8 Steps You Can Take Right Now to Help Your Family De-Stress
We’re not the only ones thinking this so-called “new normal” isn’t actually normal at all, right? Suddenly we’ve added the titles of “teacher” and “full-time caregiver” to our already full parenting plates, and while we hope we can find some silver-linings in all of this, we’re with you if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately, and we’re here to help!
Manatee recently launched the No B.S. Guide to Parenting webinar series to create safe spaces for parents and give you access to expert tips to get through stressful times (i.e. a global pandemic) as a family. Three renowned pediatric experts joined us for our first session (watch it here!) covering topics like getting back to parenting basics, managing your health as a parent, and working as a family team.
Check out the recap and 8 key steps they recommend you take to help your family de-stress!
Webinar Recap
How to manage the profound pressures of parenting:
Try to focus on making sure that every single night your kids are going to bed 100% sure that they are safe and 100% sure that you love them.
Dr. Sarah Watamura, Professor and Chair of Psychology and Director of the Child Health & Development Laboratory at University of Denver, hit us with the feels when she pointed out that, “We live in a time and place where the culture of parenting in the U.S. places extreme expectations on parents.”
“Many families have more than one working adult, and they have very high expectations for extracurricular activities, for art projects, homemade lunches, the perfect birthday party,” she said, “and this is before COVID–before we all tried to start homeschooling our kids and do our jobs. It was already a pretty untenable situation.”
Step #1 — Decide on the top three goals you want to meet each and every day.
Discuss them as a family and write or draw them down in a public place so they can recenter each family member each day.
We can’t do it all–nor should we, so, to relieve some of the pressure, prioritize achieving your primary goals, and give yourself permission to put any secondary goals to the side. For instance, a primary goal could be to avoid contributing to your kids’ sense of fear about all that is going on in the world, whereas a secondary goal might be to foster your child’s love of reading. While both are important, the latter cannot be accomplished without the former and perhaps does not need to happen every day.
Outlining priorities is especially important because “[kids] are very sensitive to the things that happen within their own family, and families are sensitive to external [factors],” Dr. Watamura says. When parents elicit stress responses to anything–quarantine, homeschool, protests, economic issues, having too many things on their plates, you name it–kids feel it. And, unfortunately, stress is highly detrimental to kids’ well-being, outcomes, and lifespan.
However, Dr. Watamura has good news: No matter the source of the strain or the source of the stress—“You have this crazy magical power where you can really block your child’s reactions to negative experiences.”
Drawing from decades of her research in the childhood stress lab, she says that, “In the moment, the parenting you provide can turn the tide on whether your child feels they need to engage a stress response to feel safe or whether they can lean on you for that. So this is not to say you have to be perfect all the time, but it is to say: “You are incredibly powerful in the face of adversity.”
Amazing! You have this magical parenting power that can have a profoundly positive impact on your kids! But you might be asking yourself, “how can I do this–how can I ensure my child knows they can lean on me?”
While your child is upset, avoid criticizing them. Try not to correct their emotion, but simply validate it.
Step #2 —Try saying “I see that you’re really frustrated right now” instead of finding ways to try to make your child feel better. Say things like “I can help you calm down or I can help you solve the problem when you calm down” to show them you acknowledge their emotion and you are here to help them process and understand it.
And for the times you’re feeling particularly underwater (let’s be real, we’ve all been there), try:
“Mental distancing,” a practice to take your mind out of a situation when you cannot take your body out of it.
Similarly, Dr. Bob Casey, Clinical Psychologist and Director of the Wellness Program at the Oncology and Blood Disorders department of the Children’s Hospital Colorado, encourages you to give yourself permission to step back when emotions–yours or your child’s–are running high.
“When things get stressful, what really contributes to that stress and really makes things go off the rails sometimes is when we as parents get frustrated with our own response and our own challenges, and I think we need to give ourselves a break and step back literally and figuratively. Literally stepping back means you don’t always have to make a decision in the moment.”
“say to your child ‘I need a minute to think about this, I need five minutes to think about this, I need to wait and talk with mom or dad about this.’ Whatever it is, you can give yourself a break and step back, so that you can respond to your child in a more calm and rational way.”
Dr. Casey also recommends having structures in place for what to do when things go haywire before they go haywire.
Having a fallback plan will help you to implement the following pieces of advice for promoting family teamwork in or out of a pandemic:
Step #3 — Have brief daily check-ins with your partner to sync up about goals, expectations, and how you can support one another for the day.
Step #4 — Divide parenting responsibilities.
Step #5 — Set firm limits for your children.
Dr. Kimberly Cronsell, Pediatrician and Medical Director for Digital Health and Experience at Children’s Wisconsin, added a few more steps to promote the cohesion–in addition to the safety and security–for kids and parents alike. She recommends you:
Step #6 — Pick one routine to set in motion. For example, aim to go to sleep at the same time every day.
Step #7 — Align playtime with lunch break, and spend the hour being active with your kids outdoors each day.
Step #8 — Find one positive thing your child (and partner) does each day and recognize them for it.
Dr. Cronsell has also noticed a rising culture of fear surrounding visiting doctors’ offices, and she advises families to consult their physicians when deciding to seek medical attention or not. She says it is particularly important parents continue seeking routine care (like immunizations) for their children in order to prevent the emergence of another epidemic like measles.
While Dr. Cronsell’s personal parenting motto–“The days may feel like forever, but the years fly by”–may ring truer now than ever before, we hope these 8 actionable steps help you to de-stress your kids, your family, and yourself. Remember that you have crazy magical powers as a parent, and, if all else fails:
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