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Coffee Parents @ Hagley

Suzanne Waters, Head of Junior College and Year 11 —

Once teenagers start high school it is easy for their parents to feel a bit disconnected from what is happening in their school and social lives. 

Your kids develop new friendships and become experts at not telling you what is happening at school and with their friends. Gone are your opportunities to chat at the school gate with other parents and a quick pop into class to catch up with the teacher. So, you can be left feeling a bit left out from it all. Add in teenage hormone changes and mood swings where they love you and want you involved one minute, and hate you and reject all suggestions of doing things together the next; any wonder you might be wondering how to handle the whole parenting a teenager thing!

Our regular Parent Coffee Mornings and Coffee Evenings, which started this year, have been an attempt to make it easier for parents to connect with the school and with each other, while gaining information and skills to support parenting our teenagers. Our first meeting was with parents who came in for the Year 9 Orientation in February. We asked them what they would like to know more about and when was the best time to meet. They came up with a list of topics and our dream became reality!

Over the year we have run 10 meetings, expanding the group to parents of all year levels, and have covered a broad range of topics including our College approach to well-being, our Health programme, cyber-safety and digital citizenship, and the developmental and learning implications of ‘the teenage brain’.

Dr Sue Bagshaw, an international expert in adolescent health and development was our guest speaker for our final 2017 presentation. She reminded parents that adolescence is a time of transition from childhood to adulthood that involves intellectual, physical, social, emotional and hormonal changes.

Sue also stressed the importance of recognising and enhancing our teenagers’ strengths, the important role of parents and other adults in providing guidance and support through this transition, and the increased importance of peers.

The positive and negative aspects of risk-taking, changes in sleep patterns, the potential influence of alcohol use, and the benefits and risks associated with social media use were also covered.

Sue brings an incredible depth of knowledge and experience to her talks, plus a lot of humour and empathy, while also giving parents the opportunity to share experiences and seek advice. We are very appreciative of Sue’s continuing work with our young people and parents, and are looking at ways of furthering these connections in 2018 and beyond.

Parent Coffee Mornings and Evenings will again be a feature of our programme for parents next year. We are keen to hear about the topics that would be useful to cover, so if you have an idea on this don’t hesitate to get in touch.