, some are born with a very high threshold for tolerating distress. These children are easy to comfort. They tolerate hunger, noise, transitions, and chaotic situations relatively well – they are already resilient.
Shortly after finishing this postgraduate work, my twin grandsons were born very prematurely and I remember watching them in their incubators, and thinking “resilience, this is what will see these minuscule babies fight against all odds for their survival”; powerless as they were to even breathe for themselves, it was their resilience that saw them through.
On the other hand, some children are born very, very sensitive to any stimulation and are easily overwhelmed. We also need to consider children having endured adverse childhood experiences, and how their resilience can have depleted by their experience of life.
The wonderful news is that the capabilities that underlie resilience can be strengthened at any age.
At Torquay Boys Grammar School, it has been decided to weave “resilience” in and around the school’s pastoral policy. This concept was halted in its tracks by lockdown in March and will be rolled out in September.

The brain and other biological systems are most adaptable in early life. Yet, while their development lays the foundation for a wide range of resilient behaviours, it is never too late to build resilience.
We are using a similar programme to that promoted by Dr Ragan Chatterjee in his literature: The 4-Pillar Plan .
Readable and straightforward, our adaptation divides our students’ lifestyle into four themes: Relax, Eat, Move and Sleep. Each pillar is sub-divided into five interventions, each designed to provide a small and realistic step towards better health, physical and mental.
As educators and parents, we can use this to address the needs of our students/children, whether inherently resilient or not as everyone benefits from this kind of plan.
Let’s explore the nuts and bolts of this next week! 

COVID-19, the fall out for young people – the beginning of a strategy

Valerie Bailey

Youngminds produced a report this Summer analysing the impact of COVID-19 on young people.
Reading its results, we can recognise the substantial scale of the challenge that lies ahead. Of course, restrictions are lifting, but we cannot simply return to what we now refer to as having been our “normal life” – the one from before lockdown. Schools, universities colleges and places of work will unquestionably have to adapt to a probable increase in mental health needs. To achieve this, they will endeavour to scrutinise this “new normal” which we are all attempting to create and ensure that excellent support will be on hand for those who require it. Alistair Campbell, on air this week, pointed towards a “2nd wave of illness” due to COVID 19, and it not being viral, but a mental health crisis. An ineffably high percentage of young people have stated that lockdown has made their mental health somewhat worse (81% in total), of which 41% stated “much worse”.
I hear you (and me) say: “what hope do we have for this generation that was already “mis-connected” and operating at a level of social networking that their elders could hardly keep up with?”
We have to take the reins back, we cannot expect them to fight their way out of this potential mental health pandemic through their Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat or Messenger accounts. Even TikTok won’t cut it.
As adults, it is elemental that we create new fashions, new tricks, new hacks for them to find their way towards recovery.
In a survey published by the Harvard Business Review of respondents between the ages of 18 and 23, 75% said they’d left a job partly for mental health reasons, compared with just 20% among the general population – us, the adults. Any answers?
In previous articles, we saw that resilience was an intrinsic kind of muscle that could be exercised and developed to handle this.
Leading from this, and from the list introduced to us by Dr Rangan Chatterjee: Relax, Eat, Move and Sleep (4-Pillar method) are promoted as the basic ways to a longer, healthier, calmer and happier life. These, in essence, are extremely important for resilience and mental health.
Thus, to pursue the resilience development programme that we were going to weave into our school at Torquay Boys Grammar School before the pandemic; we now see an urgency to respond and treat as well as to anticipate problems with coaching as originally planned.
These 4 ‘pillars’ of our health that we will promote are achieved by dedicating time to ourselves to ensure we prioritise these four aspects of our needs. This is one major lack in young people’s lives nowadays: The importance of “Me Time” for their Health (mental and physical). “Me” time is NOT achieved on one’s own with access to a social platform, by the way.
According to Chatterjee , benefits include: Improved resilience, reduced feelings of stress, improved ability to cope, more balanced outlook, enhanced ability to sleep, more restorative sleep, better concentration…
“Mens sana in corpore sano”
What is there not to like?
Pillar 01 - Relax
Modern life was already stressful for young people and adults alike – e-mails, social media, work/study pressure, lack of life boundaries, friendship stresses. Rest, or lack of it, is hugely problematic in these unprecedented times. Relaxation has NEVER been more important than it is today. Here and now, in haste, as teachers, parents, guardians, we all need to provide simple, actionable strategies to help build relaxation into the busiest and most hectic of our young people/students’ lives.
Let’s be honest, there is no ground where we will be as one with them for the choice of a relaxation tool… However, we all have our breaths, and acting on its course, speed and delivery gives you control over yourself.
Here are a few examples from Dr Chatterjee’s website :
- 6 breaths per minute,
- 3-4-5 breathing (in for 3, hold for 4, out for 5)
- box breathing (4 seconds in, 4s hold, 4s out, 4s hold)
There is so much we can achieve, for and more importantly with our young people, to show them that we, parents/teachers/guardians, know a way to unwind them – don’t forget to put their phone in another room! You could even, as parents/guardians, hold their hands and execute it with them…
The impact is immediate, calm is restored, redress your crown, you have won.
Next week, Pillar 02 – EAT. 

COVID-19, the fall out for young people – The Pillar that is EATING…

Valerie Bailey

“PSYCHOLOGY NOW”, in its volume 2 this Summer, has a special feature on the topic of eating, and when it becomes a matter for concern. Five pages of this article take us through the disorders associated with eating. Sarah Niven, a wellbeing journalist, skillfully draws our attention to the matters of volume, whether too little or too much, and the mental health origins to these ailments: “When eating becomes an issue” .
My angle today is going to be the opposite to that notion. There is, of course, no denying the veracity and validity of eating disorders, neither the trail of misery and sorrow they leave behind, for sufferers, their family and friends.
Yet, there is a new hidden beast in the fog ahead of us, and that is the danger of WHAT we eat, even if this vital need is within the spectrum of normality in proportion. Hence it is like an inverted equation of damage where the mind suffers from what we eat rather than a troubled mind produces a damaged eating pattern.
As far back as 2012, the NHS published an analysis of a research carried out with almost 9,000 subjects in Europe, the findings were so striking that we can but read intently and act immediately.
This study proved a direct association between young people consuming high levels of fast food and baked food and the propensity for developing depression. It did demonstrate that eating lots of hamburgers, sausages rolls, and pizza causes depression, simply. However, the inclination to consume fast food and the development of depression may both have originated from a common factor, rather than fast food directly causing it. Hence, participants with the highest fast food consumption were generally also single, younger and less physically active, which could have influenced their diet choice and their risk of depression, without overlooking their social background, of course.
BUPA , observes that in the UK, it is estimated that 79 million ready-made meals are eaten weekly. However convenient it may be, processed food is no substitute for cooking a meal at home, as they don’t usually provide our bodies with the nutrients needed to remain healthy.
I say this because up to this point, you may have thought I was going to wrestle with the customary culprits: fast food chains.
There is so much more we should fear from an enemy within, yet the one we can keep at bay! I mean, you can stop young people going for a large hamburger, nevertheless find yourself feeding them similarly processed sustenance at home, because you bought it and took it in.
As parents and educators, are we then to feel guilty for the way society evolves and what it exposes our children to? No! But we are co-responsible for their mental health (with them) at every level where we have an input, are we not?
In his book “The Four Pillar Plan” , Dr Rangan Chatterjee, whose work we are following at Torquay Boys Grammar School on the principle of RESILIENCE, describes eating as one of the four pillars towards a longer, happier and healthier life.

The topic of food, eating as such, can be very complicated, Chatterjee notes that it can be a maze to try and follow this or that fad diet; the promise of becoming slim, muscled or more to Instagram’s point: “allegedly” attractive.
Simplicity is the real answer. Simple meals, wholesome carbs, lots of veg, and seasonal fruits, fish, dry roasted wedges… Young people love smoothies, and homemade ones were always the best in my house until I inserted red cabbage in the mix...
Involve them in cooking, aromas, spices, and remember that they are learning their eating habits for life from us.
The main argument for ready-made food is lack of time…
Billions of these bought dishes are eaten every year in the UK. Bewildering, when you reflect upon the number of health warnings labeled on these mass-produced meals. What is also puzzling is the number of young people demanding, requesting or ordering takeaways for dinner, as opposed to cooking at home. A BBC Good Food Survey in the last few years revealed that 16-24 years olds were spending more on takeaways than any other tranche of population. The obvious correlation is that according to the survey, the average 16-24 year old only knew how to cook four dishes from scratch.
Cooking with my children has always been key, probably because there were four of them and I could not cope with all the peeling whilst also working. This is a good way to involve them, ask for help if they are old enough to hold a knife! Here is one of my favourites:
Put white fish and a few carrot slices, bits of leeks with a tsp of olive oil and whatever spice you can find in the cupboard in a foil wrap. Boil some whole rice and steam some broccoli on top of the rice saucepan.
I am not saying you, as a parent are doing a bad job of it because you do not cook from scratch every day. No one does.
I am saying that it is down to ‘us’ to look out for the detrimental impact of ready-made-fast-food on the mental health of our sons and daughters, and to fix it, in as much as we are able to. We can achieve this by ‘making food’ with them and teaching them about what they need to ingest to stay happy and balanced. Here is something else we know that they don’t.



Next week, Pillar 03 – SLEEP. 

COVID-19, the fall out for young people – How will they sleep?

Valerie Bailey

Firstly, let me get something straight… One’s resilience is not a dumping ground for the failures of others! I read with horror Matthew Syed’s column in the Sunday Times this week: “inflated grades are no help to youngsters. Improve their resilience instead” .
After the debacle of A level results and GCSEs why would we turn to young people and expect them to develop resilience and digest an ignominious infamy brought on by an algorithm?
Let’s remind ourselves of what we have all had to experience in the last five months and be reminiscent of the fact that we are adults and carers for our young.
In previous issues we have considered the mental health distress brought on by enduring isolation and lacking socialization at such a formative stage that is adolescence during lockdown.
We also pondered on solutions to ensure young people are supported through these times and regain their mental health balance. We included the work of Rangan Chatterjee from his book “The Four Pillar Plan” , which we are following at Torquay Boys Grammar School on the principle of RESILIENCE, describing Relax, Eat, Move and Sleep as the four pillars towards a longer, happier and healthier life.
In previous weeks, we explored the way we can encourage, support and incite our charge to relax effectively and eat suitably to boost their mental health.
These reviews are all a message of hope beyond the words, beyond ideas and advice we all seek. I too often hear from parents, even in “normal times”, comments of discouragement and impediment, not feeling they are able to adequately parent their teenage child.
Surely enabling resilience in them is the way forward for all of us, then.
In the physiology of the human brain, resilience is the aptitude of overcoming stress and adversity while preserving near-normal psychological and physical functioning.
One of the most important resilient strategies is the safeguarding of sleep. The plasticity of our neurons, the influence of sleep to brain resilience, the recognised factors that blight sleep quality and predict a penchant for sleep disorders. Therefore, we must examine the multiple mechanisms lending themselves as guardians of sleep, among which we will find gravity, muscular tone and dreams.
While mapping the guardians of sleep to achieve sleep resilience, we can and must favour a behavioural approach to restore and protect the fundamental properties of the healthy sleep our youngsters need.
In school, I have time and time again asked a young person as young as eleven years old what time they went to bed, as they sat in my lesson yawning away, only to be told: “Midnight, Miss”.
How can this be? Of course, parents do not purposely deprive their youngsters from sleep. In actual fact we always advocate a sensible bedtime, don’t we?
Says Chatterjee: “Over the past 16 years, I have seen that the majority of people with sleep issues are doing something in their lifestyles to untrain their natural ability to sleep.”
Whilst assuming there is something in their lifestyle that unhinges our teenagers’ sleep patterns… What could it be? Don’t we know it already? Impotent as we may be to tackle the issue? The NHS has a page on this specific matter: teenagers and sleep, under the remit of “Live well”.
Having accompanied four of these wonderful beings through these formative years as a mother, I could not stop a giggle when I read this bit of advice: “Create a sleep-friendly bedroom”. I wonder whether the author of this advice has ever entered a teenager’s bedroom; so maybe we could park that idea and go for the kill: screen time.
It is advised to not let them have a mobile, tablet, TV or computer in their room at night, and it is very well documented that the light from the screen inhibits sleep. It additionally means that our teens will be prone to stay up late interacting on social media. Hence, we are encouraged to all have at least 30 minutes off screen before going to bed.
Let’s remember that we are looking to support young people’s mental health here, this is not a discipline issue; or is it?
In the BMJ (British Medical Journal) a study was published in October last year, and reported on Forbes Magazine , exposing the use (and over-use) of social media during the day, had an impact on sleep, never mind at bedtime.
They suggested some means to explain the association between social media and sleep deprivation. “Direct sleep displacement may be particularly likely on school days, especially for very high users, since limited social media access during school hours means that at least part of this daily time on social media is likely to take place close to bedtime,”
Youngsters might simply have trouble extricating from socialising to go to bed, which then exposes the addictive virtues of some apps. There is of course the indirectly deferment of activities against sleep onset, as other daytime activities (e.g. homework) are postponed due to the addictive and repeated sense of urgency to look at and respond to social media apps notifications during daytime.
We are talking Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Youtube and Tiktok mostly for young people in Western Europe.

What do we do then?
There are some more apps available to control their apps’ usage. What a crazy world we live in!
Apple created an application named “Moment” and for Android users, “Rescue Time” – Just the names do it for me…
Let’s regroup. These youngsters are YOUR children, carers, teachers, they are all in our charge. We are the guides, the coaches that will deliver the adults of tomorrow.
It only takes to search “parental contract with youth for internet use” in your favourite search engine to unravel a plethora of solutions: “family media agreement”, “family media plan” etc.
Never before, in previous generations, have the adults had less knowledge than their offspring; they handle tools, apps, platforms that we sometimes have little knowledge of.
So here it is parents, to help your youngsters sleep better by freeing themselves: get with it (learn about what they do), get on it (take control) and have the discussions that inform them about the impact of the lack of sleep on their mental health.
(to obtain the whole series of articles on this topic by email, visit www.blablabla.com)


Next week, Pillar 04 – MOVE. 

COVID-19, the fall out for young people – Let’s move!

Valérie Bailey

World mental Health Day – How to “celebrate” its impact with Young People?

Valérie Bailey

On October 10th, the world joined together in focusing on all our mental health states – such a vast and ambitious project when considering an Inuit in a fishing village in Alaska, a youngster in South Africa, or a teenager in Torbay.
Are we ever able to provide a global offer of service or rather, federate our local actions?
This pledge leads to the concept that we should all have access to the quality mental health services we need, when and where needed, without having to pay. As we consider the plea of young people in our Bay, it is not yet quite the case! (CAMHS, Checkpoint, South West Family Values, etc. all have waiting lists) It is however believed that this is possible through a primary health care that adopts an encompassing approach to health and wellbeing of families and communities. So that we can make good health for all a reality, our government needs to invest in mental health services urgently.
If “Nobody should be denied access to mental health care because she or he is poor or lives in a remote place.” (Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization), it was therefore of pugnacious importance that the theme for World Mental Health Day 2020 would be: “Mental Health for All, Greater Investment – Greater Access”
At Torquay Boys’ Grammar School, we shared a resilience message with our students, reminding them of the 4-Pillars principle that I have regularly mentioned here, as developed by Dr Rangan Chatterjee. I conducted a survey with Y11 students who were able to demonstrate how these topics work out in the reality of their lives:


During the day, students came in their own clothes, and participated in the collection led by the Pastoral Team for the work of YoungMinds, a national online service that makes this promise: “We will make sure all young people get the best possible mental health support and have the resilience to overcome life's challenges” https://youngminds.org.uk/
Other schools in the Bay, notably St Cuthbert Mayne, invited students and teachers alike to wear yellow items of clothing, thus observing the guidelines of the #HelloYellow campaign led by YoungMinds.
At Torquay Academy, last Friday was the same as every week, Fun Friday – “because we all need fun in these uncertain times to support the mental health of young people”.
Speaking with my Year 9 class (13 y.o.) that day, when asked what the number one reason for low mood was in young people, 24/25 students named “Social Media” as the chief offender. This, we agreed, was because parents/educators usually have no idea of what goes on behind the door on children’s blue screens. This is a first! Our children know more than we do, as parents, educators, guardians and adults in general, about accessing a world we would never invite through our front door. This therefore has a dramatic effect on discipline, surely?
Steve Biddulph, author of “Raising Boys” strongly advocates a regular discipline to enable what he calls as “firmlove” – it is only born out of love for one’s child. Interestingly, he also advocates exactly the same message in “Raising Girls”, recognising that discipline is about getting involved and teaching a lesson, but not about punishment. This is, he says, what ensures children grow with a wholesome mental health.
Where and when do we get a look in, in that mostly absent gap, between their mind and a free reign on the World Wide Web?
As we seek services for the ailing mental health of our Torbay youngsters and deplore the lack of local (and global) service, how do we take a handle on the obvious culprits: Social Media and lack of healthy discipline?
Incidentally, this discussion in class took place on the same day as the Queen’s Honours List was published, and I was delighted to read that Katharine Birbalsingh, co-founder of the Michaela School, had been made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to education.
I was blessed to be invited for a visit at the Michaela School last December as one of 600 people that take a tour every year.
In my 11-year career as a teacher, I had never witnessed the atmosphere fostered in the establishment, silence in corridors, total absence of hand-held technology, whole-class repetitions, individual book work, silence during teaching and regimented lunchtimes where groups marched in the canteen reciting Shakespeare at the top of their voices.
Wait! I had witnessed this before… in 1978 when I was at school. 

#secondlockdown – are parents better prepared for Round 2?

Valérie Bailey

During the previous lockdown, a local parent confided in me: “you must think I am the most useless parent, but I have raised another child successfully before this one” referring to their child/my student. There was of course no need for this feeling…

What was our benchmark there? Indeed, there were already two: theirs, and mine.  Let’s look at another example: a similarly common, if not more topical subject is: our appearance!

On Woman’s Hour this week on Radio 4, a woman was complaining she thought of herself as “fat”… The presenter was asking what/whom she was comparing herself to? Unfortunately, flicking through celebrities’ Instagram accounts could have immediately created/reinforced that sentiment.

Albert Einstein dedicated most of his research life to relativity – I quote: “Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality.”

Why do we compare everything? And in doing so, why do we doubt ourselves and not others if we are to be part of a larger group of individuals?

For instance, how many times have you doubted yourself as a parent? I have… Many a time.

I was interested in the wonderful piece produced by Katie Cavanna, Managing Director of Re4orm in Torbay, on “imposter syndrome” (Torbay News, 29th October), especially to hear that most of us experience this at different stages of our lives. I concluded then, that parenting could probably be the role in which we feel/think this the most, as we are not trained neither educated nor do we graduate or pass certificates before we throw ourselves into parenting.

One simple but essential distinction is important to acknowledge, in presenting modern research on self-doubt. Results of self-worth have been separated neatly into two scopes: “self-competence” and “self-liking”. We over-analyse ourselves, compare our looks, size, academic achievements, and on this topic: styles of parenting.

We often hear that in years gone by “it took a village to raise a child” well, when “a whole village raised a child” No one was wrong! Or right! The child was raised.

So how do we do this in the 21st Century in the middle of a pandemic in Torbay when we cannot meet properly to air our woes and concerns about our parenting skills for instance?

First, do NOT browse Social Media… If you want information, obtain it from reliable sources, known organisations and charities, whether national or local.

Returning to the idea of the “village”, what is there in Torbay to support us, the adults who parent, mentor, educate our young people?

“FIS” on the Torbay Council website offers a range of local services accessible by phone if your child has added needs, “Parenting Solutions Devon” based in Paignton continues to offer parenting advice through the pandemic, via phone or Facetime.

I had the chance to meet “South West Family Values” (based in Torquay) and see the wonderful work they offer to families in the Bay, notably a “Teen Triple P” programme which we will explore further in my next column.

For now, remember the days when we flew all over the place? Remember this announcement?

“Should the cabin lose pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the overhead area. Please place the mask over your own mouth and nose before assisting your child.”

Look after yourself, don’t compare yourself with anyone, if you have a need for a bit of help, reach out to reliable and compassionate people or rganisations.

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are conceited while the intelligent are full of doubt” Bertrand Russell

Healthy doubt is OK, it breeds learning and knowledge; shameful doubt is toxic and breeds self-condemnation.

(to obtain the whole series of articles already published on this topic check Twitter @vbailey63)

Are sleep problems in the youth related to anxiety and depression? Or is it the opposite?

Valérie Bailey

In class in Torbay a few weeks ago, an 11-year-old informed me that he was exhausted after 4 hours of lesson. We established that he had a reasonable bedtime, and that no gadgets were in the way of his sleeping correctly. “But I wake up very, very early and just think”, I quote.

What can keep a budding teenager up in the middle of the night? The NHS website offers tips to palliate these issues, all to do with a regular, age-related bedtime, no screens etc. The part I was more interested in was this:

“Talk to your teenager about anything they're worried about. This will help them to put their problems into perspective and sleep better.”

You are also, as a parent, invited to encourage them to jot down their worries or make a to-do list before they turn in. Therefore, they should be less prone to lie awake worrying during the night.

What on earth can an 11-year be ruminating on and what effect might that have on their future mental health?

Faith Orchard - lecturer at the University of Sussex researches exactly what is going on with sleep problems and analyses the specific sleeping difficulties of young people, linked to the complex mix of sleep, anxiety and depression. Looking further into the future, Faith carried out some research into young adults who had sleep problems in their teens and demonstrated a causal relationship several years on. Simply, bad sleep in teenage may have led to depression and anxiety as young adults.

It is scientifically proven that sleep, disturbed by worry and concern, has emerged as a consequence of poor mental health, whereas insomnia is classed in turn as a cause of depression and anxiety (Mind, 2020).

This i kind of prevalent and growing issue in youth was researched by scientists from the University of Leeds and the Goldsmiths Institute at the University of London.

They published a paper in 2008 that is still very much referenced in present research, outlining anxiety and sleep difficulties associated with adolescence. They demonstrated, together with the growing body of literature, that anxious children do not sleep well and that “in certain cases sleep disturbances in youth may serve as a red flag for the development of later anxiety”.

This is my point, right here: Meijer et al. in 2016, demonstrated by study (survey) that “higher levels of the parent–adolescent relationship contributed to better sleep quality”.

One element I often encounter here in Torbay is the question of parents monitoring adolescents… They concluded that parental monitoring also played an essential role in the sleep quality of adolescents.

Youth nowadays have lives of their own as soon as they get a smartphone, there is no doubt about that. So how can we build bridges with our young people, improve their behaviour, their mood, their sleep, if we have to fights the algorhythmic addiction to their handset.

Miranda Wolpert, leading the Mental Health Priority Area of the Wellcome Trust, is looking at where £200 million will be best spent to address the causes of ailing mental health sufferers in order to construct the reality in her vision: “Can a world exist in which no one is held back by mental health problems?” Speaking on Radio 4 this week (All in the Mind).

She and her team are working on a new radical approach to deal with anxiety and depression in 14 to 24-ear-olds.

Except, we need to access this here, in Torbay, today!

Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in Torquay offer an array of services and support, although there can be waiting list to contend with. Cited here before, Youngminds is referenced by the NHS as a partner of choice for parental advice.

This week, I spoke more in depth with one of the directors at the Torbay-based social enterprise South West Family Values (SWFV): Craig Brennan-Osment.

Through the pandemic, SWFV had to turn many services to online delivery and even, as reported here earlier in the year, address hunger as part of the building blocks to families’ mental health welfare, by arranging delivery of food parcels.

The organisation is now hoping to continue to offer its programme of ‘Incredible Years’  parenting groups, and ideally face-to-face support for parents of young people who have developed behavioural issues during lockdown.

Craig spoke about their work on school attendance in primary schools.  This has been a particular challenge during the Covid crisis for many schools, with entire year groups being sent home and parents and children anxious about attending. On this topic, they also offer a programme for parents of anxious children titled “Timid to Tiger” (rather self-explanatory), this is funded by the lottery.

SWFV noticed, as did most of the social work related services in the Bay, an increase in family conflicts, domestic violence and an urgent need for cementing the mental health of the family unit as a whole.

For the November lockdown SWFV provided 275 families/children/young people with regular support, engaged in 386 supportive phone calls, 70 video sessions, received 24 referrals for mental health interventions, and 33 for Christmas food hampers.

We must remember one thing if nothing else. Although our adolescents escape our watch as soon as they get their mobile phones out of their pockets, we are still in charge, including this side of them that we have no power over.

Don’t go at it alone. Even Madonna shared her difficulties on the issue in the Guardian in 2019:

“Giving my children mobile phones ‘ended our relationship’.”

Oh and wait… Never mind her, so have I, as a parent, been confronted to this and turned to professionals at times for advice.

Madonna, you, me, we’re all in this raising teenagers’ thing together!

Have you become the family referee again?

Valérie Bailey

January 2021

We are now back in lockdown, and educators are again thrown into the jungle of online teaching. This can only mean one thing: teachers are not looking after your children and teenagers five days a week… YOU are (with the caveat of vulnerabilities’ requirements and key workers’ children).

With your role as a parent, you have the added pressure of guiding, supporting, encouraging (nagging? Threatening?) your children, as well as referee the use of the family PC/laptop, and maybe the kitchen or dining table space.

As I write this, Gavin Williamson (Education Secretary) reminds us of his promise of thousands of laptops and reduced or free data for education sites. As these devices start to trickle down in Torbay schools, educators hope to ease your burdens by providing you with the tools. It is very much worth exploring the use of Playstation and Xbox at home to enable a duplication of devices. Indeed, Birchgrove Comprehensive School in Swansea was the first to circulate a “how to’ guide for easy access to schooling from what is normally a video game station, devised by one of their students “William”; most schools and secondaries in the Bay have now received this “trick of the trade”. If you have not, see William’s school-page on Facebook.

This may help somewhat but not totally fix your need for refereeing within parenting…

Earlier in the week, I was able to discuss parenting-in-lockdown matters with Sonia Worthington, Director at ‘Parenting Solutions Devon’. Her organisation is often contacted by local schools for targeted support, and otherwise charges for the skilled services it offers to people in the Bay when they are available for face-to-face meetings or virtually online. There are also many ways to access the service if parents aren’t able to afford it. Hence, given our new lockdown predicament, Sonia wanted to share some advice with us in order to ease your burden and assist in a way that would reach many.

Her initial advice was to contact the school or schools (in many cases) first, to check and discuss potential timetable overlaps among your children and make the relevant teachers aware of this.

As children will work better if something is visually represented for them, she believes that organising a daily visual timetable/schedule and adding in timeslots during which the children can use the family laptop/device will be paramount. The older the child, the more they will want to be involved in this planning, and the better they will adhere to it, confirms Sonia.

At school, students/pupils will have breaks between lessons, two, or even three longer breaks and it is vital that they can still benefit from that.

“Print off any schoolwork where possible so all the children can be doing schoolwork while one is online, this will stop the boredom setting in” was another tip for over-stretched families.

The government is currently negotiating with internet providers to ask for extra data for the children to use while working on their devices accessing school lessons.  BT, Three and Vodafone have all confirmed that they will work with the government to assist “disadvantaged children that could fall behind in school without access to the internet”, this was reported by the BBC.

Approximately 9% of UK children are without access to a laptop, desktop or tablet says Ofcom, furthermore, over 880,000 from a household with only a mobile internet connection.

If this is your case, it is worth asking your school whether they have been made aware of these current plans by the Department for Education.

Returning to the BBC, there has been a huge push forward by the Corporation, to offer curriculum programmes that work alongside the usual “Bitesize” pages. A fantastic article entitled: “Lockdown Learning: BBC puts school materials on TV, iPlayer and online” will guide you through the best way to enlist their support.

“Parenting Solutions Devon” had further advice for parents working from home who also need the family laptop/PC: “get up earlier before the children and ensure as much work admin is completed for that day before the children wake up”.

As I have seen with my own grown-up children’s family needs, Sonia’s guidance resonated so true with us: “parents will need to factor in a timetable to care for the children and see to their needs, sort of like a tag team.”

As a single parent family, this time is super-challenging – “Gingerbread” the leading national charity working with single parent families, since 1918, have been at the forefront of shaping policy and services that support single parents. Their website offers many ideas and reminders on how to navigate the lockdown rules, including support bubbles, and childcare arrangements.

Another top tip by Sonia Worthington would be to negotiate with your work when you can fit your working hours in during the day whilst you care for the children. Early mornings working might help and also late-night working when the children are in bed if your work allows, would be incredibly helpful to you.

You can equally contact the “Action for Children” Torquay Centre for under-five parenting assistance, “Sendiass Torbay” for children with added needs, “Family Lives” is recommended by Torbay Council for parenting and family support.

Last but not least please remember you are not alone in this and please reach out to your children’s education provider if you need support.

We’ve done this before; we are all better at it. You, the parents, your children and us, the educators.

Gratitude: Do we have anything to be thankful for at the moment?

Valérie Bailey

February 2021

This week, I listened to a podcast by Riviera FM as Sharon Nelson from Heart of Torbay CIC, was interviewed last June by Dave Evitts. The CIC’s professed role is to care for the mental health of people in the Bay, inspire and motivate, encourage others to live their best life*.

This particular episode was about being thankful in lockdown – a recurring situation! Thankfulness, gratitude, two very similar feelings: gratitude in the dictionary is listed as – “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.”

She was able to describe how a “personal coach” would advise one to register 3 positive things to be thankful for. What a prodigious idea, and if it seems tough at first, once you would “get it”, you could need a notepad, not a sheet to record them.

For sure, people have much to be thankful for, as much more kindness is being despatched these days. Hopefully, the section of our society that is struggling and suffering the most, from the dreadful recession associated to a third lockdown, is able to access some support from government and direct supplies local foodbanks. In this fact though, is there really room for gratitude? If appreciation is a means for people to value what they have instead of constantly reaching for something new to make them happier, how does this work if you have nothing, and by association, you are feeling low and depressed? Furthermore, what you receive is in your quality of “being in need”?

The University of Harvard (Health Edu), after extensive research, declares that “Gratitude helps people refocus on what they have instead of what they lack. And, although it may feel contrived at first, this mental state grows stronger with use and practice.”

So, their stance is that you need to be thankful for what you have (and maybe receive) because otherwise, you will not know how to appreciate your current situation – this, in turn, will foster a state of depression.

Fittingly… I happened to watch a programme, on TV this morning, showing Amy Winehouse receiving her Grammy Awards in 2008. She was consecrated winner in five separate categories, a momentous moment in anyone’s life, a millionaire jackpot moment… Yet, she was unable to express joy, contentment or gratitude – rather she told her childhood friend: “ I cannot enjoy this moment without my drugs”.

I hear you say, this is a very far-fetched example… Is it though? No one will give you five “Grammies” anytime soon, but have you ever felt that bitter resentment that what you have is not enough? It is not what you want? How you want it? You wanted more, you wanted something different?

There is the crux of the argument. As I write this, I feel the taste in my mouth, a lump in my throat almost; a memory returns to my mind: in 1974, for Christmas (46 years ago!), I dreamt of a “Make-Up 2000” game. For days on end, I imagined how I would use the blush, the lipstick, a real girlie fantasy – I was offered a dressing gown. Yes, that bitter experience when what you face fosters an experience so real it becomes sensory. I still vividly recall the sheer sadness, I taste the almighty bitterness I experienced, as I felt that my dream had been “stolen”.

So many of us have our dreams stolen at the moment: the young people in my own family, hoping for a future that has now been postponed so far ahead it may have to disappear altogether: how can they deal with this and find gratitude to express?

The local families whose income has become precarious, now often stuck at home to educate their children, fighting to stay afloat, struggling to see the wood for the trees in their position – do they feel that hope has been stolen from them? Has this belief they had in social mobility for their children now been taken away by unsteady online education?

Many of us who feel able to, purchase goods for the local foodbanks: the Larder, Re4orm, Path, the Heaven and so many others found online on the “Torbay HelpHub”. We do this because we care, we hope our gifts will make a difference to struggling families. I am certain they do! But there must be a bitter-sweet feeling in receiving food for your children that you think YOU should be able to provide, no? Even that in itself may hinder your capacity for gratitude.

Thankfully, I return to the advice I heard on Riviera FM – “Gratitude is a decision you make” – so how can we educate ourselves to find the small mercies in our own struggles, in these “unprecedented times”?

Psychology Today recommends the following actions… All free and gracious and available to all of us:

Firstly, gratitude opens the door to more relationships; a simple “thank you” shows an appreciation that can help you win new friends.

Secondly, gratitude is proved to improve our physical health; hence, grateful people experience fewer aches and pains and report feeling healthier than other people and they exercise more.

Topically, gratitude improves psychological health whilst it reduces toxic emotions, such as envy, resentment, frustration and regret.

This gracious emotion also enhances empathy and reduces aggression, enabling better sleep. “Writing in a gratitude journal improves sleep, according to a 2011 study published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being. Spend just 15 minutes jotting down a few grateful sentiments before bed, and you may sleep better and longer.”

Finally, and even more essentially, gratitude improves self-esteem and increases mental strength. Repeatedly, research has shown that gratitude not only reduces stress, but it may also play a major role in overcoming trauma. Acknowledging all that you have to be thankful for —even during the worst times—nurtures resilience.

Gratitude, and resilience, everything we need in these hard times. I am thankful, thankful that you have read my article. What will you be grateful for today?

Be safe, be well.

*Check out Heart of Torbay on Facebook, starting a FREE course: “Mindful Mondays” this week.