Released On 11 July 2017
Events Round-Up - July 2017
Miss a recent event or want to hear more about events coming up? Milly Sutton, Cityparents Network Manager, picks out a few highlights from our events schedule.
We have had a busy few months with a full events diary in the run up to summer. The second week of May was Mental Health Awareness week where we looked at Mental Health from many different angles – how do we help our children to deal with stress and anxiety? What can all of us do to make the day-to-day easier by helping us to survive in the city? And what are commonly used psychological defences and their impact in the workplace?
A number of our parenting workshops have proved very popular - we have held events on topics including sleep training without tears; learning about the growth mindset; looking at children’s mental health; ways that we can make the morning routine less stressful; and a practical paediatric first aid course. The popularity of all these events will ensure that we look to repeat these topics in 2018. Taking place today is our seminar “101 ways to support your child’s development” with Anita Cleare, full of lots of hints and tips just before the school holidays.
Tom Beardshaw gave us an interesting perspective at our “Dads at Work” seminar in late June, which was very popular among Cityfathers. Tom gave a potted history of how the role of a father has evolved to the present day, the common challenges facing hands-on working fathers and tips on how to prioritise ‘the important stuff’ and avoid ‘time sinks’. Tom wrote an article in our previous newsletter if you would like to read that.
We were delighted to welcome Professor Susan Golombok to speak for us at the start of June to discuss her book ‘Modern Families’. Susan is Professor of Family Research and Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. They have conducted a lot of research into new family forms including lesbian mother families, gay father families, single mothers by choice and families created by assisted means such as IVF, surrogacy and egg donation. Their research conclusions were that however children come into this world, the size, shape and makeup of their parents does not have an effect on the child’s wellbeing as long as they are in a loving and supportive household. She said that often children that are conceived through assisted methods or adopted are often not informed of this, but if you are going to tell your children about their conception or how they joined your family, around the age of 4 is often the ideal time as they are quite understanding but not overwhelmed by the information. You can read more about this in our interview with Susan here.
The Centre for Family Research is currently conducting research into the experiences of part-time and full-time stay-at-home fathers; if you or your partner are interested in participating, please click here for further details.
We look forward to seeing you all after the summer holidays with almost 20 events to pick and choose from in the approach to Christmas.