There’s something particularly hard about hearing your child has been left out by their friends – perhaps it was a one-off where they sat alone at lunch, or maybe it’s the more pervasive kind of social exclusion where they’re left wondering: why don’t my friends want to play with me anymore?

Whatever it is, as a parent, you probably want to scoop them up and make sure nobody can ever hurt their feelings. But this isn’t possible – and actually, it’s how we support and guide them through these moments that ultimately helps them learn how to cope when future troubles strike.

If your young child’s going through something similar, we spoke to Kemi Omijeh, a BACP registered child and adolescent therapist, about how parents can best support their kids through these tricky social times.

When a child tells you they were left out, listening can be enough in some instances – “we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of listening, particularly active listening,” Omijeh told HuffPost UK.

“This means being fully present to hear what your child is sharing and offering them emotional validation and support.”

It can be very tempting to problem-solve and offer reassurance, but the therapist notes we run the risk of not giving our child’s emotions the time and space they deserve, and also not giving them the opportunity to process and resolve the challenge themselves.

She advises you could offer emotional validation instead, by saying:

• “That sounds really hurtful/sad/upsetting”
• “I can see why you’d feel upset/angry/left out”
• “It makes sense that you wanted to join in.”

If your child opens up to you about feeling left out, gently show curiosity. You could say something like, “I wonder how that made you feel?” or, if they’re visibly upset: “I can see that you are sad telling me this story, were you able to share your sadness with anyone at school?”

“By focusing on emotional validation and giving them the emotional language to express themselves, your child can feel heard, understood, and emotionally held,” said Omijeh, and the experience may pass without needing intervention.

But if you support them through this moment, and the issue persists over a significant amount of time and it begins to impact your child’s day to day activities and emotional wellbeing, an intervention may well be needed – whether that’s speaking to their school or the parents of your child’s friends.

To help your child have healthy and appropriate responses to life’s events, Omijeh suggests we can help build on their emotional literacy – the ability to understand, express and cope with emotions.

“In the context of feeling left out or not being chosen, we want to support our children to develop an internal sense of worth, language to express their emotions and advocate for themselves, and the ability to seek solutions where possible,” says the therapist.

Children who have a strong sense of self are less likely to take rejection personally, she adds, so it’s important to work on affirming and celebrating who they are and their interests. Expanding their social world by looking at clubs and special interest activities they enjoy can be helpful in achieving this.

You can also help build their self-esteem by giving specific and positive feedback about the positive things you observe them doing. So, for example: “You’re so thoughtful” or “I noticed that you helped your sister with that task, how helpful”.

You could also help your child explore and practice what they might say in a scenario where they feel left out by their friends. Role playing with toys can support this.

The therapist advises parents to pay close attention to the frequency and patterns of being left out, and then consider the context and ask these questions:

• Is this happening occasionally, or daily?
• Is it one peer, or the wider group?
• Is there teasing, humiliation, or power imbalance?
• Is my child withdrawing more generally?
• Is the school aware? Is it being addressed?

“Gather information with those questions in mind, without interrogating your child; instead create a safe, ongoing dialogue,” she suggests.

“Support your child’s agency and voice by asking them what they think might help?” The therapist adds it’s OK if your child doesn’t have a solution, but it’s important they are asked the question.

Once you’ve acquired all the information you need, speak to the school or childcare setting, focusing on the facts and the impact on your child. You can then invite the school to share their observations and work together to come up with a support plan.

Labour has announced major reforms for children with special education needs and disabilities in England after years of being “sidelined”.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has today promised to overhaul the one-size-fits-all approach so children will receive more tailored support.

Here’s what you need to know and why it matters.

SEND stands for special education needs and disabilities, and applies to both children and young people who need extra support.

Just under a fifth of all pupils (1.7 million) receive some kind of support for SEND in England.

EHCP – education, health and care plans – are legally-binding documents, available for those who might need extra help than is usually provided in mainstream schools.

Local councils have to enforce EHCPs, which can apply to individuals up until they’re 25 years old as long as the person in question is still in education.

A total of 639,000 young people up to the age of 25 have EHCPs, including about 5% of all pupils (483,000).

The number of young people with EHCPs has more than doubled over the last decade, mostly due to the rise in autism diagnoses – and the system has buckled under this increased pressure.

The Covid pandemic has also driven up demand for speech and language services.

As Phillipson said, despite staff efforts, the “disadvantaged gap is still wide, children with SEND are sidelined and bright children from ordinary families are still not achieving all that they should”.

The National Audit Office said the system was “broken” in 2024 and it was “financially unsustainable for councils.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) believes spending on SEND has increased by two-thirds in the last decade.

It’s expected to more than double in real terms between 2015 and 2028.

Meanwhile, EHCPs have been criticised for taking too long, offering inconsistent decisions, and difficult processes.

Labour has announced major changes to its system which Phillipson said is one “for all children”.

She wants support to go from “birth to workplace”, saying the government will increase funding to where it’s needed most.

“We have a moral responsibility to work together on this,” Phillipson said.

Phillipson said: “The SEND system designed ten years ago for a small number of children is now broken. Parents end up fighting tooth and nail for entitlements on paper that don’t see them getting additional support. Children’s educations and lives have suffered.

“Today’s plans will take children with SEND from sidelined and excluded to seen, heard and included. Every child will get the brilliant support they deserve, when they need it, as routine and without a fight.”

The government wants to put children with SEND into two categories, either Targeted, which is for those who are in mainstream schools, or Specialist, which is for the children with the most complex needs, by 2035.

More than a million other children with SEND will then be legally entitled to a school support plan, this time called Individual Support Plans (ISPs).

Only the Specialist children with especially complex cases will be entitled to EHCPs on top of their ISPs.

Children will gradually be moved onto ISPs from 2030 onwards, once that system is fully established.

No child in year 3 now, or older, will be forced to move on to an ISP if they don’t want to until the end of their time at secondary school.

They will be reassessed as they progress through their education from 2029.

Phillipson said these plans will be “guided by nationally defined and evidence-based specialist provision packages”.

Both EHCPs and ISPs will be digitised to reduce bureaucracy and increase transparency, too.

The government said it will announce plans to recruit 6,500 new teachers – one of its manifesto pledges – to accompany these reforms.

Phillipson added that it is crucial to start supporting SEND children early, so the government is investing £200 million in “start hubs” with SEND professionals.

Teachers and support staff will be trained to meet the needs of children with SEND based on the latest evidence, too.

Every school will be entitled to some funding from a £1.6 billion inclusion grant to deliver proven programmes like small group speech and language support.

Every secondary schools will have an inclusion base where they can deliver additional support and small group worth, due to the £3.7 billion investment to create more than 60,000 more specialist places.

The government hopes to offer more support for children with severe behavioural and processing needs too, with its £1.8 billion backed “experts at Hand” scheme.

Prime minister Keir Starmer has said he hopes these changes will stop children from having to travel miles away from home every day to go to a school which can meet their needs.

Draft packages will be published later this year with input from experts and parents.

Specialists fear that these changes will not add up to much in reality.

Andrea Dixon-Boldy, founder of the SEN Parent Support Group, told HuffPost UK: “While the government presents a two‑tier, standardised model as transformational, the financial reality is that once the headline of billions is diluted across 24,000 schools and 152 local authorities, a typical school sees the equivalent of one extra TA and limited access to overstretched specialists.

“How does this meet our children and young people’s needs when they are already struggling?”

Similarly, SEN psychotherapist Gee Eltringham said “Giving every child a plan sounds positive, but without real and relevant training for the staff writing those plans or understanding the reasons behind why the child needs certain intervention, it risks becoming paperwork over practice.”

She said it was key to establish two priorities, one for children already in crisis and another group for those who can still avoid burnout and secondary mental health conditions.

Parents have expressed concern after the government announced major changes to education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which almost 640,000 children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) currently have in place in England.

As part of new SEND reforms, the Labour government has pledged £4 billion to “make every school truly inclusive”, with mainstream schools receiving extra investment to help children get tailored support where and when they need it.

It has also promised £1.8 billion to create a “bank of specialists” like SEND teachers and speech and language therapists in every local area which schools can utilise on demand.

Going forward, the plan is for EHCPs – a legally-binding document outlining the needs of a child and what support is required to meet those needs – to be reserved for the most complex special educational needs, which can’t routinely be met in mainstream schools.

In addition to this, the government said there will be a new legal requirement for schools to create Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for all children with SEND.

“Every ISP will draw from a national framework of high-quality interventions that lead to the best education and life chances, personalised by the teachers and specialists who know children best,” the government said in a press release.

“The support ISPs set out will be easily available, without a fight, thanks to the government’s multi-billion-pound investment in services like speech and language therapy and small group teaching in schools.”

The transition from EHCPs to ISPs for children in mainstream schools will begin from 2030.

ISPs will be in place for children who are transitioning from an EHCP before they move to the new system, so there should be no break in support, the government said. EHCPs and ISPs will also both be digitised moving forward.

Andrea Dixon-Boldy, founder of the SEN Parent Support Group, which was set up as a result of her experience trying to access support for her child, told HuffPost UK: “While the government presents a two‑tier, standardised model as transformational, the financial reality is that once the headline of billions is diluted across 24,000 schools and 152 local authorities, a typical school sees the equivalent of one extra TA and limited access to overstretched specialists.

“How does this meet our children and young people’s needs when they are already struggling?”

She is concerned the reform “replaces enforceable, needs‑led provision with standardised pathways and school‑level responsibility, without the legal accountability or sustainable funding required to change children’s lived experience”.

SEN psychotherapist Gee Eltringham, who is a parent and founder of twigged, the parental support system for children with ADHD, said of the shift to ISPs: “Giving every child a plan sounds positive, but without real and relevant training for the staff writing those plans or understanding the reasons behind why the child needs certain intervention, it risks becoming paperwork over practice.

“ADHD is not ‘fidgeting so give them a fidget’. Dyslexia is not ‘slow so give more time’. What we need is trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming schools from Reception onwards. If we make mainstream environments genuinely understanding, we prevent crises and reduce the need to respond to burnout years later.”

She wants to see a 50-year cross-party commitment to creating inclusive schools, rather than short-term policy shifts.

“We must separate two priorities: children already in crisis, and those we can still reach early enough to prevent burnout and secondary mental health conditions,” she told HuffPost UK.

“Inclusion bases, exam adjustments and templates will not fix this on their own. Deep neurodiversity understanding and trauma-informed practice will. Children’s nervous systems cannot wait for political cycles, and waiting until 2030 for reform is not good enough.”

Anna Bird, chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership, welcomed the extra investment promised, but said they are “deeply concerned” about plans to restrict access to EHCPs to those with the most complex needs.

She pointed out that there hasn’t been any mention of which children are considered to have complex needs, either. HuffPost UK has contacted the government for more insight on this.

“Parents and young people up and down the country face months of worry unless the government reassures them that all children whose needs cannot or are not met by individual schools’ plans will be able to get an EHCP,” she added.

Amanda Allard, director of the Council for Disabled Children, said they welcome the commitment to retain EHCPs for children and young people whose needs cannot be met through the new mainstream model.

“We know that many parents will welcome the legal requirement for schools to create Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for all children with SEND,” she added, noting that at the same time, parents “will be concerned to understand how accountability will work”.

Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, called the changes “an opportunity to move to a system that acknowledges that every child, at some point in their lives, will require help and support”.

She added that “no child should fear losing support” so she will be working closely with ministers and families over the coming months to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The BBC has confirmed that it will be censoring an utterance of the N-word by an audience member with Tourette’s at this year’s Baftas in its iPlayer coverage of the event.

On Sunday night, Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson attended the Baftas alongside the cast and crew of I Swear, the 2025 film inspired by his life story.

Variety reported that, before the ceremony, the event’s floor manager told guests that they “might hear some involuntary noises or movements during the ceremony”.

This incident was included in the BBC’s coverage of the 2026 Baftas, which aired on a time delay of around two hours.

At the time, Baftas host Alan Cumming acknowledged the “strong language in the background” and thanked audience members for “understanding and helping create a respectful space for everyone”.

He added later that night: “Tourette’s Syndrome is a disability and the tics you’ve heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette’s Syndrome has no control over their language. We apologise if you are offended tonight.”

On Monday, the BBC also apologised “for any offence caused by the language heard” and has since confirmed that it is being removed from the version of the Baftas ceremony streaming on BBC iPlayer.

“Some viewers may have heard strong and offensive language during the Bafta Film Awards,” a spokesperson told HuffPost UK. “This arose from involuntary verbal tics associated with Tourette syndrome, and as explained during the ceremony it was not intentional.

“We apologise that this was not edited out prior to broadcast and it will now be removed from the version on BBC iPlayer.”

The NHS’ official website describes Tourette’s syndrome as a “condition that causes you to make sudden, repetitive sounds or movements”, known as tics.

It also lists examples of tics including whistling, sniffing or clearing your throat a lot, making animal sounds, repeating a sound, word or phrase and swearing, though it’s noted that this is only in rare cases.

“Tics can be triggered by different things including stress, excitement or tiredness,” the NHS also advises.

Since the Baftas aired, the BBC has faced considerable backlash for cutting a pro-Palestine message from one winner’s acceptance speech, while leaving in the use of the N-word.

A rep for the broadcaster previously said: “The live event is three hours and it has to be reduced to two hours for its on-air slot. The same happened to other speeches made during the night and all edits were made to ensure the programme was delivered to time.”

When you wake up in the middle of the night, do you find that you’re sleeping on your stomach or your side? Or do you consistently wind up on your back with the sole of one foot tucked against the calf of your other leg?

If so, you sleep like a flamingo. And if you’re on TikTok or Instagram, you might come across an influencer claiming this sleep position signals you’re stressed out or carry pain in your hips.

While this sleep position isn’t inherently dangerous – and, in fact, may be most comfortable for your body – it may suggest you need some extra support in certain cases, said Laura Nolan, a psychotherapist who specialises in somatic therapy. Here’s what to know.

Nolan said she most commonly sees people sleeping this way when they have hypermobility, a condition in which joints stretch beyond their typical range of motion. Many people with joint hypermobility syndrome experience loose joints, joint instability and chronic pain.

“Hypermobility is linked to neurodivergence and many of the neurodivergent adults I work with report sleeping in more unconventional ways, including in the flamingo posture as well as with clenched fists or T. rex hands,” she said.

Sleeping in the flamingo position may be a habit acquired through experience and repetition. Or perhaps you wind up in this position because of chronic pain or a physical injury, Nolan added.

It’s also possible that consistently sleeping in this position – which could be unstable for some – could further strain your joints or even result in muscle stiffness, she explained. “Our bodies are complex,” she noted.

The flamingo position isn’t an automatic red flag. Nolan said it’s entirely possible that this position is simply a cosy way for you to sleep. “It can be normal and healthy to sleep in the flamingo position,” she explained.

Jade Wu, a board-certified sleep psychologist, similarly said we naturally sleep in positions that are most comfortable to us. “Often being in this position simply shows that someone feels most comfortable doing it,” she added.

In fact, if you’re on your side with a leg up – a variation of side sleeping – the flamingo position may lower your risk of sleep apnoea and other breathing problems, Wu noted.

As a somatic psychotherapist, Nolan is more curious about what feels good about sleeping in this position rather than assuming you have “stuck stress” in the body or that something is wrong.

Nolan encourages people to have a relaxed, easeful approach to sleeping. “Having too much scrutiny over how you sleep, including by thinking you are sleeping wrong or engaging in sleep perfectionism, will likely worsen sleep quality for those with existing issues,” she said.

Unless an orthopaedic health care provider or another physician has advised you to stop sleeping like a flamingo to avoid putting pressure on certain joints, there’s no need to stop, according to Wu.

Rather than forcing or training yourself to sleep in certain positions, get creative about how you can support your body while you snooze, Nolan advised.

For example, if you tend to sleep like a flamingo, consider adding a pillow underneath your knees. If you’re more of a T. rex sleeper, consider holding something in your hands, like a stuffed animal or pillow. “Be creative,” Nolan said.

If you feel stressed at bedtime, carve out some time to unwind – by practicing yoga, mindfulness or deep breathing – after dinner. Another technique Nolan recommends is progressive muscle relaxation, which involves tensing then relaxing various muscle groups. As you move between body parts, notice how each one feels.

“Remind yourself that stress is not all bad and we have many easy and quick ways of completing the stress response,” Nolan said.