The purpose of this session is enabling the children to make a connection between their rights being met and their emotional wellbeing.
Key message: Love is what children need most.
“To do our best, a child needs to feel confident, express themselves through art, positive feedback and to feel loved by people.”
What do children need to be healthy, happy and safe: Sleep, love, a home, a family, to spend time with friends, healthy food and an adult to look out for you.
Shower children with compliments to make them feel good about themselves!
This week, the Imagineers are thinking about loneliness. Being lonely is something that most people will experience at some point, but if it happens a lot it can negatively impact on a child’s mental health and they could become vulnerable.
‘A child can be lonely because their parent as died, or works lots or off-shore.’
‘When it rains, a child could become lonely because they are not allowed out to play with their friends and they have nothing to do.’
‘A child would be lonely if they ask their friends to play and they say no.’
‘If they feel someone doesn’t love them, the child could become lonely.’
‘If you are lonely you would feel depressed, upset and angry. You would cry and your body might be sore. If someone says you can’t play, you would fight them.’
The Imagineers ideas for helping a child overcome loneliness all involve including and spending time with the child and doing something fun or relaxing together.
The session is concerned with the impact adults’ behaviour can have on children’s emotional wellbeing.
Key messages:
Positive adult figures in a child’s life can be: police, ambulance people, youth club adults, parents, carers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, school nurse, teachers, counsellor and doctors.
Considering adults behaviour (at home, school and in the community)
Positive adult behaviour: fun adults, happy, care for children and always help them out. Plays games with you, gives you praise, makes you feel proud of yourself. Gives advice. Doesn’t tell children they did bad, says ‘that’s okay you might do even better next time’. Lets you know they are there for you.
What we need from a positive adult: a place and time for us to talk one-on-one when we are struggling. Let you go on your phone if there is time at the end of class.
Negative adult behaviour: Shouting or screaming at you – it makes you not confident, want to shout back or you wanna knock their lights out. Affect a child’s safety, make you feel uncomfortable, unsafe or scared. Telling a child to do things that’s dangerous or that they don’t want to do – if not a good parent or good role model. It might be scared to go home and might want to stay at a friends house all the time. Telling you what to do an making you feel annoyed – sometimes want to do own thing.
Imagineer Leo has written this blog post:
‘Today we were making our own characters with play doh. We were thinking about positive adults. Imagineer Gabrielle, made an alien called Naomi for her model. Naomi has had light to help children see what is happening at night time. Naomi also has a phone that can never cut out because it always has good reception and she is always ready to listen.
Imagineer Katie made her sister as her model. Her sister likes playing on her phone a lot. She knows a lot of things, she is really smart. She can phone a child when they feel scared or worried or they have good advice for other children that are going through a bad time in their life just know. She can also teleport to children when something bad is happening so she can be there to help them out when they need it.
Also Imagineer Sean-Paul made a man called Jim who has a love detector in his chest. Jim puts his love detector on when he feels lonely or down because it tells him who loves him, and how much they love him. He lets children borrow his love detector when they feel down.’
In this session, the Imagineers have been introduced to the stigma attached to mental health problems and have considered how children might look after their own wellbeing. They have created Care Boxes showing their manifesto for how to care for yourself.
Key Message: Equip children with the right skills and tools so they can care for themselves too: breathing, meditation, getting enough sleep, be active, doing something they love or that keeps them calm.
Here are some of the ideas for the Imagineers’ Care manifesto:
Get enough sleep
Ask for help
Listen to someone else’s story
Play with a dog
Laugh
Try out meditation club
Stay strong by talking to someone
Speak to friends about the things that are making you sad
Get a teacher to help
Explain to someone how it happened, so it won’t happen again
Try and think of positive things.
Ask for help
Do something that make you happy and calm like drawing or writing
Breath in and out
Don’t give up on what you do as it is motivating and encourages you
This week, for Mental Health Awareness Week, the Imagineers will explore how children think and feel about their bodies, and what can be done to encourage to nurture positive body image.
‘Playing football makes me feel great.’
Who can help support a child to feel good about their body: ourselves, family, parents, sisters/ brothers, family, teachers, social services, friends you trust and PSAs.
‘Teachers can make children cry and upset by putting them down. It might get in the way of a child feeling good about themselves.’
‘Teachers should give us time everyday to do the Daily Mile. They should come out and do it with us.’
Adults can: make sure you have equal boys and girls activities and clubs for children who are gender fluid, compliment and say ‘keep going’ or ‘don’t give up’, make opportunities to experience new things and go new places, make time to talk, make children feel wanted, provide us with healthy snacks and packed lunches, take us to dance classes, let us relax make extra curricular activities for accessible, help us cut down on bad food, let us go outside and play during class, make more better body standards – introduce role models who are more realistic.
‘A pressure on children is social media. You only see the happy side of people’s lives, you don’t see the down. Models are slim and they use Photoshop filters. It makes me feel bad about myself.’
Children can: play badminton at lunchtime, be active, get involved in activities, get sleep, eat healthy food, chill out in the sun to help your body relax and think happy.
‘If you feel good about your body, you may like more people around you because you are less self conscious.’
Sometimes, when a child’s mental health is at risks, they can’t change the really big things, sometimes things are out of their control. But the child can maybe influence enough things to help make a difference. The Imagineers reflected on their scenarios from the last session and improvised ideas for what children and the adults around them could do make things better.
Key messages:
Willow 10
Willow’s grandma passed away and she’s had sleepless nights. At home her mum and dad are arguing a lot and at school she finds her work hard and thinks she is bad at everything.
She feels sad about things in her life and she is only happy when she is doing things she likes, like baking and being outside. These things help her to escape the awful things in her life. She doesn’t feel like she has anybody to talk to.
Willow could do some things to change or influence what is happening. She could talk to someone about it and not bottle things up, she could do more baking to make pocket money to escape, she could change her appearance a little bit like dye her hair to build her confidence and make her feel better about herself, take a walk or cuddle her toys when her parents argue.
She can’t change that her parents argue or that her grandma has passed away. She can’t change how other people in her family behave when they are stressed. She can’t help that she isn’t able to concentrate on doing her homework.
She could write her feelings in a journal so that she can read it if she feels that way again- so she knows what to do and can learn from past experiences. She could maybe talk to other family and get help with solutions. Use noise cancelling headphones to block out arguing and let her focus on her homework.
As her friend, I would invite her for a sleepover at my house and talk to her about her emotions. I would bake with her and do things that she likes. I would talk to my parents to see if they could help.
Mandy 12
He was bullied at Primary School because of his name. He recently went to High School and he feels anxious about more bullying. His parents split up and now he lives with his step-dad and step-sister.
He is worried everywhere. Being at home makes him even more anxious than being at school.
He might not be able to stop bullying. Bullies can be permanent unless you change school. If he can’t change, then it might be hard for him to stay calm if people are winding him up.
He could change his name but people would still know. He could talk to someone he trusts at his new school, they might have knowledge and be able to help – it might of happened to them before.
Talking to someone is always good when your worried, but that might be hard if he doesn’t have any confidence.
As his friend I would annoy the bullies so that they know I’ll stick up for my friend. It might work but it could maybe make the bullying worse because more and more people might join in – I’ve found this out the hard way.
This week, the focus was on helping Imagineers understanding the concept of mental health. Just like we all have our physical health, we all have mental health.
When we have good mental health this means we can think, feel and act in a way that allows us to enjoy life and deal with the challenges it presents. When we have a mental health problem then there is something happening in our lives to make us feel stress or that we are not coping day-to-day, this might make it difficult to do things like go to school or be with other people.
Here are the Imagineers characters and their comics illustrating realistic scenarios that a child might find themselves in. They show a situation where a child’s mental health is at risk because of circumstances and how they feel.
Josh, 9
His parents don’t spend time with him and his sister because they have to work so much. He feels sad, annoyed and left out because his friends at school do fun things with their families.
Billy, 10
His gran is really unwell and so her mom is staying with her a lot, leaving Billy alone at home. Nobody at school knows about it. He has a sore tummy all the time. It is hard to concentrate in class.
Gaby, 13
She gets slagged off by her mum. Sometimes it’s funny but sometimes she reacts, and arguments happen. She is lonely and feels angry all the time.
Joe, 13
Joe’s mum has been stressed a lot lately because of the bills and life in her general, so she has been losing her temper and hitting Joe and calling him names. His dad has left his mum to do everything on her own and she feels lonely. She smokes a lot. She now has to go to hospital because of this. Joe is worried for his mum because she is sick. He’s worried she might die.
Chloe 9
Her parents split up and keep arguing in front of her. At school her teacher doesn’t make her feel welcome in class, she shouts at her when she isn’t feeling good. She feels emotional and cries. She is worried about who she will live with and she feels left out in class.
According to the psychologist Robert Plutchik there are 8 basic human emotions: joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, trust and anticipation. And according to the Imagineers there are 9, with the addition of love! For this activity, the Imagineers come up with ideas for when a child might feel these emotions and making their own papier mache emojis for checking-in.
Key message: Feelings really matter. They have a big impact on all that children do.
Joy
When someone is polite; welcoming and kind, playing with friends; when good things happen in your life; when you have a good day; when you get something new; when you see your mum and when you play at a park.
Sadness
Someone is unkind or rude, when you feel betrayed, when you get bullied, if you lose someone or something, when your pet dies, when you move away and when you have no-one to play with.
Love
Being with your family, when your parents take you to new places, getting a new sibling, your parent(s)/ carer gives you a hug everyday and when your mum asks you to come out for dinner.
Trust
When someone make you feel safe and protected, if someone helps you, when your friends keep a secret, when someone trusts you with a secret, when you like someone, and they like you too, when you earn friendship and you know you can depend on your mum.
Anticipation
When you’re expecting something to happen and when you are waiting for your mum and dad argue.
Fear
When you are scared because you are getting bullied at school, when you don’t want to do something, if you are lost in a forest, when you go to bed after watching a horror movie, when you play a scary game and when your parents argue.
Surprise
On their birthday, at an event and when you get a surprise party.
Anger
When you get made fun of, when you are bored and have nothing to do, when you lose a game.
Disgust
When you eat something, you don’t like and when someone spits out food they have already chewed.
The Imagineers are investigating mental health. The first session is about exploring emotions, encouraging the children to expand their language in connection to their feelings.
‘We have been talking about mental health and emotions. We made a scale and all put ourselves over 5 [for how we feel today] so that is pretty good.’
‘I feel sad because my dog passed away last week.’
‘I am feeling happy because I am back doing stuff with the Imagineers, which is pretty cool.’
‘I like doing the check-in because you get to find out how other people feel.’
