Grief & change
Loss, upheaval and the seasons a family did not choose.
38 pieces across Thrive
Understand what's happening
Journal
When Your Child Asks You to Use a Different Name or Pronouns
It can feel like a small word to change and a large thing to practice. Both are true — and the practicing matters more than the perfection.
10 minutes
Learn
Separation Anxiety Solutions
Compassionate steps for goodbyes that stick.
10 minutes
Journal
Why Some Days Are Worse for No Reason
There was no fight, no bad grade, no obvious trigger — and yet your child fell apart by 9am and stayed fragile all day. Often, there was a reason. It…
10 minutes
Learn
Helping Children Through Grief
Support through loss, at any age.
10 minutes
Journal
Behaviour Is the Last Thing to Change
Recovery from trauma doesn't show up first as better behaviour. It shows up as capacity — the ability to notice, to pause, to ask for help — long before that…
10 minutes
Learn
Recognising When Someone May Be Struggling
Warning signs, changes and when to be concerned.
10 minutes
Journal
The Child Who Remembers More Than You Think
Children don't need words to store an experience. Long before a child can describe what happened, their body may already be holding it — and that memory can surface as…
10 minutes
Journal
The Conversation Before Anything Changes
How parents tell children a separation is happening shapes how the child experiences everything that follows. What to say, when to say it, and why the message should come from…
10 minutes
Journal
When a Grandparent Has Dementia
Helping a child hold on to someone who is still here, and still changing.
10 minutes
Journal
The Sibling Who Waits
Growing up beside a brother or sister with a disability, chronic illness or high support needs shapes a child’s whole life. Here is how to see the quiet one in…
10 minutes
Journal
The Room They Left: When Your Eldest Moves Out
The week your eldest moves out for university, work or a first flat brings a grief nobody warns parents about. Here is how to stay meaningfully connected without hovering, and…
10 minutes
Journal
When a Child Hears You Arguing
Conflict itself is not the damaging part. Unresolved conflict, witnessed and never explained, is.
10 minutes
Journal
The Child Who Seems Fine
After something frightening, some children fall apart. Others become impeccable. The second group worries me more.
10 minutes
Journal
When the New Baby Arrives
The first child does not gain a sibling. They lose a monopoly. Both things are true, and only one of them gets a card.
10 minutes
Journal
How to Talk to a Child About Death
Death is the hardest conversation many parents will have. Honesty, warmth and small words are the way through.
10 minutes
Journal
How to Help Your Child Through a Friendship Breakup
When a best friend pulls away, the pain is real. Here's how to support your child without rushing the grief.
10 minutes
Journal
The Questions That Come at Bedtime: When a Child Worries About Death
Almost every child, somewhere between five and eleven, works out that life ends. What they do with that discovery — and what you do with it — shapes far more…
10 minutes
Journal
When the Dog Dies
For most children, a pet is the first death they meet. How the adults handle it teaches them what grief is allowed to be for the rest of their lives.
10 minutes
Journal
When a Parent Is Unwell
Children do not need the whole truth. They need a true, small version of it — and something concrete to hold onto while the adults are frightened.
10 minutes
Journal
Small Griefs: Helping Children Carry Loss and Change
Children do not grieve in a straight line, and they rarely grieve when we are ready. What they need is not the perfect explanation, but somewhere reliable to bring it.
10 minutes
Journal
Everything in Boxes: Moving House With Children
A move looks like logistics to adults. To a child it is the removal of every external structure they use to feel safe, all in the same fortnight.
10 minutes
Journal
The Three Minutes That Change a Meltdown
Most of what parents are taught about big emotions happens too late. The window that matters most opens in the first three minutes — and what you do there decides…
10 minutes
Journal
Most Revision Does Not Work: How to Help Your Child Study
Highlighting, re-reading and copying out notes feel productive and change almost nothing. The methods that do work feel considerably worse.
10 minutes
Journal
Consequences That Actually Change Anything
Most family consequences are punishments in a calmer voice. The ones that work look completely different — and they are usually decided long before the incident.
10 minutes
Journal
How to Tell the Children: Talking About Divorce and Separation
Separation is not what harms children most. Conflict they are placed in the middle of is. Here is how to have the conversation, and the hundred smaller ones that follow…
10 minutes
Try this in real life
Grow
The Shared List That Replaces Nagging
When one person holds every task in their head, the only way to distribute the work is to speak — which everyone experiences as nagging. A visible list changes who…
10 minutes
Grow
The Doorway Pause: Ten Seconds That Can Change How You Come Home
Ten seconds on the doorstep, before the handle turns. One of the smallest practices in Grow, and one of the most reliably useful.
10 minutes
Grow
The Question That Gets a Real Answer
Children are not withholding. They are being asked a question that is impossible to answer. Change the question and most families find the conversation was there all along.
10 minutes
Grow
The Once-a-Year Family Review
Most families never step back and ask what worked. This is a structured hour — five questions, one page, everybody's handwriting on it — and it changes more than a…
10 minutes
Grow
The Meeting Where You Change Your Mind
Most parents privately know when a rule has stopped working. Changing it publicly, at the table, is one of the strongest things a household ever watches an adult do.
10 minutes
Grow
The Family Agreement
Every household runs on rules nobody wrote down and nobody agreed to. Spending an hour making them explicit changes the argument from 'that's not fair' to 'that's what we said'.
10 minutes
Grow
The Twenty-Minute Reset
Not a cleaning routine. A short, shared, timed, everyone-participates reset that changes who is responsible for the state of the house — and quietly ends the argument about it.
10 minutes
Take this with you
PRINTABLE
Three Breath Patterns Card
Square, long-exhale and hand breathing on one printable card for the fridge or the school bag.
10 minutes
WORKSHEET
Parental Burnout Self-Check
A clinically framed self-assessment across exhaustion, distancing and loss of efficacy.
10 minutes
TRACKER
The Family Habits Tracker
Five small family habits, thirty days of squares, and an honest reflection on what to keep, change or let go.
10 minutes
GUIDE
Body Safety & Consent Plan
A simple, non-frightening plan for teaching personal safety and trusted adults in a developmentally safe way.
10 minutes
WORKSHEET
Grief Memory Box Worksheet
A gentle guide for children and parents to name, keep, and return to memories of someone who has died.
One evening
WORKSHEET
Hard Season Minimum Plan
Decide in advance what stays and what drops when the family is in survival mode.
10 minutes