Tutorial business based in Inverness launches programme to help children address mental health issues
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The founder of award-winning My Primary Tutor has introduced the Emotions First programme after finding an increasing number of youngsters too crippled by anxiety to begin learning properly.
Karen Simpson said the situation that has been exacerbated by lockdown and the impact of the coronavirus crisis.
"We work with pupils from age five up to 14 and building confidence has always been an important part of our business – the key to the kids achieving something with us is that they believe they can do it themselves," she explained.
"And usually they are lacking in confidence when they come to us, but it is never necessarily been to the point where we feel we can't even start any kind of work with them academically. We always feel we can begin things, but we have had more pupils over the last wee while who are just struggling so much emotionally that it is a massive barrier to their learning. This is why we developed the programme to look at what they are thinking and develop strategies to become more positive."
Mrs Simpson believes lockdown has led to more parents becoming aware of just how much their children were struggling. While children might be able to cover this up to some extent at school, at home with their parents they can be more honest about their difficulties, Mrs Simpson suggests.
"I think it has really heightened parents' knowledge of where their kids were at," she said.
"Kids might be able to hide a little bit with their peers, but at home there is no hiding and that has brought a lot of emotions to the forefront.
"We are hoping this programme will help and parents will see what a difference it can make for their child."
The Emotions First programme is based on developing a growth mindset, helping children to understand they are capable of learning anything.
"A lot of kids have quite a fixed mindset, so they don't think that, so we have designed this programme to give them strategies so that when they come across something that's really difficult they have the resilience to help them get past it rather than give up," Mrs Simpson said.
"The idea is that once they have done the eight week programme they are ready to move on to more academic learning, but with these strategies underpinning everything so when they do come across things that are difficult, they can use them to move on."
Mrs Simpson, who was named FSB Scotland sole trader/small business of the year in 2020 as well as winning the Highland Business Women best new business title, said response to the programme had been very positive since its launch a few weeks ago. Children who previously struggled with reading were now enjoying reading novels and becoming more engaged with their academic work.
"We hope the programme will have an impact on both parents and children," she added.
"We have created a free journal for parents that can be downloaded from our website. That can be really good starting point for a conversation with your children and to see how they are feeling and what is it that makes them lash out or get really upset."
