3a. Understanding your child: from toddler to teenager

About this course

No matter your family setup, the important relationships in your child’s life help shape their emotional health and wellbeing. This transformative course offers a reflective space to think about your child’s development, their behaviour and how they are communicating.

Understanding your child: from toddler to teenager is for all parents, grandparents and carers of children aged between six months to 19 years. The resources are tailored so that whatever their age, you can use the ideas and techniques to help better understand your child, their emotions and how to nurture them.

Understanding your child: from toddler to teenager | 3m43s

Understanding your child: from toddler to teenager has been developed by a team of Clinical Psychologists, Child Psychotherapists, Health Visitors, Child and Family Practitioners and, importantly, parents. Everything you will follow and learn in the course has been informed by experience and is designed to be practical; to help you and your family in your everyday interactions. You’ll also learn about the foundations of wellbeing and mental health, as well as how our brains work at different times in our lives and what this means for the way we think and express ourselves in childhood and as adults.

The course follows 11 Modules, each taking around 20 minutes and broken up into manageable chunks called Units.

The first few Modules cover some ways of thinking and concepts that will help shape the approaches and ideas around the later sections, so this means it needs to be followed in order, one Module at a time. You don’t need to do it all in one go, and our advice is to take breaks and spread out your learning.

Understanding your child: from toddler to teenager is designed for all parents in any situation, but you might find that perhaps you begin to feel you would benefit from more personalised or specialist support, and so there are some additional resources signposted throughout to guide you.

We know that there are many different families, with different backgrounds, shapes and sizes. We have tried to consider some of the different needs of families in this course, but it hasn't been possible to account for all backgrounds. If your personal situation isn’t reflected, we still hope that you find something helpful in the main ideas about developing close, connected relationships between parents and children and welcome your feedback to improve its relevance.