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You can also check out all of our practical videos on our YouTube Channel here - these include nappy changing, making up a bottle, topping and tailing and so much more!
Written by Lucy Oladapo, Family Consultant. This family came to us for a parent consultation, not because they were having any major difficulties but because Mum wanted some support in putting a routine in place for baby. The catch was that it needed to fit in around their 3 year old’s daily routine including nursery drop offs and pick ups.
Read MoreWritten by Katie Crouch, Senior Lecturer, Researcher and Consultant in the Early Years. Due to Covid and subsequent home-schooling, we have all become aware of the pressures faced by families when trying to support learning in the home. Now that schooling and home learning are becoming separate entities again, we look at how we can build healthy routines and home learning habits.
How can we as adults help our children to develop a love of learning outside of the school environment? In fact, the learning which takes place outside of the school can often hold a deeper sense of meaning and understanding for many of our children and this leads to question why this could be the case?
In my experience, it is down to just a couple of simple factors;
Learning away from school can have fewer boundaries, such as time constraints.
Children are also more likely to feel emotionally safer with their significant adults and fewer opportunities for self-comparison with peers.
In this blog I will look at how we can maximise children’s learning potential within these circumstances.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. Has your child recently moved from a cot to a bed, and now keeps getting up to come and find you? This can be a very common situation that parents find themselves in and often a child can go from sleeping well in their cot to being awake several times per night and refusing to stay in their bed!
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant.Bedtime and the lead up to it can feel like quite a juggling act especially when you have more than one child to do your bedtime routine with.
This time of the day is often when we want things to be calm and to be able to give our children opportunities for one-to-one time, but it doesn’t always happen that way! At the end of the day everyone (including you!) is tired, and bedtime might not always go as you would hope…but that’s ok! Don’t put too much pressure on yourself - it can take time to find what works and it will evolve over time as your little ones get older.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. The day when clocks change is coming up and it can always be a worry that this is going to have an effect, meaning all your hard work on getting a good sleep routine in place could be ruined. Fear not! There are some easy ways to keep this on track!
This blog specifically focusses on the clock change that we have in October, where we ‘fall back’ and gain an extra hour…or we hope that this would be the case but not always so when we have little ones.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant.It is very often the case that your child, who loved having a bath all of a sudden stops wanting to go in! We often see bath time as that ‘wind down’ opportunity before bedtime and when our little one refuses to get in or gets upset we can worry that this might affect bedtime etc.
Please be reassured that some children will go through this phase, it can be normal and it is all about their stage of development at the time.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. It has been a long 12 months, but we are just starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel (keeping everything crossed) and the thought of being able to do things and see people again is a really exciting one. However, for our babies and children (and even some adults) this new phase is something that we need to adjust to, and this might not just be a case of ‘getting back to normal…’ in some cases we will need a plan to gradually re-introduce other people back into our lives.
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. The day when clocks change is coming up and it can always be a worry that this is going to have an effect, meaning all your hard work on getting a good sleep routine in place could be ruined. Fear not! There are some easy ways to keep this on track!
This blog specifically focusses on the clock change that we have in March, where we ‘spring forward’ and lose an hour…which none of us enjoy!
Read MoreWritten by Claire Burgess, Family Consultant. This is a very common issue that parents face and it can be hugely frustrating and challenging when all you want to do is for your child to get dressed, put their shoes on, brush their teeth and tidy up their toys etc. One of the first things to think about is that when our children are babies, we do everything for them and they have very little input or choice in what happens when. Once our children start to find their voice and have the ability to do things independently, then they want to practice this as much as possible, it is a newfound freedom! This can however be exhausting for us as they are taking a great deal of time to do the simplest of things (which you know you can do in 2 mins!) because they are finding it tricky or just want to keep doing it over and over.
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