Has something changed at home?

It is really important that no matter how small the issue.... that you share it with us. If this affects your child it will affect them at school too....

We are all here to support you at Barming Primary School and if we can't we will aim to find you that support!

Please contact Mrs Darby, our Family Support Worker, or look on her dedicated page. You can also access information below:

Confidence, Self-esteem, Resilience and Growth Mindset

In order for our children to be successful throughout life they need to develop confidence, resilience and a growth mindset.   

Definitions:

Confidence = the feeling that you can trust, believe in and be sure about the abilities or good qualities of somebody or something.

Self-esteem = having a good opinion of yourself.   It is based on understanding what your strengths are and valuing yourself as a person.   Self-esteem is usually described as high or low.   People with lower self-esteem are unable to see themselves as capable, sufficient or worthy.   Whereas people with higher self-esteem have healthy feelings about themselves and are more likely to succeed in personal and career goals.

Resilience = any ability that involves the ability to adapt when faced with various pressures, both internal and external pressures.   Resilience is the process of handling stress and recovering from trauma or adversity.

Growth Mindset = in a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.

Signs of Low Self-esteem in a Child:

• Talk about themselves in a very negative way “I’m stupid”, “I’m ugly”.
• Constantly comparing themselves to others in a negative way.
• Become overly concerned about other people’s opinion of them.
• Mood swings often seeming sad, withdrawn, angry or depressed.
• May lose their temper quickly and be prone to becoming emotional.
• Don’t have many friends or prefer to spend time on their own.
• Will often go to great lengths to avoid social situations.
• Feel their efforts are never as good as those of other people.
• Find it difficult to accept either praise or criticism.
• An unwillingness to try new things for fear of failing.
• Give up easily and say, “I can’t”.
• Find it difficult to cope with failure.
• Blame other people or situations for their failings – “the teacher was stupid” or “the computer didn’t work properly”.
• May cheat or lie if they think they are going to lose a game.
• May try to downplay the importance of events in which they don’t participate – “I didn’t want to be in the play anyway.”
• A loss of interest in activities they used to enjoy.
• A decline in their performance at school.
• May adopt negative behaviours such as missing school, smoking/vaping, drinking or generally misbehaving.

A growing body of research suggests that what an individual believes about themselves and their capability is the most important factor in learning.

Self-confidence: feel that I can try something new, cope with failure and go on and achieve success (resilience).

Self-esteem: I feel good about myself and my relationships.

Self-efficacy: If I want to make something happen it will.

Resilience is a key factor in protecting and promoting good mental health – resilience is the quality of being able to cope with adversity.

Self-efficacy can be defined as an individual’s belief in their ability to act independently, to make realistic decisions for themselves, to set goals and reach them.

Resilience is supported by self-esteem and self-efficacy… underpinned by a secure social base.

What is Resilience?

There are many different definitions of resilience used in research and practice. Some people think of resilience as:

• Bouncing Back, Bouncing Up or Bouncing Forward
• Doing better than you’d think given the circumstances
• Beating the odds

For more information and resources, please click on the link below:

https://www.boingboing.org.uk/resilience/resources-getting-hold-stuff/

https://www.boingboing.org.uk/resources/resilience-resources-parents-carers/

Growth mindset:

“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” (Dweck, 2015)

Growth mindset has become a popular representation to support children and young people to develop a more positive outlook and attitude to learning.

In its most basic form, it challenges self-perceptions, that intelligence, “talent” and other basic properties of the mind are fixed and cannot be changed.   Growth Mindset helps learners to appreciate that thought processes expressed as “intelligence” and “talent” can be developed.

Growth Mindset suggests that someone can develop a more positive view of “self”, helping them to persevere when learning gets tough, to become resilient learners that are not put off by mistakes (e.g. “I can’t do this… yet!”).   Growth Mindset is aligned closely to strategies that build self-confidence, self-efficacy, resilience and self-esteem.

The power of YET…

'Should you tell your kids they are smart or talented? Professor Carol Dweck answers this question and more, as she talks about her ground breaking work on developing mindsets. She emphasises the power of "yet" in helping students succeed in and out of the classroom.

Carol Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology and, by courtesy, at the Graduate School of Education. A leading expert in the field of motivation, her research has demonstrated the role of mindsets in students’ achievement and has shown how praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and learning. She has lectured to education, business and sports groups all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. 

Please watch the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ

How my behaviour affects my child?

Children learn to behave from a range of sources:

- Television / Film

- Computer games

- Parents

- Family

- Friends

Children look up to a range of people and often hope they will be like them when they grow up.   Therefore, we all have to be mindful of the behaviours we model to our children as they learn from... US!   As parents we need to be mindful about what our children access, so please ensure you check the age ranges of television programmes, films and computer games - they have a restriction for a reason!

Below are two YouTube videos which are worth a watch about how our behaviour can influence our children:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEgL7K7gkOk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p-Ibi-P9lM 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCunStG5ewM