What Is the Best Way to Support Children’s Wellbeing, Mindset, and Performance?
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 27
- 5 min read
Written by Graham John Morgan, Performance Mentor
Graham is a serial innovator with a unique, proven record in Football, Education, and Performance. Building on his extensive career experience, Graham is collaborating with a global leading neuroscientist, Dr Michael Merzenich, to create footballing brains, a programme of Mentored Brain Training to improve performance, mental strength, and resilience.
Graham Morgan and John Bishop are the founders of Evolve: A Social Impact Company, a multi-award-winning social enterprise that has been pioneering innovative approaches to improve the performance of children in school. Evolve mainly works with children growing up in challenging circumstances and often living in disadvantaged areas.
However, interestingly, their Evolve programmes have proven to be of equal value to all of the school population and to adults as well as children.
Graham and John are from different generations and bring individual life experiences and skills to their work. However, they both believe our Education System could benefit from adopting more modern approaches to learning. In this article, they discuss how parents can best bring about transformational change to the performance of their children.
Graham: Why do traditional educational models sometimes fall short, and what is a different way to think about it?
John: While traditional education focuses heavily on academic learning outcomes, it sometimes overlooks the foundational skills of wellbeing and mindset that are necessary for success. Schools are often under immense pressure to deliver on a specific curriculum and test scores, which can leave less time to focus on a child's holistic development and emotional health.
Our approach suggests a simple logic model, improving a child's wellbeing will lead to improvements in their mindset, which will, in turn, drive better performance in all areas of their life, from academics to sports and everything in between. This is not about ignoring the importance of learning but rather recognizing that a strong foundation in wellbeing and positive mindset is the essential building block upon which all other learning is built.
Graham: How can parents and teachers help children improve their wellbeing?
John: Our Evolve model breaks wellbeing into six key elements, sleep, nutrition, physical activity, emotional wellbeing, personal development, and self-efficacy. A highly effective strategy for improving all six is to help children find a passion or a hobby they can get good at, especially if it is physically active in nature. Better still, encourage them to meet and interact with others interested in the same pursuits – whatever their age. This is not about pushing them to be the best but rather helping them build and strengthen an interest that they can come to love, whether it is cooking, languages, sport, robotics, or hiking, any positive activity works. When a child finds joy and a sense of purpose in an activity, it naturally improves their sleep and nutrition, which are the essential foundations for health. It also boosts their emotional wellbeing, building a sense of agency and self-confidence that drives improvement across all six elements.
Graham: How can we help our children to develop a better mindset?
John: In our model, mindset has three main elements, control, cognition, and character. To improve self-control and emotional regulation, for example, there is a technique called "emotion coaching," which is effective but is often difficult to do in the heat of the moment when your own emotions get involved.
Another way to look at this is to treat each day as a training session where you are the coach. When your child handles a difficult situation without allowing their heightened emotions to take control, praise, celebrate, or even make a note of these moments.
For the times they miss an opportunity to regulate themselves, you can make a discreet note of it to discuss later when everyone is calm and receptive. This training helps them to respond to a situation with intention, rather than just reacting to it out of impulse. We have similar strategies for developing character and cognition in children and young people, too.
Graham: What are some important character traits to develop in a child?
John: While it is best to focus on a child's existing strengths, some traits are strongly linked to success in life. These include perseverance, curiosity, self-control, optimism, gratitude, and enthusiasm. Perseverance is the key to pushing through a difficult math problem, while curiosity is what makes them ask "why?" and seek deeper understanding. You can subtly encourage these traits by using role models that a child admires and having conversations that prompt them to think about what made that person successful. For instance, when watching an athlete, you could ask, "I wonder how long she had to practice to be able to do that so well?" or "Do you have any idea how he managed to get so good at that?" These conversations will start developing curiosity and encourage them to join the dots for themselves.
Graham: What about cognitive skills? How can we help with those?
John: Cognitive skills like attention and focus, visual and auditory processing, and working memory are the building blocks of learning and thinking. You can improve these by deliberately focusing on them within a child's passions or hobbies. Using a hobby as a hook allows you to make this practice enjoyable.
For instance, if your child loves gaming, you can focus on how quickly they react and make decisions, praising their visual processing skills. Instead of saying, "You are not paying attention," try a positive, mentoring approach like, "You concentrated for longer today. Can you concentrate for even longer next time?" You can then "provoke" them in a positive way. Praise, provoke, and persevere in a supportive way, not a critical, judgmental way, and remember that cognitive skills are exactly that. They are skills, which means that they can be improved over time.
Both parents and child development professionals need to realise that children and young people have a lot of learning to do. Appreciation of this, alongside a healthy dose of patience, will certainly help. However, we should accelerate their learning and development wherever possible, and these simple strategies can be very effective in doing so.
To view the work of Evolve, visit their website here.
Read more from Graham John Morgan
Graham John Morgan, Performance Mentor
Graham Morgan's career was initially in physical education and then football coaching at a high level, before moving on to devising Project HERO (Health Engagement Real Outcomes), a multi-award-winning mentoring programme.
He has taken the successful mentoring work of Evolve: A Social Impact Company, developed in partnership with John Bishop, and combined it with the brain training expertise of Dr. Michael Merzenich of Brain HQ. The result is poised to be a game-changer for football coaching.
