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Our founder, Maureen Dawn Healy, is a life-changing healer, counselor and author focused on seeing more sensitive children thrive. Her first book,Growing Happy Kids, was called a "must read for parents" by Edwene Gaines.   

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      Articles by Maureen Healy

The Highly Sensitive Child 

Does your child want all the tags pulled out from her shirts? Or enjoy quiet play more than big and noisy groups? Does she seem to read your mind? Or ask lots of questions? Is she incredibly perceptive noticing all these minor details of life? Perhaps she has even been labeled as "shy" or "highly emotional" by someone close to her. If you answered yes to any of the above you may be raising a highly sensitive child - and yes, this is a great thing.

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School Bullying 

Last week, I was away in Alabama when I tuned into CNN’s program on bullying. The progam shared ideas from Dr. Phil, and showed a new Public Service Announcement (PSA) titled “Stop Bullying, Speak Up." These are all solid starts to elevating the collective consciousness about bullying, but in my opinion they just aren’t enough.

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Confidence in Children 

Sitting across the table from my Aunt and Uncle at a post-funeral lunch my Aunt blurts out "I wish my daughter was more confident." Hmm I think. Her 8 year old seems happy but shy. There's nothing wrong with being shy but I understand her wish for her daughter to really emerge from childhood feeling confident. So I began thinking what is confidence? What is the root causes of confidence? How can we nurture it?  

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To read more by Maureen on Psychology Today's website: Click Here

PBS: This Emotional Life

 

Is Your Kid Feeling Down in the Dumps?

You know how to speak with your kid – you talk all the time about school homework, soccer games, and their favorite spaghetti dinner. But how come when your son or daughter comes home from school looking sad, you become speechless? Your eyes open up big and you take a few deep breaths wondering: What in the world do I do now?  Read More


Is Your Child Resilient?

Every parent wants to raise their child to be strong. To be able to pick her or himself up after falling, shake off a poor grade at school or a mean comment from a "friend." The ability to do this and stay focused on your inner strength is an important lesson in childhood...and actually in life. With twenty years of working with parents and children, I have found there are certain things that resilient kids do and I share 3 key ones here.  Read More

The Highly Sensitive Child

“… it is primarily parenting that decides whether the expression of sensitivity
will be an advantage or a source of anxiety.”
Elaine Aron, PhD
 
Does your child want all the tags pulled out from her shirts? Or enjoy quiet play more than big and noisy groups? Does she seem to read your mind? Or ask lots of questions? Is she incredibly perceptive noticing all these minor details of life? Perhaps she has even been labeled as “shy” or “highly emotional” by someone close to her. If you answered yes to any of the above you may be raising a highly sensitive child – and yes, this is a great thing.
The Highly Sensitive Child
As a former highly sensitive child, I personally relate to Elaine Aron’s description of the highly sensitive child. She states a “highly sensitive child is one of the fifteen to twenty percent of children born with a nervous system that is highly aware and quick to react to everything.” Such children are incredibly responsive to their environments whether it is the lighting, sounds, smells or overall mood of the people in their situations – these kids pick it up. (Dr. Aron’s test to “see” if you are raising a highly sensitive child is at: http://www.hsperson.com/pages/test_child.htm)
With a sharpened sense of awareness these children are often gifted intellectually, creatively and emotionally demonstrating genuine compassion at early ages. The downside is that these intensely perceptive kids can also get overwhelmed easily by crowds, noises, new situations, sudden changes and the emotional distress of others. Daniel, a four-year old client of mine, is a highly sensitive child and notoriously won’t take naps because he is too “wound up” by his preschool peers. Another highly sensitive child, Lizzie at age eight, came home from school after seeing a bullying episode and just broke down crying. Criticism, defeat and the distress of others is something sensitive children feel deeply.  
A huge number of my private child clients are highly sensitive children. Since my expertise is children’s emotional health – these kids need extra care and feeding so that they can learn how to see their sensitivity as a strength and begin empowering themselves with tools to tap into the “upside” of their sensitivity such as insight, creativity and empathy while simultaneously learning how to manage their rich emotional lives.

To read more, you can go to Maureen's blog at Psychology Today:  http://bit.ly/iXVvzR

"Selecting just the right words and saying them to your child

has the power to strengthen them, and in today's world,

every child needs to be strong from the inside out."

Maureen Healy

"Empowering Kids" 
Pure Inspiration Magazine

 

© 2013 Maureen Healy • Growing Happy Kids, LLC •  contactus@growinghappykids.com • 828-450-2023