Mum develops a digital platform for children to cope with anxiety.

Christina Cran is 43 years old and Fin's mother. She had been struggling to stay active, struggled to go up a flight of stairs, lost weight, and had an unquenchable thirst, but as a busy mum working in public relations, she delayed going to the doctor until a bizarre blackness on her tongue left her with no choice. In October of 2014, after months of feeling this tired and unwell, she was finally diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, a life-changing illness.

Fin was only two at the time and was upset when he saw his mum in hospital, and Christina underestimated the toll this experience would take on him. With this new reality imposed by the disease, even an afternoon trip with her son to the supermarket could see her having a hypo, making the normalities of life feel like a major chore. She soon realized that she was struggling to keep up with her energetic little boy, and this made Fin increasingly anxious. He was asking if, ‘Mummy was going to die", or, ‘Be taken to hospital again?’, clinging to her all the time. Seeing Fin like this motivated her to help him overcome the fear and anxiety but she didn’t know how.

At that moment, she started to look for something to help teach him with breathing and mindfulness skills, thus helping him cope with his anxiety, but could not find anything for his age group. This meant that she needed to take it into her own hands and develop a guide that could provide this

With this guide, Fin soon began to get over the anxiety around his mum’s health and now, at the age of six, he uses his skills to focus on tasks, and deal with tricky emotions.

She soon realized that so many more children around the world could benefit from learning how to cultivate focus, attention, calm, and kindness, and in turn, this could help them with their emotional literacy, and inner resilience and nurture positive mental well-being, so she came up with the idea for Wee Seeds. This digital platform will have a range of games and exercises for parents, teachers, and carers to use, such as the ones that Fin used. The exercises were designed with consultation from mindfulness and meditation expert Dr. Vee Freir, consultant clinical psychologist and co-ordinator for the NHS Mindfulness Project.

Wee Seeds will work on a socially conscious buy-one-give-one-away model, so free subscriptions can be donated to children and families who might benefit from the exercises. A Wee Seeds prototype was created by Scots designer Emma Chapman, who also worked on early designs for leading meditation app Headspace.

Learn more about this solution here https://www.weeseeds.co.uk/
This story was adapted from https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/family-kids/mum-creates-anxiety-...

The images were taken from https://www.weeseeds.co.uk/ and https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/family-kids/mum-creates-anxiety-... as we don't win any of them.