What's On - All the wintery entertainment for families 19, 20 & 21 Family Travel Guide- Th e benefi ts for children when they travel. 23 Food Glorious Food -What's fussy eating week all about?

Eco Ice

What's On

Peachy Keen

One of the UK’s most famous Christmas ice rink powered by renewable energy at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion is back now on until 8th January 2023. Tickets can be booked online at royalpavilionicerink.co.uk

Marvellous Medicine

This winter, Th e Festival of Light at Longleat will bring Roald Dahl’s most iconic characters to life. Wiith some lanterns more than 15-metres tall it's set to be marvellous!. Booking advised. longleat.co.uk

Wonderland

The iconic Hyde Park Winter Wonderland, is returning this year for its 15th anniversary. Families can experience a magical day out, with a host of new attractions. Free entry tickets during off -peak hours too! Visit : hydeparkwinterwonderland.com

Winter Entertainment

Free Fun!

This year Avebury Manor is decorated to tell the story of Th e Nutcracker. Travel to magical realms as Clara and the Prince journey from an enchanted forest, along the lemonade canal and to the Sugar Plum Fairy's castle of sweets. Th ere will also be family rooms dedicated to children's crafts and Christmas stories as well as Christmas activities across the site. Why not end your visit with a delicious mince pie in the cafe or a trip to the gift shop where you can fi nish your Christmas shopping in style? Price free although normal admission applies. No booking required and is on until New Years Day! nationaltrust.org.uk/ avebury James and the Giant Peach’ runs from 7th – 10th

December at Th e Merlin, in Frome with six performances including a ‘relaxed’ show too! Saturday 10th. Full times and prices via merlintheatre.co.uk

Trust Time

Christmas is the time for festive days out with the historic National Trust. Such an array of places to visit with activities included. Check out nationaltrust.org.uk

Hey Duggee

Hey Duggee is touring for the fi rst time ever in February 23 and here’s your chance to see this interactive show! Tickets from lighthousepoole.co.uk

Family Travel Guide

This guide from Love Holidays is a must-read for any parent looking to understand the impact of travel on childhood development.

Why do families decide to travel together?

Travel can boost family relationships as you experience new things together and create cherished memories. Plus, we all need a break from our regular routine. Being away from everyday stresses can help families connect on a deeper level. Why do you want to go? We’ve already mentioned some of the reasons why families decide to travel together, but there may be others which apply to you. It helps to have a discussion about what you're most interested in doing. This makes the planning process easier as everyone’s preferences will be taken into account. It also means you’ll have similar expectations. Sure, there are always going to be unexpected hiccups and spontaneous moments, but it’ll be more peaceful if you all know the purpose of your trip. Where do you want to go?

The world is a big place. And chances are, everyone will have a destination (or three) in mind that they’d love to explore. But when you have a family, there’s more to travel planning than sticking a pin in a map. Here are some things you need to think about. How much are you able to spend?

This is a big factor in travel planning. Your budget will determine where you can stay, how you get there, how long you can stay there, and the activities you can do. To follow is how to create (and stick to) a budget for family travel. Research the cost of transport and accommodation in your destination. These often take up the biggest proportion of a budget. Factor in the cost of food

Will you be catering for yourselves or eating out most of the time? Maybe a mix of the two? Research the cost of any attractions you want to visit Most historical sites and museums have an entry fee or ask for a donation. Look for family tickets or free entry for children under a certain age. Add a buffer

You may encounter some unexpected costs, so it helps to be prepared. Even if you don’t end up using the extra money, you’ll have peace of mind. Research the transport available

Is there an off-peak time to travel that knocks the price down? Flight comparison sites are a great way to find this out. And use public transport instead of getting taxis if it’s possible to do so.

Money-saving tips

Plan your days carefully

If several of the attractions you want to visit are within close proximity to each other, you can plan a day or two around that area. Some companies even offer tickets that give you access to multiple attractions for one price, which is often cheaper than buying tickets for each separately. Travel during off-peak times

Prices can skyrocket during peak seasons like summer, and the crowds are much bigger, too. If the weather’s not too bad and accommodation and attractions are still open, then avoiding these times of year and visiting during the off-season can cost a lot less. You’ll have more space to explore, too. How long do you want to travel for?

The length of your trip is connected to logistical constraints, such as the aforementioned budget, schooling for children, and work commitments for adults. Availability of accommodation and transport will also affect how long you go away for. So how does all this help develop our children?

Although our brains start developing before birth and continue to change into adulthood, children’s brains are built rapidly in their early years. There are periods of time in early childhood and adolescence when they are more sensitive to the things they experience, both positive and negative. Positive experiences can help kids develop healthy brains. As the NSPCC points out, it’s never too late to give a child or adolescent positive experiences, such as loving familial relationships, access to support services, and learning opportunities through travel. Here are some of the key moments in children’s development.

Three weeks after conception, the brain begins to produce neurons. Neurons transmit information between different parts of the brain and the nervous system. At birth, they have generated almost all the neurons they’ll ever have. The auditory system (all parts of the ear and some parts of the brain) matures. At five weeks, learning and memory formation begins. At nine months, they start demonstrating gross motor skills like crawling, cruising, and walking while having both hands held. At one year and three months, speech develops. At one year and six months, they start demonstrating fine motor skills like clapping, waving, and turning pages.

Explaining brain development Researchers have come up with a number of metaphors to explain children’s brain development and how parents and other caregivers can encourage it. Let’s take a look at what they are. Air traffic control

Everyone’s brain must manage different tasks every day. As children grow, they learn how to organise and prioritise these tasks and control impulses and emotions when necessary. Researchers compare this to being an air traffic controller. Parents and caregivers can demonstrate how to manage tasks through their own actions and behaviour. In the context of family travel, this could mean planning a day out, staying calm, and managing emotions if the

day doesn’t go to plan. You can also help children by asking them what’s on their mind, helping them to find a solution for any tricky tasks, and encouraging them to make choices, like selecting something from the menu at a restaurant. Brain architecture

Brains are built step-by-step, much like a house. Positive experiences during childhood, such as family travel, lay the foundations for a healthy brain. Serve and return

Researchers compare interactions between adults and children to a game of tennis. Children ‘serve’ and adults ‘return’ with a positive response, creating a ‘rally’ which helps to develop the child’s language, plus cognitive and social skills. This can begin at a very young age, as soon as children start babbling, gesturing, and using facial expressions. Parents and caregivers can encourage interactions by joining children in face-to-face activities, responding to babbling, gestures, and facial expressions, maintaining eye contact, and praising any vocal sounds. Children repeat behaviours they’re praised for, and over time these sounds will turn into words. Stress

Stress is a normal part of life. Part of brain development is learning how to cope with it in a healthy way. For example, older children might get ready to take an exam and draw from the experience in the future. Parents and caregivers can help children cope with stress by listening to their concerns without being dismissive, soothing them, and seeking extra support for any larger challenges. Tipping the scales

Researchers compare children’s brain development to a set of scales, with positive experiences on one side and negative experiences on the other. Tipping the scales towards positive experiences leads to healthier brain development long-term.

While you don’t need to overthink every interaction you have with your child, it helps to keep these metaphors in the back of your mind. When you’re a kid, it’s easy to think that your little corner of the Earth is the whole world—it’s certainly your whole world. Travelling elsewhere helps children to realise that there’s much more out there. There’s plenty to discover, from new cultures and cuisines to languages, landmarks and experiences, as well as meeting new people. They’ll see that something different to what they’re used to is a good thing, and become more accepting as a result. Introducing children to other cultures helps them to become better at solving problems and promotes a sense of curiosity and a willingness to learn. Yes, travel is fun. But it’s also a huge educational opportunity for kids, so it’s important to include some learning in your plans in addition to leisure. Learning through immersion offers extra invaluable context only real-life experiences can bring. This can help older kids understand concepts from their classes, which improves their results overall. While school is certainly important for socialisation, travel also has benefits in this regard, offering opportunities not found in a classroom. It exposes children to people of different ages, nationalities, and backgrounds which create empathy, improves communication skills and self confident. New situations requires us all to adapt, and children are no different. The ability to adapt is an important skill that adults and children alike will call upon throughout their lives in order to cope with change. Travel involves getting used to different environments and different cultural norms, so it’s a great way to teach children how to adjust. Travel can also teach children to be patient—after all, even the most well-organised plans can be hit by the unexpected. You may have to wait in long queues or spend a lot of time on transport, and kids will have to find ways to occupy this time. They’ll learn how to keep themselves entertained. Being away from the usual daily routines can be a lot at first. But everyone will still have tasks to carry out. For example, a child may be involved with packing their suitcase for the trip, which can teach them skills such as organisation, making decisions, and looking after their things. They can also get involved with travel admin, like navigating a new city or finding a nice place to eat. All of this can help them to become more responsible, which translates well to everyday life (and future adult life). It’s easy for daily stresses to take over. And while travel does involve its fair share of admin, ideally it will also give you plenty of uninterrupted time to spend with your children. With many parents’ time split between caregiving and their career, it can be hard to find time for everything. A survey of 2,000 adults found that families spend just four hours of quality time together each week, but travel can fill the gap because it involves separation from everyday life.

Sharing the experiences of travel together will strengthen existing bonds and create wonderful memories you’ll all enjoy looking back on for years to come. And as we’ve seen, positive interactions contribute towards healthy brain development, especially when they come from important figures like parents and caregivers.

Food GLORIOUS

Fussy Eating Week

Fussy Eating Awareness Week was created to turn the tables on traditional approaches to parenting at mealtimes, to tackle generational bad habits and reduce stress of mealtimes. Research shows that if they could wave a magic wand, (95%) of stressed parents would use it to have their child eat a wider variety of food. As well as parents and family members, Sarah Almond Bushell from Eastbourne, Founder of The Children’s Nutritionis used this awareness week as an opportunity to reach out to the professionals whom parents turn to for help - the frontline health professionals and education providers, who are not specifically trained in this area, yet are expected to support parents who are struggling. She is working to share her specialist knowledge with them too via accredited courses so that they can create a positive ripple effect with families in their communities. Access to Sarah’s expertise will be free but as an extension of her impact, Sarah is hoping to make a difference and is asking that people who join her make a voluntary donation to The Trussell Trust justgiving. com/fundraising/the-childrensnutritionist who support a nationwide network of food banks, providing emergency food and support to people locked in poverty. Last month saw the launch of the inaugural Fussy Eating Awareness Week, (21st-27th November, 2022) as an awardwinning Registered Dietitian with over 20 years of NHS and private practice experience of working

GLORIOUSFood

Fussy Eating Awareness Week launched on the (21st-27th November, 2022), we find out what it was all about.

with families, Sarah has taken matters into her own hands, to try and help tackle the challenge that makes so many households unhappy. Mum of 2, Sarah, who also consults for brands such as; Heinz, Holland & Barrett, Burger King and Hovis, is on a mission to open up more conversations about fussy eating, providing free expert advice to parents, education and healthcare providers on subjects that are often ignored and offer free solutions to help overcome stressful mealtimes with fussy eaters, in a bid to support the thousands of children and families who suffer ongoing stress from this problem. Sarah is also working to try and help distinguish when fussy eating is ‘just a fad’, a normal part of child development, and when it is something more serious and she wants to help provide more support for education and healthcare providers to enable them to identify this. Driven by her own story of struggling to feed her son, despite her many years of clinical experience, Sarah, a frustrated healthcare professional and parent, personally sought out the best advice from across the globe to help her understand what was at play with her son’s fussy eating. Learning from the most highly qualified specialists in America, who Sarah then trained with, she has delved into the Psychology of child development and eating Psychology and feeding therapy to help initiate breakthroughs, both in her own situation and with her clients. Sarah is currently reaching around 130K people each month with her expertise and knowledge via her online platforms and hopes that this dedicated Fussy Eating Awareness Week will enable her to reach many more. With her years of experience, Sarah is also in the process of creating an accredited course for healthcare providers, such as; Health Visitors, GP's, Dietitians and Nutritionists… and education providers; such as; nursery and pre-school staff… to ensure that fussy eating is recognised as an area that they are required to be trained on, to ensure more frontline health workers and education providers are prepared to deal with these challenges in the best manner. Sarah is also passionate about helping to cut the ties of generational eating habits, having seen that often the children’s behaviour is fuelled by our own ingrained unconscious beliefs and habits from our childhoods around what mealtimes should look like. She believes that sayings like - ‘if you don’t clear your plate there’ll be no pudding’ and ‘if you don’t eat your tea you’ll be having it for breakfast’ and ‘we’re not leaving the table until you’ve eaten that broccoli’ are all stress evoking, creating dangerous negative emotions around food and potentially fuelling later in life mental health challenges around food and weight management. Instead, Sarah is on a mission to share with us what science shows is the best way to parent around food and she hopes this will go some way to combat the misinformation that exists around how to deal with fussy eating and the desperation tactics that some parents resort to. Sarah said; “Making back up meals, bribing them to eat a vegetable, and tricking them with hidden ingredients only further fuels the fire and these approaches can cause further problems for the children as they grow up, and their relationship with food into adulthood can be affected”. To review some of the work parents can visit: childrensnutrition.co.uk/fussyeating-awareness-week/ and for any healthcare providers interested in receiving Sarah’s free resources email info@childrensnutrition.co.uk

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