We were thrilled this week to host Kristina Freeman, co-founder of the award-winning Mental Health & Wellbeing program, Grow Your Mind. Children at Forestville Montessori School have been participating in Grow Your Mind as part of their learning around selfcare and wellbeing since late last year.
This week, FMS parents had a personal introduction to the program, learning how it is implemented here at FMS and what they can do at home to support their family’s mental health and wellbeing.
Our program began with some statistics on depression and mental health in our population, including our children. A standout from this conversation was that people who do not experience some type of mental health issue in their lifetime are in the minority.
This statement is comforting for anyone struggling with mental health and neutralises the stigma around mental health too. If so many of us experience mental health concerns, the question is then: what can we do about it?
This is the essence of the Grow your Mind program.
Created for children from pre-school to primary age, Grow Your Mind recognises the importance of understanding and looking after your mind in a variety of ways.
The program is presented to children with beautiful imagery and cast of characters that represent different functions of the mind. They are:
- The wise owl (the prefrontal cortex) – the part of the mind involved in higher order thinking, planning and decision making.
- The guard dog (the amygdala) – the part of the brain that responds to threats and helps to keep us safe.
- The sifting sooty (reticular activating system) – helps us keep steady and focused so we can work towards finishing work and achieving goals.
- The elephant (Hippocampus) – this is our memory, learning and recollections. It helps us draw on experience and use what we know to help ourselves.
- The octopus (insular cortex) – is our sensitive self – the part that enables us to connect and be a good friend.
Through these characters, children become familiar with the parts of their mind and how these affect their moods, decisions, and emotions. They learn that they feel their best when all the characters are talking to each other and how to recognise when one part may not be working so well. Grow your Mind then offers tools and strategies to help.
One of the best examples of this is our guard dog. The guard dog is activated by stress of any kind – real or imagined.
Images, stories, music and more are used in the program to help children understand when their guard dog is activated, and what they can do to ‘tame their dog.’
Various parts of the brain are needed to help assess the threat (how bad is it?), to assess their reaction (does my response match the size of the problem), and to think about what they may do about this (who can I call, what has worked before?)
This is where we see the animals in action, working together to solve a problem.
It brings an enormous amount of self-awareness and grows the skill of emotional regulation- something we adults can learn too!
This type of emotional regulation is just one element of the Grow your Mind program. Mental health and wellbeing, however, is broad with many inputs and outcomes. Building resilience and strength requires more than emotional awareness.
Grow Your Mind offers children a range of theoretical and practical tools they can use to support positive mental health. Here are just a few we touched on in our parent education session:
- The value and importance of recognising our strengths, and how to look for and acknowledge strengths in our children (even when they are hard to spot!)
- The flow-on feel-good of kindness for givers and receivers
- The importance of acknowledging all kinds of feelings – those we are comfortable with as well as those that don’t feel so great
- The ability to choose to shift our mood by asking the question: Do I wish to stay in this mood, or shift it?
- Tools that help shift a mood; shifting focus, breathing techniques, movement, change of environment
- The power of gratitude practices to create a long-term positive outlook
- How to flip from pessimistic to optimistic; challenging unhelpful thoughts to give a more positive view
Finally, we were introduced to B.O.B.
Be of Benefit.
At Forestville Montessori, we love this one. It is reflected in our school values and is a key outcome of Montessori education, preparing children to be contributory members of their community.
Be of Benefit embodies this value and gives children an abundance of ideas how they can Be of Benefit for their families, friends, communities and the planet!
B.O.B. naturally helps to build connections, belonging, self-worth and personal ability – all solid foundations for positive mental health.
To end, we’d like to express our own gratitude: Gratitude for the benefits and outcomes of Grow Your Mind for our students and staff, and for the opportunity to share the program with our parent community this week.
Thank you to Kristina and the team at Grow your Mind.
To all the FMS families who missed the event, we encourage you to download the Grow Your Mind handbook shared here, to listen to their podcast and check out these additional resources to help you practice Grow your Mind at home (FMS families, reach out for your parent discount 20%).
