Welcome to the parent course (mini-course 1 of 3) to learn about fight, flight, freeze and the busy mind. This course is easy to read and follow and has been created from the Mindful & Wellbeing Course we offer to schools to work through, enabling them to support children’s mental health and wellbeing. We know it is important for parents to learn and have knowledge about the important and useful topics we teach to young people at Developing Matters CIC.
Firstly, the information is something we do not learn at school or as adults, but hopefully doing this course and the other 2 mini-courses will help you understand yourself better. Secondly, it will give you the knowledge and resources to pass on this vital information to the young person/people in your lives or understand them more. As each young person is individual and unique, we hope you can adapt the information and the activities to suit them… you know them best. Everything we suggest has been tried and tested with 100s of young people and the learning content has been taught to children aged 10+. The breathing techniques and mindful moments can be done at any age.
The mini-course includes 3 breathing techniques and 2 mindful moments to try and is split into two learning themes:
Fight, Flight, Freeze & The Busy Mind.
Each learning theme has 7 topics to read with activities to either think about, discuss or do. Some activity sheets are included for you to print off. If you don’t have a printer don’t worry you can just copy the visual on a piece of paper and complete it that way. The other activities can either be a chat with your child, or you can write down the activity and complete it together.
There are a few reflective questions along the way, these are just for you to think about and help you with your understanding and learning, some people find it useful to use a notepad and write down ideas, reflections, or other things they may want to follow up. This information does not have to be shared as part of this course it is just to help you to personalise your learning to then incorporate into your life. There are a couple of quiz questions to finish off the course and you can request a certificate of completion.
If you feel that your young person would benefit from learning all the course content and completing all the activities available in this mini-course then there is an option to purchase the mini-course manual for young people either as a PDF or a hard copy on our website (usual price £25, but you can request a code from completing this course and purchase for just £10).
The course is easy to navigate, just start on lesson 1 (section 1) and move on to the 2nd lesson and 3rd. For lessons 4 and 5 there will be 7 topics to complete, once the topics are finished then navigate your way back to the lessons to move on to the next.
In the topics there will be some ‘Take Time To Think’ prompts. These thought reminders are to give you prompts to start to think about what you are possibly dealing with, how busy your mind is and to stop and think about if you need to change your thinking patterns, if you need to change a situation and/or if you need to have a mindful moment or do something to help or change a situation. Think about them as the questions arise… then at the end of the course you will either write down the helpful ‘Take Time To Think’ questions or you can think of your own that will help you and/or your child as individuals. Although there are many similarities in our brains, there are also lots of differences; our lives are different, our environments are different and our life experiences are different… our likes and dislikes will also be different and our triggers so use this learning to develop your own strategies as well as trying out the ones in the course.
We hope you find this information helpful and that it gives an understanding of fight, flight, freeze and the busy mind and that you continue to use some of the strategies and cognitive thinking to support your wellbeing and also the wellbeing of your child.
Good luck 🙂
Clare and team at Developing Matters CIC