We have lots to look forward to this spring with the latest Let’s Talk About Parenting events programme, which promises a fantastic array of events for parents of all ages and professionals working with children. You can find the full version of the latest brochure on our website by clicking here or you can scroll down to browse through information about the upcoming events we have to look forward to this spring.
If you’d like to keep up to date with the latest events taking place in your local library, we recommend also signing up for our email newsletter. This way, you’ll get the latest updates and information about the latest events straight to your inbox.
You can scroll down to browse through the list of upcoming events, or you can click on options in the list below to take you straight to the sections you’re interested in.
Baby Sign Language (4 week course)
With Claire Glynn (Clever Little Handies)
Clever Little Handies is an award-winning baby sign class for parents with babies from newborns, up to wobblers / babies of 1 years of age.
We already know babies can communicate with their hands before they can talk; they can wave; they can clap; they can point. They have the dexterity in their hands to formulate signs long before they have the muscle dexterity in their mouths to form words. By providing tools to communicate from an early age they will have a vocabulary to use, even if they’re not formulating words yet. Irish Sign Language signs that pertain to the day to day with a baby are taught through nursery rhymes, songs and poems. Don’t wait to communicate!
Click on the links below to book your place:
Athy Library: Weds 14th Feb – Weds 6th March, 10.30 – 11.30am
Naas Library: Tues 9th Apr – Tues 30th Apr, 10.30 – 11.30am
Maynooth Library: Weds 8th May – Weds 29th May, 10.30 – 11.30am
Sleep – What Every Parent Needs to Know (birth – 6 years)
With Lucy Wolfe, Sleep Consultant
An introduction to your child’s sleep. Responsive sleep shaping strategies to embrace from birth – 6 months. Responsive sleep learning strategies to implement from 6 months to 6 years.
Addressing 3 core reasons that routinely dilute parents’ efforts.
Decisions to make that improve sleep-where does your baby sleep-who starts the process-using a dummy-when to begin.
10 definitive steps towards positive sleep practices including using my stay and support approach to improve sleep gently and considerately by day and by night.
Book your place by clicking the link below:
Toilet Training – Less Stress more Success!
With Dee Holland Hannon
This workshop prepares the parent for potty training. It will cover readiness and prepping your child before starting. With the correct preparation a lot of the hard work can be done before the child ever sits on the potty. It will teach the parent Deirdre’s unique approach to potty training, including rewards, naps and bedtime. Deirdre will highlight the common challenges of potty training to reassure the parent of what’s “normal” for many. Learn how to avoid and reduce resistance, encourage co-operation and have a motivated learner during training. Understand the basics of bowel and bladder health and come away better equipped to tackle this next stage in your toddler’s development.
Book your place by clicking the link below:
Starting ‘Big School’
With Dr. Mary O’Kane
Your child is starting ‘Big School’ in September, this means new experiences, new friends, and a whole new identity as a Junior Infant. Naturally you want to support them in making this transition a success. How should you best prepare your child for this major transition in their lives? In this session, Dr. Mary O’Kane offers some very practical advice on the most important skill sets for children during this transition, and how best to support your child over the summer in developing these skills.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Dealing with Challenging Behaviour
With Alan Quinn, Le Cheile
When faced with a child/teen who is argumentative, disruptive, controlling, abusive and even threatening or violent it is really useful to approach this from a place of understanding. Firstly, understanding our own triggers and reactions. But also understanding what their behaviour is telling us about what is really going on and how we can better respond to it.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Lost in Transition – Rediscovering Your Identity in Motherhood
With Anne Morgan
Becoming a mother is an incredible, life changing experience, and it is also one of the most significant psychological and physical changes a woman will ever have. No matter how prepared we are for the arrival of our little one, we often overlook the impact this transformation will have on our sense of self.
During those early years, many women find they have almost fallen into the gap between who they once were and who they are now. Society expects women to appreciate the gains motherhood brings, without providing a space to reflect on the losses. This means that we often struggle in silence to make sense of the dramatic changes we undergo as individuals.
Regardless of what stage of the journey you are on, if you ever find yourself saying “I don’t really know who I am anymore” then this talk is for you. My aim is to provide you with some practical tools and useful insights to reconnect with your sense of self, to rebuild your confidence and to help you get your spark back by doing more of what makes you feel alive.
This is a reminder that we can fully embrace motherhood, while fully embracing ourselves too.
Book your place by clicking on the links below:
Helping your Anxious Child – Tips and Strategies for Parents
With Helen Vaughan
This talk will cover the tell-tale signs of a worried child, how to talk to them about it, practical skills on learning to cope with stress (and not avoid it), how anxiety works in our bodies & why, and building resilience in our young people/families.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Parenting with Patience
With Dr. Mary O’Kane
Parents often cite challenging behaviour as one of the most stressful
aspects of parenting. From tantrums for the little ones to negotiation with older children, managing children’s behaviour in a positive way is very important in terms of supporting their social and emotional development. In this Webinar, Mary supports parents in framing behaviour management in a positive way, giving practical advice on best to support positive behaviour using connection to help us parent with patience.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
How to think like a Psychologist
With Dr. Antaine Stíobhairt
Antaine will introduce some frameworks that psychologists use to understand the factors contributing to emotional and behavioural difficulties and to identify things that could be helpful. He will then provide a brief introduction to key concepts for intervention that are used by several major therapeutic models. The aim is to equip parents with a solid foundation for addressing difficulties more effectively and provide directions for further learning.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
First Aid for Parents & Caregivers
With First Aid for Everyone
A popular and regular event on the programme, this informative and
interactive course uses lots of visual aids in the presentation and there are plenty of opportunities for the participants to ask questions. Topics covered will include:
- Calling the emergency services
- The First Aid Kit
- Choking
- Meningitis
- Burns
- Temperatures / Seizures
Book your place by clicking on one of the links below:
Empowering Safer Children Online
With CyberSafe Kids
This is Cybersafe kids most popular session aimed at those with, or working with children from 8-13 years old and offers a general overview of social media, gaming and the online world. Our aim is not to scare, but rather to raise awareness of what children are doing online and offer practical advice and resources to help participants deepen their knowledge. Areas of focus are popular apps and protecting privacy, areas of risk, digital wellbeing and critical thinking and useful resources.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Understanding Bullying
With Jennifer Ryan
This seminar will take a common-sense approach to the complexities of bullying and aims to equip parents to deal with bullying effectively. It will guide parents through why bullying happens, how to recognize it in your child and effective strategies for intervention for you as parent and for your child.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Dealing with Challenging Behaviour
With Joanna Fortune
When we are parenting through Challenging Behaviour with our children, it is helpful to hold in mind that our children are not trying to be difficult so much as they are trying to show us that they are having a difficulty! In this parenting talk, Dr. Joanna Fortune will talk us through creative and therapeutic ways to respond to our children’s challenging behaviour in way that brings “(behavioural) correction within our (emotional) connection”. She will also help us to develop strategies to ensure that we stay grounded and don’t “flip our lids” when faced with such challenging behavior. This is an informative and practical talk and Dr. Fortune will model therapeutic techniques that parents can use.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Supporting your Anxious Teen
With Helen Vaughan
What can you do for your anxious teen?
This workshop with Helen Vaughan from Maynooth Counselling & Psychotherapy will discuss:
- Understanding teen development
- How to parent adolescents
- How anxiety impacts our young people & supporting them.
- Teen issues: secondary school, bullying, social anxiety & boosting resilience
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Helping Teens Thrive Online
With CyberSafe Kids
Whether we like it or not, being online is part of life and none so much perhaps as for teenagers. This session aims to raise awareness of what young people are doing online, and the associated risks and safeguards. We provide information and guidance on platforms teenagers are using, digital literacy and wellbeing, and the inherent risks of being online; oversharing and privacy, cyberbullying, sexting, grooming and digital footprint.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Parenting Teens & Tweens
With Dr. Mary O’Kane
Adolescence is a time of rapid change, during which there are two main aims. The first is to become an independent autonomous adult, and the second is to develop an individual identity. In this Webinar, Mary explains some of the changes taking place in the teenage brain, and how they impact on social and emotional development. She offers practical advice on how we can support our teens to grow into the adults we know they can become and achieve all they are capable of.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Family wellbeing through the Teenage years
With Michael Ryan
In this talk, we will look at the realities facing parents when their children reach their teenage years. Michael will talk about what to expect, what are the challenges for everyone in the family at this stage, and give practical tips on how to survive the change in family dynamics. We explore the current realities for teenagers and their parents and give practical tips on communication, positive mental wellbeing and managing technology.
Book your place by clicking on one one the links below:
The Transition from Primary to Secondary School
With Dr. Mary O’Kane
The move from primary to secondary school can result in both anxiety and excitement, and that is just for the parents! This is one of the most significant transitions our young teens face. The changes are social, emotional, and academic, as they move from being the ‘seniors’ in their primary school to the ‘juniors’ in this new educational environment. In this talk Dr. Mary O’Kane outlines some of the challenges faced during this transition, and offers very practical advice on how we can support students on this new educational journey.
Book your place by clicking on the link below:
Power of Play! – Early Years Events in Kildare Libraries
In addition to Let’s Talk About Parenting, we also have the POP! (Power of Play!) programme, which encourages learning through play. This monthly events programme offers a range of fun activities, including art, music, messy play, theatre, dance, storytelling, and yoga to promote development of language, literacy, and numeracy skills in children aged 0-5 years.
These events will also give children the space and opportunity for socialising with other children their age.
Get notified of upcoming POP! events by signing up for our email newsletter by clicking here.
Toys, Technology, and Training
The TTT programme is designed to offer support to the neurodiverse community and consists of a specialised collection of toys and assistive equipment, along with a yearly programme of events.
For more information, check out some of our recent TTT blog posts here or the Kildare Libraries website here. You can also subscribe to the TTT email newsletter, to keep up to date with the latest events.
ParentingSupport.ie
ParentingSupport.ie provides information on parenting supports and services in Co. Kildare and Co. Wicklow. It’s an easy way to find out what’s available in Co. Kildare and Co. Wicklow for parents.
Go to ParentingSupport.ie for:
- Details of upcoming parenting courses and talks in your area.
- Information about local services and organisations that support parents.
- Downloadable booklets and leaflets on a range of different topics relevant to parents.
If you work with parents:
- In addition to the above, you can post details on the website of courses, programmes or talks you are delivering by completing a simple online form.
For further information:
- Website: ParentingSupport.ie
- Email: info@parentingsupport.ie
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/parentingsupport
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/parentingsupport
This is an initiative of the multi-agency Kildare West Wicklow Parenting forum.*
It is supported by Kildare Children & Young People’s Services Committee and Wicklow Children & Young People’s Services Committee (CYPSC). It has been funded by Kildare CYPSC via the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures Programme funding from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs.
*Forum members are: Co. Kildare LEADER Partnership, Curragh PRIDE Family Resource Centre, Athy Family Resource Centre, Kildare County Childcare Committee, West Wicklow Childcare Committee, HSE, Kildare Library Service, InSync, Newbridge Family Resource Centre, Prevention, Partnership & Family Support TUSLA.
Kildare Library Service 
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