Resilience workshops in primary

[Sparklybutold]

Has anyone any info on these in practice? We've had some wishy washy notification that yo yos can be purchased for £8, 10 or 13 quid! I did jokingly ask what the heck the yo yos were made of? Can't help but feel the cost off the courses is being subbed by the purchase of yo yos?

I find this particularly cutting when both of my kids are ND and I'm currently going through tribunal with the eldest. Are these classes actually fit for purpose or are they another shite government initiative with zero substance.

Thank you for your post, I completely agree with you. I am sorry to read though that your child has had to have experienced trauma.

Indeed.

How sad.

This is also a thing in the NHS right now - never mind getting us enough staff to, you know, support patients, or dealing with endemic bullying and lousy HR who don't know their backsides from their elbows, let alone employment law, let's have resilience sessions in which we apply gaslighting principles to make you leave the poor ickle bullies alone. The yo yos are a whole new set of nonsense though, do they make the tea for that price?!

Resilience in students is incredibly, insanely low. Not just emotional resilience, but the skills to be able to accept being wrong and making mistakes, the resilience to write a whole paragraph without bellyaching, the resilience to do homework, the resilience to not use the toilet once an hour… Don’t get me started on the resilience to deal with normal things like friendship ups and downs, crowded corridors, loud lesson bells. We are at record breaking levels of adjustments because, if you boil down about 80% of the reasons given: my child feels mildly uncomfortable.

Oh my goodness I am not 100% sure we didn't have someone in to flog yoyos in my school too- 35ish years ago!

Who are these people.... who IS Ned?! 😂

That's what Resilience should mean.

Increasingly, it's used as an excuse for whatever poor treatment a person, or school is delivering.

And lots of evidence that whole class interventions DON'T work, or can be harmful.

Look up Dr Lucy Foulkes at Oxford.

The recent Wellbeing in Schools trial found that some interventions increased help-seeking behaviours in children (a good thing provided there's help to be sought) but none directly improved resilience or emotional problems.

Your second paragraph is a sweeping generalisation. My 8yo dd is autistic. She most definitely benefits from resilience coaching, but in her case it revolves around us focusing her attention on the things she very much can have control over. We agree Plan Bs with her which are gradually having the effect of helping her realise that she can do things she once thought impossible, providing she has a fall back plan (a safety net) for when she feels totally overwhelmed - and that that's ok and preferable to her just giving up immediately. The more she overcomes, the more she realises she's capable of and that things aren't as scary as she thinks, the more she's willing to push herself a little more, the more she finds life easier because she has been armed with coping mechanisms. It becomes a virtuous circle. Yes, we have to work harder at it with her than parents of NT children do. However, the difference in her in the space of two years is immense. And that is because we have worked hand in glove with her school and teachers, following an ehcp needs assessment, to understand her better and apply the right strategies. So I do agree with you that a whole school (whole life) approach, rather than gimmicks, is the key to better outcomes.

Yo-yos are a gimmick, I agree. I've no idea what the actual content of the resilience workshops is to gauge whether it's worthwhile or not. Do you know? Much of our approach has been self learned, with some CAMHS one to one support thrown in. But the basis is always the same - enabling her to experience new things, with a back up plan in place. She's still allowed to say "no, I absolutely don't believe I can do that" and we move on, return to it another time. And there are still the inevitable meltdowns, but they are far fewer.

Appreciate my dd is just one autistic child, and this won't work for all autistic children - or indeed the plethora of other SEN needs, personalities etc. But there are a good number for whom it will benefit.

Im not at all surprised to read this.

Resilience grows from a lifetime of having it modelled to us by family and teachers. Who also support and encourage us as individuals when we face challenges.

It can no more be taught in 4 x 30 minute sessions than you would teach someone to 'be kind and compassionate in half a term'.

Your post demonstrates misunderstanding of how important education is. If you’re not in lessons, you are exceedingly unlikely to achieve your academic potential. That will lead to, most likely, poverty. Which will exacerbate (if not give rise to new) mental health challenges. If your expectation is that a child should spend as much time as they like in a supportive/pastoral/counselling/well being focused setting and not in lessons, fine. Do not expect them to ever be financially independent. Expect them to then be in a spiral of self doubt and lack of personal fulfilment. I see multiple students, every day, who spend a significant majority of their lesson time not in lessons, because they aren’t happy, because they are anxious, because they have friendship issues etc. Those students are academically behind and some will never catch up now. I don’t just mean ‘won’t get grade 9’, I mean functionally illiterate.

Support structures have shifted massively with many not getting the same level of support as there parents did.

@Sparklybutold Slightly off topic, but what support structures were available for previous generations? I don’t remember anything much (I’m 50) and they certainly weren’t around for even older people.