 So we're thinking about coronavirus and the pandemic and attachment and what lockdown means for little ones and how we can help. OK, Sophie. OK, so one of the questions, and I'm just reading it from off the slido, is might G's had attachment problems when young lockdown sees him isolated from much of his appall, is he likely to become detached again? If so, how what is the best way to help? OK, so, OK, so issues when when younger things have got a bit better and we're just worried that this might kind of essentially trigger things becoming more challenging again. And I think that more widely there's a concern during this more challenging time that anyone who's had any kind of challenging experience in the past that there is the potential for things to unravel a little bit and things to potentially get worse because we are under these sort of particular stresses. And I think that the main sort of advice I would give here really is to think about what are the what are the positives in lockdown and how we can kind of lean into those and use some of our sort of alternative ways of kind of reaching out and remembering that every time that a child does have a positive interaction during this time that actually you're kind of investing in their emotional piggy bank for later on. So even though the child might not be interacting with the people with whom we're concerned about their relationship with the interactions that they are having in this time is kind of building up their capacity to cope their capacity to thrive in their capacity to have and build strong relationships with other people. Does that answer it's like I haven't got it in front of me so yes. Okay. I was you. Thank you. What's next. So we have next. How can we support CYP. I'm not sure if that stands for something with trauma. So how can we support children and young people with trauma. For example, experience abuse during lockdown to build attachments again when they're afraid and new people often calls flashbacks. There's quite a lot to unpack there. Yes. So they've experienced trauma. They might have experienced abuse during lockdown to build attachments again when they're afraid. Okay. So yeah, so we're thinking here. There's a lot in there. But essentially we're thinking about how we can help kids who've experienced trauma to form strong attachments. When actually they might find it difficult to build relationships because this might trigger issues for them. So here I'll be going back to the very basics of how do we enable children to feel safe. And creating that feeling of safety is always going to be the number one thing I'll be looking for in a sort of trauma informed response and supporting a child who's experienced trauma. So we're thinking first about making sure they're physically safe. So they are safe from harm and those that they love are safe from harm. So if they have experienced or witnessed any kind of abuse, we need to know that they are safe from that. So we put our safeguarding hat on. And if they are going to school or preschool or another care setting, we need to know that they're confident that when they are separated from the person who cares for them that that person is also safe. So that's going to be really important that like literal physical safety is number one. Then we're thinking about how we build that emotional safety. So how do we make sure that child is seen is heard that they are able to kind of somehow communicate something about what they're feeling so that we can begin to help them respond to and raise. So how do we make sure they feel seen and heard and cared for by people around them? Then we think about their social safety. So how do we make sure that they feel comfortable within their environment that they able to interact with those around them? Particularly here if we've got children who have experienced challenging relationships during lockdown and there might be difficult stuff to unpack here and they might have seen some negative modeling going on around them. Then we might need to be thinking about what is okay in terms of social interaction and how can we help them to learn really positive ways of communicating and building relationships because they might not have seen that happen for a little while. And then there's the final thing which is when children really beginning to thrive that idea of kind of cognitive safety and giving them the confidence to begin to kind of work beyond their boundaries and take challenges in their learning. But it's all about enabling them to feel safe really and kind of seen and heard and soothed. So it goes back to those real basics but always just to keep listening and keep listening to them providing an opportunity for them to work with us. And the final thing here is that for any child who's experienced trauma just consistently being there we're not going to fix this overnight trauma is something that impacts in the long term. It impacts on brain development and it can be really challenging. The brilliant thing is that our brains are plastic throughout our whole lives and we've got a really better understanding of that than we used to. We used to think they were very, very critical periods and if stuff happened then it was impossible to undo and we know now that that's not true and that brains can be remoulded at any point. It becomes harder but it is always possible so every single positive interaction that you have with a child or every time even that you just remain there when they're distressed and you sit there with them. Even if you can't be near them they won't allow you in or to touch them. That is still helping to create new more positive pathways for them and it might take some undoing to kind of move beyond the really challenging ones but we will help them create those new pathways so persevere and be patient. Brilliant. Another question we have is we have been working on independence with my eight year old before lockdown. They manage 45 minutes in the same house with another adult. Not sure how to restart this. Great question. So with anything where we are working towards a goal with a child there's two key things to bear in mind. One is to have a think about framing the goal from the point of view of the child. So what does the child want? What is their aim and can we create a goal that works for them? So do they want to work towards being in this household with another adult and if not why not and if so why and let's frame it in their terms and try and see what the motivations are for them. If we can understand what's in it for them and why it's something they might want to work towards that gives us a bit of a starting point and at least they're motivated to work with us on this. And the next thing is thinking about how can we enable the child to succeed. So instead of thinking right the goal is to get them back to 45 minutes in the household with this other adult. Maybe the first goal is for them to stand outside the house for one minute with that other adult and to see if we can. We basically need to choose something that's so small that it feels ridiculous to even bother doing it because we know we can do that because what we want is for the child to know I can do that. And once they have found they can do that then we do the next step. So it's lots of tiny, tiny, tiny steps and every time the child succeeds no matter how small that success is. We celebrate it, we note it, we praise it and then we think about what next until we get to the point that we kind of need to. But we've got to start by thinking about what are the goals here and in what way are they in the child's interest and what are their motivations here and try and reframe those goals from their point of view. Just knowing what their wants and wishes are isn't enough because they might want to be able to do something but that doesn't mean they can right now. So we've got to work out what they want to be able to do and why and then break it down. Next. Does anyone have any questions before I just carry on reading any out? Has anything come to anyone? No, okay. So the next one is my daughter only wants to be with me. She could just about cope with school concerned how to get how to help her get back in next year from the looks at this person's putting brackets. I want to move to flexi not full time. Yeah. So yeah, and this is this is something that's come up quite a bit where children have really thrived at home and adults feeling like actually is the return to school a good thing and should we be doing this. And I think this is really difficult and actually we need to take a step back and try and think about things again from the point of view of the child and the wider family and think about what do we actually want here what we aiming towards and why. And what ultimately would be kind of, you know, best for the child and then also what's realistic. So if you might decide that perhaps your child would be better off at home but you don't think you can meet their educational needs or you can't manage it financially then actually we're still in a position where the child's going back to school for example so we have to work out what's what's what's possible what's practical and what what are our motivations here so we've got to start off by working out kind of what the goals are assuming then once that's all kind of looked at that we do want the child to be able to return. And it's really similar answer to the last question. We need to think about well how can we find the positives for that child for returning. What are their motivations why would they want to go back and it doesn't matter how small those motivations might seem so we might think well we would like the child to be an education to improve their life chances and the social skills say. They might say well I'd really like to go back because I miss Emily and I want to talk about horses. Whatever it doesn't matter if there's something no matter how small that is a motivation for them being in school. Then we we latch on to that and we use it and then again we break this down into really tiny steps. So again we're not looking at this child returning full time right away we're starting off with the child sitting in the bedroom in school uniform and just practicing and then building up tiny tiny tiny steps and perhaps looking at that transition as a phased return. And here it's going to be really important to have good communication between school and home and working together as a team around the child where possible using child centered planning and goals and child focused language so they understand what's going on. What they can expect of the people around them but also what's expected of them. And again we'll look to make small steps and to celebrate each each kind of success as we go through but we're always looking to create icons. So in these kind of circumstances where a child's had a really challenging time often there's a whole litany of things they can't do or things they've done wrong or places where they feel that they failed. And actually what we want to do is to build up their confidence and so maybe I can't go to school I can't manage it but I can sit in my bedroom in my school uniform and that's the first step yeah. So I've got another question here. Terry's got his hands up. Just from what would you say it's probably not what you can do but would you say schools need to think about what they actually offer children coming back what subjects. Coming back not to heavy study but coming back to the building of fun, joy, happiness all of that art obviously. Terry's an art teacher. Yeah so this is a really tough one because what I think and what I feel and what's going to happen are probably two really different things sadly. What I think is that we need to think about our children as long term projects, they're going to grow into adults one day all being well. And in order for them to do that and to do that successfully we're going to need to do a bit of hard work now to build them back up to create their confidence and to really really re-engend about love of learning. They are going to return to school in really uncertain times we don't know how long schools going to be back in session before we get another spike. We don't know whether there might be more losses and separations coming. We don't know whether they are going to end up doing the exams they normally would if they're at that kind of age. We don't know so many things right now. Also we are having to learn new ways of interacting. We've missed out a load of school. There's just so many different things that are tricky here and really I think the very best thing that could happen for our kids right now is to be able to go back to school to really begin to rebuild those relationships with the children and the adults in their life that are so important to create another safe base for themselves and to have some fun like play and connectedness and that sense of purpose and belonging are really important. And actually I think like fun and purpose can also be had through learning and I do think that learning and achieving is really important. So for context here Terry has been my daughter's art tutor during lockdown he's been giving her one-to-one art lessons. And for me that's been the most important thing that's happened for us for a really long time because my daughter is previously a school avoidance and had really disengaged with learning and had fallen back into that pattern during lockdown even though we've made really good progress beforehand. And Terry offered to teach her and she now very willingly like more than willingly has asked to carry on through the holidays and beyond engages with art. And that for me is so brilliant because she's loving learning she's learned she can focus and she's seen that she can do things and she can develop skills. And I know she's now really looking forward to returning to school although she's going to carry on with the art tuition I believe. I now know that she's built what she needs to to go and love other learning and art and creative endeavor can do that for us as well as helping us to emotionally regulate and express ourselves and just give us that sense of joy and fulfilment. Actually there's a lot there that can build our capacity to learn elsewhere so yeah I think you know if I were ruling the world I would be really focusing on very clear, consistent, predictable routines for children but that engendered a lot of fun, a lot of creativity, a lot of play. I don't write the rules sadly. What I do know though is that, so I wrote a framework for schools, the SWAN framework about enabling a successful return to school and it focuses on nurture above the kind of traditional curriculum. And I got a little bit worried because it got access to a lot more widely than I thought thousands of people have done it and I suddenly thought oh God am I going to get them in trouble with Ostad. So I spoke to Ostad about it and they said no it's fine basically. They're not going to inspect anyone on what's happened during the pandemic and granted you know if you don't make expected progress at some point it might come back to bite you but my thinking here as an educator is we will make expected progress more likely if we build our children up and get them ready for learning and that might take a moment so yeah. Big top pick. So I've got quite a big question here. Is there a risk of COVID triggering or worsening germaphobia which may manifest itself in OCD traits. So repeated hand washing you know and elevated levels of anxiety. How do we manage this bearing in mind that hand hygiene is very important currently and therefore positively reinforcing that behaviour. Brilliant question and I actually would really like to run a whole session on this if people are interested. But very briefly OCD is a massive issue and we will like of course without doubt see a resurgence of OCD behaviours particularly kind of health and hygiene behaviours in people who've experienced it in the past as a result of the pandemic because suddenly this behaviour that we might have worked really hard to learn not to do. It's suddenly the thing that we're all doing all the time we're told you must do this to keep you safe and if you don't then you know people will die and that's really really challenging if you've worked for years in some cases to overcome the compulsion to obsessively clean and keep yourself clean and keep your environment clean. So this is going to be very very triggering for many people. So yes we will see an increase and we will get lots of new cases because kids will have learnt this they will have picked up on this messaging that in order to stay safe we must stay clean so yes we will expect to see relapse yes we will expect to see new cases. The really good news is OCD is one of the most treatable of all mental health conditions. The issue is on picking it up and I'm referring in for help and as soon as we do that then we are able to begin to make progress and so if you remind me afterwards and I'll send through the there's some really good workbooks OCD workbooks so that if people aren't able to access actual clinical help you can buy the clinicians at the Michael Rutter Center at the Maudsley in London. They have been amazingly generous in basically sharing their program for overcoming OCD as a tool that anyone can buy and it's designed for that you know therapists who might be delivering interventions in schools and so on to use but really anyone could use it as a starting point if they were struggling to access help but yeah OCD so we use specifically tailored cognitive behavioural therapy so are we trying to change our actions by changing how we think we try and break those patterns basically it's really really treatable and yeah the OCD books are great and I will share the link to them. Brilliant I've made a note of that so I'll make sure that gets shared after this session. The next question I have that's also in the Zoom chat is how do we help the children who are transitioning from an early year setting to school without having a normal stage process? Yeah so the transition is something that's worrying a lot of people so first of all I would be thinking about what are the things that you would normally do and what is the closest you can come to them in the current context. Some schools right now I think are doing a better job of transition than normal because they're doing things like creating videos because they can't bring the children in in person and the child can watch them again and again and again and they can watch them with their family and they can ask questions and that I think is quite positive so we can you know there are things that we can do and I think we need to think really carefully about what are going to be children's worries and fears which we would do always during transition anyway but those worries and fears might be a bit different than usual now. We can also do things like thinking about can we get children together online so that they can build some friendships virtually before they attend in person and certainly my daughter's school did this really successfully last week. They had a move up day and everybody spent the day online with their new classmates and that was really positive and good relationships were forged so we just need to think about what would we normally do and what's the closest we can come to that right now. And then we need to accept that this might not run completely smoothly in the autumn and we need to be responsive to that need. The other thing here is we probably need to involve our families more than we would in transition at the moment because their worries and their fears are going to be more significant than usual too. So we need to be reassuring to them and make sure they've got good avenues for support and they know how to help their child. But I think the most important thing here is that most small children are really delighted to go to school and if we can give them a positive experience when they arrive there actually they will often transition really well. Parents and carers often worry about it more than the kids I mean so many people that first day of school it's the mum the dad or the carer who stands at the school getting tears the kids gone. That's a really good point just to add on that my mum at school she's on gate duty so she sees the children from their parents to her classroom. And you know as they're walking up they have a conversation about what they've been doing since they saw each other last to kind of ease that transition. Okay so I've got a really tough question for you here which is my husband left during lockdown any tips on how to make my daughter feel more secure? Oh gosh, wow. I mean this is lockdown is the kind of relevant thing here other than that everything feels a bit like it's in more of a pressure cooker. This is more about how do we manage sort of separation and loss generally. That's a big question to try and answer without the context. I think the number one thing I'd say here is that when we lose other attachment figures whether that's through separation or bereavement. The remaining attachment figures like the key thing there is just to make sure that child feels really held and to really focus in on really building that bond. And obviously there's other kind of more complicating factors there about what does that relationship look like and so on. So here I would really focus on in and make sure that the child knows that they are safe, that you are going to stay here, that you're not going to leave them. Because sometimes when children have these experiences quite early then their worries are well is mummy going to go to? Will I be left? Is it something I did? So we need to seek to reassure. The other thing I would be looking to do here is not to assume to understand what the child's worries are, but rather to be brave and actually open up those conversations and try to create a safe environment where they can talk about what's on their mind. Or explore it through words or art or music or play or whatever works for them and just be curious and be prepared that some of what you hear might be hard to hear. But if you don't hear it you're not able to help with it. So trying to create a really non-judgmental and safe environment where the child can explore it. And just finally there, sometimes it's very hard for a child to talk to a parent about that because they don't want to upset and worry you. So we might be thinking about this might be harder during lockdown, but outside of lockdown we might be thinking about where are there other really strong relationships here where that child might be able to open up and talk to someone. So in schools, often schools will have place to be or a counsellor or just an adult that the child particularly gets on with. Sometimes it's easier for them to talk about that or about their concerns and worries. But yeah, listen to them really, it'd be my number one thing. Is there one last one, Sophie? We're going to need to wrap up. Yeah, I was going to say there is one last question. How can we support LAC to not become too attached to care figures in their lives, e.g. case workers during lockdown? Okay, so looked after children, we don't want them to become too attached to other figures. Okay, so right, I feel quite strongly it's okay for looked after children to become really well attached to important adults in their lives. We have a responsibility to make sure that we're happy, you know, we're that caregiver that we are happy to take on that load and we're happy to carry it and to be with that child and be the person that they need right now. And we do have a responsibility that if they're going to need to transition to another person that we handle that responsibly and we explore it. So we might need to know what the limitations are and when we might need to kind of hand them on. But it will not do a child harm in my opinion and experience to form a really strong attachment with someone. Normally what that means is then they've learned how to trust how to build a strong attachment and they're able to do that again. So they can form that again with someone else. The problem comes if they form a strong attachment and then suddenly it's severed. So we need to just think about what happens next and how do we help that child to transition successfully. We might want to really carefully plan for that we might want to try and identify who are the other adults here that we might begin to form that relationship with that we might begin to pass that bat on on with. But every child needs to have at least one adult in their life who's fully there for them who really cares about them who thinks about them when they're not in the room every child deserves that. And if that is you know someone who's essentially working with them rather than someone who is kind of related for or caring for them. That's okay. We. Yeah, that's okay. And I'm very lucky and I get to work with so many really inspirational people who do take on that role every day. And we have to think about our own well being as well but it's a real gift to a child if you're able to form that attachment with them and allow that to happen. Okay, well that's all the questions. Thank you Sophie.