Andy McNeilly is working on his third book and has the job of his dreams. Justin Flynn spoke with the Ocean Grover about work, life and past, present and future projects.
If you are a parent and are reading this, how much time do you spend with your kids?
Not just being in the same room or house, but how much actual time?
If the answer is ‘not enough’ then Ocean Grove author Andy McNeilly’s books might be useful.
Five years ago the Ocean Grove Primary School Mental Health & Wellbeing Leader published Connecting with Your Kids and then last year released Connecting with Your Teens.
The tomes have been acclaimed as an essential tool for parents wanting to be more involved in their childrens’ lives.
“I noticed probably five years ago that schools were really doing a great job of teaching all the academic stuff, but weren’t really up to speed with the social, emotional learning and the well-being,” Andy says.
“Schools are really good at it now, but at the time there was a big gap. I wanted to give parents some skills and tools to be able to help their kids as well learn those executive skills, like being more resilient, learning to manage emotions, learning about gratitude and empathy about being kind.”
As Andy’s own kids turned into teenagers, it was natural to write another book about connecting with your young adults.
“As my kids became teenagers it became necessary to have more teenage-focused themes in the book,” he says.
“So it has a lot of similar executive skills, but they’re more age appropriate. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts and a lot of so-called experts, and they talk about quality time and I don’t know if there’s any kid who would grow up and say ‘oh I have really good quality time with my parents’.
“They’re not interested in quality, they’re interested in quantity. They don’t care what you’re doing, whether it’s fishing or whether you’re sitting down with them watching TV, or whether you’re just eating dinner, it doesn’t matter. They want to spend time with you.”
Putting away the iPad and turning off the TV for a small amount of time each night can make an enormous impact in bringing families closer together, Andy says.
The aim of both books is to build ‘life skills’ that kids need to thrive, through fun programs that give parents the tools they need to connect with their children. The emphasis is firmly on ‘fun’.
“As soon as you make it serious, the kids just go ‘I don’t want to do it’,” Andy says.
“If you’re playing a game or doing an activity they’ll want to do it more. I don’t know about you, but I’m not looking around my life now asking ‘where can I do some boring stuff? I’m really after some unengaging, boring stuff’. I want to do stuff that I enjoy, fun stuff.”
Four years ago Andy was a primary school teacher, but an opportunity came up that was perfect for him. That’s when he became Mental Health & Wellbeing Leader at OGPS.
“It was a pilot program in Victoria and because of the high incidence on the Bellarine Peninsula of mental health concerns in our adolescents,” he says.
“The pilot program was brought to another 20-odd schools around our region and it was to try and help those kids develop resilience in primary school before they get to high school to get them more equipped to deal with these issues that they’re facing.
“Then I applied for the job. I was in the classroom. And because I had such a passion for well-being and social, emotional learning, I was like ‘I’m blessed, this job is made for me’.”
“I love my job. It ties into this job, ties into all the other things I do outside of school – my writing and speaking conferences and workshops.”
Even though Andy’s three kids are grown up, he says putting in the work early on will pay dividends later on when they are teens.
“We’ll ask them if they want to go camping and they’re like ‘yeah, let’s go’ and because we went camping when they were younger, they still wanted to do that,” he says.
Andy probably inherited his love for teaching and coaching from his father, who teaches hypnosis.
“He’s a bit of a guru in his field,” he says.
“He also teaches psychotherapy and coaches people and sets up courses and stuff I’ve done. I ended up getting a couple of diplomas and one diploma in coaching for solutions.
“So that really helps me in my role in school. Outside of school I’m seeing clients, kids and adolescents, giving them coaching sessions as well to help them.”
Andy is currently writing a third book called Quality Relationships Matter in conjunction with John Henry OAM.
“It’s about relationship-based education,” he says.
“There’s five pillars to relationship-based education – trust, forgiveness, integrity, hope and compassion. And those five skills, John says, gives people the tools to create quality relationships.
“Like adults, kids will make mistakes. But if you punish them, there’s no learning. So we want to be able to educate kids so when they make a mistake, they’re going to learn from it. So how do you fix that up when you’ve made a mistake? What do you do to fix up that thing in a relationship where you’ve done so well? How do you get that trust back? How do we show the compassion for that error that we’ve made? I’m hoping this will be a very helpful book.”
Despite telling himself after his first book that he would never write another, Andy has plans for more.
“I do have another few books in the pipeline,” he says.
“Someone said something about writing a book Connecting With Your Family or Connecting With Your Grandchildren and the other one I’d like to write is Connecting With Your Students.”
See andymcneilly.com.au to learn more about Andy’s publications, workshops, coaching, webinars and more.
