Topical Resources
Tooled Up Events
- Staff Only
- Dr Lewys Brace, University of Exeter
- February 1, 2023
- 19:30
- GMT
- Parent Webinar
- Kate King and Sarah Cox
- February 7, 2023
- 19:30
- GMT
- Parent Webinar
- Miranda Eodanable, Educational Psychologist and PhD Researcher
- February 10, 2023
- 12:30
- GMT
- Staff Only
- Dr Ingrid Obsuth
- February 17, 2023
- 12:30
- GMT
- Staff Only
- Simon Pettit, Deputy Head of Pre Prep, York House School
- February 20, 2023
- 12:30
- GMT
- February 27, 2023
- 19:30
- GMT
- Parent Webinar
- Dr Lisa Sugiura, University of Portsmouth
- March 14, 2023
- 19:30
- GMT
- Parent Webinar
- Professor Gareth Morgan (Children’s Hospital Colorado)
- March 15, 2023
- 19:30
- GMT
- Parent Webinar
- Dr Lisa Sugiura, University of Portsmouth
- April 25, 2023
- 19:30
- BST
- Parent Webinar
- Professor Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas
- April 27, 2023
- 19:30
- BST
Guidance for Educational Settings
Following a Suicide or Sudden Death
To mark World Suicide Prevention Day on Saturday 10th September, we are proud to have published a resource for schools, written in collaboration with suicide prevention charity, The OLLIE Foundation. This comprehensive guide will provide leadership teams in schools and other educational settings with the detailed guidance needed to coordinate an appropriate, helpful and safe response following the tragic event of a suicide or sudden death in their community.
This invaluable resource is available for free. Simply click the button below to view and download the PDF.
The home of evidence-based resources on all aspects of parenting, education and family life
Schools that are part of our Tooled Up Education community can provide their parents and teachers with access to Dr Weston’s exclusive resources, covering areas such as aspiration, resilience, mental health and behaviour.
As a member of the Tooled Up community you will have access to a whole host of evidence-based resources, which will enable you to support your children or students in a way that makes their lives and educational journeys both easier and more enjoyable.
Dr Weston's Wednesday Wisdom
In an ever increasingly busy and demanding world, Wednesday Wisdom provides a reflective 2 minute read every week that readers constantly tell us they look forward to. Full of topical and relatable experiences that help provide reflection, motivation and support in achieving a balanced family life.
Over the years, thousands of people have benefitted from, and continue to enjoy, the parenting and educational talks from Dr Kathy Weston at Tooled Up Education and have subscribed to Wednesday Wisdom. Join now for free to get your own weekly digest of motivating, interesting, and thoughtful parenting advice from Dr Weston herself.
“I just wanted to say how grateful I am to read your Wednesday Wisdom email. Perfect size for the time I have to engage and reflect and think about the topics you touch on. It helps me to evaluate my parenting and take a step back to look at scenarios that play out.”
Parent – October 2020
Elevating Empathy
I am starting this week’s Wednesday Wisdom with an apology, to all ‘allergy parents’ or indeed anyone who lives with a severe allergy or allergies: I’m sorry I didn’t know what you go through. I feel motivated to say this following a webinar that I hosted last week with Professor Adam Fox of ‘Allergy London’ and Sarah Knight (CEO of The Allergy Team). This was a webinar for school staff across our Tooled Up Schools and addressed optimal strategies for reducing severe risk in school settings.
Parenting Question of the Week
My wife suffers with health conditions and has been diagnosed with cancer. The chemotherapy is starting to become difficult for her and I am concerned about the impact this may have on my child’s learning at school. I am also concerned that my son doesn’t bottle things up and that we do all that we can to help him feel supported.
Our Promise: We will answer all questions, and, whilst we may share your question and answer to help others, we will never declare who asked it.
Researcher of the Month
Dr Cele Richardson, Clinical Psychologist and Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science and Centre for Sleep Science at the University of Western Australia.
Research Interests
Dr Richardson’s research primarily focuses on sleep and mental health in young people. Sleep and internalising problems, such as depression and anxiety, commonly co-occur and she works to elucidate mechanisms linking sleep with emotional problems in adolescence.
Sleep problems are extremely common during adolescence and lack of or low quality sleep is increasingly being causally linked to poor mental health. Various research papers have examined how parents might be able to support teens to sleep better. Parental warmth has previously been found to protect sleep in early adulthood, yet the nature, directions, and mechanisms of this association were unknown. Our Researcher of the Month, Dr Cele Richardson and co-authors, have found that parental warmth is indirectly associated with better adolescent sleep through healthier sleep hygiene practices and that better adolescent sleep is often associated with greater parental warmth, because these adolescents have better sleep practices.
The study found that teens who reported higher levels of parental warmth had healthier sleep hygiene practices, were more likely to be early birds (have a preference for ‘morningness’), sleep longer on school nights and be less sleepy during the day. Good sleep practices were also linked to greater parental warmth, mainly because there is likely to be less conflict and strain on the parent-child relationship around bedtimes.
The paper confirms that good sleep hygiene is fundamental to getting high quality sleep. Engaging in fewer sleep hygiene practices consistently predicted worsening of sleep and daytime functioning, and teens at risk of inadequate sleep tended to engage in fewer sleep hygiene practices over time. The study showed that young people may increase unhelpful practices, such as reducing daytime activity to conserve energy or using substances to promote sleep and minimise daytime impairment, in an effort to overcome poor sleep. This can inadvertently contribute to sleep troubles.
Implications for parents
Parental warmth may protect against developmental changes in adolescent sleep, partially by improving sleep hygiene practices. Parents should foster a warm relationship with teens, providing them with emotional support, encouragement and spending time together doing shared activities. Try to approach interactions about sleep in a loving and caring manner, not in an authoritarian way. Sleep problems can place understandable strain on the parent-child relationship. It’s important to recognise that decreased parental warmth may further perpetuate poor sleep, creating a vicious cycle.
Implications for schools
This study support the inclusion of sleep hygiene content in adolescent sleep interventions. When it comes to school-based sleep hygiene interventions, many increase teens’ sleep knowledge without changing sleep behaviours, which is critical for actual improvement in sleep. Schools implementing sleep hygiene interventions should seek programmes that adopt a knowledge-to-action framework and those which foster teen’s self-efficacy and self-regulation of sleep. Schools might also like to create strong parent partnerships, emphasising the importance of loving, warm communication around sleep and more generally.
Tooled Up News
Studying Shakespeare?
Is your teen working towards their GCSEs? Macbeth is a key GCSE text for many of our teens and we are extremely excited to share the arrival of our new Supporting Macbeth resources for our Tooled Up community. These are revision resources for Macbeth written with parental engagement and home study in mind.
Shining a Light on Kindness
Given that World Kindness Day was celebrated earlier this month, on November 13th, now seems a good time to talk about the results of a very large and exciting public science project. The Kindness Test was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 in conjunction with a team from the University of Sussex, led by our brilliant former podcast guest, Professor Robin Banerjee. A whopping 60,000 people aged 18-99, from 144 different countries filled out the online questionnaire, making it the world’s largest in-depth study on kindness to date.
💡Do you know how to browse resources and use our filters to tailor the search to your needs?
Here’s a reminder of how our digital library works. Should you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
Start your search here: https://bit.ly/403jJlv
This week's Wednesday Wisdom is out now.
Read the full article and sign up for our weekly updates via the link: https://bit.ly/3JnadDQ
#parents #parentingtips #school #teachers #children #familytime #dailyparenting #allergies
This week’s webinars are all about sports! These talks are perfect for any budding athletes out there, whatever their sporting interest. So make sure to register your place and tune in to this week’s webinars: https://bit.ly/3Xx3Xh8
#parenting #education #children #teens
@BWPMatron @Parentengage @_allergylondon @theallergyteam Our great pleasure
We created an activity that encourages children to notice all the kind things that they do for others. There are plenty of ideas for them to try, but there’s also lots of space for them to write down their own kind acts: https://bit.ly/3WkyXzv
#parenting #familysupport
Does parental warmth have a positive impact on teens’ sleep?
Our Researcher of the Month, Dr Cele Richardson and co-authors, used data from the RAW Project to examine the impact of parental warmth on teen sleep.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3ZQppPJ
Looking forward to our Q&A webinar tonight at 730pm on allergies - with Professor Adam Fox of @_allergylondon and Sarah Knight of @theallergyteam both of whom know EVERYTHING! Please don't miss this brilliant opportunity to ask ANYTHING! Registration on front of our site.
@Char_Markey Parents modelling the ability to unsubscribe, unfollow or mute anything online that makes them feel bad about themselves or their bodies. Parents looking in the mirror and saying "I look ok today!" rather than being unkind to themselves!
This week's Wednesday Wisdom is out now.
Read the full article and sign up for our weekly updates via the link: https://bit.ly/3QQgWrZ
#parents #parentingtips #family #parenting #school #teachers #children #familytime #dailyparenting
📢We've reached a Tooled Up milestone! The 550th resource has just been added to our digital library. Every week we add resources, in response to school staff and parent requests. We love our proactive Tooled Up schools. We learn, we grow, we find out together. #ittakesavillage
@FSLnews Wow!
@habsboys Mais c’est super!
‘I think it's a fab resource that we're very lucky to have - I was blown away by the talk when it launched and the breadth or resources available. It's very easy to navigate!"☺️ #parentfeedback #tooledupschools #supportingparents
#CoSpace report - 2.5 years into the pandemic
📉#CYP behavioural & emotional symptoms decreased but attentional symptoms were stable since March'22
📈#Parents financial stress increased over the last 2-years
#mentalhealth symptoms & financial stress higher in vulnerable groups https://twitter.com/topic_group/status/1615306805243936770
Latest Co-SPACE report on children’s mental health & parents' financial stress, 30 months since March 2020 is now published! #research #mentalhealth #MentalHealthMatters
Follow the link to read the full report 👇https://rb.gy/faakm6
@UKRI_News @ESRC @jsps_sns @WestminsterFdn
Did you know that a recent study has shown that #children who learn to #play well with peers at preschool age, tend to enjoy better #mentalhealth as they get older?
Read our top tips on high quality play for children: https://bit.ly/3k8NwsL
Managing pupils’ #allergies can be a challenging business. In this webinar, paediatric allergy expert Professor Fox and allergy parent Sarah Knight of @theallergyteam discuss what ‘optimal’ allergy care looks like: https://bit.ly/3X67R0k
#teacher #school #teaching #education
Following on from the success of his last Q&A for Tooled Up parents and carers, we invite you to return with more questions for Professor Adam Fox from @_allergylondon: https://bit.ly/3QrvsWR
#parenting #parentingtips #familysupport #children #teens #wellbeing
Watch this space! We are developing a webinar in April with the inspirational @fashionnatascha so we can all learn more about fashion, sustainability and eco-anxiety! If any of your students wish to get involved in this webinar please let us know #supportingschools
For those who need to hear it, this popped up on my memories from a year ago today by the brilliant @charliemackesy . It is so very true ❤
Fill out our Plan A, B and C templates, pop them in envelopes and keep them for results day. On the day itself, open the relevant envelope and use it to help all of the positives shine through: https://bit.ly/3IEuK6S
#education #children #teens #mentalhealth #wellbeing
This week's Wednesday Wisdom is out now.
Read the full article and sign up for our weekly updates via the link: https://bit.ly/3GWkBRD
#parents #parentingtips #family #parenting #school #teachers #children #familytime #dailyparenting
A great opportunity for bereaved parents to be involved in a research study that will really make a difference in the future. We are looking for families that have lost a child in 2021 in hospital, hospice or at home with palliative care. details below #bereavedparents #research
@tringschool Our CPD chat on Chromebooks within our library might be of interest too!
@MarinaBazhydai Marina please get in touch as we can tell our parent and school community about this project - research@tooledupeducation.com
My lab is conducting an online study on children's wonder - please share with UK caregiver communities! https://twitter.com/LancsBabylab/status/1544299879274618880
Our @LancsBabylab team is looking for 9-11 year old children to complete an online questionnaire about curiosity and creativity. If you have a child in this age range and are based in the UK, please email activelearninglab@lancaster.ac.uk to find out more.
@StChrisNW3 Love it!
This free guide which we co-authored with @THE_OLLIE_FOUND is providing schools, NHS professionals, police officers and others with guidance to coordinate a helpful and safe response following a suicide or sudden death: https://bit.ly/3GVJzk9
#theother51 #suicideprevention
@CommonSenseSLT Thanks for signposting Lisa. We are very keen to get in touch with you Lisa, please email kathy@tooledupeducation.com
We are *extremely* excited to share some news. From 16th March, @HChristie_psych will become our new Head of Research. Dr Christie holds a PhD in Psychology (with a focus on Parenting and Parental Mental Health) and is an award-winning researcher with a specialism in trauma.😊
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If you are interested in learning more about Tooled Up Education, have a technical question, press enquiry or any other query, please follow the link below or get in touch with Dr Weston’s team on email: office@tooledupeducation.com
