Emotional Confidence

Over recent years I have witnessed first hand, a downward spiral of emotional confidence in young pupils. There are increasing pressures on primary children in terms of SATs, less emphasis on developing non-cognitive skills of self-esteem, resilience, empathy and awareness of need, negative multi-media intrusions, and an unhealthy focus on appearance.

The net result is that pupils are not being prepared to reach their full potential, especially at such a crucial age in their development. Equally, there has been disturbing rise in child mental health issues:

• One in 10 children aged between 5 and 16 years (three in every classroom) has a mental health problem, and many continue to have these problems into adulthood
• Over half of all mental ill health starts before the age of 14 years
• Children are less likely to suffer from serious mental health difficulties in later life if they receive support at an early age, providing a cost saving to adult mental health services (Place2Be)

Five years ago, I decided to try and challenge this negative trend by writing a series of books and accompanying resources that dealt directly with building emotional confidence in young children and that provided strategies to combat mental health issues. The net result was the creation of The Amazing Journey Of CUPPA – His Quest To Find The Five Secrets Of The Confident Mindset.

The basis of the books, CD audio and animated videos was to demonstrate what it takes to gain emotional confidence through a fictional character called Chris Cupsworth as he travels around the world and encounters many challenging scenarios. The child reader is faced with the same scenarios with various choices and consequences to make. Both the reader and Chris have the friendly supportive Alf to help with their choices, but must be aware of his arch enemy Willie Fail. There are a series of characters which are encountered in each mission, some are more helpful than others!

The resources aimed at transition between primary and secondary is for ages 9-12 and  include a child reading book, a child activity book, and an adult guide along with a 5 book series for parents to use at home. There are opportunities to measure child progress before, during and after completing the journey. Plus, there is an audio CD which reads the story along with 5 animated videos that detail various mental health strategies.

If used within schools, the reading books are re-useable and include various cross-curricular subject lesson plans that incorporate English, History, Geography, and Computing.

So, either as a teacher, parent, or adult associated with developing young children, why not invest as little as 5 hours to help give young children the gift of emotional confidence and at the same time, help protect them from mental health issues.