Real Skills for Real Life – Get GRIT Workshops for Kids
The Get GRIT Program is an evidence-informed social and emotional skills program that offers children aged 5–12 years proactive and preventative support to their mental health and wellbeing. It teaches essential life skills to strengthen emotional resilience, social skills, self-esteem, and confidence.
Since 2017, over 1,000 children from schools across South East Queensland have participated in the program. With each workshop, Get GRIT continues to make a meaningful difference in the lives of young people and the communities that support them.
The Get GRIT Program, designed for children aged 5-12 years, empowers kids with the knowledge and skills to maintain a healthy mind and positive wellbeing. The program uses evidence-based practices to teach your child how to master the skills needed to thrive, both now and for the rest of their lives.
Get GRIT teaches children how to:
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Establish and maintain healthy relationships,
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Effectively navigate social settings,
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Resolve interpersonal conflicts,
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Understand and manage their emotions,
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Develop strategies for responding to their emotions in a healthy and constructive way,
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Be optimistic and resilient,
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Develop a growth mindset and
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Tackle life's challenges with grit.
The word ‘grit’ is often used to describe resilience, perseverance and determination. Get GRIT aims to develop grit and much more. GRIT is an acronym for Getting Along, Resilient Thinking, Identifying Emotions and Taking Charge. The four elements in the Get GRIT Program will teach your child the most important skills in life.
Getting Along
This element focuses on helping children develop the skills to build positive relationships and navigate social interactions effectively. By learning how to connect with others, communicate respectfully, and work through challenges, children gain a deeper understanding of relationships. Strong, positive relationships contribute to greater happiness, a sense of belonging, and emotional well-being.
Children will learn how to:
- Establish and develop positive connections.
- Maintain healthy and supportive relationships.
- Effectively navigate social settings.
- Communicate effectively and listen actively.
- Identify positive ways to work out disagreements.
- Be an upstander against bullying behaviour.
Resilient Thinking
This element involves children learning the skills to persevere in the face of setbacks and frustrations, to be grittier, more positive and optimistic. Children are taught resilient thinking skills to reduce stress, anxiety and negative thinking. Training children to be aware of their internal dialogue and their thinking patterns fosters resilience by helping them to better manage life’s inevitable disappointments.
Children will learn how to:
- Identify and understand their thoughts and thought patterns.
- Recognise unhelpful 'stop' thoughts and helpful ‘go’ thoughts.
- Identify thinking traps.
- Catch, check, challenge and change unhelpful ‘stop’ thoughts.
- Be a resilient and optimistic thinker.
- Persevere to overcome frustrations and bounce back from adversities.
Identifying Emotions
This element involves children developing awareness of their own emotions and others. Self-awareness, the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, is the ability to recognise emotions and their impact on both yourself and others. By developing self-awareness and self-regulation skills, children can enhance their well-being, improve their social interactions, and set the foundation for lifelong emotional resilience.
Children will learn how to:
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Identify and name their feelings,
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Regulate and manage emotional responses,
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Manage anxiety and anger,
- Implement behavioural and cognitive positive coping skills.
- Articulate and communicate what they need.
Taking Charge
This element involves teaching children to take charge of their learning by developing a mindset of growth, persistence and optimism. Changing the way a child perceives their own abilities and potential can drastically improve their performance. Too often children live in the now rather than the yet and as a result they focus on their limitations rather than their potential.
Children will learn how to;
- Develop a growth mindset.
- Persist with tasks when faced with challenges.
- Develop grit.
- Embrace mistakes as chances to learn and grow.
- Be adaptable and take risks.
- Develop self-discipline and self-motivation.
- Develop time-management skills.
- Set personal goals.
Real Skills for Real Life – Get GRIT Workshops
The Get GRIT Program is an evidence-informed social and emotional skills program that offers children aged 5–12 years proactive and preventative support to their mental health and wellbeing. It teaches essential life skills to strengthen emotional resilience, social skills, self-esteem, and confidence.
Program Structure
Get GRIT offers two developmentally appropriate programs tailored to different age groups.
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The Lower Primary Program is designed for children aged 5–8 years.
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The Upper Primary Program is for children aged 9–12 years.
Both programs cover similar concepts but use age-appropriate activities and techniques, delivered over four 2-hour sessions. Through stories, games, craft activities, and group discussions, children learn and practise key social and emotional skills in a fun and engaging way.
A core component of the program is the Get GRIT Student Journal, which each child receives upon joining. This journal plays a vital role in reinforcing learning beyond the sessions.
Each week, children explore key concepts and skills with their Get GRIT teacher. To deepen their understanding, they are encouraged to work through each chapter with their journal mate—a parent or family member who supports their learning at home.
The journal provides opportunities for reflection and skill-building outside of the group environment. Parental involvement is essential to reinforcing newly learned strategies and creating opportunities for children to practise them in daily life.
By strengthening children's emotional well-being, the Get GRIT Program also helps parents develop the knowledge and tools to support their child’s social and emotional growth.
Please note: Our sessions are for children only, and parents are not permitted to stay for the full duration. This ensures a safe and private environment where children feel comfortable participating and expressing themselves freely. However, parents are invited to join for the last 15 minutes of the session.
Research
The Get GRIT Program is grounded in evidence-based research and built on established psychological and educational theories, including cognitive-behavioural theory, positive psychology, growth mindset theory, and social and emotional learning (SEL) frameworks. Each component of the program is carefully designed to translate theory into practical, age-appropriate strategies that help children develop emotional resilience, positive thinking habits, and strong interpersonal skills.
We support children who may be struggling with:
- Anxiety
- Challenges in understanding and managing emotions
- Low self-esteem and confidence
- Negative self-talk
- A fixed mindset
- Difficulty with social skills
- Trouble making and maintaining friendships
- Coping with grief, loss, or trauma (including parental separation)
- Low self-efficacy and belief in their abilities
Get GRIT Workshops in Your Area
As well as the Get GRIT Program being delivered in schools across Australia, there are also local Get GRIT workshops facilitated by independent practitioners. These facilitators are professionals with backgrounds in education, psychology, counselling, or social work, or have completed specialised training in social and emotional learning. All practitioners are certified Get GRIT Facilitators.
Please contact the facilitators below directly for any enquires or bookings.
Brisbane North - Kind Kids Therapy
I am a Kid with GRIT
I have a positive attitude and a growth mindset. I DREAM BIG.
I am persistent and resilient. I believe that challenges will make me smarter and that mistakes are proof that I am learning.
I am the boss of my thoughts and feelings. I manage my anger, frustrations and worries and bounce back.
I catch unhelpful STOP thoughts and change them to helpful GO thoughts.
I cooperate, collaborate to problem solve and talk it out with my friends. I play to WIN friendships.
I am KIND to myself and to others. I am confident, courageous and brave.
I am a kid with GRIT.
Testimonials
I thought I would just touch base with you, a few months on from completing the Get Grit program with our daughter. We are working very slowly through the journal at home, taking our time and enjoying the moments this has given us with her.
We have both seen an incredible improvement in our daughter's emotive language, her choice of words around her feelings and thoughts and her ability to calm and soothe her worries with the techniques you have given her. She is approaching difficult situations with 'I can' thoughts which was one reason for seeking your program as she had approached many situations with a negative, worried or nervous attitude.
We are truly grateful for your Get Grit Program and for the time that you gave to our daughter at the end of last year. The impact you have made on our little girl's life will be immeasurable!
My 6 year old daughter was lucky enough to do the Get Grit course this year after I’d noticed her self talk had become slightly negative and her general resilience in school and with friends had lessened. I can not speak more highly of the course and the journal she received. We did the chapters of the journal together at dinner time as a family and included my 4 year old daughter in the conversations. There were so many gentle reminders for us as adults throughout the journal and my husband and I loved the conversations. Articulating emotions and normalising every emotion has been a gift for our family and improved our communication. The course itself was excellent and referring back to the journal in the months since has been very helpful. My daughter’s negative self talk and self confidence has improved significantly. I’m very grateful to Michele for developing such an important course that all kids would benefit from.
My son aged 8, was struggling with low self-esteem and his negative internal dialogue. Although he has always been a very likeable child and played well with others making friends quite easily, I had noticed the small negative remarks from some peers were influencing the view he had of himself in an awfully negative way. He was simply becoming more negative in all areas. My heart was breaking with statements from him such as “I’m no good at anything” or “I don’t like myself, what’s there to like?” I was becoming very concerned that the negative mindset he was struggling to see past, would soon become fixed. “I can’t....yet” is the most powerful change I have seen in his behaviour in the past 3 weeks since the course. I’ve been able to remind him about the phrases he was taught and it very quickly becomes a positive shift in his overall behaviour. He has a workbook that he has since turned back to- coloured in and completed extra activities (all while reminding and refreshing the teachings). He now has coping strategies for dealing with negative statements from others and his worries. Not allowing it to become a reflection of himself; something I had tried many times to help with but I never hit the mark. I would recommend Get GRIT class for any child seeking support for a negative mindset, a closed mindset or anxiety and worries. The program also discussed friendships; making and being a good friend and I can see how this would benefit many children also.
Online Courses
If you purchased one of our online programs (Get a GRIP of Anxiety or Get GRIT Program), please login here.
