The Birth Network of Monterey County presents a free community postpartum group in Salinas on the 4th Tuesday of every month.
Finding Quiet: Family Tools for Coping With Stress
We are starting another school year with a pandemic still a part of our daily life. In addition to the fears that can stir up, parents and children alike routinely deal with all sorts of stressors.
While we don’t have control over outside forces like the pandemic, we can prepare for changes that knock us off balance. Taking time to bolster your mental health and coping skills before flexibility is needed is a great strategy for parents. You’ll feel better prepared to handle big changes and have go-to solutions when smaller stress strikes. Plus, you’ll be showing your children an example of how they too can deal with life’s stresses.
The ideal place to start is with your own well-being. Once you’re on sure footing, you can move on to helping kids learn the same techniques.
“First, put your mask on before you put your kids’ on, just like on an airplane,” says Justin Mohatt, M.D., Board Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Medical Director for Innovation at Ohana, Montage Health, in Monterey.
CONSIDER MEDITATION, MINDFULNESS, OR YOGA PRACTICE
Deep breaths from the belly are known scientifically to calm the nervous system, and yoga invites a release of tension in the body and a transformation of thoughts and feelings. The practice of meditation, which I learned at a Zen Center I regularly attended while in college, changed my life significantly. This inspired me to take mindful breathing and yoga into the classroom when I became a teacher in 2002.
The benefits of meditation are well documented and it can be practiced regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs. You can start simply with just sitting quietly for a few minutes, concentrating on your breath as it moves in and out of your body. There are many excellent books on meditation and various methods of practicing but you truly can keep it as simple as a few minutes of attention and reap rewards. Adding a mindful moving practice like yoga is a great next step. You can find yoga videos online or attend one of the many yoga studios in the area. A few minutes of meditation and a few yoga stretches will start your day off on the right path.
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN BASIC MINDFULNESS TECHNIQUES
When my two teens were toddlers, we practiced “belly breathing” to calm their nervous systems. We did this together often, and as “time in” (vs. “time out”) in the midst of a meltdown or when I sensed one arising. I also introduced them to my “Mindful Minute” routine by tapping on a Tibetan singing bowl a dear friend gifted me many years before.
My kids learned that when they heard three, slow taps on the bowl, I wanted them to freeze and focus on their breath; when they heard one tap, our Mindful Minute was ending. This worked well for us then, and my kids loved ringing the bowl themselves to see if I would freeze and breathe. I welcomed those rings and relished in the joy and peacefulness I could see in their expressions. This told me it was working—that I had succeeded in providing my kids with a time-tested tool for coping with strong emotions during difficult times.
STRESS VS. ANXIETY: WHEN TO GET HELP
Stress is a person’s response to an external trigger, such as an exam, that includes physiological and emotional reactions and is time-limited, in theory, according to Dr. Mohatt. When the provoking event is over, the stress should go away. However, he says that prolonged stress, such as that associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, also exists. Anxiety, on the other hand, can be more persistent, doesn’t always relate to identifiable events, and the excessive worries don’t go away when the stressor is absent.
“Some anxiety is just a normal part of life and helps us protect ourselves. However, when the anxiety does not relate to an identifiable trigger, is out of proportion, persists, or causes functional impairment, then it can be a problem that needs to be addressed. We become particularly concerned when a young person’s anxiety interferes with their ability to meet or stay on track with expected developmental tasks for their age.”
Take the time to notice how your child is feeling each day. Know that there are overlaps in the signs and symptoms. Both stress and anxiety can lead to physical symptoms such as headaches, stomachaches, sweating, and fatigue. Mental symptoms can include difficulty concentrating and sleeping. Irritability and changes in appetite also indicate your child may be feeling stressed or anxious. In addition, a child who is experiencing anxiety may avoid people, places, or activities they used to enjoy.
Dr. Mohatt says you can differentiate between stress and anxiety typically by how long they last. If your child is experiencing stress or anxiety that lasts beyond what seems like a reasonable amount of time—or their symptoms are beginning to interfere in their daily activities—he recommends seeking help. Start with your pediatrician, he says, as they are able to quickly screen for concerns and make recommendations, and they may be able to help—or they may make a referral for mental health services.
Simple techniques that include planning ahead for stressful situations and preparing the mind and body with meditation and yoga can make all the difference in dealing with life’s difficult events. In addition to making your days more peaceful and happier, you’ll be giving yourself and your children the gift of strengthened resilience.
Five Factors for Strong Families
When hard times hit, what makes some families fare better than others? The good news is that the bad things that happen to a family don’t define them, and we can minimize the risks of adversity to children’s developing brains and bodies, which are more sensitive to stress, using “protective factors.”
Research shows there are five protective factors that build family strengths and promote optimal child development, as determined by the Center for the Study of Social Policy and partner organizations.
These factors are interconnected; often, if you engage one of them, it’s easier to cover more of the others.
What are these five factors?
1. Parental Resilience. This is your ability to deal with stress as a parent, and it boils down to basic things, such as nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep to be patient. Develop your inner strength and exercise flexibility when life doesn’t go as planned.
2. Social Connections. All of the factors really relate back to social connections. It’s all about relationships: relationships with our children, relationships with other family members, relationships with friends and community.
If you feel like you need to grow your network, get plugged in. Consider an online parenting group if you don’t have the connections in your current life circumstances.
But start by connecting at home with your children. Here are three great tips that simplify parenting and foster stronger bonds:
- Touch your kids eight times a day. This could be simply straightening a collar, or a full-body hug.
- Have at least one eye-to-eye conversation with your kids each day.
- Invest three minutes in connecting with your kids when they wake up; when you are reunited after school or work; and before they go to bed at night. It adds up to nine minutes.
3. Concrete Support in Times of Need. Help families meet basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, and health care. Seek help when your own family is in need due to a crisis. If you don’t know where to start, contact a local hotline. No one should ever feel alone as a parent in our community, and there are plenty of resources available to help.
4. Knowledge of Parenting & Child Development. Parenting education makes you stronger. Take a comprehensive parenting class and become an expert on your child in particular. Seeking to understand your children and their particular needs can make parenting much easier.
5. Social & Emotional Competence of Children. A child’s ability to effectively and positively interact with others, express their feelings in healthy ways, and self-regulate their behaviors impacts their relationships, including that with parents. Help your child find the words to express how they feel.
And remember those social connections? Give your child opportunities for direct practice in relationships to strengthen this protective factor.
The best part about these protective factors is that they benefit ALL of us as families, regardless of income level, race, religion, marital status, etc.
Lissa Carlson is a publisher of a parenting magazine in Wisconsin and thinks the protective factors are one of the most brilliant things she’s ever learned about parenthood.
Calm Down: Mindfulness for your Family
A friend shared a thought recently — that perhaps we aren’t meant to rush through the darkness, but to learn how to see within it. As we fumble in the dark, I find that even taking it “one day at a time” can be too much. So I go smaller. I am narrowing my focus to what is immediately around me—observing my thoughts and feelings with compassion and claiming moments of peace and presence.
With mental health challenges on the rise and no end to the pandemic in sight, mindfulness can be a powerful way to reclaim our sense of calm within the storm. It can decrease stress, help facilitate post-traumatic growth, support our overall health, and improve mental clarity. Mindfulness makes it easier to experience health and happiness, even in the darkest of times.
Annuka Harris – an author who teaches mindfulness to children – writes that, “For children, mindfulness can offer relief from whatever difficulties they may be encountering in life. It also gives them the beauty of being in the present moment.” And like so many lessons, the best way for kids to learn mindfulness is by seeing it modeled by parents and caregivers.
Here are a few ways to support mindfulness at home as a family.
OBSERVE Take a moment to point out your surroundings, sensations, and feelings with your kids. You may say something like, “The breeze feels so nice on my face,” or “what can we hear if we listen carefully?” or “my legs feel a little sore from playing — my muscles must be growing stronger.” These observations help to bring us into the moment and create a sense of appreciation for everyday beauty and sensations. Taking note of these details can also help to create more vivid memories.
ARTICULATE HOW YOU’RE FEELING Articulate your feelings, even the scary ones. Explain how you move through scary feelings. We cannot protect our kids from intense emotions and the fear that accompanies living in a chaotic world, but we can equip them with tools to work through their feelings. A good start is describing feelings as something that we experience in a moment, rather than viewing them as who we are. When one of my four-year-old sons starts to get upset at a sibling, I might say, “Wow, it looks like the feeling you have right now is ANGRY.” And he will say, “Yes, it is!!” And we can talk about how that feeling came to be and how he can manage it in a healthy way. After enough practice, he will resist hitting or screaming when he’s upset, and will instead tell us, “The feeling I have is ANGRY,” knowing that we will work together to help him feel better.
BACK TO THE PRESENT MOMENT Use everyday mindfulness to support your mental health. The benefits of mindfulness come into play anytime we are present and fully engaged in what we’re doing, whether making art, eating, or digging up weeds in the garden. If you find yourself up in your head and spinning out over the day’s latest calamity, take a deep breath and observe your surroundings. What can you see, smell, hear, feel? Are you, in this very moment, safe and well? Is it possible, in this moment, to experience peace and joy? Permit yourself to feel present and happy when you can. Those moments do not deny the existence of serious problems; they equip us with the strength and perspective to keep fighting.
CREATE CALM Create a calm carpet or calm corner. The idea is to fill a space with items and textures that naturally engage your child’s senses and allow them to work through big feelings in a supportive and safe environment. You can order flashcards and posters that provide emotional intelligence-building tools. Still, any quiet space with your child’s favorite comfort objects can be a “calm corner” if it facilitates conversations around feelings.
VISUALIZE Guide your kids through a bedtime visualization. If your family is interested in exploring meditation, guided bedtime visualizations are a great way to start. Your kids are already lying down and in a semi-restful state of mind, and if they’re anything like my kids, they’ll be eager to do anything that prolongs their bedtime routine! Visualizations can be as simple or elaborate as you want, but my go-to is describing the view from a forest floor. I ask the kids to close their eyes and imagine looking up at a canopy of trees with a gentle breeze blowing the branches, the warm sun on their faces, and birds chirping. If they’re still wound up and having trouble relaxing, I’ll describe how verrrrrry heavy their arms and legs are, and how their bodies are feeling warm and snuggly on the forest floor. Beyond helping to calm their bodies and breath, I hope that visualizing something beautiful as they fall asleep encourages happy dreams.
Katie Raquel is the founder of Katie’s Coldpress, a Realtor with Over the Moon Realty and the author of SQUEEZED: The Raw Truth About Work-Life Balance. She lives with her family in Monterey County.
Talking About the Pandemic with Your Kids
The pandemic has now been with us for almost six months, and no one knows when it’ll pass. How can parents talk to their kids about it in a way that’s realistic and helpful but doesn’t make them worry? Here’s what the experts say:
FIND OUT WHAT THEY KNOW & WHAT THEY WANT TO KNOW
Start the conversation by asking them, as child psychologists Drs. Felicity Sapp and Daniel Chorney put it, “what they know, what their worries are, and what they want to know.” This will help you: 1) clear up any misunderstandings (there are lots of false rumors circulating); 2) address the topics that concern them the most (some kids worry about what could happen to them, others are more anxious about their family and friends); and 3) assess how much information they can handle (some kids find comfort in knowing as much as possible while others prefer to know just what’s necessary. “Our challenge, as parents,” say child psychiatrists Drs. Karestan Koenen and Archana Basu, “is to consider all the information and then ask ourselves: what makes the most sense for my child?” Dr. Adam Weiss, a pediatrician, agrees: “the goal is to provide enough detail so they understand the situation and how to stay safe, but not cause them fear, confusion, or anxiety.”
ENCOURAGE THEM TO ASK QUESTIONS
No matter how well you explain the pandemic, your kids are likely to have a lot of questions. When kids ask questions, especially the same questions repeatedly, it’s rarely just because there’s something they don’t understand, but it’s because they’re worried. “Asking the same question over and over,” says Dr. Davis Fassler, a child psychiatrist, can be “a way for a child to ask for reassurance.” For example, if your kids keep asking why it’s so important that they wash their hands with soap every time they’ve been outside, it’s likely not because they don’t know the answer but because they’re concerned with whether they’re washing their hands well enough to protect them from the virus.
ACKNOWLEDGE UNCERTAINTY
Answer your kids’ questions and address their worries, but also acknowledge when they bring something up and you don’t have a good answer. “Given how much uncertainty there is,” Ms. Rachel Ehmke of the Child Mind Institute says, “try to be comfortable saying ‘I don’t know.’” Ms. Ehmke adds that it may be tempting to want to reassure your kids that things will be better soon, even when you aren’t sure yourself: “But teaching children how to tolerate uncertainty is key to reducing anxiety and helping them build resilience.”
OFFER REASSURANCE
You can’t promise your kids that the pandemic will be over soon, but you can help empower them by talking about what they can do, in their own small way, to fight it. As Dr. Jamie Howard, a child psychologist, puts it, “kids feel empowered when they know what to do to keep themselves safe.” This includes wearing a face mask at all times when they’re outside, following social distancing guidelines, and avoid touching their face and shaking hands with anyone.
However, don’t put too much pressure on your kids. Reassure them that many smart adults (like public health experts and science researchers) are working hard to fight the pandemic and develop a vaccine. “When you reassure children that the adults are managing the situation,” says Dr. Jamie Aten, a child psychologist, “you give them permission to be kids.”
Tanni Haas, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Communication Arts, Sciences, and Disorders at the City University of New York – Brooklyn College.
Stress Busting for Kids
Our children are increasingly facing situations that cause them great anxiety. With the Coronavirus dominating our lives, many kids are feeling emotional effects of the uncertainty. How can we help our kids get through these stressful times so they can learn to calm themselves down?
One helpful technique in addressing anxiety is distraction. If we can interrupt the ruminations and overwhelming fear, then our children can get back to a calmer, more balanced state of mind. We can teach our kids how to do this by using mindfulness to be fully present in the moment. Mindfulness allows our children to better understand their mind-body connection, and to stop being so reactive to thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations no matter what is happening in their environment.
A commonly used mindfulness tactic is to have tools that trigger all of our 5 senses. To make it easy for you to arm your kids with tools to calm down when they get panicky, consider putting together a “5 Senses” Stress Busting Kit based on these ideas:
Touch
Feeling different textures can be an effective distraction tool. One trick is to have your child touch and feel one texture at a time. Have them tell themselves what it feels like. This way their full attention is on what they are touching. It is helpful to have several different types of textures to rotate through, such a smooth, rough, slimy, squishy, fuzzy, and hard items.
- Touch and feel books like Pat the Bunny
- Touch and feel cards
- Stress balls
- Buy a sensory toy kit or put together your own a bag of items with multiple textures like a tissue, sandpaper, a cotton ball, a squishy ball, and a piece of felt.
Sight
The sense of sight offers many possibilities for relaxation. Here are a few ideas for your stress busting kit that are easily accessible on the go:
- Mindful coloring books: Creative activities like coloring have been scientifically proven to reduce stress levels because we become so focused on what we are doing when we reach a state of “flow” that we forget what is going on around us. Your children can use any type of coloring book, but mandalas are very popular in the mindfulness world.
- Nature imagery: Amazingly, just looking at pictures of nature scenes can reduce stress because our parasympathetic nervous system (which helps us to calm down) is activated. Include a packet of national park postcards or nature-themed picture book in your kit.
- Kaleidoscope: Looking at colorful, mesmerizing patterns can grab anyone’s attention for minutes on end, and is another wonderful way for our children to get lost in the moment.
Taste Mindful
eating is another popular relaxation technique. It is a good idea to be prepared with a couple of items that your kids can use to focus on taste. Teach them how to use mindful eating to direct their attention to the flavors in their mouth. Try a mindful eating exercise such as Mindfulness and the Art of Chocolate Eating.
- Trail mix: A must-have for your kit since it is a non-perishable snack that has multiple items to taste like granola, nuts, seeds, raisins, dried cranberries, yogurt drops, and chocolate pieces.
- Sugar free chewing gum multi flavor pack: Chewy gum can relieve stress and anxiety, according to a 2008 study.
- Flavored oral sensory chew toys: These are great for children 6 months and up. Not only do these have flavors to focus on, but they also have multiple textures.
Sound
Music helps take our attention from fear to something pleasurable. It is a healthy distraction, allows us to be mindful, and forces our brain to shift the thinking process. Consider putting together a special playlist for your kids to listen to when they are stressed. Although slow, quiet classical music is known to have calming effects like lowering pulse and heart rate, reducing blood pressure, and decreasing the levels of stress hormones in our body, it is really a personal choice to discover which music you find most soothing. Upbeat songs about happiness may work for some while soothing nature sounds may work for others.
Smell As the old adage “stop and smell the roses” reminds us, fragrances can help us to relax and be in the moment. There is no scent more relaxing than lavender. The antioxidant components of lavender can lower the level of stress hormones in our body. There are a number of methods to use lavender to soothe stress and anxiety. Here a few that you can throw in your stress busting kit:
- Lavender spray
- Lavender lotion for kids
- Aromatherapy diffuser bracelets and necklaces for children
Sandi Schwartz is a freelance writer/blogger and mother of two. She has written extensively about parenting, wellness, and environmental issues. You can find her at www.happysciencemom.com.