Bright Beginnings South West

13/07/2020

A brain that gets anxious sometimes is doing exactly what brains were meant to do - keep you alive, warn you of danger, and remind you how much you love your favourite things. It just works a little too hard on the first two, but with a little tweaking - mindfulness, exercise, a happy belly and other things that brains love - anxiety can be brought back to small enough.

01/07/2020

This is such a beautiful way to strengthen your young one’s capacity to put space between a thought or a feeling, and a response. The more they can expand that space - and the space only needs to be for a moment - the more room there will be for a healthier, less reactive response.
⠀⠀
Thoughts very quickly become feelings, which drive behaviour. Anxious thoughts drive anxious feelings, which drives anxious behaviour (fight or flight) - but it doesn't have to be this way. Mindful bubbles is a way to teach kids that they don't have to 'become' their thoughts. Rather than having a thought and immediately reacting to that thought (we all go there), treating the thought mindfully by observing it in a bubble makes way for the thought to be there without driving an automatic behaviour (such as avoidance).

Being able to let thoughts be there without buying into them is a powerful skill to have. In terms of anxiety, it opens the way for anxious thoughts to ride with us, without giving them the steering wheel. It's a difficult thing to do, and it might take time to master the skills when thoughts and feelings are big, but like all good things, building strong, beautiful, non-reactive brains take time and plenty of practice.♥️

26/06/2020

04/06/2020

01/04/2020

On World Autism Awareness Day, we celebrate and recognise both the rights and achievements of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

It's a time to reflect on our vision and what we strive to achieve in everything we do:

That all children with Autism have a great start in life,

That all children with Autism receive the education they need,

That all adults with Autism receive the support they need to lead an ordinary life,

And that we live in a community where people with Autism are understood, accepted and celebrated.

Today, we say thank you.

Thank you to each and every individual with Autism for your strength and courage, and for helping us to see how better the world can be when we embrace difference.

Thank you to our families, carers and guardians for being the biggest advocates and supporters of people with Autism.

Thank you to our staff, who even in these difficult times are still working hard to ensure we can continue to meet our mission and values.

And thank you to the Western Australian community for seeing beyond the spectrum, and helping us work towards our dream of an inclusive and accepting world for all.

11/03/2020

The "Behavior" in Applied Behavior Analysis" is not only referring to negative behaviour! Yes, a large part of what we do is managing and reducing negative behaviours but it would be worthless if we weren't able to replace it by increasing a more replacement functional skill.

So can children who don't have negative behaviors benefit from ABA? YES!

08/03/2020

05/03/2020

In the wake of a 50% increase over 5 years in the number of young children being suspended in our primary schools, Maggie joined Weekend Sunrise studio to talk about what’s going wrong with education in Australia.