Good social, emotional and mental health means knowing our minds, our stories, managing our feelings, and understanding how feelings and experiences can shape and create patterns of behaviour. Attending to the weather systems which rolls across our minds and can influence our behaviour in the here and now is an essential skill to being in positive relationships with ourselves and with others. It is also something we may continue to learn and develop throughout life.

Self-awareness (our capacity to know ourselves, our story, to recognise, name and manage our feelings) and emotional resilience are key skills which help us to hold onto our thinking and use a range of skills to consider our next move. Self-awareness moving into meta-awareness is our ‘pause button’. Something so simple, as pausing sounds, is in reality a hugely complex skill. It has as much to do with the chapters of our lives (our experiences) as it does with what is happening in the present moment. There are many children and young people who can struggle to pause – who do not have enough skills to manage their feelings, yet.

It is my belief that children with social, emotional and mental health needs, require self aware practitioners and an approach which moves away from judgments. An approach which recognises the role which time and kindness has in supporting connections and states of receptivity amongst children who can become excluded to the edges of our schools. Children who lack self-awareness require us to see, hear and know them in order to develop this key skill. They need us to accept them where they are and in our acceptance we can support the development of new skills, new ways of being and relating in the world.

‘The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change’
Carl Rogers

Time and Kindness Ltd seeks to share a different way of working, to occasionally challenge beliefs, with the aim of helping us all to be skilled practitioners who can reach and teach those children who can become excluded to the edges of our schools.  Based on my experience, knowledge and research I hope to support staff and to be part of creating a coherent strategy with other agencies and professionals.

I believe that at the heart of developing provision which addresses the social, emotional and mental health needs children and young people are resilient and self-aware adults who have appropriate training and support.