As teachers and mums, Gemma Arnold and Sophia Ziff are on a mission to change the way we talk to our children.
Specialising in mental health and well-being, they say the disruption to education, plus the isolation of periods of lockdown over the pandemic has had a significant impact on children and their parents.
With parents juggling childcare and schooling while working from home, some hit emotional burnout. They struggled to navigate new ways of working, including holding meetings on Zoom, while caring for their children in the background.
Some found that their parenting changed, as they juggled work with childcare. They were desperate for good behaviour while taking part in work meetings from home, and resorted to threats or bribery.
Beyond that, with a steep rise of mental health issues being reported among young people as a result of the disruption, caregivers struggled with how to approach important issues.
After speaking to a range of parents, Arnold and Ziff, both 31, decided to set up Toddlers Teens And Between last year to support caregivers. With schools still hit by Omicron and many parents working from home again, the issues are still pressing.
They offer support and education for parents on educational issues and help them to embrace technology that has changed over generations. Primary school teacher Arnold responds to queries from parents with children under the age of 11, while Ziff, a mental health and wellbeing co-ordinator at a girls’ state secondary school, works with parents of young people up to the age of 18.
“Parents were suffering over lockdown,” says Arnold. “We realised that many parents weren’t getting much support from schools as they tried to navigate Zoom, their own stress at work and looking after kids who would have been at nursery.
“There was a lot of emotional burnout. In the end, many fell into a pattern of sticking children in front of an iPad, pleading with them or shouting.”
“There are also differences in the way we teach children now, especially subjects like maths, compared to the way we were taught. Children would ask their parents questions, and they would have no idea how to answer.
“Another issue is parents have to try and shift their mind-set on issues.
“We were brought up being ‘anti-computers’ and being told that spending too much time on them was bad. But now, that’s how children talk to their friends a lot of the time.”
Arnold, a mother of two, says she tells parents that early intervention and the use of positive language are key.
“If you can have open communication with your children from a young age, you would hope that would continue as they get older.”
She adds: “A lot of the time, there are power struggles between parents and toddlers and people can fall into a trap of bargaining, pleading or shouting at their children.
“We offer an alternative. We would encourage parents to use positive affirmations and language, and also offer children a choice. The importance of language is huge.
“Telling a child ‘you are kind’, is a good thing to hear before they go to bed.
“It is about reframing how you talk to a toddler. For example, rather than telling them: ‘Do not jump on the couch’ when they do not know what the alternative is, you can say: ‘put your feet on the floor’.”
Meanwhile Ziff says the number of students she mentors has “doubled” since pre-pandemic — as have the number of issues.
While she would once talk to teenagers struggling with low self-esteem, friendships, sexuality and identity, since the Covid-19 outbreak she has seen an increase in eating disorders, severe depression, self-harm and attempted suicide.
“A lot of parents just do not know what to say to their children going through these issues. They don’t want to say the wrong thing or speak too harshly,” says Ziff, who has one child.
“We try to provide the parents with a script and the language that we have been trained with, so they can have conversations with their children. We talk about self-esteem, social media and how to provide positive affirmations.”
She says their company, which has supported around 20 families since its launch, the majority of them Jewish, has seen that “parents are in tune with their children but do not always know what they can do to help.
“The way children are growing up now, especially with technology and social media, is very different to what we grew up with.”
Edgware United Synagogue-member Arnold and Ziff, a member of South Hampstead United Synagogue, both trained on the Teach First programme after first meeting as students at Immanuel College High School.
They are keen to offer an affordable service to parents seeking support, with one-on-one sessions costing £110 an hour, or courses with pre-filmed modules on topics from language to social media for around £84.
“Mental health and well-being can be overwhelming topics,” says Arnold.
“We say that parents tend to parent how they were parents — or they hated it so much that they do the complete opposite.
“With that in mind, we provide an alternative.”
