As a mother and advocate, the resources from this website have been helpful to our family during times when we've experienced a need for additional mental wellness support. Their website has lots to mental health information to comb through, but today I'm sharing these conversation starters that are handy to have around to connect more with our kids at home. The following is from On Our Sleeves. 

"Kids are constantly going through a variety of emotions. How do you continue to know what they are going through? How do you build relationships so that they come to you?
By starting conversations – and keeping them going. Having conversations is crucial to healthy growth and development. And the more you practice, the more you can build your confidence to tackle life’s tough subjects with your kids, such as mental health concerns, racism and tragedy. Our resources can guide you in getting started and giving advice, along with how to talk about difficult topics."

Want to understand more about School Refusal? Here are some parent workshops. Click the image below to be taken to the pdf. Links are on the pdf to register. 
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Excellent tips on how you can get the conversation started and going at home. Click the video below.

This post is shared from: www.onoursleeves.org/mental-wellness-tools-guides/conversation-starters/starting-conversations
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Even before the pandemic, we saw alarming trends when it came to children’s mental health. Children want and need to be heard, supported and respected.
How do we support our children and their mental health?Start talking!Talking to children about their thoughts, feelings, and experiences is necessary for their healthy growth and development. When you talk to children openly and honestly about their day-to-day routine and their mental health, you can learn about concerns or problems they are dealing with, help them problem solve, and build their confidence for facing difficult moments in life. And the more you have conversations, the easier they are to have when difficult topics come up!

How do you start conversations?  Here are three tips.

1. Set the stage. The work begins before you even start the conversation. If your family creates a daily habit of checking in and talking with each other, it will make conversations about their mental health or concerns easier.
   • Pick times with low distractions where children are more likely to focus on the conversation and share, such as family dinners, bedtime routines, car rides or short daily walks.
   • Model the behavior. Children learn by watching us.
     • If you share about your day, thoughts and feelings, kids will learn to do the same. If you had a hard day, share that too! Sharing, at their appropriate developmental level, helps children learn that emotions are normal and how to cope with them by watching you.
2. Ask open-ended questions. You can talk about all kinds of topics, not just emotions or behaviors. Remember, your goal is to create the habit of feeling comfortable sharing with you. Download the questions below to help.
3. Find the right time for difficult conversations. Pick a time when everyone is calm and emotions are not high. Ask permission to start the conversation and if your child is not ready, ask them when a good time would be. Make sure you’re in a private area with low interruptions.

What if they don’t want to talk?If they don’t want to talk, that’s OK! If you try to push it, they will shut down more.

• Compromise! Let them know you care about them and what’s going on in their lives, so you want time to check in. Ask them when a better time would be instead and try again. Children are more likely to engage if they feel some control or choice over a situation.

CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2022
​The Youth Mental Health Awareness Project Events
Sunday, May 1 – Thursday, May 5
Find Connections. Build Community.Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week -- held every year during the first week of May (National Mental Health Awareness Month) -- is a national campaign that raises awareness and funds to promote better mental health for children.
Click the images below for more information.   Check out their calendar of events coming up. Sign up to get the Youth Mental Health Project's newsletters to find out about more events and resources.

The Long Island Advocacy Center journals a monthly newsletter keeping families informed and up to date on helping our community advocate for our kids. Click here or directly on the image below to read the entire newsletter. 

On behalf of the Meadow PTA School of Excellence committee, we share a new webinar on mental health & wellness.

​Just like physical health, we all have mental health.

Presented by Whitney Closson, Family Education Specialist
School Mental Health Resource and Training
Mental Health Association in New York State, Inc.

[ Social Media and Mental Health: What Families need to Know.
It is no secret that over the last 15 years that internet and media use has skyrocketed.

Today, 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online almost constantly.

As a result, many caregivers, educators and individuals are left wondering about the impacts of social media and the digital world on their overall wellbeing.

Information covered includes:

• How to start the conversation around internet use
• How to set healthy media boundaries
• Data to help understand psychological risks and emotional impacts
• Understanding risks and how to respond to cyberbullying and more

Click here to watch the video on Social Media and Mental Health: What families need to know ]

Sincerely,
Meadow PTA School of Excellence Committee
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“Everyone has mental health, just like everyone has physical health, not everyone will experience mental illness, but everyone will have periods of time when they struggle with their mental well-being, just as we have physical health issues from time to time.”-Stan Preston

"ParentCamp is a transformational Family-School-Community Engagement Model designed to build a connected school ecosystem of caring and supportive adults surrounding our kids. ParentCamps are not the traditional stand and deliver sessions but facilitated dialogue where the entire room is the expert and everyone brings important and unique perspectives to the table.

The Design of the Traditional Family Engagement Model is Compliance Conditions. Compliance conditions keep people in “lanes” or “silos.” The Design of the Virtual ParentCamp Model is two-fold: Equality Conditions plus Purpose. Equality Conditions at a Virtual ParentCamp mean every person can be a learner and leader for kids, with the opportunity to go to any session at any time. Equality conditions mean every person can talk, listen, encourage, and connect with others as it feels right to them. Purpose at a Virtual ParentCamp means family, school and community decide not only the session topics but also the purposes around the topics–connect, strengthen and collaborate. Purpose is the secret sauce that leads to Family-School-Community Collective Efficacy.

Welcome to a new lived experience of “Family-School-Community Engagement” where each person can bring their abundant gifts to ParentCamps and together create a world where kids feel happy, healthy and strong.   

Welcome to a level playing field and a unique family engagement experience every single ParentCamp.

This is how you Transform school culture and education.

One hour at a time. 

One Virtual ParentCamp at a time.

We would like to invite you to join us in our nationwide Virtual ParentCamp “model classroom” every other Wednesday night. Come see what joyful family-school-community engagement looks like, sounds like, and feels like. Register at www.parentcamp.org/events. We are training school teams of 8 people in the Virtual ParentCamp Model. We think you’ll be pleased to know the teams are made up of family, school and community!

Find us here: www.parentcamp.org and www.linktr.ee/parentcamp

Listen to our stories of Impact on our YouTube Channel –​
Registration is open now for Wednesday, March 23rd’s Virtual ParentCamp.  Join us from 8 pm ET/5 pm PT to 9 pm ET/6 pm PT.  Registration will turn off at 7 pm ET/4 pm PT. We tried the Zoom registration process the last time and it just didn’t work for us, so we are going back to our previous registration system."
https://www.parentcamp.org/event/2022-03-23-vpc
Excerpt taken from https://www.parentcamp.org/about-virtual-parentcamp/
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Offered by the Youth Mental Health Project is their Spring Webinar Series: Your Burning Questions about Anxiety & Stress in Children. April 5th at 1pm Registration link below.  

Click here to register for this timely and informative upcoming webinar about Stress & Anxiety in Children. 
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While some events and meetings are still running virtually, we are back at school and in person for PTA meetings starting March 22, 2022. This is the first one in-person in 2 years. A lot has happened to the world since then. A lot of the world is experiencing difficulty coping with the stress of the global impact Covid has made to our every day lives. It is our hope that through connecting our community with helpful information to resources pertaining to wellness and mental health, we can continue to move forward armed with the support our families need. It is our intention to build stronger family-school partnerships through programs like PTA. If you would like to help diminish the barriers to opportunities for activities that can improve our community's mental health & wellness, please follow this link to complete a form and let us know how you would like to be involved. By building partnerships around advocacy and support services, we build a stronger family-school connection, and normalize discussions on mental health in school and at home.
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Check back here frequently to see what new information we have to share with our Meadow families. 

Interested in helping this initiative? Click here to connect with us!

With gratitude,
​Your Meadow PTA