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Here Is A Practical Way To Teach Your Child Self-Compassion

The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others. ~Sonya Friedman

I read some fascinating research about a program that help people to stop smoking. The rationale behind the research was that when people are trying to stop smoking, they are stressed. When people are stressed, they usually have negative self-talk. If the smokers were able to practice self-compassion, they were more likely to not go back to smoking.

I was thinking that it would be wonderful if we taught this to our kids. Imagine if our kids were able to practice this compassionate mind therapy on themselves whenever they were in a stressful situation. They would always be level-headed and thinking straight.

The reason practicing self-compassion works is because what we conjure up in our mind has the same effect on our body as if it was actually happening. If being in a stressful situation causes our body to produce adrenaline, then thinking about a stressful situation also produces adrenaline. So when we are stressed, even though we will not be running or fighting, our body gets ready to that – fight or flight. Our body gets more blood to our arms and legs and gets less blood to our brains. The rationale is simple, running from a tiger doesn't take much thought but your legs better be working as best they can!

Now, if your son or daughter is taking a test and they are very stressed, their body will be producing adrenaline. But here the system doesn't work. Now they need as much blood going to their brain as possible, not less! But the adrenaline will be sending extra blood to their legs – what a waste!

So we should be teaching our kid ways to not get stressed. And compassionate mind training is one such way. The compassionate mind training is done by having each participant imagine their own perfect compassionate person. Who is it that can always comfort them? How old are they? What do they look like? What does your most compassionate person think to themselves? What is their voice like? Now integrate that person into you!

In the smoking program, the smokers then had their “compassionate person” write them a letter saying how proud they were that they were quitting smoking, knowing that there would be hard times and supporting them no matter what. Then, every time the participant wanted a cigarette, they would conjure up their compassionate self.

Imagine what this could do for our kids! Every time they are in a situation where there is peer-pressure, they would have a compassionate self there to help them. Every time they were in a tense situation , their compassionate self could calm them down. They would never need to turn to cigarettes or other destructive habits!

And, of course, if they have a wonderful relationship with themselves, they will certainly have a wonderful relationship with their friends and their friends will be happy to spend time with them.

And, best of all, this will do wonders for their relationship with you!

Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine. If you do, include the following bio. If you would like to print and distribute this article, click here.

Shaya Kass, PhD is a parenting coach.

I help parents create relationships with their kids that give a lifetime of smiles. Sincere, deep, loving relationships. Having a parent coach can help you create one of these fabulous relationships. I offer tips and techniques for growing happy, inspired kids and parents at http://www.PositiveParentPlus.com.

Visit now for a free report on The 7 Key Steps to Being A Positive Parent.

Shaya can be reached at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com

Are Your Responses Just Right?

“Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.” – Ben Stein

I recently read about some research on what makes good marriages. Of course, there is a ton of research about why marriages go bad. Dr Shelly Gable looks at what goes right in a good marriage.

One of the important factors, not surprisingly, is how one spouse responds to the other's news. You might think it is all about showing empathy when your spouse relates bad news. For example, how you respond when your husband comes home and tells you he has been laid off of work. But Dr Gable actually looks at how we respond to good news.

There are four possible responses. As an example from my own life, I was recently asked to create a new course at the university where I teach. When I told my wife this news, one way she could have responded was by being both positive and enthusiastic – “Wow, great, I'm so proud of you.” Another possible way was positive and subdued – “Good news.” A third possibility would have been enthusiastically negative – “Oh my, that will be a lot of work, and what if they don't accept your proposal after you do the work. And that may mean another evening class.” The final possibility was passive and negative – “Oh, okay, by the way, the market was out of your favorite kind of cereal.”

It is pretty obvious which is the best way to respond. (And, yes, my wife was very positive and very enthusiastic and immediately began to tell her family and our friends. I think she was more positive and enthusiastic than I was!)

To give you another example from my life, seven or eight years ago when I decided to run a marathon, I told my father. His response was, “Don't hurt yourself. You know running a marathon can be bad for your ankles and knees” or something to that effect. Now I know that my father said this only out of love and concern for me, I have no doubt about that. But that love and concern did not make me feel very good at the moment.

The reason the first response is so powerful is because of something psychologists call “capitalizing”. You take the pleasure of the present moment and capitalize on it and spiral the positive emotions upward. And this is a key to strong relationships.

Some of us are very good at responding actively and enthusiastically. And we reap the rewards in wonderful relationships with our spouses and kids.

Some of us have trouble responding enthusiastically when we are distracted. So if we are at the game when our child's team wins the game, we will pick them up and jump up and down. But what if they tell us when we are in the middle of watching a football game? Or reading our email? (The email is my downfall!)

And sometimes, out of love and concern, we respond negatively, like my Dad did. I am not saying we shouldn't be concerned. But perhaps we should bring it up later on. First, let's give an enthusiastic response and then brainstorm how to overcome any problems.

So think a little bit about how you respond when your children (or spouse) come home with good news. And think about if there is room for improvement. If you keep improving, you will create a better relationship with your kids!

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Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine. If you do, include the following bio. If you would like to print and distribute this article, click here.

Shaya Kass, PhD is a parenting coach.

Visit now for a free report on The 7 Key Steps to Being A Positive Parent.

Shaya can be reached at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com

Does Your Child Sit Out Group Activities

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"I visualize things in my mind before I have to do them. It's like having a mental workshop."

- Jack Youngblood

Little Brian brings home a flier from kindergarten about basketball tryouts for 5 year-olds. As soon as he gets home he gives it to you and asks if you can go right away. You have to explain that he will have to wait a few days because the event will be on Saturday and today is only Tuesday. Brian practically sleeps with his basketball the rest of the week.

Finally, you get there on Saturday morning and, all of a sudden Brian clings to your leg so tightly that you practically loose circulation to your toes! He just will not let go. What the heck happened??

Brian may have been very enamored with the idea of basketball but simply did not realize everything that went along with it. He didn't think of the 100 other kids that would be there or the level the chaos and commotion and he simply was not prepared to deal with it all. So he shutdown, clung to you and would not listen to any words of reason.

The worst part is that you know that he would enjoy himself. How can you help him get over this shyness or crowd aversion so that he can enjoy himself?

One possibility may be that part of Brian's personality is having difficulty in large crowds. But that would be VERY very unusual. Most kids will do fine. But kids like Brian need a little help.

Brian was probably a little shocked by the commotion. Perhaps if you had sat Brian down beforehand and told him there would be lots of kids and lots of commotion, he may have been able to deal with it. Perhaps it was only the shock and a little preparation may have been enough.

Going just a little further up the scale, perhaps Brian needed a little more preparation. You might tell him that all great athletes visualize situations beforehand. Perhaps if you would have done a visualization with Brian beforehand, he would have been okay. You would ask Brian to close his eyes and picture a big gym with 100 kids in the gym. There are 20 basketballs being bounced. There are parents screaming to kids from the sideline. Kids are screaming to each other on the court. While Brian is visualizing this, ask him how he feels. If he feels stressed during the visualization, you can be sure he will be stressed when you get there. You might want to help him to visualize staying calm and sticking with it. You might help him to visualize dribbling the ball, passing it to teammate or making a basket. The more you prepare him beforehand, the easier time he will have when he gets there.

So the way to make sure that your child takes part in activities is to help him or her prepare as much as possible beforehand. Talking about it might be enough or you might have to do a full blown visualization. But take the time, because this skill will serve your child for a lifetime!

Did You Forget To Schedule You Into Your Day?

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“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” Stephen R. Covey

Parents are often super-busy these days. They work a full day, they have to run a household, usually without help, and they have to raise the kids. So we make schedules. 6-8 in the morning is set aside for the getting the kids ready for daycare or school, 8 to 4 is set aside for work where every minute is scheduled, 4-7 is pick up the kids and make dinner, 7-8 is time for baths and bedtime, 8-10 is laundry, washing up miscellany and if you are lucky you sleep from 10 to 6 (hah hah!) Oh yeah – the work you brought home to finish! When will you do that?

If that schedule looks something like yours, you have blocked out time for your kids, your boss, and your house. You forgot you!

I love the Louis E. Boone quote that goes, “I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.” You immediately see the irony of it. Yet you don't see the irony of not having time in your schedule for you. If you never take any time for yourself, you will not be functioning as well as you can for everyone else.

“But”, you say, “I don't have time.” “I am doing it for my kids.” “I'll rest when I'm dead.” You know these don't hold much in real life. But if you do want to be selfless and do it for your kids, how about teaching your kids to take time for themselves! Don't do it for you, do it to teach them! After all, do you want your children to grow up and have a crazy schedule like you?!

The very first step to getting some time into your schedule for yourself is to recognize that it should be there. If you don't make yourself a priority, no one else will!

Step two is to get some help. You need someone else's time so that you can have some time. The first person you might turn to is your spouse. You go out Monday night and they go out Wednesday night. Or you switch off every other Saturday morning.

That obviously won't work if you are a single parent or if you would like to have a “date night”. So you may turn to your parents or in-laws. But many people don't live near their own families. So what can you do?

What about a time-off exchange program. What if you took your neighbor's kids every Monday evening and they took yours on Wednesday? Then you both benefit.

Jack Canfield tells a story of welfare moms in the projects of Chicago who finished college that way.

So there are solutions for how to go about getting some time – now what? What do you do with your new found time?

Anything you want. If you need some mental health time, have coffee with a friend. Or perhaps you can go for a walk on the beach or in the park. Exercise is always a good idea. Perhaps a massage. You should do whatever will rejuvenate you and make you feel good.

The bottom line is that if you see the value in taking time for yourself, you will make it happen. And if you do, you will thank yourself for doing it. Your kids will also thank you.

How To Help Your Child When They Are Feeling Overwhelmed

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“When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.”

Unknown

Last year, when my sister-in-law came to visit from Los Angeles, my little one missed a few days of fifth grade. While missing a few days of fifth grade is hardly the end of the world, he did have a feeling of being overwhelmed when he was trying to make up the work that he had missed.

So what is the best way to help your child when they are feeling overwhelmed?

Jack Canfeild's advice from his book The Success Principles which is aimed at adults, applies equally to kids in this case. His first piece of advice is to “chunk it down”. What this meant for my son was rather than look at all the homework he had to do, first we looked at the math homework that he had to do, then the English homework, then the history and the science. We then broke it down further to two different sections of math homework and an English essay and some workbook pages. It sure looks a lot more manageable when you look at it that way!

The next idea we used was an idea I heard that was used by a old-time copywriter. He used to set an egg-timer for 33 minutes when he was working. He would work for 33 minutes, then take a break. I didn't expect my 5^th grader to work for 33 minutes, but we figured he could work for 15 minutes straight and then take a 10 minute break. Again, this helps to cut down on the feeling of overwhelm because all he has to do is work for 15 minutes. The he gets to take a break. That is not too bad.

Finally, this was not a one-day project so we also broke up all the work based on when he would get it done. We knew that on his “kung-fu” day, he would not really have a chance to get a lot of work done, but on his “early-day”, the day he gets out at 1:30, he would have a chance to do 4 or 5 of his 15-,minute sessions. This is actually similar to short-term goals (the homework to get finished today) and long-term goals (catch up on all the homework).

By breaking it up this way, he finished all the work in less than a week while keeping up with newly assigned work.

So what should you do if your child is overwhelmed? Step one would be to “chunk it down” – break it into smaller pieces. Step two is to break up their work period into manageable times with breaks scheduled in. Step three is to schedule work times so that it gets done.

By the way – this strategy works very well for adults as well!

3 Tips For Making Dinner Time A GREAT Family Time

You pick up 5 year old Jimmy from soccer practice, 8 year old Alice gets dropped off from ballet lessons and 11 year old Zach comes in from Little League. It is 5:30 and you have to start dinner. While you are working on dinner you have to help Zach with a report on Italy and you have to help Alice with math homework. Finally at 6:15 you are ready to sit down to dinner. But are you ready to enjoy dinnertime with your family? Or are you hoping to just get through it? Just hoping to survive?

Dinner-time may be the best time of day for building relationships within your family. Dinner-time may be the only time of day that the whole family gathers together, or it may only be most of the family with a parent or older sibling not home yet. You know it is an important time, but how can you change gears from the hectic time that led up to dinner to the calm time you want dinner to be? And how do you make sure that all the kids help set the tone you want set?

Like any other time of day, you have to be very clear with your expectations at dinner-time and you have to communicate that to all the parties involved.

Firstly, you should begin dinner with a quiet moment, perhaps even a few moments of meditation. Everyone has been hectic and everyone needs to calm down a bit before the meal begins. If anyone gives you hard time about this, tell them it also improves digestion and blood pressure. In addition, you are less likely to overeat if you have calmed down and choose to focus on eating.

Secondly, since dinner is at the end of the day, it is also a good time to review your day. One excellent way to do this and to focus on the positives is for everyone to tell one thing that went well today. In my family we kick this up a notch and everyone says what they are happy and grateful for. It is also a good time to prepare for the days ahead. What meetings are coming up? What changes are coming to the normal schedule? What does everyone need to know about?

Finally, you want to minimize or eliminate the negative. You should declare dinner a “No- Complaint-Zone”. (Okay, your whole house should be a Complaint-Free-Zone 24 hours each day, but start with the dinner-table!) At dinner-time, no one is allowed to complain about their teachers, their coaches, the referee, the boss, the co-worker, etc. You get the idea. And parents have to be just as careful (or more careful). Make sure your kids help you to stop complaining.

Another challenge at dinner time is choosing foods that everyone likes. Let the kids help choose the menu. They can even help prepare dinner. The more input the kids have, the less likely that you will hear complaints.

Make dinner-time special. Your kids will remember it for the rest of their lives.