by Dr. Caron Goode | Oct 20, 2018 | Understanding Your Child
Traditionally, many school-aged children love school and look forward to start of a new school year. But for other children, it’s also a time of great stress. In fact, stress—those overwhelming feelings of doubt about ourselves or our ability to handle things—is as common in children as adults.
The greatest challenge to parents today is teaching children to manage stress effectively. Children may react to excess stress with behavior that seems immature, inappropriate, or even disturbing. One child exhibits anxiety and tears the night before going back to school. Another child speaks of new teacher and asks her parents questions while trying to imagine the teacher's personality. Another child enjoys shopping for school clothes and looks forward to seeing new friends.
Stress can be terrifying to children who lack the emotional maturity or experience to understand and deal with it. The challenge for parents, teachers, and other caretakers include how to recognize signs of stress in children of different ages, how to know when stress threatens to overwhelm a child, and what to do about it.
In Nurture Your Child’s Gift, I offer excellent suggestions to help parents cope with their children’s stress. A stressed-out condition can result from a specific cause or from life in general. Here are some examples:
- At 17, Jen was a high school senior expecting to graduate with honors in the Spring. Just before Christmas, however, Jen’s father lost his job and the family had to move into the basement of a cousin’s house. Jen soon developed a severe allergy, then asthma. The illness cost her so much time from school that she required home-schooling to make up the difference.
- Mark was only two when his parents divorced. Confused, Mark wandered the house, calling plaintively for his father, but weekends with Dad made him cry. Most weekends, Mark developed upset stomachs that were so bad he’d miss preschool on Mondays.
Age-Related Stressors
Toddlers need to feel safe and comfortable. Stress for preschool children can arise from a new face at home or at day care, the disappearance of a familiar face, visiting lots of new places at once, or abrupt changes in the family’s structure, relationships or daily routine.
During the grade-school years, children become concerned with pleasing people like teachers, parents, guardians and coaches. School life—even a change in assigned seating or having to take a test—brings higher levels of stress every year. And when it comes to peers, even the threat of diminished acceptance is terrifying. Sleep-overs, birthday parties, sporting events and music competitions can trigger stressful reactions.
Through middle school and beyond, the pressures kids feel from parents, teachers, peers, society at large, and from within increases. Children have to learn adapt to these pressures. Because they have grown in their intelligence, curiosity and knowledge of community, demands for their attention, time, energy and effort can often feel like a tug of war. As in the cases of Mark and Jen, it is not unusual for life-altering events to express themselves in illness. At the University of Missouri, for instance, researcher Mark Flinn found that a child’s risk of upper-respiratory infection increases by 200 percent for the seven days following a high-stress event. And parents like Miranda’s might confuse what they believe are normal behavior with an expression of anxiety. Children often display their tensions in small acts that have aggressive undertones.
How You Can Help
- There are many ways parents can help their children deal with stress and stressful situations.
- Don’t try to fix everything for the child, and avoid offering advice. Sometimes just listening so that your child feels truly heard may be enough to relieve the stress.
- As you listen, ask questions that encourage your child to think a situation through. “What’s the next step?” or “How would you handle that?” are good questions. Ask a lot of “what-if” questions, too.
- Help children listen to themselves. Nurture Your Child’s Gift suggests quiet-time techniques for children to listen to nature sounds like rain or waves upon the beach, to their own heartbeat, or to recordings of whales, dolphins or birds.
- Encourage children to spend time listening to their thoughts. When they feel free to speak their own thoughts aloud about a situation, things suddenly become clear.
- Nurture Your Child’s Gift details a diaphragmatic breathing exercise for kids and parents. Shallow breathing is associated with the production of cortisol, the stress hormone. Deeper, effective breathing produces feelings of relaxation and calm.
- Use soothing and rhythmic music, even simple drumming, to help your child relieve muscle tension. It works!
- Don’t overlook exercise for releasing stress and tension. It works for your child just as it does for you. Have children walk the dog, get on the treadmill or stretch through easy yoga movements for children. Any movement they enjoy will help ease stress away.
- Parents can do much to alleviate stress in their children’s lives. Effectively dealing with your own stress is the first step. Showing your kids how to release their stress comes next.
Copyright © Caron B. Goode.
by Dr. Caron Goode | Sep 26, 2018 | Certified-Family-Coach
. How we parents communicate and demonstrate conversations with our children speaks louder than any intention or goal. A parent coach or family consultant trains parents and family members in communications skills. How are your communications skills?
Not Like This
"Caron, speak up." My father screamed. Other statements he used were....
"Quit mumbling. Stop mumbling. You are driving me nuts."
"Quit mumbling.
My father was a man with a hearing loss, probably acquired from his stent of service in the second world war. He boasted how he was lucky to be alive despite the shard of metal in his brain. He drank a lot which often resulted in being a happy drunk until he couldn't hear what one of his children said. Then, his short fuse resulted in the not-so-nice screaming bout.
The story of my father demonstrates how truly important establishing two-way communication within families is. Two-way communication implies two people are speaking, but also listening, as well as respecting, opinions and solutions. Two-way communication suggests that listening receives as much respect as speaking.
Communication styles are characterized by the way people want to appear and be heard:
- People want to look (or attempt to appear) a certain way when communicating. For example, it was necessary to my father that he raised his voice and corrected me because he was the "boss."
Unclear, poor communication leaves family members unhappy and lonely. If your communication skills are lacking, then a family member may be miserable and feel alone. These tips can help you improve the opportunities for being heard, speaking your truth, and inviting conversations with your children.
Ten Right-Way Communication Skills for the Home
Fostering a more favorable environment in your home includes offering opportunities for discussions and space for disagreements, Try these communication strategies
1. Be open and honest with one another. While being honest, be kind when saying something that may cause a family member any distress. Children are more receptive to calm voices, kind words, and tone of voice, but then, isn't everyone?
2. Have some fun each day. Family fun doesn't have to take up a lot of time. It can be as simple as having ice cream cones or playing with your pets. Simple tasks or rituals make a significant difference in how the communication flows in a home, mainly when people are engaged in functions together.
3. Set priorities for chores that everyone must do. Agree on who does what chores and when they should do them, so everyone participates in age-appropriate tasks. Write them on a chore chart ahead of time to prevent arguments!
4. Keep privacy boundaries. Adults and kids both need their privacy on a regular basis. Ensure that the kids understand the importance of respecting this priority.
5. Have a family meeting each week to discuss family issues. Find a time in which everyone in the family can attend. Hold the meeting every week, preferably at the same time. In the meeting, let each family member speak their mind, even if it's a complaint. Solve challenges, run ideas by each other, and make plans for the future together.
6. Allow free time. Everyone needs some time to do things on their own or with their friends. Meeting this need will help each family member feel more satisfied, fulfilled, and open to communicating.
7. Spend holidays and special events together as a family. Strengthen your family bond with special occasion family traditions. Let the kids share their ideas about the occasion, too.
8. Establish a weekly family night. Make time just to enjoy being together. Watch movies, play games, or have story time. Encourage laughter and open communication.
9. Learn to negotiate. Learning to compromise and come up with win-win solutions for everyone involved is a priceless skill that will serve your family members well throughout their lives.
10. Say, "I love you." Each day, remember to show your spouse and kids how much you love them. Share loving, encouraging words and hugs freely throughout the day - even if it's a hard day, especially if it's a hard day!)
A happy home promotes a supportive place to live, play, and look forward to the future! A comfortable home welcomes your loved ones when they return from work or other outings. They can leave the stresses of the outside world behind as they enter the warm sanctuary of home. Practice these communication strategies to create an inviting environment in your home because you shape the foundation for your child's ability to get along in life.
Fulfill Your Calling and Train as a Family Coach
by Dr. Caron Goode | Sep 21, 2018 | How to Become A Consultant
Success habits should not be set in stone because you constantly evolve. As you grow and change so do your habits because you will be redefining your goals and plans.
To create success habits, one essential is that you know what you want to achieve and why you want it. When you feel confident in your “why,” then you can make your commitment to creating it. This requires you to understand how you will change and how this affects your daily life.
You create a plan and there is an end goal.
You evaluate your plan every day to ensure that you are on the right path.
Following these two steps are prime examples of successive steps. Success habits require commitment and focus. To maintain these, you need a positive mindset and to be emotionally invested in achieving your goal. Without these, you could lose interest and momentum. Eventually, you might allow negative self-talk and behaviors to interfere with your practice and plans.
If your end goal changes then put the new goal into your plan and re-check every step to ensure that you remain committed and able to achieve the goal.
It may be that your original goal was to wake at 6.00 am every day as this would give you 2 extra hours before the start of your normal working day’s routine. Waking early is a success habit adopted by the majority of successful people as they understand the importance of time and routine. You may find that 2 hours is not enough time to complete the tasks that you feel are essential for reaching your goal and that you feel stressed and inefficient instead of positive and well planned.
You could re-plan and go to bed slightly earlier so that you can get up at 5.00 am. This would give you an extra hour in the morning to complete the tasks you feel are essential for a successful start to your day. Looking at these small changes in routines and not hesitating to make necessary shifts truly serves to strengthen your habits.
Your day can start in a positive way. This sets you up for success from the start. Develop a morning routine that works for you. It should include a healthy nutritious breakfast, as well as activity that will provide positive motivation for the day ahead. This will probably involve Planning different activities such as exercise, reading, listening to audio recordings, studying, yoga, self-hypnosis, visualization or using positive affirmations.
What works for you? Success routines take trial and error and also involve using different methods depending on the habit you are trying to create and the end goal. Being flexible is crucial. Flexibility ensures that when a change occurs, you view it in a positive light, accept it and go with it.
As you change and your business evolves, your routines may also change. You will want to evaluate which success habits you need. Don’t be afraid to change them, as the changes will create more commitment and focus. For your ultimate goal to be achieved you need to undertake the constant evaluation of your mindset, your habits, strengths, weaknesses, motivation, and goal. This constant re-evaluation will help you create success habits that work for you and not against you.
Success habits should not be set in stone. In fact, they constantly evolve because you will be redefining your goals and plans.
For you to be successful in creating habits, know what you want to achieve and why you want it. You need to committed to creating it and this requires you to understand why it is important to you. How it you change as a result? How will your life evolve?
Success habits require commitment and focus. To maintain both, create a positive mindset and to be emotionally invested in achieving your goal. It is too easy to lose interest and momentum without those goals lingering in your thoughts. If your end goal changes then put the new goal into your plan and re-check every step to ensure that you remain committed and able to achieve the goal.
It may be that your original goal was to wake at 6.00 am every day as this would give you two extra hours before the start of your normal working routine. Waking early is a success habit adopted by the majority of successful people as they understand the importance of time and routine. You may find that 2 hours is not enough time to complete the tasks that you feel are essential for reaching your goal and that you feel stressed and inefficient instead of positive and well planned.
Success Planning
You could re-plan and go to bed slightly earlier so that you can get up at 5.00 am. This would give you an extra hour in the morning to complete the tasks you feel are essential for a successful start to your day.
Start your day in a positive way! This sets you up for success from the start. Developing a morning routine will work for you.
Do you a healthy nutritious breakfast?
Do you have an exercise routine?
Do you read inspiring affirmation for your positive mindset?
Do you hold a specific goal in your mind that represents the day’s accomplishments?
Do you have life activities for reducing stress and promoting positivity, such as exercise, reading, listening to audio recordings, yoga, self-hypnosis, visualization or using positive affirmations?
It is important that you find what works for you depending on the habit you are trying to create and the end goal. Being flexible is crucial. Flexibility ensures that when change occurs you view it in a positive light, accept it and go with it.
As you change and grow, creating the success is so deeply satisfying. For your ultimate goal to be achieved, continue to evaluate your mindset, habits, strengths, motivation, and goal. This constant re-evaluation will help you create success habits that work for you and not against you.
