Welcome! Raising children in today's world presents many challenges. The old saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ underpins our philosophy at CGS. We firmly believe in working with our families in an effort to support the young people in our care.
In a mental health emergency please see contacts below:
Kids Helpline 13 11 14
eHeadspace 1800 650 890
BeyondBlue 1300 22 46 36
Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467
Eating Disorders 1800 33 4673
Anxiety is the feeling of worry, apprehension or dread that something bad is going to happen or that you can’t cope with a situation. It’s also the physical reactions that go with the feeling, like ‘butterflies in the stomach’, tension, shakiness, nausea and sweatiness. And it’s behaviour like avoiding what’s causing the anxiety or wanting a lot of reassurance.
Anxiety can happen in response to a specific situation or event, but it continues after the situation has passed. It can happen without a specific situation or event too.
Anxiety is a common and natural part of life. Everyone feels anxious sometimes.
It’s normal for children and young people to feel worried about something that’s happening at school – for example, when starting a new school or during exams. Sometimes, however, school can become challenging, stressful or distressing over a much longer period of time.
If your child is feeling anxious about school, or not able to go, it can be exhausting for both of you. Mornings in particular can become really stressful for the whole family, as you try to juggle your child’s feelings alongside the need to get them to school and get on with your other responsibilities such as work. Even if you manage to get your child to the school gate, you might know how difficult they’re going to find the day – or know that you’ll be facing the same problem tomorrow morning.
If you’re in this situation, the following link has advice to help you explore what’s going on with your child, make changes at school that can help, and find the support you need if your child can’t go to school.
Anxiety is a common mental health issue that affects people of all ages, including kids and teenagers. While anxiety is a normal emotion that everyone experiences, it can become overwhelming and interfere with daily life. Luckily, there are many resources available to help kids and teenagers manage their anxiety. The attached article explores over 40 of the best resources for kids and teens with anxiety.
Bullying can be devastating for children’s confidence and self-esteem.
If your child is being bullied, they need guidance, love and support, both at home and at school. Your child also needs to know that you’ll work with the school to prevent any further bullying. Often your son or daughter will say they do not want you telling the School, however, if the School is to help they first need to know.
https://raisingchildren.net.au/school-age/school-learning/bullying/school-bullying-helping
The eSafety Commissioner (eSafety) is Australia’s independent regulator for online safety.
They are the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer online.
Commencing operations in 2015 as the Children's eSafety Commissioner they are now at the forefront of the fight against online risks and harms faced by adults as well as children.
eSafety is a fast-growing team of educators, investigators, lawyers, policy analysts, technology experts, digital specialists and other professionals who share one goal – a safer and more positive online experience for all Australians.
You might notice learning difficulties and some early signs of specific learning disorders in the early years of primary school, when children start classroom-based learning in reading, writing and maths.
For example, if your school-age child has learning difficulties or a specific learning disorder, you might notice that they:
- dislike reading, writing or maths or find reading, writing or maths hard
- have a lot of trouble spelling common words, sounding out words or counting
- find it hard to count syllables in words or spot single sounds in words, like the ‘k’ sound in ‘monkey’
- find it hard to think of rhyming words
- have trouble with basic maths skills – for example, they lose track when counting or need to count things one by one
- don’t feel confident about schoolwork
- try to avoid schoolwork or homework or get upset about doing it.
Resilience is the ability to ‘bounce back’ during or after difficult times and get back to feeling as good as before.
It’s also the ability to adapt to difficult circumstances that you can’t change and keep on thriving. In fact, when you’re resilient, you can often learn from difficult situations.
Your child’s resilience can go up and down at different times. And your child might be better at bouncing back from some challenges than others.
Why pre-teens and teenagers need resilience?
All pre-teens and teenagers face everyday challenges like arguments with friends, disappointing test results or sporting losses. Your child needs resilience to bounce back and learn from these challenges.
Some young people face more serious challenges like family breakdown, illness or death, or bullying. And some have more challenges than others because of disability, learning difficulties or disorders, mental health issues, chronic health conditions and so on. Resilience will help them with these challenges.
It can be a difficult to understand why your teenager uses social media so much. It might seem like they're always online, and always distracted from the life in front of them. This page will help you learn more about social media and teens, why it matters to them, and what the risks and benefits of social media can be.
https://parents.au.reachout.com/staying-safe-online/social-media/social-media-and-teenagers
Topics include Self esteem, Sex education, cyberbullyting, anxiety, smoking, racism, sexting, sexual orientation, Drugs, Divorce and more.
The link below takes you to a range of information to assist you in discussing and dealing with these sometimes difficult and awkward topics with your teenager.