Social Stress & How to Survive

Ages for groups are determined by your child’s age at the start of the program. If you have a request for a group for another age, please email us.

We believe that consistency in the group allows for more growth in skills, relationships, and depth of connections for both children and adults, so we do not have a drop in option. While we encourage attending all weeks, we understand that illness and life events happen, and there is no penalty for missing a session.

Mandy’s suggested language:

You’ll have fun playing games, exploring nature, and learning how to be a good friend. We’ll talk about big feelings and work together on fun activities. It’s a place where everyone can feel happy, be themselves, and make friends.

The kids' activities will be around things in nature. A few of Mandy’s go to guides are:

"Sharing Nature: Nature Awareness aCtivities for all" by Joseph Cornell "Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature" by Jon Young, Ellen Haas, Evan McGown

"Play the Forest School Way" by Jane Worroll & Petter Houghton

Activities include storytelling, exploration, nature crafts, predator play, Build a Tree, Animal Communication and camouflage.

Parent support circles follow a light structure beginning with a grounding/centering exercise before moving into a sharing space. You may share about anything going on in your life- parenting challenges, partner struggles, other stressors, and wins as well! The group will listen with compassion to shares and then offer gentle reflections and questions. There is never judgement or telling you what to do. There is also never pressure or a requirement to share. In our last few minutes, we close our circle with a short closing ritual. Confidentiality is very important for a safe sharing space, so it is vital that nothing shared in circle is discussed outside the circle.

This group prioritizes inclusion and non-discrimination. We respect everyone’s pronouns and identities and expect the same respect from all participants. Queer, trans or non-binary individuals and non-traditional family structures are welcome!

Children and adult groups will be near each other- your child will be able to see you and know where you are. For many children, this is enough. We believe that encouraging your child to try to participate without you is ideal, because they get to experience relationships with other children fully, and you get to experience support fully. However, we also want the experience to be gentle and positive for your child and if they need time to adjust or run to the parent group for a hug, we will not stop them.

Ideally, if you are able to have other childcare for siblings, it will allow you and your participating child to have the best experience. If this is not possible, we encourage you to bring an activity for the siblings to do near the parent group. Please keep in mind that adults may discuss topics you don’t want your children to hear and balancing caring for them may impact your experience in the support circle. However, we believe that less than ideal support is better than no support, so we don’t want lack of childcare to be a barrier to participation.

Your registration includes one child and one adult. It’s fine if that adult changes from week to week. If you want to have a 2nd adult join the group, please email us or use the “sibling” registration to add a 3rd member of the same family. We want to accommodate as many parents as possible while ensuring the group size stays within our maximum of 6.

In the event you or your child is sick, including fever, vomiting, diarrhea, or cough within the last 24 hours, please stay home so you can recover and protect the health of other participants in Branch and Bloom.

Refunds or makeup classes are not available for absences. Please do your best to attend all sessions to maximize the learning and relationship and skills development.

(During Winter we will meet indoors and do not anticipate cancellations due to weather unless driving conditions are unsafe)

We anticipate being outdoors in weather that is hot, chilly, windy, or damp. Please bring water, use sunscreen, and dress appropriately. If the weather is severe enough for it to be unsafe, we will cancel.

In the event that we need to cancel a session due to severe weather or other unforeseeable circumstance, we will offer a makeup session, and if we are unable to offer a makeup session we will offer a pro-rated refund. We will make every effort to communicate any cancellation by the email and phone number given at registration.

We are working on being able to accept waiver funding, and we may be able to accept mill levy funding. If you would like to work with us to try to set it up, we would ask you to register and pay, and then we will work together to submit invoicing for waiver funding. If we succeed we would refund your out of pocket cost. Please email us to discuss further.

We do too! Send us an email with what you’re looking for and we’ll see what we can do for future sessions.

In particular, we are exploring a Fort Collins and a South Denver group. If you would be interested in either, please email us.