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MENTAL WELLNESS FOR KIDS AND TEENS

Amanda Dounis

MENTAL WELLNESS FOR KIDS AND TEENS

Positive Thinking Clinic (PTC) Services for Kids and Teens: MENTAL WELLNESS FOR KIDS AND TEENS

Positive Thinking Clinic (PTC) is able to provide professional services to kids and Teens of all ages (through to and including adulthood). Mental wellness for kids and teens is carefully planned.

Amanda Dounis is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Strategic Psychotherapist, Professional Counsellor, Master Neurolinguistic Programming Practitioner and Early Childhood Teacher  (plus a few more credentials which make her a unique expert in her specialities). She offers Mental wellness for kids and teens.

Programs at PTC may be delivered via individual, small group, sibling, or workshop environment. The aim is always mental wellness for kids and teens.

Not every child needs to have an issue to work on to attend any program, individual session or workshop. Many kids come along for growth and development for a healthy mindset, and to gain skills for their own tool set.  

Some of the topics that Amanda focuses on include but are not limited to the following:

Mindfulness Skills:

  • Calm the mind and body
  • Pay attention
  • Become more self aware
  • Feel happier and confident
  • Connect with others
  • Have fun.

Meditation:

  • This is one of the kids favourite moments.  
  • Meditation is happening everywhere; social /private settings, and groups /individuals.  
  • There are many benefits to meditations with children.  
  • They spend time with their own self, experiencing the moment, visualising positivity, relaxing and unwinding.

Controlling and Letting Go of Anger and Tense Moments:

  • Simple skills to successfully manage anger.
  • Tools to calm down during emotionally tense moments.
  • Strategies to overcome anxiety.
  • Using anger in a healthy way.
  • Steps to create positive change.

Bullying (knowledge and what to do) and Resilience Building Skills:

  • We look at the law and rights as individuals.
  • We explore scenarios and ways of dealing with issues publicly and privately.
  • Kids become equipped with their “rights” and the correct path to follow.
  • We also work on resilience to ensure kids can continue moving forward in a positive and healthy direction.

Anxiety Solutions and Tips:

  • Anxiety solutions are created from mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy, brain research, and positive psychology.
  • The aim is to help children and teens manage anxious thoughts, create wellbeing and build resilience. 
  • All activities are solution oriented so that kids learn to re-route the brain quickly.
  • We learn anxiety and so we can unlearn it too.  Keep in mind, anxiety is also normal, so we look to detect abnormal reactions, and to manage these.

Self Compassion:

  • Have you ever thought about carrying out a random act of kindness? 
  • What could you do?
  • How will you ensure that you will do it?
  • I aim to stimulate conversation and promote mindful and kind ways of being.
  • This assists each individual in building their own values and being the best they can be at any given moment.

Melting Worries:

  • I like to encourage thinking by using cognitive therapy techniques. 
  • The aim here is to directly change thoughts to worry less. 
  • I encourage relaxation by engaging in exercises to relax the body and the worried mind.
  • I promote movement /doing, using behaviour therapy techniques.
  • Useful for changing habits and behaviours to effectively manage worry.
  • I encourage mindfulness by increasing awareness and acceptance of the present moment.
  • Basically, I use a variety of cognitive behaviour therapy and mindfulness strategies to release anxiety.

Choosing Strengths:

  • We all have strengths but sometimes we don’t know that we do. 
  • Did you know that being curious is a strength?
  • If we are curious, we may explore other ideas, we may even ask another person how they are feeling…
  • It is important that kids and teens realise they possess inner strengths and how they can be used in different scenarios.  
  • Strengths assist in problem solving and resilience skills.

Friendships:

  • At any age, kids and teens may struggle from friendship issues.
  • This may affect sleep, appetite, academics, and social life (not to mention more).
  • Friendships and social interactions are very important.

We learn:

  • How to make friends,
  • How to keep friends,
  • How to understand friends,
  • Individuals are taught that friendships may become rocky, but it is the person within us who becomes most important,
  • Values, resilience, loyalty, honesty, empathy and more are a focus in this topic.

Feelings and Emotional Intelligence: mental wellness for kids and teens

Getting to know your feelings:

  • Name how you feel.
  • Think why you feel that way.
  • Put it together into words.

Eg.. I feel nervous because I have a math test tomorrow.

  • Now pick someone to talk to.
  • Just by having a chat with someone, telling them how you feel and why, can help you start to feel better.
  • Talk about your feelings any time.
  • In-fact its great to practice this, even if its just small talk.

E.g. I am real excited about the game tonight. I think I will play full game.

  • You don’t have to talk about every feeling you have.
  • But noticing your feelings and describing how you feel and why is a great habit to get into.  
  • It becomes healthy to regularly talk about your feelings.  
  • Why? Because one day if you are experiencing something difficult, you might find it easier to talk about it.
  • So remember, talking about your feelings is a great thing to do!
mental wellness for kids and teens

Relaxation and Meditation for Teens: mental wellness for kids and teens

Kids and teens are faced with the challenges of competition, high speed, and highly technical busy world.

Meditation assists teens to;

  • Improve concentration.
  • Enhance creativity.
  • Deepen self awareness and self esteem.

HSC sessions:

Being a successful HSC student and a successful university student, Amanda has maintained up to date industry standards and tools.  Enough to know what today’s students are looking for.  

Mostly HSC students are feeling stressed, anxious, pressured, and all those normal feelings.  Handling them with skill is what’s important.

Teens are looking for improved techniques to:

  • Handle stress.
  • Be more organised.
  • Increase focus and attention.
  • Retain important information and enhance memory.
  • Overcome procrastination.
  • Improve confidence, and lots more.

Yoga and Mindfulness for Teens: mental wellness for kids and teens

Techniques include:

  1. Feeling confident /releasing nervous energy.
  2. Engaging compassion.
  3. Grounding in the present.

Important elements used include:

  1. Relaxing
  2. Focusing
  3. Breathing
  4. Connecting
  5. Moving

Teens tend to really enjoy such experiences and as a bonus discover better relationships with themselves, and others.  They also improve their focus, relaxation and concentration skills.  This is a great advantage not just for school academics but also for sports performance.  It’s all about gaining control and a new way to connect with one self.  With kindness and compassion.

Self Compassion and Mindfulness for Teens: mental wellness for kids and teens

Sometimes its not easy having conversations with teens (especially when they don’t speak!).  But we respectfully keep trying.

Sometimes we need to have conversations about:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • School
  • ADHD
  • LGBTQI
  • Anger 
  • Body image
  • Mindful awareness
  • Compassion

The Positive Thinking Clinic uses mindfulness, compassion, self-compassion, and kindness to tackle, discuss, and deal with these challenging issues.

Deep Conversations … with Teens and Young Adults:

At the Positive Thinking Clinic Amanda endeavours to give teenagers and young adults an opportunity for a voice. We promote mental wellness for kids and teens.

Conversations often revolve around:

Openers: 

E.g. What would you like to do more of?

Identity:

E.g. What do you think is the best thing about being your gender?

Relationships:

E.g. Do you prefer to have lots of friends, or a few close friends?

Values:

E.g. Which do you prefer? Blending in, or standing out?

Emotions:

E.g. How do you cope with things that fall apart?

Beliefs:

E.g. Do you or your family have special celebrations or traditions?

The purpose of such “deep speaking” is to encourage open and honest sharing.  

Respectful listening, a respect for confidentiality, and other agreed rules are also important to establish from the start.

Transformational power may exist in the right question given at the right time.

mental wellness for kids and teens

Programs for Senior School Students:

Teaching students skills to:

  • Remember what they read.
  • Be motivated when they study.
  • Improve their academic performance.
  • Find ways to learn faster.
  • Discover techniques so they do not get side tracked.

Meditations are included to:

  • Reduce exam anxiety.
  • Improve performance during exams.
  • Focus on homework.
  • Think positive.

Deeper Mindful Mediations are also used to:

  • Induce a light state of relaxation.
  • Focus on super fast learning.
  • Discover the genius in you.

Visualisations are used to:

  • Imagine success at study using relaxation and visualisation.

Neuro Linguistic Programming Techniques and Relaxation to:

  • Focus and concentrate better using an anchor technique.
  • Enhance concentration.
  • Assist to ‘get into the flow’.
  • Study better during the senior years.

Yoga and Mindfulness for Children:

Participating in such activities, children learn to support their health and well-being.  They are also left feeling empowered and with a better ability to move through many stressors in their life without becoming overwhelmed. We promote mental wellness for kids and teens.

Activities involve:

  • Breathing with the heart and belly.
  • Feeling strengths.
  • Being in the present moment.
  • Managing anxiety.
  • Finding compassion.
  • Getting in touch with feelings.
  • Relaxing and restoring.
  • Identifying thoughts.

Such activities serve as a toolkit for kids as they connect, breath, move, focus and relax.

At The Positive Thinking Clinic;

  1. Children benefit as they connect to their own feelings and thoughts, to the world, and to people around them.
  2. Children learn different ways to use their breath and explore its impact on their energy levels and emotions.
  3. Children move to build strength, balance and flexibility.  They realise what their body is capable of, and develop their own personal power.
  4. Children engage in activities that help them notice what their mind is working on.  They also strengthen their focus and learn to manage distractions easier.
  5. Children also find the opportunity to rest their mind and body, thus allowing it to restore.

Feeling afraid:

We all get scared sometimes.

Fear can be good for you sometimes.  It can even keep us healthy.

How? Well if you get too close to a cliff, you will get scared and step back and this will keep you safe! I bet you didn’t see it that way did you?

A little fear can also make your senses rather sharp and help you perform better.

But when we feel scared with no apparent reason, this is called ANXIETY, and this can bring on other feelings e.g. tummy ache, dizziness, or a horrible feeling.

If you have an intense fear of something, this is called a phobia.

The Positive Thinking Clinic works with all types of fears to relieve anxiety.  There are great NLP techniques that kids and teens respond very well to.

mental wellness for kids and teens

Being a good sportsperson:

Play clean, handle victory and defeat with style and dignity.

Sportsmanship is an attitude which can influence others around you.  

It takes maturity and courage to:

  • Play fair
  • Respect and follow rules
  • Respect what the referees and officials say
  • Respect your opponents 
  • Respect yourself

Tips:

  • Congratulate opponents regardless of who won.
  • Be positive towards your own team.
  • Stay cool and control your temper.
  • Acknowledge good play from either team.
  • Accept what officials say.
  • Avoid violence (this is not how to settle disputes).
  • Learn everything you can about your sport.
  • Speak respectfully to everyone (your team, opponents, referees etc).

Don’t forget to have a good time.  

You wont have that much of a genuinely good time if you only focus on winning.  

Play fair while you have fun.

Oh and being a good sportsperson is not just for when you are on the field.  

Use it in other areas of your life (work, school, family etc).

mental wellness for kids and teens

Coping Skills:

  • Breathing techniques

E.g. Various deep breathing tips

  • Mindfulness

E.g. Focusing on sounds

  • Meditation

E.g. Using the imagination

  • Yoga

E.g. Using an empowering pose

  • Grounding

E.g. Physical and mental techniques

  • Using distractions

E.g. Write a poem, clean your room

  • Using your physical body

E.g. squeezing an object, going for a walk

  • Identifying thoughts and feelings

E.g. understanding your triggers

  • Communicating thoughts and feelings

E.g. using “I” statements

The above summaries about each topic offer a snap shot of what PTC offers.

We have lots more topics too: school focus, organisation, procrastination, positive mindset, and the list goes on and on.

Content is always relevant to each and every child. Promoting mental wellness for kids and teens.

Follow me on social media to be kept up to date for program packages and workshops during school holidays.  

Inquiries welcome at any time.  The ultimate goal is to be able to show children their strengths, and how to use them to become better versions of themselves.

Best done with an award winning member of the community and childhood industry for over 20 years.

Amanda Dounis

Positive Thinking Clinic

1/7 Magdalene Terrace

Wolli Creek, 2205

0458 850 850

amanda@positivethinkingclinic.com.au

www.positivethinkingclinic.com.au

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