Children’s Mental Health Week 2023 will take place at Rye St Antony School from 6-10 February. This year’s theme is ‘Let’s Connect’. People thrive in communities such as our Rye family, and this connection is vital for our wellbeing. When we have healthy connections – to family, friends, and each other – they can support our mental health and our sense of wellbeing. As we always say, ‘Be Well, Do Well.’
For Children’s Mental Health Week 2023, we’re encouraging our community to connect with each other in healthy, rewarding, and meaningful ways and to promote our own wellbeing. In form times, pupils will be creating ‘Self-Care Plans’ in which they personalise a plan to support their wellbeing and to promote positive mental health – this may be through social activities, such as connecting with friends or joining a new club, or through physical activities, such as dancing, walking, cooking as a family, or trying a new sport. In addition, the pupils will look at how they can support their own emotional wellbeing through journaling, goal-setting, and self-kindness.
At Rye, we believe that our children’s emotional well-being is just as important as their physical health. Good mental health helps them develop the resilience to cope with whatever life throws at them and help them grow into well-rounded, healthy adults. There are many ways we can promote wellbeing at home and at school, such as being in good physical health, eating a balanced diet and getting regular exercise, as well as having time and freedom to play, indoors and outdoors. We are fortunate with our beautiful grounds here, where the children can explore our woods in free play and eat outside on the terrace when the British weather allows! Other factors are also important, including feeling loved, trusted, understood and safe. Our pupils develop trusting relationships with their form tutor and with our wider pastoral team, including our nurse, lay chaplain, and counsellor, to support them when they need a bit more help.
The theme of ‘Let’s Connect’ is empowering – but it can sometimes be difficult to start conversations about children’s wellbeing. The teenage years are both exciting and challenging to parents but we know that having strong relationships and connections are fundamental to wellbeing. The Anna Freud Centre recommends the following to help parents begin conversations about their children’s feelings, beginning with letting your child know that you are always able to talk and that you give them your full attention when they do wish to talk. Being an active listener and not dismissing a young person’s worries helps them feel safe and heard, while empathising helps children feel understood.
On Tuesday we celebrate our connection with our Parents as Jane Graham, Director of the Health and Wellbeing BSA Group and Director of HIEDA, will host a live webinar discussing ways we can promote the good mental health of our children, and strategies to help support them when things don’t go so well.
All senior pupils will have the chance to meet Jane Graham on Wednesday when she visits Rye to lead a series of workshops and seminars for the pupils, appropriate to their age. These interactive sessions will help the pupils promote positive mental health in themselves, at home and with their friends. Teenagers can often experience emotional turmoil as their minds and bodies develop. Working out and accepting who you are is important to growing up, and these workshops, along with our form time activities, will help the pupils develop strategies to foster their resilience and wellbeing.
On Friday, alongside Hendred’s Charity day, all the pupils will enjoy a Wellbeing Afternoon. A range of activities is offered, with pupils able to select two workshops from yoga, meditation, wellbeing walk, fitness, origami, comic book design, baking, football and drumming – alongside many other activities. This will allow the pupils to experience something new and develop a new skill, or take part in an activity they already enjoy and extend their skills, before a period of well-earned rest and relaxation over Half term, where they will be able to put their personalised Self-Care plans into practice.
Mrs Jo Creber
Deputy Head Pastoral
