Sarah Wells, BA

Sarah Wells, BA
C.T.S. Play Therapist and Child and Family Group Facilitator, Merrymount Children's Services

Sarah Wells is a child and parent group facilitator at Merrymount Family Support and Crisis Centre. She uses her training in Play Therapy and Mindfulness to help guide her work with families. Sarah is a trained in Circle of Security and is a certified Trauma and Loss Specialist through the TLC Institute. Sarah is an Adjunct Professor of Field Education.

Making Mindfulness Matter: Creating a Culture of Resiliency within the Family
Sunday, May 3, 2020 — 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM

In today’s busy, on-demand world, with our lives filled with screens and our brains having to process more stimuli than any other point in time— learning to take a “mind break” is important for reducing stress and learning to be in the present moment. This is especially important within the family context, where levels of stress for parents and children is on the rise. Supporting parents to cope and manage their stress can help them better meet their child’s emotional, psychological and behavioural needs and in turn, parents can then support their child’s development of social, emotional and self-regulation skills.

This workshop will be centered around a mindful model of parenting that provides a framework for parents to respond to stressful situations in a way that builds resilience within the family. This model integrates many of the concepts and skills taught in the Making Mindfulness Matter (M3) program. Through this model, participants will be provided the understanding of how stress affects the brain and behaviour, and how to create a mindful gap between our thoughts and feelings and our behaviour, so that we can make the choice to respond, rather than react.
Participants will engage in multiple interactive skills aimed at teaching mindful parenting and then learn how to use these skills with their child, enabling parents and children to have a common language and skill set to use to boost their resilience as a family.

Participants will come away with:

  • Will understand how the parent brain and the child brain works under stress and how mindfulness practice can help us respond rather than react to stressful situations
  • Will learn a mindful model of parenting that can help build resilience and self-regulation within the parent, child, and family
  • Will practice various concrete mindfulness skills, social-emotional and positive psychology techniques to use with parents/guardians and children