This year just continues to amaze, doesn’t it? As this week is unfolding, we a all scrambling to keep on top of news, restrictions, recommendations and changes. With a COVID cluster in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, we all have to readjust our lives and look at what needs to happen and how best to do it. If we as mature, seasoned adults are wrestling with this, stop for a moment and think what it must be like for our kids. Our Year 4 students camp this week has been cancelled, sporting competitions that many children had been training for and had their heart set on, have been cancelled and these are just a couple of things in their lives.

I have mentioned before that our children look to us for cues in how to act and react, and for security and comfort in times of change. I have a very simple suggestion for where to start this week in a time of restriction and uncertainty here in Adelaide. Explore and emphasise what we can do, rather than what we can’t do. I enjoy reading the work of Carol Dweck and her thoughts and research on a Growth Mindset. (Dweck, 2007) She talks about how growth thinking embraces challenge and persists in the face of setbacks. We are trying to find ways of doing “something” for our kids and families in the end of year activities, by focusing on what we can do, rather than what can’t be done.

I think this can really help in our family climates as well. We can get out in the back yard and kick a ball, or jump on the trampoline, play hopscotch, prepare a vegie garden, make some flower arrangements, watch a movie as a family, play some board games, cook up a storm . . . the list goes on. These are all things we can do. Let’s give these the attention. I think it makes for a better place for our children (and us) to be right now.

Have a great week with your kids,

Mark B

“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13