Understanding your child with additional needs
- 6 months to 19+ years
- English
- Modules
- Voiceover
- Course Modules
1.1 Welcome!
1.2 How do you currently feel about parenting?
1.3 How parenting makes you feel
1.4 How parenting makes you feel on a bad day
1.5 Finding out more
1.6 Developing your relationship with your child
1.7 Behaviour is communication!
1.8 Feelings and behaviour
2.1 Understanding our feelings
2.2 How we know we're happy
2.3 How we know we're sad
2.4 How we know we're tired
2.5 How we know we're anxious
3.1 Understanding when your child feels happy
3.2 Understanding when your child feels sad
3.3 Understanding when your child feels tired
3.4 Understanding when your child feels anxious
3.5 Sensory processing and feelings
3.6 Your child's feelings
4.1 Reading behaviours
4.2 Other parents' examples
4.3 Reading your child's behaviour in these situations
4.4 Look, think, say!
5.1 How our behaviour affects our children
5.2 Your feelings make a difference
5.3 The challenge of reading behaviours
5.4 The three key questions
5.5 A recap
5.6 Time to have a go!
6.1 The story so far...
6.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
6.3 What's coming up
6.4 Tuning into what your child needs
6.5 Developmental stages
6.6 A reminder about brain development
6.7 Reflecting on your child's brain development
6.8 Helping your child learn new skills
6.9 What it takes to learn new skills
6.10 Switching shoes
6.11 Understanding developmental stages
6.12 What would you do?
6.13 A recap
6.14 Time to have a go!
7.1 Developmental stages
7.2 Some other parents' observations
7.3 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
7.4 Feeling worse and feeling better
7.5 Containment: the basics
7.6 Containment: parent and child
7.7 Containment: learning more
7.8 What can happen when we have our own worries
7.9 Making space in your mind
7.10 How feelings are communicated
7.11 The feelings
7.12 Doing things differently
7.13 Thinking about how we say things
7.14 Developing a containing relationship
7.15 Time to have a go!
8.1 Welcome and recap
8.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
8.3 Review
8.4 What's coming up
8.5 Approaches to parenting
8.6 What you might like to pass on to your children
8.7 Styles of parenting
8.8 Different kinds of parenting
8.9 Authoritative parenting: Getting the balance right
8.10 Time to have a go!
9.1 Reflections
9.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
9.3 What's coming up
9.4 Learning by playing
9.5 Learning through play with adults
9.6 How play can benefit relationships
9.7 Ideas for playing
9.8 Different ways of playing
9.9 Another look at the play sequences
9.10 The wider benefits of play
9.11 A recap
9.12 Time to have a go! Adult
9.13 Time to have a go! Child
9.14 End of Level 1
10.1 Welcome and reflections
10.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
10.3 The Dance of Reciprocity: The basics
10.4 Communication between adults
10.5 Understanding the Dance of Reciprocity
10.6 The 7 steps of the Dance
10.7 Understanding babies' actions
10.8 Noticing the Dance with your children
10.9 Development is not a straight line!
10.10 The Dance
10.11 Self-regulation and the Dance
10.12 The look-away
10.13 A recap
10.14 Time to have a go!
11.1 Welcome and feedback on Time to have a go!
11.2 Recap
11.3 Sleep
11.4 Separating from a child
11.5 Overcoming separation difficulties
11.6 Common causes of sleep disturbance
11.7 Why do we need to sleep?
11.8 What helps us to get to sleep
11.9 Sleeping difficulties
11.10 Having a routine to go to sleep
11.11 Recap
11.12 Time to have a go!
12.1 Reflections and what's coming up
12.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
12.3 Anger and independence
12.4 Coping with anger
12.5 Seeing anger in a different way
12.6 When can anger be helpful?
12.7 What are the kinds of things that might make a child feel angry?
12.8 How to help a child who feels angry
12.9 Learning emotional containment
12.10 Helping your child learn to manage their anger
12.11 Anger and self-regulation
12.12 Parent child interaction examples
12.13 Alternative approaches you could take
12.14 Managing anger
12.15 Recap
12.16 Time to have a go!
13.1 Reflections
13.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
13.3 What's coming up
13.4 The Dance of Reciprocity: Recap
13.5 How to recover when things go wrong: rupture and repair
13.6 Example of a rupture
13.7 How the situation could be improved: a repair
13.8 Repairing the situation
13.9 Repairing relationships
13.10 What happens after a disagreement
13.11 The importance of apologising
13.12 Helping your child learn rupture and repair
13.13 Time to have a go!
14.1 Reflections and what's next
14.2 Feeding back on Time to have a go!
14.3 What have you managed to change?
14.4 Quiz Time
14.5 Doing things differently
14.6 Recap of Resources
14.7 Further resources
14.8 Post-course questionnaire
14.9 Solihull Approach acknowledgements
14.10 The end of this course: continuing your journey
About this course
This specialist course for parents, relatives or friends of children with additional needs is designed to support you to better understand their world and how the important relationship you share can enable them to thrive. Building on the principles of nurturing emotional wellbeing shaped by the Solihull Approach, the course will help you to read and manage behaviour, develop your communication and support their development.
It’s also for you as a support for your emotional wellbeing. Parenting a child with additional needs can bring a range of big emotions, that at times may feel overwhelming. Recognising and processing these feelings is a really important part of the care you provide your child.
Understanding your child with additional needs is for all parents, grandparents and carers of children who may be neurodivergent, have a physical or learning disability or may be autistic. Some parents describe their child as differently abled or neuroatypical, neurodiverse or neurodivergent. The resources are tailored so that whatever their developmental age, you can use the ideas and techniques to help better understand your child, their emotions and how to help them process or manage them.
Understanding your child with additional needs
Understanding your child with additional needs has been developed by a team of Clinical Psychologists, Child Psychotherapists, Child and Family Practitioners and, importantly, parents with shared experiences. Everything you will follow and learn in the course has been informed by experience and is designed to be practical, to help you and your family in your everyday interactions. You’ll also learn about the foundations of wellbeing and mental health, as well as how our brains work can work differently and what this means for the way we think and express ourselves in childhood and as adults.
The course follows 14 Modules, each taking around 20 minutes and broken up into manageable chunks called Units.
The first few Modules cover some ways of thinking about emotional health and concepts that will help shape the approaches and ideas around the later sections, so this means it needs to be followed in order, one Module at a time. You don’t need to do it all in one go, and our advice is to take breaks and spread out your learning.
Everyone’s experience with children with additional needs will vary, and you may find the course brings up some difficult issues for you, or you might find perhaps that you begin to feel you would benefit from more personalised or specialist support. This course includes references and signposts to additional resources and information about helpful services you might wish to explore.
We know that there are many different families with different backgrounds, shapes and sizes. We have tried to consider some of the different needs of families in this course, but it hasn’t been possible to account for all backgrounds. If your personal situation isn’t reflected, we still hope that you find something helpful in the main ideas about developing close, connected relationships between parents and children and welcome your feedback to improve its relevance.