Meet Angela Wheeler
Mother, mental health enthusiast, and expert traveller
My goal is to get a Braidy® into the hands of every child in New Zealand and Australia, so they can hold their stories in the palm of their hand.
Imagine if children had a fun, exciting, step-by-step process to follow during the day to organise and process their thoughts, identify their feelings, make action plans, problem-solve, and reflect on outcomes?
Meet Braidy®. An incredibly effective resource that helps children think, communicate, learn, and develop better coping skills and resilience.
Braidy® is being used by nearly half-a-million children worldwide, as well as educators, mental health professionals, and parents - and now it’s our turn!
With the rights to Braidy® for New Zealand and Australia, I’m passionately guiding educators, professionals, parents, and children to embed the Braidy® approach.
So, how did I get here?
I’m incredibly passionate about my three children, their education, and mental health in New Zealand.
When my 16 -year-old daughter was born, I realised the biggest gift I could give her was a sense of mental well-being, and the ability to communicate well under pressure or in conflict.
Having been a travel agent for 20+ years, I was pretty purposeful in my search for helpful tools and resources.
I spent 16 years researching education/parenting/ and social skills programmes as well as child psychology/education/business (phew!).
You name it, I found it. But nothing ticked all the social-emotional boxes, and nothing looked fun enough for kids to want to engage in.
Then in 2014, I stumbled across Braidy®.
And never looked back.
Braidy® brings the sparkle back into children’s (and adults') eyes.
By holding the Braidy® and using the resources, they tell their stories, process feelings, scaffold difficult conversations, learn, problem-solve, and gain a sense of calm and collaboration.
It’s been transformative for my family and many children around the world. Now it’s time to get Braidy® into the hands of every child in Australasia and turn our mental health statistics on their head.
About Mindwing
Braidy® was developed 30+ years ago by leading American mental health and education expert, Mindwing Concepts, Inc, and is now being used in 26 countries around the world.
Mindwing’s goal is to provide educators (and parents!) with tools to help children become literate, confident, independent, empathetic, happy people in their homes, schools, their communities and workplaces, and in interpersonal relationships.
Braidy® was designed in 1991 by speech language pathologist (Mindwing founder and president), Maryellen Rooney Moreau, to improve literacy skills of oral language, writing, and comprehension.
Her goal is to give every child - regardless of age, ability, or culture - the skills to think, communicate, and learn effectively in order to achieve academic and social success.
Mindwing provides professional development training and coaching for educators of students from early years through high school. The organisations 17 publications and 70+ multi-sensory sets of materials are used in all 50 US states, every province in Canada, and in 24 other countries.
LINK TO MINDWING CONCEPTS