Anthony Says: Keep Your WITS About You!

Anthony McLean is awesome, plain and simple. Parents were enthralled on Monday night during his heartfelt, hilarious and incredibly helpful presentation. It was no different for the children on Tuesday when he captivated them from start to finish. We hope that you were able to share all that you learned with each other at home. A big, big thank you to the PA for sponsoring this parent/child workshop. It was a fantastic turn out. Thank you especially to our PA Chair Devin for organizing the food for the evening. It was delicious and was a great way to start the night and Paula, Emily and Clare did a wonderful job keeping the children entertained while the parents were in the presentation.

There was so much to take away from both presentations. One of the main things for the children was ‘WITS‘, Anthony’s recommendation for coping with a difficult or hurtful situation with another child or children ~

Walk Away
Ignore It
Tell Them To Stop
Seek Help

The children also learned how to ask themselves if they were helping or hurting a situation or person. Anthony used role playing, songs and tons of humour to show the children how to empower themselves and others. The very next day we saw the children using their new coping skills. For the parents, Anthony reminded us how to be good ‘coaches’ and that our main job as parents is to raise our ‘baby elephants’ to take care of themselves out in the world. Please see below for some well-earned words of praise for Anthony from a CGS parent in attendance on Monday. I know many of us would echo the sentiment!

Dear Anthony,

Just a quick note to say how much I appreciated your talk yesterday at Children’s Garden School. It was an excellent presentation, stylistically and substantively, and a great blend of humour, insight, and inspirational. It was also more emotional, in a good way, than I anticipated. Thank you again for your presentation and work.

~ CGS Parent