We think we can all agree that it doesn’t matter how many years ago you left education, we still get that same uneasy feeling of nervousness and excitement every year around this time - but why is that?

Well, for around 14 years and beyond, every September we pushed our vulnerable selves into a new situation, a new group of people and a new year of unknowns.

Sometimes it went well, sometimes it really didn't, and sometimes we may have encountered life-changing friendship shifts.

This was bound to have a lasting effect on us.

September is a bit like the start of a New Year for parents.
New routines.
New commitments.
But with out the pressure of keeping to New Year resolutions. 

We’ve pulled together some useful resources below to help make this time a little easier for the young people around us and give us some resources to use to support them. 

WATCH

The Worry Tree

What if no one talks to me?
Will they still be my friend?
What if I don’t get to sit next...

This week is Children's Mental Health Awareness Week. 

What practical steps and ground work can we do as parents and teachers to help our children have good mental health and prioritise this as much as we do physical health? 

1. A little bit of routine 

HOW can routines help our anxiety?

As adults make lots of decisions every day but so do our kids, especially teens.

What to wear, what to eat, what to do for the day, what piece of work to finish first.

If you have too many decisions to make, this can increase your anxiety.

Try having some "certainty anchors” built into your day.

These are things that make parts of our day solid, anchored and unchanged. 

If you take time away from the need for a decision this can reduce the anxiety. 

Bring some routine into your day, a little bit.

Build routine into your morning and evening and then you can be more fluid during the day to do your school work. 

Decide what you are going to wear, what work you...

It’s September again and a time for a new start for many.

Perhaps you have a young person going into a new year, perhaps they’re starting a new school or perhaps they are flying the nest to begin their University life.

It’s exciting, worrying and overwhelming all at once and that goes for you as well as them.

Remember that it’s perfectly valid for you to feel that way and make sure you reassure them that the same goes for what they’re feeling.

Use some of our handy tools below to help you navigate this new landscape and the ups and downs.

Back to School Special - Build Confidence with The HOW People

Last year, we had the absolute pleasure of chatting to Jo from Flourish about the start of the new school year and how you can help your children to feel more confident going into what can feel like a social frenzy after weeks at home.

Tune in to find out how they can improve their self-esteem, hear top tips for making friends and also the advice we would...

So much can happen, often unrecognised or glossed over as we keep making baby steps towards the vision that we have for The HOW People.

So, it is time to stop, to step back and look at our highlights from 2022 before we take a bit of a break over the holidays. 

Here they are. 

Our Five Gold Things. 

#1 CONNECTION

On a beautiful sunny day in September, Esme, a 16 year old from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - who has been in our HOW membership community for two years having found us completely randomly - and her family came to Mumbles to visit us. She brought us new hats from her trip to Iceland. We laughed, ate and swam in a seaweed filled ocean.

She then travelled around the country and met up with other girls she’d met through the membership, making real life connections with people who will be friends for life. Tonight she is leading an art session for us as one of our HOW Mentors. One of our core values is CONNECTION. Reaching out and meeting new...

Do you want to BE more? GET more? STAY more?

Then it’s time to get curious.
These are my top tips.

YOUR HEAD

• Notice your head chatter and remember that you’re in charge here! What’s the ratio of the kind words to negative ones?
• Remember a time you were confident? What were you doing? How were you doing it? If you’ve had confidence before – you can get it again.
• ‘Fake it till you make it’. Bet you’ve heard this gem.  Believe you can be confident. Not that you can’t or aren’t. Remember, you’re in charge of how you feel.

YOUR BODY

• Think of it like an instrument – you need to tune it up to get it working properly
• Breathe full and deep into your belly
• Feeling jittery? You need to shake it off. Put on some music and dance big to change the energy in your body. (20 star-jumps will do the same thing!)
• When you talk, make the sound come from your chest rather than from your throat
• Vary your tone, rhythm,...

This month we are introducing a slightly different newsletter and blog post to go alongside the popular WFRDB (Watch. Follow. Read. Do. Buy.)

Remember, If you want to receive our newsletters automatically, sign up via the link on our website and we will plant a tree as well as making sure you get a jam packed newsletter every month. 

This is a bit of a behind-the-scenes round-up of the goings on at HOW HQ. Because someone recently asked us 'What are you up to at the moment?' and we realised sometimes it isn't always obvious from our current newsletter. 

So, this is a snapshot of what we are up to.

The main projects we are working on with links on how to get involved or how to sign up.

This week we have 4 things we'd like to tell you about:

1. Mindset and Mindflex Workshop for girls 11-16 years old: Monday 13th June 7pm

Last week, we attended TEDx Swansea and one of the speakers said… "Wouldn’t it be good if children were...

Love it or hate it phones, social media and the digital world is here to stay.

There is no avoiding it.

We all need the connectivity that has been created over the last 30 years.

This is an education piece. The importance comes in helping our pre teens and teens  how to live with and develop good habits when using these brilliant advances in technology.

Forty percent of 10-11 year olds are spending at least 30 hours a week on their cell phones. Nearly two days worth of screen tech time.

All of this often comes without learning, guidance and instruction. As parents we often cross our fingers and hope for the best while checking occasionally.

Would we hand our car keys to a 17 year old without a few lessons first?

The introduction of phones can cause havoc with friendship groups, group chats, constant checking and FOMO particularly those at the end of primary school going up to secondary school. 

But.. can you even begin to imagine a pandemic without the the wonders of the...

2 years ago today co-founder Dr Jo Watkins did her first ever live zoom/interview and about home schooling during lockdown.

This involved pulling a ridiculous face, itching her cheek, saying ‘Ummmm’ a lot and failing to remember to brush her hair… not much has changed then.

This was nothing to do with HOW but Jo was getting asked a lot about education at the beginning of the pandemic having home schooled her own kids for a period of time

At that time, in terms of HOW, we had

- Cancelled all our live events and surf sessions with Gwen Spurlock
- Had no functioning website
- Software that we couldn’t navigate confidently
- No course
- No membership
- No online presence to speak of
- We had not interviewed any speakers
- We had not done any live sessions with the girls
- We had not done any collaborations other than surf locally and one talks night

Our current business model was not even thought up yet.

It would be great to quantify what we’ve done since.

...

This a story about someone wonderful, doing something totally spontaneously that will change their world forever and enhance so many other people’s really tough worlds in the process.

Tomorrow, on HOW Inspire membership call, we were booked to have a session with one of our great friends and GP coaches Dr Kathy Morton chatting about periods, PMT, the ins and the outs and how we manage them but she messaged to say she wasn’t going to be able to make it last week.

She was on her way to Poland to see if she could help with the awful situation unfolding on the border with Ukraine.

This was not in the game plan for her last Monday. She was watching everything unfold as we all are, feeling helpless and desperate to do something.

The stories about Kathy, or ‘Our Kathy’ as she is called by so many other people’s children, are too many to tell but essentially, she is one of the kindest, most selfless, honest, humble, loving, empathetic, generous and funny people...