Growing Your Teenager courses

Edition: November 2024

Have you recently applied for your child’s Year 7 school place for September 2025? If so, you might be interested in our successful Growing Your Teenager course pilots.

Working with local secondary schools, West Sussex County Council and Sussex Police, the pilot courses over the last two years have helped hundreds of parents of teens. The free course is designed to help parents understand and navigate some of the challenges the teenage years present.

Sessions covered topics such as understanding the teenage brain, self-esteem, online and community safety, and much more. It also provided an opportunity to meet other parents with new starters at the school.

Lots of the topics discussed are common sense, but it is reassuring to hear you are already doing the right things.

Neil, a parent participant from the 2024 session

Neil added:

"It has been a great opportunity to meet other parents going through the same phase. Navigating the start of secondary school is incredibly daunting for parents as well as for the children.

It has been most helpful to learn about some of the strategies we can put in place now that will help mitigate those tricky situations that come up in the future especially around the use of mobile phones.”

Look out for communication from your new secondary school about similar courses coming up.