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Sarah Bolitho - Support & Training for Parents & Carers

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Did you know that a baby's brain isn't born fully

Did you know that a baby's brain isn't born fully developed?
Say whaaaaaaat?! 🤯😱
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This means that it is built not born. Cool bro 👊
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The only part of the brain born ready to rock and roll is the brain stem. #lucky and #funnythat because it's responsible for survival functions including SLEEP.
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Q.
Guess what we need in order to fall asleep and maintain sleep?
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A.
A feeling of safety.
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Because when we go to sleep we are at our most vulnerable.
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Ho do we help babies feel safe? By regulating their sensory system.
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Rocking, swaddles (cuddles), snuggles, white noise, reducing visual input (dark room)... these all serve to regulate the nervous system.
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Accompany these things with a predictable and consistent routine and a calm, confident caregiver and you have the perfect partnership for navigating babies and sleep 💃
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If you'd like more sleep help my 1:1 sleep services are here to support you. Check the link in bio to head to the website.
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Did you know that babies learn primarily through their senses?

“I know what I like and that’s beige, beige, b

“I know what I like and that’s beige, beige, beige!”

Who’s little one is in the ‘beige foods only club’?

Do you have a little one that only eats pasta or chicken nuggets and trying to get them eating anything else is like getting blood out of a stone? #nextlevelimpossible

- the key 🔑 is this: the division of responsibility

You decide what to offer.
You create the environment.
You provide a consistent routine around mealtimes.
You leave the pressure to your bum on the seat 😆 and take it off what your kiddos doing.

You present the food and avoid getting caught up in what they ‘should be’ doing with the food on the plate and how much they ‘should be eating’.

👉🏽They decide what to eat.

Little ones can only eat what we offer them and what we present, so keep offering without pressure. Each exposure is one step closer to maybe a touch, a sniff or a lick which is one step closer to a nibble 💃

Are mealtimes at your place stressful or easy breezy?

Some days are just too much.
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We're all doing the best we can with what we have at the time.
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If you're battling with what you 'should' be doing and comparing yourself to what others are doing, I'm popping up to remind you that that's not helpful to anyone.
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Treat yourself with the same compassion that you show to others.
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YOU ARE NOT A LAZY PARENT.
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The days are hard, the jobs are endless. Sometimes you have to pull the pin on doing any more tasks and that is ok.
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I feel particularly strongly about the napping situation in this post.
Settling and re-settling babies can be hard work, there's nothing lazy about contact napping or jumping in bed for a bit of shut-eye yourself.
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Tag ya parenting pals and remind them to take care!

Can you spot the theme?
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Attachment theory is about relationships.
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It's about how you ARE. It's a way of BEING.
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It's based on relationships, which is why I advocate for relationship based parenting practices that worries less about what other people think of you and more about how that makes your small person feel.
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It's about stripping BACK layers of what you feel you should be 'doing' to focus on a way of just being.
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The most fundamental aspect of attachment theory is the behavioral system which is designed to create a predictable outcome of bringing their parent (caregiver) CLOSE. This system will activate (turn on) when a little one experiences fear, anxiety, or related forms of distress.
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These experiences in early childhood create templates of how to be in relationships with others as you age.
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Attachment relationships get organised on a spectrum of secure to insecure and it isn't unusual to experience different default behaviours depending on the situation or person.
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There a four well accepted styles of attachment, do you know what they are and do you know your attachment style?
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Bowlby (AT pioneer) believed that how individuals are treated by significant others throughout life —especially during times of stress—shapes the expectations, attitudes, and beliefs they have about future partners and relationships 🤯🤯
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These expectations can be thought of as “if/then” propositions that guide how people think, feel, and behave, especially when they are upset.
e.g., “If I am upset, then I can count on *someone* to support me”
or
"If I am upset, then I can expect my feelings to be invalid and dismissed and will learn not to rely on others"
These thoughts are known as working models.
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📷@stefspillsink

Have you been feeling the overwhelm and frustratio

Have you been feeling the overwhelm and frustration of parenting small people lately? 🤯
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My favourite thing about the work I do is helping parents to cut through the internet noise and give them practical, evidence based strategies that stem from building a secure attachment 💛 #emotionaladvantage
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I’m a lifelong learner and I’m currently over halfway through my clinical masters (yay 💃), if there’s a strategy for responding to a behaviour I’ve probably read it. Ive probably even taken it for a spin myself - I’m right there with you on this wild wild rollercoaster ride of parenting!
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The strategies I teach are rooted in neuroscience 🧠, child development 🧒, and promoting a lifelong relationship.
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I offer 1:1 sessions to give you practical, easy to implement tips and tricks.
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These are amazing but they can only get you so far…
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I’ve taken (a lot of) what I know and created a parenting framework called The Positive Parenting Puzzle 🧩 to help you. With over 8 hours of content the PPP will help you:
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💛make sense of the experiences you had as a small person to help you reparent your inner childhood
💛understand child brain development 🧠 so that you can make sense of their behaviour
💛 learn positive discipline strategies so that you can change behaviour, reduce the overwhelm and #donoharm
💛learn how to use your child’s first language; play to build to strengthen your relationship
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Have you checked it out?
Drop me a 🥰 below or send it through a DM if you’d like to learn more.

Do you mean to say ‘no’ but it always comes ou

Do you mean to say ‘no’ but it always comes out sounding like ‘yes’?
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🤯 People- pleasing is a template that was probably learned in childhood to ensure your safety.
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It sounds like a ‘yes’ when it should be ‘no’ because you worry about how others will feel.
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If you can keep everyone happy then they’ll continue to want you around, right?

As a kid it feels like you’re always walking on eggshells and never wanting to ‘rock the boat’ so it’s easier to fly under the radar. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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In parenting it often feels like avoiding tantrums because you want everyone to be happy.
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Parent pleasers are often hyper-focused on making sure everyone knows that they’ve been ‘good’ today and that they’re ‘happy’ today and often develops because their parents struggle to coach them through their emotions.
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So ‘big emotions’ become associated in their minds with being overwhelming and unloveable. If a small persons feelings overwhelm their big person then the small person starts to believe that those feelings must be really bad. So they learn to no longer express them and learn to behave in a way that keeps everyone on side.
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💛💛 this is the importance of emotion coaching in parenthood, to break these cycles ✊🏼
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What emotions do you struggle the most with?

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