The Huge Bag of Worries

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For the parents of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, this step-by-step guide offers hundreds of ideas and methods that work with children aged 3 to 12. It provides play activities to help parents enhance communication, solve problems and strengthen relationships in skilful, fun ways. The Huge Bag of Worries is useful to help you understand that life doesn’t always stay positive and, while it sometimes seems that the weight of your worries may grow too great to manage, you cannot ignore or attempt to hide from your problems as a way to deal with them. Sharing worries with those who care about you, or with those older and wiser, can help you understand that many of us share the same concerns and, sometimes just discussing those concerns can make them seem more manageable. It can also help you understand that some worries are simply not yours at all and that while you may be concerned, you are not responsible.

Caring for the needs of the group was no small task. Martha busied herself in the kitchen with all the preparations, while her sister, Mary, sat at the feet of Jesus. For those children who want to explore shape and bubbles a little more – parents/carers can bend coat hangers into different shapes. Explore whether the bubbles come out in the same shapes as the newly formed bubble wand. This encourages discussions about spheres, ovals, triangles and squares. Being able to write their worries down and leave them there is a skill that will really help children as they develop and generally helps worries to not bubble up into a huge problem. My favourite character is the old lady who lives next door because she has lots of good advice and she is very helpful and a good friend to Jenny. There were lots of different characters in the book who Jenny could ask for help, I like how we see lots of different people she could ask and how we realise everyone can need help sometimes. The story is a great example of how we will all feel sometimes, and it makes it easy to see how worries can build up and affect all areas of our lives, even for grown-ups like parents or teachers.It tells the story of a little girl who carries around a huge bag filled with worries. (‘The metaphor is little monsters). The heavy bag follows a little girl called Enid who has just lost her Granddad. As Enid goes out for a walk with lots of different emotions whooshing around inside her head she feels the weight of the heavy bag that she is carrying. Along her journey, Enid comes across different kinds of people who encourage her to talk about how she is feeling. With each meeting she offloads an item from her bag that represents a stage of grief and talks about how she is feeling. Inevitably, as she takes each item from her bag, it feels lighter and she can walk along her journey easier.

It may be hard to see children worrying, but it is completely normal, especially if lots of change is going on in their lives. Article 17, which states that parties recognise the important function performed by the mass media and shall ensure that the child has access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health; and Look at some of the messages which came from children to other countries – this clip looks at the origins of the rainbows and some of the messages - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-52117854/coronavirus-always-think-positively-we-are-all-with-you Ask the children to think about who they would like to send a message of hope to now. It might be a friend, a grandparent, the people in their neighbourhood or even a stranger in another country. What would the content of their message be?Having difficult conversations is hard, but if you handle it well it can bring you and your child closer together and help you to understand each other. This is what Enid is doing by talking to each person she meets on her journey. She offloads a telescope and explains how Grandad had said he would look at the stars with her but now he has left her. She offloads a large wooden boat that grandad made with her last summer and she explains how they were going to sail it together. As she removes each item and expresses her feelings to someone her bag feels lighter. Eventually she is left with memories that weigh nothing at all. She knows those memories will always be there. It is a perfect story for children who are feeling anxious or for when you want to discuss strategies about what to do when we have a worry, as we all do at some point. My own children have loved this book, especially with the uncertainty of COVID-19. My youngest (aged 6) asked me to read it over and over again. Often, children struggle to open up about their worries due to the overwhelming feelings and emotions that come with them.