Graham Norris

What do you most want for your children?

Most people, particularly parents, teachers and carers say things like, happiness, security and friendship.

Schools are busy places, they have external and internal pressures and are constantly under public scrutiny. Finding enough time to listen to every young child can be hard.

Being Bothered is a book specifically designed to open the door to enable children to talk about aspects of their well-being. It serves as a gentle start to building their resilience to cope with the challenges they face as they grow and develop.

About ‘Being Bothered’

Even before the Covid pandemic, life for very young people involved a degree of regular change; this coupled with pressure from peers and the use of social media, created high degrees of anxiety. I am sure you are aware that a 2017 report highlighted one in eight (12.8%) 5 to 19 year olds had at least one mental disorder. In the current environment, this situation is significantly worse.

A couple of the key issues relevant when supporting young people are raising awareness of a situation that they might think is theirs alone, and then getting them to talk about it.

Stories are powerful tools when influencing young minds. So, I used the lockdown period to move a couple of stories I had written as a result of my work with very young people, from being on my PC to being out in the published world. The first is, ‘Being Bothered’.

It is a Wellbeing resource for teachers and has been very well received by several Headteachers, class teachers and SENCO staff: its intent is quite simply to raise awareness of the inner voice, which can be damaging at times. It does so in a way that allow teachers to safely explore how their pupils might be affected in a similar way.

Customer Reviews

First of all the children really enjoyed it. They laughed at first about the word 'bothered' being used so much in the story and then once a few of them had started to listen properly, they settled down and enjoyed the story. The most interesting part of the book was the conversation afterwards that I had with the children and they very much fed each other - it was very illuminating and actually gave me a sense that these very young people have difficulties expressing their self esteem issues or even acknowledging them to themselves or anybody else. The conversation was initially started by a boy who said for a long time he actually thought he had a person living in his head that was telling him things all of the time. He eventually worked out for himself that this couldn't be true - but he did say he had never spoken to his mum or dad about it - just kind of found it out through checking with friends and peers.

Naomi Hammerton

Class 4 Teacher WCS

A lovely story showing how sharing our worries with a friend really helps. A great way to start discussions about feelings and listening.

Tonie Scott

Headteacher, Bishop Henderson School, Coleford

I have just read 'Being Bothered'. It will definitely be a fantastic PSHE resource for upper Key Stage 1 / Lower key stage 2. I often used stories such as this with my Year 2 class as they provided a great starting point for discussions and activities around emotional issues. I think the main learning that children would take away is that it is normal to feel 'bothered' and how they might cope if they do (The importance of talking about our worries, challenging our negative thoughts, distracting ourselves from our negative thoughts).

Louise Rosewell

Early Years Specialist

I think children from Yr 2- Yr 6 would benefit from this and so many lovely themes that can be pulled out from this book. I love the feeling of being bothered as I know many children are very anxious about all manner of things now and this will help to address that it is ok to feel ‘bothered’ and we can do positive things about this. This will be a great resource to help children with transition/changes for example moving class or moving schools. It would be lovely to tap into how to communicate with others, when and who we talk to, how we talk and listen to others, what to do if we are worried. Obvious theme of friendship and what friendship means, qualities of a good friend, discussions around best friends, what does trust mean? You can explore feelings with this, how do we feel when we are bothered, what happens in our head, do we hear voices. How do we feel when we are without friends and family, what helps us to feel better, how do we feel when nothing is bothering us?

Key Stage 2 Teacher, Somerset

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