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Jen Bunting DAHhyp | Creator Of The CalmTalk Method(@thehighlysensitivechild)'s profile avatar HD Profile

Jen Bunting DAHhyp | Creator Of The CalmTalk Method

@thehighlysensitivechild

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🎒School anxiety, toileting & tummy aches
🔍Finding the ROOT cause for sensitive & ND kids
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The calming words you say to a sensitive child in the moment they’re feeling worried or really angry, can often backfire. There’s neuroscience behind this too- i think it’s fascinating! Anyway , I spoke more about the types of words I often recommend to parents I support and why they tend to calm their child. This is how my CalmTalk method works 🙂 it’s all centred on helping a parent and child communicate more effectively and helps the child hear the words their parent intends them to hear… And the result? The child often speaks more calmly up themselves too! And then can feel calmer. I’ve got a 3 part video series coming out this week if you want to learn more about how to do this with your child. 🙂 Keep an eye out on my stories- I’ll announce it there first this week. ❤️ by @thehighlysensitivechild
2
a month ago
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Comment START below to get the videos. 👇🏼 In my neuro- science informed video series, I’ll show you how to speak to your child in a way that changes what they hear and how they feel! One of the phrases I share with you on video 3 calmed an 8 year old in minutes. Excited for you to listen! Press play and listen tonight 🎧 If your child crumbles the moment you gently correct them… or melts down after school… or panics over the smallest mistake… you’re not dealing with “big emotions.” You’re dealing with an inner story that’s hurting them. Sensitive children don’t just react to the moment, they also react to what the moment means to them. And for many, that meaning sounds like: “I’m wrong.” “I’m failing.” “I’m too much.” “You’re disappointed in me.” That’s not defiance. That’s not drama. That’s shame and shame changes how the brain hears you. When shame is activated, the nervous system goes into survival mode. Your calm words can’t land. Safety can’t register. And your child spirals, even when you’re doing everything “right.” But when you speak to the inner story, not just the behaviour, or the thing that just happened, everything shifts. This is where real change begins. by @thehighlysensitivechild
260
4 months ago
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For many children, school brings all sorts of challenges but the one that i notice time and time again is the one connected to self worth. The background question “am I okay? Or do my feelings make me too much? Weird? Not enough?” That feeling of acceptance is like oxygen to our souls. And I think a big part of the reason why nothing changes when we just talk to a child about the worry we see on the surface. Or teach them how to name their feeling Or how to take 3 deep breaths when the worries come up. Is because there’s often so much hidden beneath the surface. So many children have hidden worries. Will my teacher think I’m being silly and judge me for feeling worried today? Will my mum be annoyed if I ask her to pick me up from school today? Am I weird for feeling so worried? What’s wrong with me? No one else is worrying about the school trip. Notice how all of those thoughts are connected to their self worth. And whether they’ll be accepted. Included. Or rejected. Judged. I’ve seen in my practise with parents and children that the beliefs that a child holds about who they are when they feel angry or when they feel worried, end up being part of what’s heightening their emotions. And the very real worry about whether they’ll be accepted, included or rejected and judged is also a part of the daily worry too for so many children. Those worries are enough to make a child feel worried about going to school. And it’s often a good chunk of the weight in their school backpack. And it goes unnoticed most of the time. And that is what we work on together in my 1-1 program. So that we can look at what your child isn’t saying. And what you can say to them to change the way they speak to themselves inside their own self talk every day. ❤️ by @thehighlysensitivechild
2
a month ago
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When Marie came to me, she had tried everything she already knew to calm her ten year old. Her day job was working with a company who specialises in regulation for adults but nothing she already knew of worked for her daughter. When I first meet a parent, I spend 90 mins with them on a video meeting, working through my profile of questions designed to get to the heart of how a child is feeling. The questions are designed to give me a complete 360 degree picture of that child - in as much detail as possible- so that I can begin joining the dots and predicting what is likely causing the feelings that a child currently has. She came to me with a child who had tummy aches, so my first question is always “have you spoken to a doctor?” when the answer is “yes, and they said there’s nothing medically wrong” and it’s suspected that it may be related to emotions or worries, I focus on how worries can express themselves somatically in the body. Often when a child can’t express how they feel or don’t understand how they feel, it can come out in expressions of tummy aches for example. So once I’d spent time speaking to the parents, I began focusing on the way that they could respond to her in the moments when she’d say she had a tummy ache or worry about her mum not being there because she was working. I also picked up on specific things from that discussion such as the way the child may have felt when she was in a loud environment, or how she felt when she felt she needed to do well at her dance class. A lot of those specific details are the result of a well trained lens- when you’ve worked with so many families, you begin spotting common themes and patterns and it’s then very easy to spot potential feelings with a child and show their parent what would likely calm them in any given moment. Following that initial meeting, we communicated 3 days a week- focusing on one theme or concern at a time. I would offer practical advice, they’d implement it at home & feedback to me how their daughter was feeling week upon week. We saw changes slowly occur and then they were reporting less tummy aches, happier to go out without mum and generally calmer 🙂 by @thehighlysensitivechild
0
a day ago
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Inclusion isn’t about helping a child just feel included; for many children it literally is the difference between them waking up with tummy ache and not wanting to go or waking up and feeling supported and more relaxed because they know they are going somewhere that they feel they belong today. ❤️ Years ago, when I was a support teacher for a 5 year old autistic child in a classroom, I learned that inclusion wasn’t only about giving him the right support. It was also about how that support was offered within the classroom and what he heard me say infront of the other children. When a strategy repeatedly singles out one child, and brings often unwanted attention to them, it can unintentionally reinforce the belief: “I’m different. I can’t cope. I’m the problem.” So, wherever possible, I began suggesting that we make supportive practices part of the experience for the whole class. Movement breaks, visual instructions, processing time, emotional check-ins and inclusive language can benefit many children - not only the child whose needs first drew our attention to those things. This didn’t mean treating every child identically. Inclusion means giving children what they need without making difference feel like defectiveness. If I played a game with a few children on the carpet, I’d make sure I spoke to him in a way that would help him feel accepted and ‘part of the class’ with the other kids that he was playing with. Did I always get it right? No, not at all. It was a big learning curve for me back then. But his mum requested I be his support teacher, because I didn’t have any preconceived ideas as to what his needs would be. She didn’t want someone to put him in ‘a box’- she just wanted someone who could support him through his day and help him feel accepted and supported. by @thehighlysensitivechild
0
a day ago
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For many children, school brings all sorts of challenges but the one that i notice time and time again is the one connected to self worth. The background question “am I okay? Or do my feelings make me too much? Weird? Not enough?” That feeling of acceptance is like oxygen to our souls. And I think a big part of the reason why nothing changes when we just talk to a child about the worry we see on the surface. Or teach them how to name their feeling Or how to take 3 deep breaths when the worries come up. Is because there’s often so much hidden beneath the surface. So many children have hidden worries. Will my teacher think I’m being silly and judge me for feeling worried today? Will my mum be annoyed if I ask her to pick me up from school today? Am I weird for feeling so worried? What’s wrong with me? No one else is worrying about the school trip. Notice how all of those thoughts are connected to their self worth. And whether they’ll be accepted. Included. Or rejected. Judged. I’ve seen in my practise with parents and children that the beliefs that a child holds about who they are when they feel angry or when they feel worried, end up being part of what’s heightening their emotions. And the very real worry about whether they’ll be accepted, included or rejected and judged is also a part of the daily worry too for so many children. Those worries are enough to make a child feel worried about going to school. And it’s often a good chunk of the weight in their school backpack. And it goes unnoticed most of the time. And that is what we work on together in my 1-1 program. So that we can look at what your child isn’t saying. And what you can say to them to change the way they speak to themselves inside their own self talk every day. ❤️ by @thehighlysensitivechild
2
2 days ago
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When your child is looping around in the same worries or pings from one worth to the next- there’s often an underlying reason and that’s what I talk about in this live stream 🙂 When a child has had past experiences where they felt embarrassed, perhaps at school, or worried about something like the school trip that’s coming up… If they’ve not been able to identify what exactly they’re worried about or what exactly made them feel embarrassed… They’re not able to talk to you about it. And if they’ve not been able to talk to you about it, they’ve likely not processed it. So when I work with a family, I’m spending a lot of time helping a parent learn the language and process to helping their child name what they’ve felt and process it. This is done in a very natural way through conversations- not in a sit down and let’s talk about it type conversation, which many children will not want, especially when they find emotional conversations scary or overwhelming right now. Check out more about this in today’s live. And if you’d like to apply for 1-1 coaching with me, the link to tell me more about your child is up in the bio. I’m taking applications for 2 more families to work with me for a start date of mid to end October. ❤️ by @thehighlysensitivechild
1
4 days ago
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There’s often a lot of unspoken worries that a child has that they want you to speak to. But how are you supposed to know what they are if they don’t speak to you about them? This is what I spend a lot of my time translating for parents- what your child is really feeling. I speak more about this in today’s live ❤️ by @thehighlysensitivechild
0
5 days ago
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It’s often not just about the worry they talk to you about. by @thehighlysensitivechild
1
10 days ago
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A few months ago one of the parents that I was supporting asked her child’s teacher if she’d be willing to consider a few words that could help her daughter feel less worried in class about pleasing the teacher and making mistakes. That teacher said ‘yes!’ And not only did she use those words that I gave to her Mum but she decided to use them with ALL the children in the classroom! She sent me her feedback a month later to tell me what a calming impact it had on all the children. The words I’d given to this parent for their daughter were specifically around helping her feel less pressure to get things right, and less fear about judgement. Words that helped her clearly hear the message, “you are wanted here and I like you being here no matter what you do in class or how you feel.” Turns out every child can benefit from hearing this message repetitively. And for the children who worry all day about making a mistake and come home screwing up their homework because they don’t understand it… Hearing that message in class every day is not just a nice to have, it’s literally the difference between them feeling able to relax in class enough to focus or waking up literally freezing and not able to walk out the door to school. Language matters. Words make a child feel included or different and left out and left behind. And this teacher said it was really simple to implement too! Because the reality is teachers have enough workload and I needed to make it very easy to bring into every day school life. What difference do you think it would make to your child if they heard those types of words most days in class? I’m genuinely interested to hear from you…. by @thehighlysensitivechild
0
11 days ago
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Often the worry of others judging or not fitting in is enough to stop a child from going to that activity or school. The avoidance becomes a protection from judgement. From feeling excluded. This is often one of the elements of what’s going on underneath for many of the children that I support by working with their parents. by @thehighlysensitivechild
0
11 days ago
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Most of the parents that I’m currently supporting have a child or teen who is struggling with school. Not because they want to just sit at home all day. Not because they want to have a day off But because they genuinely can’t relax in school. They spend all day masking ; hiding how they really feel, so that no one thinks they’re weird or ‘the only one who’s feeling anxious’ So many worries come home with them… What does that friend think about me? Will I have tummy ache and feel sick in class tomorrow? Is my teacher annoyed at me? Every parent that I speak with feels some level of pressure from school to get their child in. And some feel pressure from their partner too- when both disagree on how they’re both handing things. Too soft. Not encouraging them enough. Need to just get them in school. When those words are echoing in your own home as well as being heard from school, it’s no wonder that it begins to feel like it’s all on you as a parent to work this all out. Where I come in is to help you get to the bottom of what’s actually making school feel impossible for your child or teen. The very first thing that I do with any parent that I work with is run through a profile of questions to help me understand how all of their different feelings connect. I’m not asking “how can I help you?” Or “how is she feeling?” And I’m not teaching you breathing exercises or how to help your child cope the next day. I’m getting to the bottom of what’s going on. Each piece of information you give me about your child helps me understand what’s likely going on. I’ve worked with hundreds of families over the last 17 years and this has helped me get to the bottom of things very quickly. And when it comes to anxiety relating to school, there’s often very common underlying factors at play. Each child is different and unique and this is about helping you understand your child so that we can understand what they’re really trying to tell you. Worries, anxiety, tummy aches - not every child just needs help to ‘think differently’ or cope with their feelings. They need us to understand what their emotions are trying to say. Because they’re not random. by @thehighlysensitivechild
0
12 days ago
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