Webinar: Kia mātua rautia – introducing Tākai

Maraea Teepa:

Kia ora. Nau mai, haere mai. Ngā mihi mahana ki a tātou i tēnei ata. Tēnei te mihi ki a koutou kua tahuti mai ki roto i tō tātou wāhanga o Tākai Kōrero. Nau mai, hoki mai.

Kia ora and welcome back to our new kaupapa around Tākai Kōrero, where we take you on journeys and supporting your development around child development and other kaupapa areas that might support you to become that awesome village person around every parent and tamariki.

I really want to mihi to everyone, and welcome us all back into this space. Tēnei te mihi. Ko wai ahau? Ko Maraea Teepa ahau, and I will be guiding you on the journey today. And I want to thank everyone. I know it’s a busy day, so we’re going to make sure that we keep it tight and so that you can practise some of the things that you learn today.

We’ve got awesome kaikōrero today.

Today’s kaupapa is Kia matua rautia – introducing Tākai. Tākai and kia matua rautia – rautia talking about let there be a thousand people around every parent and caregiver that raise our mokopuna, especially in those early years.

So we’re lucky today to have some great whānau that will support our conversations, and I want to introduce them.

Our first kaikōrero is Deb Rewiri, and I would call her my Aunty Debs – Whaea Debs. She's of Ngāre Raumati, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Awa and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui. She’s a kaiako within Brainwave Trust, but you might also know her as the lady from Kororāreka. You want to know about brain development and how to make it sexy in community? Whaea Debs is your lady. But she’s also worked in multiple areas around supporting whānau, whether that was in prisons or at the hapū level in community. She is passionate about our mokopuna and us thriving, supporting mokopuna to thrive.

Our next kaikōrero is Anna Mowat, a real Tākai champion, just like Whaea Deb. She’s from Real Collective, and you can actually go onto her podcast, and she supports the village. Anna is a writer, an advisor, and supports parents and the wellbeing of our mokopuna. She’s a specialist in this area. I’m really excited to have her here.

And our last kaikōrero is Vicky Ellison of Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga. She’s a parent educator, she’s a kuia, she’s a mum of awesome tamariki and mokopuna, and she has supported the kaupapa of Tākai even from its evolution from SKIP, so we’re really happy to have Vicky. Vicky continues to support communities, especially with our whānau at WELLfed.

So tēnei te mihi ki a koutou katoa, e ngā māreikura kua tau mai i tēnei ata. And we’re really lucky to have them.

Because of the time, we might get into the kaupapa, but I might get you to do a quick mihi to everyone, whānau, our three kaikōrero.

Deb Rewiri:

Kia ora.

Maraea Teepa:

Kia ora, Whaea Deb.

Vicky Ellison:

Tēnā koutou.

Maraea Teepa:

Kia ora.

Anna Mowat:

Kia ora koutou.

Maraea Teepa:

Oh, awesome. So we’re lucky to have these wāhine māreikura to support us in our journey, and really, the reinstatement of Tākai, and we’re really happy to have you all here. We’re going to get into a little bit about the whakapapa of Tākai.

So as you know, Tākai is a national positive parenting platform. What is positive parenting, in your view? That’s what we’re here today to ask those questions to each of our panel members.

How did you get involved, Whaea Deb?

Deb Rewiri:

Well, for me, the beginning was for me SKIP, and the transitioning process into Tākai really filled me with joy and hope, because it seemed to be premised off this whenua, and it was looking at Māori models of practice. And for me, it was important to amplify and help people to really affirm their identity and their culture in the way that Tākai did. I don’t necessarily think that SKIP didn’t do that, but for me, it was coming more into a cultural context to uplift the mana of whānau.

So when I think about positive parenting, I really do think that it encapsulates, rather than mum, dad and the two kids, it encapsulates the whole village. And so there’s aunty – and when you call me aunty… I certainly know when I go to work, when people call me whaea, I say to them, you can call me whaea, you can call me nan, you can call me aunty. Don’t call me miss.

So, for me, it’s like, let’s have fun with this, let’s amplify what it is to be in a cultural context, and let’s look at the multitude of difference from whānau. And it’s on that spectrum of, you know, good enough parenting to really what helps this particular whānau to help their tamariki to flourish. And that’s what we’re looking for. It’s premised off what are the basic needs to survive, but actually, how do we maintain this flourishing aspect with our whānau, with everything that’s coming on top of them? You know, so having fun, I think, is the key point there.

Maraea Teepa:

And that’s always been a kaupapa within SKIP. And if you don’t know, SKIP was Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents. And it was actually a wero, a challenge, from our East Coast whānau to think about, hey, SKIP, you’re not doing it for us right now. What might it look like if we introduced kaupapa Māori around parenting? And myself and Vicky Ellison were on that journey together around what does that look like, and what is that rauemi that could support everything that our kaimahi were asking for, because this is what parents wanted.

Vicky, I think that’s a real good intro into you. Can you tell us about some of the Tākai resources, especially our Whakatipu, because it was our Ngāti Porou whānau that actually challenged us on that, and whether we had rauemi that supported tīpuna parenting. So if you could talk a little bit about Whakatipu.

Vicky Ellison:

Just like the original SKIP resources, it was important to get the voices of families who were managing parenting and enjoying parenting. And for me, positive parenting – anything positive feels good. So if it’s positive parenting, it’s something we’re feeling good about.

So we said, okay, to our whānau Māori, what are the things that we know that our tīpuna were doing that made it great for our mokopuna? And we had access to the whānau voices, you know, what was working good, and we had access to some of our research. Te Kāhui Mana Ririki, they had developed some research on what did those first visitors to New Zealand see our tīpuna Māori. How were they parenting? Taking those examples and trying to feed that into our resource.

What did it look like? For a start, we wanted to keep it simple. So the cartoon imaging was quite important, you know?

[Graphic: The eight Whakatipu booklets held in a fan.]

This is how we grow as a whānau, and the important bit about birth – you know, it starts in pregnancy, not just once the pēpi arrives. This is a good one.

[Graphic: Cartoon from the Whakatipu booklet. While māmā and friend enjoy a coffee together baby has found the dog bowl. Text reads “Looks like you’ve been shopping for new appliances!” “Yeah. Do you like my new toaster?” “No, I’m talking about your new vacuum!” Mama leaps into action as baby is about to try the dog biscuits. “What new vacuum?...Aue!”]

This is the realities of whānau life and having a bit of a laugh around the things that two-year-olds do.

The key messages of SKIP were there – that kids of a certain developmental stage will do certain things. But, you know, ehara te mea a kino, it’s not naughty, this is just developmentally appropriate. And our tīpuna knew that. You know, we have whakataukī that say that, that tell us so.

[Graphic: Covers of Whakatipu booklets, Te Kākano, Te Pihinga, Te Kōhuri and Te Māhuri.]

So we wanted it to reach whānau who could relate to the imagery for a start, and then the messages in there. And we want it to be free and we want it to be accessible. You know, people say oh everybody gets everything online, but if I live in you know the back blocks, maybe I can’t get access to the internet so well. So something that I can write on, something that I can put a picture on, draw some of my whakapapa into that booklet. Those are all things that we felt were important – to make this ours, you know, belong to us.

Maraea Teepa:

And it was really interesting eh Vicky, because part of Whakatipu was that our migrant and refugee communities saw themselves in it. So it’s a rauemi that actually really supported all families that had mokopuna.

Vicky Ellison:

Yep.

Maraea Teepa:

I think and those were some of the exciting things that were happening at the time when we developed different resources. And again, for Tākai, it is around how we would share this in different communities, and what are our other rauemi that we have?

And I think Anna, this is something that you were part of in developing some of our rauemi, especially the resources that reach communities just around just being active and going out there and doing something different with the mokopuna – or not something different, but just reawakening the play and excitement of play. And you helped develop Tiny Adventures. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, Anna.

Anna Mowat:

Oh, kia ora, Maraea.

Yeah, so Tiny Adventures came out of the Christchurch earthquakes. At the time, I was supported by SKIP and by All Right? wellbeing campaign to be really curious about how parents and whānau were going, what they were noticing about themselves, and what they were seeing in their tamariki.

[Graphic: A set of the Tiny Adventures activity cards.]

[Graphic: Anna Mowat, Tracey Tuhi (Mental Health Foundation) and Sue Turner (All Right?) holding a cake in celebration of the Tiny Adventures launch.]

And so as a part of that, what I did was I headed off to 50 community events to ask and find out with different rauemi at the time.

And I just remember distinctly one māmā saying to me, “I’m finding it hard to really lift my gaze right now.” And that really stayed with me. It was an incredible way to describe how things are when it’s tough. And we’ve all been through that in the hardest of ways, and many times so have the whānau that we’re walking alongside.

So I took that back to our teams at All Right? and SKIP, and I was excited, but also really worried. We thought hard about all we know about wellbeing and tamariki development and what would make the greatest difference for whānau and their tamariki at that time. And we came away with a really simple idea: we just have to make it easy to play.

[Graphic: Covers of three Tiny Adventures cards – The love game (just a minute), Let’s do a body scan (gimme 5), Make your own poi (happy hour).]

And that became Tiny Adventures – those small, achievable little invitations that helped whānau find moments of play and connection in the middle of a really challenging time, and also in the middle of just an ordinary, busy family day, hey? And so the activities stretch from one minute, which you know feels achievable, up to what we called a happy hour. And we found that that framing worked, and parents really loved them.

And, you know, it’s interesting when you think about this. I live in a world of theory, and what parents and whānau don’t need is more theory. You know, we could have written resources at the time that talked about the importance of play, we could have offered a speaking event, we could have written a parenting programme around it, but that can feel really hard and perhaps bring some guilt or some pressure. And so we knew that this had to be really light – maybe have that little bubble of excitement that you mentioned, Maraea, around play and doing something adventurous as well.

Yeah and while the activities themselves are really simple, you will all know that the deeper purpose is around positive parenting components – particularly the relationship between parents and their tamariki, and providing moments to connect.

Maraea Teepa:

I think that’s one of the exciting things eh Anna. All of the rauemi that we’ve just mentioned through our three kaikōrero are all around building protective factors for whānau and mokopuna.

And so through little activities like gimme five, which is about give me five minutes and we can play a game or engage with each other – it’s all about give me five, just a minute, or a happy hour – or go in and ruku, dive into the spaces of Whakatipu, and learn what’s happening for whānau, what they’re happy about and what they’re anxious about. And that’s the reality of those grassroots resources, supported by research and evidence, which we’re quite excited to bring back.

And that is a big space that we all play in, and you all work in communities. And I think these rauemi, as Anna talked about, aren’t a parenting programme, but they can support you in working with communities and whānau. So if you’ve got a parenting programme, the rauemi are there to just enhance and support you in that space.

We’re going to really tap into kia matua rautia around the village, because that is a big purpose – supporting the village that support the whānau.

And it’s actually a big chance that we’ve seen around parenting spaces and understanding what that looks like. And Whaea Deb, you’ve been working in those parenting spaces, but they look very different. So it might be at a marae, it might be in prisons. Maybe you could just share some of the things that you’ve noticed around parenting spaces in your time working and supporting whānau.

Deb Rewiri:

Thank you, Maraea. Look, we’ve been parenting for millennia and, you know, basically we’ve been managing to all hold it together. But the process we’re in now is that there’s a proliferation of information that comes through that talks to us about what is good parenting. When actually, when we move into the space that we’re creating for whānau to come into, what we fail to do is to actually ask them what their parenting space looks like.

And I think some of these key questions that we have, rather than coming from an expert model of “I’ve got all the answers for you”, is to actually glean from them what it is that they actually need, and how they can use a resource like Tākai to actually enhance what they’re doing, rather than wait for a problem to appear. But most whānau come into the parenting space with issues, with problems, and they want sometimes with me with the magic wand, to wave it and say, well, have I got an answer for you? When actually I sit back and say, what have you tried? How is it going? You know, we forget to ask those questions where whānau can actually develop that whole sense of, like, these are my babies, and how do I work it in a way that actually helps to enhance the relationship?

This whole process that we talk about – and when I’m bringing in the neuroscience, because I always acknowledge that our tūpuna were the first neuroscientists. And I talk about waking up the DNA, because basically what we’re doing is building on that narrative of cultural context that actually builds on that intrinsic knowing inside, that intuitive knowing. Because I think, as Vic and Anna said, everybody knows what it’s like to feel happy and know that, gee, I’m making some gains in this space.

Whether I’m working with 30 new mamas, or in the prison space, or with a particular hapū, for me to amplify the Māori context is really important, because we’re in a partnership process, always. We’re in a partnership process in terms of Te Tiriti, and we’re in a partnership process with our whānau that we’re working with. And so, to bring in those concepts is really opening up a narrative of conversation.

And that’s what I want people to feel when they come into the space that I’m trying to create – is that it doesn’t matter what I bring into the conversation, actually I’m going to be able to get some support here. But here’s the kicker. They don’t actually know how much support they’re going to get until they have a willingness to come into that. And so what I try to build on is looking at what they bring into the space, rather than what I do. I can adapt it and change it and pivot any which way, but actually, what is it that they’re needing from me?

Because, you know, have I got something for you? Of course I have. But am I the expert? No, I’m not. You are the expert in your child, not me. And actually, how can I help to enhance that with some of the information I have? And look, let’s give it a go. You know, there’s nothing lost in giving something a go.

And when they say to me, how many times do I have to do this emotional regulation around time out? Well, I always call it time in. Because when children are acting out, what they don’t need is actually time away from us, they need time in with us. And so, how do I emotionally connect to my child? And just asking those questions calrify a lot for them.

Because there’s some expert models out in the ether that are always trying to tell them how to get it right. What I want to say to them is, what’s actually working for you? How does having fun, how does singing, how does playing with your child make you feel? Because there’s a partnership process in that that I think we forget to enhance with our whānau. And that’s the key, really – our tamariki are having fun with us. Ka pai.

Maraea Teepa:

And I think that’s a real good kaupapa to really think about, Whaea Deb – you said give it a go. For a lot of our communities, and especially within Tākai – and Anna this is, maybe you could support us in answering this kaupapa – Tākai is all about being culturally responsive. How can tauiwi build their knowledge and ability to build stronger relationships – because Whaea Deb talked about relationships – especially with whānau Māori? And what have you done?

Anna Mowat:

That’s a big question. So one of the things I think that Tākai has given me as Pākehā, and all of you as community colleagues in this, is a greater sense of permission, I think, and a little more confidence to work and walk alongside whānau Māori. And I don’t mean permission to speak for Māori or to position myself as an expert in mātauranga Māori, because I’m not and cannot be. I mean permission to engage, to keep learning, and to not feel my fear, not let my fear of getting something wrong become a reason to stay silent.

And I felt this particularly – again, just going back to our work in prisons – I was involved in designing the parenting programme down here for the regional prisons, and worked alongside pāpā at Christchurch Men’s here, as well as adult children whose parents had been incarcerated. And I realised that I couldn’t meaningfully talk about parenting in that context without acknowledging mātauranga Māori, whakapapa, collective wellbeing and the impact of colonisation. You know, these were not optional additions, they were part of understanding the experiences and the strengths and aspirations of the people that I was working alongside.

But I’m also very aware of the question, who am I? Who am I to speak to this, you know? And so I always come to this carefully. I share something that I may have learned from my community colleagues – and I love quoting Whaea Deb and Vicky and you, Maraea – and say something along the lines of, this is my understanding. How does that sit with you? What am I missing here?

And I remember doing that at Christchurch Men’s, and there was lots of nodding in support of the kōrero, and then one tāne, who didn’t always speak a lot, stood up, and I thought he was going to challenge me, and he said, “You stand in your mana, you bring tika kōrero.” And I took that as an invitation, I think, to bring what I genuinely know in terms of my education in psychology, and as a Te Tiriti o Waitangi partner, while remaining honest and open to learning as well.

So for me, strengthening relationships with whānau Māori begins there. We recognise that the lens that we bring, and we take responsibility for building our knowledge and our te reo Māori, rather than expecting whānau to educate us. And it’s always a kōrero, hey, like Deb says, and a kōrero that I absolutely love, yeah. And I think, too, beginning knowing with who we are. You know, Nō Kōtirana, nō Airangi ōku tīpuna. I’m from Irish and Scottish ancestry. And we know that alongside the strengths and the knowledge and the aspirations already held within whānau.

Maraea Teepa:

And I think that’s really important, Anna – just being comfortable in yourself, because if you aren’t comfortable in yourself, how can you support the development of our whānau and where they are at? Not where we want them to be, but where whānau are at themselves.

And that’s something that you do really well, Vicky, in the mahi that you do. You’re in the Porirua community, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about the mahi that you do at WELLfed, and how Tākai resources can support the parents and the mahi that you do there.

Vicky Ellison:

Ka pai Maraea. Yeah, nearly three years ago, WELLfed wanted to run some parenting courses alongside their cooking courses. It’s an awesome story, the WELLfed story. Look it up if you get a chance – it’s online, on their website. But they said they wanted to use the Tākai resources. And I saw this and I said, I could probably give you a hand with it.

So, yeah, nearly three years on, we’ve been running weekly parenting sessions. You know, you say the programme – I just crack up at these two talking, because we’re all in the same waka. Play is one of the key things that I stress in our sessions, so I model play. We do a lot of playful things. We do a lot of singing.

I encourage, the neuroscience is key as well. For our first session, I’ve developed a big poster of the brain, and we go through that, so that everybody knows we’ve all got a brain – not just our mokopuna, but our adults too – and it works in a similar way. When we’re stressed, we don’t think so great. So we get that point really honed in in the early session, so that then we start talking about their behaviour – their two-year-old’s behaviour. What do we think’s going on in the brain? Okay, how are we going to respond to that?

So, all the māmā – we’ve had one pāpā, I think, but mostly it’s māmā, and often parenting on their own, so they have the added challenges of not having someone to tap them out, not having that tākai wraparound. So we are that. I sing, always we start with waiata, and it’s usually you know one about helping out each other. If you haven’t got somebody else, you’ve got someone here at WELLfed that might tap you out, or give you a bit of a pat on the back. “You’re doing alright, girl,” you know? Keep it simple.

So the groups – we do six weeks, and we do four weeks – talking about kids and parents and building the relationships through different ways, those tikanga, whānau tikanga – we used to call them the six principles. And we use those, again, we go back to what’s the brain doing when we are yelling at kids? What’s the brain doing when we’re cuddling kids and giving them an awhi? So we have that neuroscience as the base, and then we use those Tākai resources to relate to their specific age children.

And often if we’ve got big kids – we’ve got teenagers – well, then we look at those tohu whānau. You know, how do you talk to a 16-year-old and how do you talk to a six-month-old? What’s hard for you? Again, like the girls have said, questioning – you know, what are you finding difficult? And then as a group, what do we reckon is happening here in the brain? What might help?

So it’s kind of cool now that I’m a freelance person – we can develop our kōrero and our activities and our games relating to what we’ve got in the room on the day. I don’t have to follow any particular learning outcomes. The outcome is that we enjoy parenting. Keep it simple. What are you going to try this week? Something maybe new.

Maraea Teepa:

And I think that’s the exciting thing about it, eh. As you talk about it, it’s like, what is exciting, what is new, and where they’re at. And I think for Tākai, that’s been a huge, you know, mihi to the communities that support us, because as you may have heard, Vicky’s just developed a new brain poster, so I might have to ruku into that and see how that might support other communities.

And that is the beauty of Tākai – we hear stories, we hear kōrero, we see what works, and see if we can continuously improve the rauemi and resources and the mahi that we’re doing out there.

And you’ve tapped into some of those rauemi, Vicky. For you, I want to stick to the rauemi and how you use it. What rauemi has been really useful for you? You talked about how you introduce different things, but which actual rauemi do you use a lot in your mahi with WELLfed?

Vicky Ellison:

The one I use consistently is the Mātuatanga – Thinking about parenting.

[Graphic: Cover of Mātuatanga – Thinking about parenting booklet.]

Again, the research was conscious parenting, and as Tākai does, we take something and we simplify it so that I can connect with this kaupapa. The names might change, but the actual kaupapa that’s within it remains the same. And Mātuatanga looks at why do we do what we do as parents? And then we sort of break that down a bit. You know, what were the influences for us growing up? And that’s a big part of our first sessions, when we’re talking about our own experiences of being parented.

[Graphic: Everyone has their own style of parenting. Spectrum with rock on the left, tree in the middle and paper on the right. The rock: Parents are sometimes too hard and inflexible. The tree: Parents are fair and firm, flexible when appropriate but strong and grounded when needed. The paper: Sometimes parents give in too easily.]

We look at parenting styles. Again, we’ve simplified that. We’ve simplified it into the rock, the paper and the rākau there, you know – firm in the ground, but flexible when the winds of parenting are blowing us around. And that’s a really cool thing. We do activities around that. And they think about their parents, their whānau, and how do we communicate with our kids? And that’s a really important one.

So we might do a couple of pages the first week, and then we’ll go back the next week and start – and I love this one – create moments, make memories, share stories.

[Graphic: Two-page spread from the Thinking about parenting booklet.]

How do we make memories? And the thing is, there are good ones from our past and there’s not-so-good.

So how do we turn those not-so-goods around, get rid of those, and try and make a lot of positive ones for our kids?

The communication, yeah, the firm and fair. Again, we’re breaking down the development to where’s your kid at? Okay, if your child is of a particular age – these are the sort of things that you might see. Te Māhuri, you know, the Whakatipu booklet for the older kids. For the teenagers, again, we come back to what’s challenging? What do you want your teenager to say about their māmā when they’re having their own children? There’s nothing like having your own kids to suddenly respect your parents and their whakaaro.

Maraea Teepa:

And that’s really interesting, eh Vicky, because you talked heaps about the mahi that you do with the rauemi and stuff, but you always start with the waiata. Whether I’m singing a “Tohorā Nui, Tohorā Roa” like it’s actually all those little simple kaupapa, where I talk about my Māori yoga session through Tohorā Nui – it’s about being creative around waiata and how that supports it.

And Whaea Deb, when we think about waiata, how can waiata support whānau and tamariki, and what waiata do you love?

Deb Rewiri:

Actually, you sang my favourite, Tohorā Nui. I think it’s my favourite because there’s lots of action and expression, and that’s why I love it so much. But like music activates different areas of the brain. And when we think about it, most of us are having fun when we’re singing. I mean, we’re not sort of like Tohorā Nui, are we? So I think it’s activating all those feel-good hormones in our brain that we need to actually have fun.

And so when we’re doing that in a session – whatever we want to call it – when we’re with a group, and we have a preparedness to actually step out of the comfort zone and do that, and people are sort of looking at you and thinking, oh, well, she looks like she’s having fun, must be okay. I think you reach a certain point in your developmental stage where you think, I don’t care, if I’m having fun, then people are going to click into it and they’re going to join in. And so I think it’s an invitation, when we’re singing waiata, for everybody else to come on board.

And when I have a room where there’s babies in there, or there’s tamariki in there, they love it. And you can just see the delight on their faces that an adult is actually engaging in this. And I have a mate who’s in early childhood education, and she talks about the main things that she does to actually work with tamariki – is to actually sing and play.

And so that clear emphasis on what is actually happening in the brain. Well, actually, if we’re having fun, then it’s activating all these feel-good hormones that are really key for making us feel good, boosting our immune system, you know making us think about things in a positive light. And I think that’s some of the key factor in this positive parenting in the village. You know, each of us has an aunty or uncle that will pick up a ukulele or pick up a guitar and just start singing. And I think those are the key elements that are really important.

When I see parents sort of sitting on the edge of the seats, waiting for the next expert advice they’re going to get from someone like me, and I say to them, well, what do you think? And I look around the room, and they’re all sort of like, oh, I didn’t realise you were going to ask us, I thought you were going to tell us. And I think this is a reminder to us to get into a process of asking, rather than just assuming that people will look to us for the answer. And always getting them to you know give it a go, practise it.

And when I have people that come up to me and say to me. You know, “I was lying in bed one night and we were trying to separate our baby out of the room” and I just said to her, “oh, how old was she?” And she said, “oh, four months, but we’d been told it was time to separate her out of the room”. And I said to them, “how did you feel?” And this wahine said to me, “well, actually, I thought, gee, I don’t like it when I have to sleep on my own in my bed and my partner’s not there, you know?” So she said, from that process, what she learnt was to bring the baby back into the room in baby’s cot, and they sorted out a system themselves.

So what she got, I hope, from me was I wasn’t going to judge her because she decided to do something different. But I wanted her to actually in front of the room of other young parents, explain why she did it. And we all know that if we’ve got a reason to why we’re doing something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all in the same waka, but it means we’re doing something different. But what it was for her – we come back to relationship again – was the relationship between her and their baby. And so she began to see that.

And when I gave her some feedback around how positive the experience seemed to be for her, in the relationship with her partner and with the baby, that just enhanced what she was feeling inside. She didn’t feel like she was being judged. She thought, yeah, I’m doing a good thing here.

And so, I think if we can walk away from sessions feeling like people do feel that they’ve been listened to, they’ve been heard, and that they can leave in a way that says, “actually, I’m doing okay, and what can I do more of?” You know, and so it’s not me actually pouring it into them, it’s actually them answering the questions themselves. They will have specific questions that they will ask me, queries.

You know, it’s like I was helping one of my mokos. She’s five, and she was trying to sound out a word, and I just told her the word, and her mother turned around and looked at me, and I said to her, sometimes, you know, when we want somebody to try something, but they’re really struggling, why do we sort of hang back and say, well, I’m not going to help you here, I’m just going to let you struggle away, when we can actually offer something readily available that might be helpful?

And I always premise it with, like, "here’s something I tried, or here’s something I’ve thought about, or here’s something that I read about that other people are trying, you know, and leave it up to them. So I think it’s always premised around that can-do attitude, and I’m here to help support that process of your parenting.

Maraea Teepa:

Ka pai thank you, Whaea Deb. And again, you don’t have to be the Beyoncés in their lives, because you are – your voice is their first voice. So when they’re in your puku and they’re in utero, they think your voice is the safest voice in the world. So if you sing a waiata, you are awesome.

But if you even pick some waiata and get the kids to join in on that, rather than screaming at them to wake up i ngā ata, maybe get them to support you to pick a playlist of waiata in the morning and then jam that out. Again, waiata, whatever waiata it is, whether you’re listening to Bob Marley or River Bushman, pick some waiata that you can talk about with your mokopuna and tamariki and your kāinga, and get them to do it. But on the Tākai website, we’ve got over 100 songs and waiata, so they don’t have to just be the normal Tohorā Nui, it can be any whānau waiata.

Because waiata also triggers great memories, some good memories. So bring some good memories and make more memories. As Vicky says from the parenting resources, what are the memories you want to create? So we’re able to do that.

Because I think the biggest thing, Anna, when we think about all our rauemi, and especially around play – and Vicky talked about low-cost, no-cost play – you know, when we think about protective factors, what does that look like in the mahi that you’ve done?

Anna Mowat:

I suppose I always come back to play because it’s got all of the other key protective factors inside of it, if we looked at, you know, our whānau tikanga that Vicky spoke to as well, those six principles of parenting.

It supports love and warmth, so there’s these beautiful moments of connection. It supports guidance and understanding. It’s a really positive way to kind of, like, provide some kind of boundaries around stuff. You know, follow rules, because sometimes, annoyingly, we have to do that, don’t we? There’s also consistency and consequences. Like, you know, if you don’t play by the rules, then maybe there’s a consequence around that as well. So you can apply it to kind of any setting.

Inside of my work with whānau, there’d always be an element of play. I’d always have something with me that supported – you know, blocks in the back of my car, for example.

Maraea Teepa:

And I think one of the things that you talk about, Anna, is around, like, the website – navigating the website, and like you’re playing in that space. And I know that you work with parents in neurodiverse communities. Maybe you could talk about that sort of mahi too, like the work that you do, and we can navigate the website.

Anna Mowat:

Awesome, okay, cool. Yes, I’m guessing that neurodiversity is coming up a lot for kaimahi, you all, at the moment, and sometimes we feel comfortable and competent in that space, and sometimes not so much. And I’m certainly a mix of that. So, you know, this comes up for me.

So the first place I like to go on the Tākai website is inside Rapu Rauemi, and then Kaupapa Mahi for the articles, and have a look in there to see what’s available.

[Graphic: Shared screen of the Tākai website.]

And the cool thing is that in the developmental topics, there is neurodiversity there, so we can head straight there, which is really helpful. Understanding neurodivergence is one that I’ve looked at before, and I pick out some of the ways that I think might be supportive.

[Graphic: Understanding neurodivergence article on the Tākai website.]

I’m following this pathway because I recently was working with whānau where their tamaiti had a recent diagnosis of autism, right? And that comes with lots of feelings, hey? Sometimes relief, sometimes grief, and sometimes feeling like that explanation is too clinical, and they worry that it determines too much about their child. I don’t know if you’ve experienced that.

And also, I think if we have a relationship with that child, sometimes there’s some shock for us too, or maybe we go, oh yeah, that stacks up. And I think that’s a tohu, that’s a sign that we do need to come with a fresh perspective and think really hard about that. So that’s why I often bring myself to the Tākai website, because it really supports me with that.

So inside of the articles, I love gleaning the information and going straight to the kōrero starters to see what’s there.

[Graphic: Conversation ideas in the understanding neurodivergence article.]

And it sort of helps me, you know come to whānau who may be finding a diagnosis hard. That first kōrero point is really nice.

Maraea Teepa:

And that’s the cool thing – you can just pick and mix and have a look and use the search engine. But we’ll go back into your conversation ideas, Anna.

Anna Mowat:

Thank you. So that first question there is around.

Maraea Teepa:

“You know your child best. What makes them special? What do they most enjoy?”

Anna Mowat:

Yeah. And again, that’s where you could support a play activity with whānau. So it could be taking a sheet of paper and then, you know, together as a whānau, writing up all of the beautiful words and kupu that describe and define their tamaiti, in the way that they know them and they see them. And then that can be something that they take to preschool or kura to support that child’s kaiako too. Because we want to always look beyond that diagnosis too.

[Graphic: Scrolling up to the search box at the top of the page, typing autism.]

Often I’ll do a wee search, I’ll add in autism, that will bring up something else – and there’s that beautiful article that you took me to, Celebrating autism: 6 ways you can support whānau.

[Graphic: Celebrating autism article on the Tākai website.]

Maraea Teepa:

So that’s really awesome, Anna. And I think it gives everyone a taster of how you can search on our website. And there are multiple kaupapa in here, and there might be kaupapa we don’t have. So our wero, our challenge to you, is tell us what kaupapa we haven’t got – and you might have that – and we will partner up with you to update and continuously update all our kaupapa areas.

One pātai that we have. Um which resource do you think is the most eye-catching for mātua that gets them excited? So is that matua as men, as pāpā, what resources do you think. Quick question. If yous were to name one rauemi that supported our papas and got them excited, what rauemi would that be? I’ll throw it to you, Vicky.

Vicky Ellison:

I can’t say it because I’m not a matua. Well, I am a mātua. I think probably, again, images that look like, you know, me. I can see myself in there, you know? Is that my cousin so-and-so in that picture? As opposed to, you know, the original SKIP people looked like something from a 1960s home economics magazine. Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that, to tell you the truth.

Maraea Teepa:

Actually she was just talking about parenting, parents as a whole aroha mai. So thinking that’s a great rauemi too.

Vicky Ellison:

Anything that, to me – oh yeah, that looks like my whānau – you know, I’m going to pick that up.

Anna Mowat:

I was just going to add to that. I mean, the Thinking about parenting that you were talking about before, Vicky, is a goodie, just because there’s, as you say, a dad on the front of it.

But I guess the other thing is too, is that the resources just help to begin the kōrero, but they don’t prescribe how you know a dad might come to them, or any kind of intervention. And that’s kind of what I love about the resources – all of them – is that they might offer a language and knowledge and an opening, but it’s up to the person in front of us to help shape how it’s understood and used. And so, yeah, use the resources in that way. Does that make sense?

Maraea Teepa:

Yeah. And I think there’s another question that came up, Whaea Deb, and this is possibly for you is do you offer training around neuroscience to utilise as a base to support whānau?

Deb Rewiri:

Well, it’s all interconnected. You know, when we talk about neuroscience, it’s not like a separate body of work. It’s like, how do you connect it to tūpuna knowledge? How do you connect it to everyday circumstances when you’re working with whānau, you know and build in that neuroscience? When we’re talking about, you know, happy hormones – I mean, I’m not saying endorphins, but I might use it so that people get used to that languaging. But for me, it’s all interconnected. It’s not a separate body on its own.

In terms of Brainwave Trust, they do offer the ability for presenters to come out and work with whānau groups, in the professional realm, like if there’s a professional body that wants information about that, schools. You know, there’s a whole lot of kaupapa that can walk hand in hand with whatever group wants it.

But, you know, it doesn’t necessarily take away from the work that Vick’s doing, because I know she knows this information anyway, and she was trained in it. So for me, it’s like any work that she’s doing can actually amplify and simplify those messages going across to whānau, make it more manageable in terms of understanding, oh yeah, well, we are all born with a brain, and actually, what’s the function of it?

Maraea Teepa:

We’ve come to the end of Tākai Kōrero, now a big mihi to our māreikura, Deb Rewiri, Vicky Ellison and Anna Mowat.

Engari, e te iwi, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou katoa. Ngā mihi nui ki ā tātou kaikōrero i te rā nei.

A big mihi to everyone that joined us on our first Tākai Kōrero for 2026. Tēnei ka mihi ki a tātou. Kia ora.

Deb Rewiri:

Kia ora.

Vicky Ellison:

Tēnā koe.

[Graphic: Tākai Kōrero logo]