Teach your positive values to help your kids with their stress
Stress for Success
January 31, 2012
The world is full of stress and it’s your responsibility to teach your children how to handle it.
To help you create a relationship that encourages your children to be open to your advice, create a Stress Safety Net (SSN) for your kids so they can feel safe, secure and loved. In recent weeks, I’ve covered two of the six components of the SSN:
1. Parents as role models;
2. Unconditional love;
Today we’ll consider teaching your children your positive values.
A positive value is a belief that produces corresponding behaviors that serve both the practitioner and those on the receiving end of their value-guided behavior. So honesty is good for the honest person and for those around her.
Values define you. They serve as a road map in deciding how to handle situations and to live authentically. For example, you’ve taught your daughter to respect others, which includes not harassing anyone. When her friends bully another child your daughter doesn’t participate and may even tell her friends to stop. Conversely, going against a held value would create stress for your daughter.
If your kids don’t learn their values from you, from whom will they?
To teach your positive values, identify a stressful situation in which your child is involved. Which values would be help him handle the situation? If he’s deciding upon which college to attend would encouraging values like curiosity and open-mindedness be potentially helpful?
Next, teach your values through these five steps:
1. Role model the value yourself. The biggest teacher of your values is how you live your life. If you value privacy and get upset when your child walks into your room unannounced, how can he learn this value if you walk into his room unannounced?
2. State your value frequently. When appropriate explain your value, whether during a conversation or a TV show. My father often said in response to certain situations, “There’s nothing worse than a liar.” To this day honesty is one of my strongest values.
3. Praise your child when she abides by a value, especially in a tough situation like a friend pressuring her to cheat and she says “no.” Praise her courage (another value) for doing something unpopular.
4. Discuss positive and negative consequences of living and not living by certain values. Positive consequences of being curious might include learning more, making life more interesting and fun, having friends who are also curious. On the down side, too much curiosity might find you poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Identifying both positive and negative consequences of a value helps define which limits might be wise to impose.
5. Be honest about your lapses living up to your own values. Like the father who admitted to his kids that he isn’t always completely honest with his own mother when she asks him if he’s busy. Minimize your kids’ cynicism by admitting and explaining your lapses.
Values serve as anchors in this stormy world. Give your children positive ones to navigate successfully.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Assure kids of your love and support
Stress for Success
January 24, 2012
To build your children’s Stress Safety Net (SSN) the second and most important component is your unconditional love: to love them without condition. It’s the thread that holds everything together.
Unconditional love doesn’t require you to always approve of their behavior; you love them in spite of it. You’re there for them, yet won’t necessarily rescue them from foolish behavior. You can apply consequences to their misbehavior, even punish them, and still love them.
Todd stood by his teenage son who repeatedly got into trouble with the law. Each time he received a call from the police, he’d go through the process without rescuing him and assuring him of his love while his son faced the consequences. Eventually, his son got involved in sports and slowly straightened himself out. He even thanked Todd for making him take responsibility for his own behavior while still supporting him.
Unconditional love requires connecting with your kids regularly, lovingly, playfully, and much more often than not, positively. This allows you to survive the normal, uncomfortable connections.
Keep in mind, if your kids don’t connect with you positively, they’ll connect with you negatively; chronic fighting and clinging are examples.
A young single mother of two small children felt drained most of the time working a full-time job and managing the home front all alone. When home she raced around trying to get everything done. Her kids clung to her making it even more difficult. Someone advised her to spend an uninterrupted weekend hour with both of her kids doing fun things together. Much to her amazement, after a couple of weeks, her kids quit clinging to her the rest of the week. They’d been starved for her full attention. Once they received it they felt more secure and loved.
With all kids these moments are to create a trusting relationship. With older kids they’re also to know what’s going on in their lives. Peer pressure can get them into situations they’re unable to handle well. You must keep your eyes open to what your kids, their friends, and other kids in their age group are doing.
Whatever your child’s age, these connections don’t have to be time consuming; most take just minutes. Like reading your child a story after school, watching TV together, sitting together while you both do your “homework,” or daily exchanging hugs and kisses in the car.
All kids, regardless of their ages and resistance, need these special moments. Nurture them.
Unconditional love also requires being nonjudgmental. Judgments feel like you’re putting a condition on your love. As parents you want to help your children do well admonishing, “Don’t be a slob chewing with your mouth open.” “You’re too lazy about school work.”
Instead of labeling your child lazy or a slob, describe the behavior you want to change. “Chew with your mouth closed, please,” or “Set aside two hours to do homework when you get home.” Your kids respond better when you deliver it this way.
Next week we’ll cover teaching your children your positive values.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Stress for Success
January 24, 2012
To build your children’s Stress Safety Net (SSN) the second and most important component is your unconditional love: to love them without condition. It’s the thread that holds everything together.
Unconditional love doesn’t require you to always approve of their behavior; you love them in spite of it. You’re there for them, yet won’t necessarily rescue them from foolish behavior. You can apply consequences to their misbehavior, even punish them, and still love them.
Todd stood by his teenage son who repeatedly got into trouble with the law. Each time he received a call from the police, he’d go through the process without rescuing him and assuring him of his love while his son faced the consequences. Eventually, his son got involved in sports and slowly straightened himself out. He even thanked Todd for making him take responsibility for his own behavior while still supporting him.
Unconditional love requires connecting with your kids regularly, lovingly, playfully, and much more often than not, positively. This allows you to survive the normal, uncomfortable connections.
Keep in mind, if your kids don’t connect with you positively, they’ll connect with you negatively; chronic fighting and clinging are examples.
A young single mother of two small children felt drained most of the time working a full-time job and managing the home front all alone. When home she raced around trying to get everything done. Her kids clung to her making it even more difficult. Someone advised her to spend an uninterrupted weekend hour with both of her kids doing fun things together. Much to her amazement, after a couple of weeks, her kids quit clinging to her the rest of the week. They’d been starved for her full attention. Once they received it they felt more secure and loved.
With all kids these moments are to create a trusting relationship. With older kids they’re also to know what’s going on in their lives. Peer pressure can get them into situations they’re unable to handle well. You must keep your eyes open to what your kids, their friends, and other kids in their age group are doing.
Whatever your child’s age, these connections don’t have to be time consuming; most take just minutes. Like reading your child a story after school, watching TV together, sitting together while you both do your “homework,” or daily exchanging hugs and kisses in the car.
All kids, regardless of their ages and resistance, need these special moments. Nurture them.
Unconditional love also requires being nonjudgmental. Judgments feel like you’re putting a condition on your love. As parents you want to help your children do well admonishing, “Don’t be a slob chewing with your mouth open.” “You’re too lazy about school work.”
Instead of labeling your child lazy or a slob, describe the behavior you want to change. “Chew with your mouth closed, please,” or “Set aside two hours to do homework when you get home.” Your kids respond better when you deliver it this way.
Next week we’ll cover teaching your children your positive values.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Parents role models for children’s behavior
Kids learn more from you, especially at earlier ages, than from any other source
Stress for Success
January 17, 2012
Teaching kids how to manage their stress is a gift that will pay them dividends for the rest of their lives.
First build them a Stress Safety Net (SSN) so they can feel safe, secure and loved. This creates a springboard from which they can launch into their challenges and opportunities. The first component of this SSN is “Parents as Role Models,” (adapted from my audio program, “Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress.”)
Parents are their children’s number one role models. Kids learn more from you, especially at earlier ages, than from any other source. What has your own stress management style taught your children, who learn from both your effective and ineffective strategies? How you communicate, manage your emotions and handle conflicts teach your children something.
To become conscious of what you’re teaching your kids, ask yourself, “Is how I’m handling this stressful situation how I want to teach my kids to handle similar situations?” If not, you need to learn to better handle it yourself. You cannot teach what you don’t understand, so learn and practice stress reduction skills for yourself. Your children will learn from your example.
An essential tool to improve what you model is to understand that the role you play with your children largely dictates their role in reaction to you. A change in your role almost always brings about a change in your child’s behavior. For example, if you constantly remind your kids to do their homework – the reminder role - they’ll react by taking on the role of forgetful or dutiful child perhaps. If you’re not happy with the forgetful role you may nag that child to remind her to do her homework. But your reminder role keeps her in her forgetful role!
The point? To get a different outcome with her change the role you’re playing: stop reminding. Identify and announce a different role that would encourage her to take more responsibility like the supportive role. Only step in to help her with homework when she asks. This new role requires you to stop reminding her. If she chooses to forget she’ll pay the consequences. She’ll probably blame you for her own forgetfulness but don’t get hooked by that. One day she’ll figure out that you truly have stopped reminding leaving her to remind herself.
In situations that your kids aren’t handling well figure out if the role you’re playing makes you part of the solution or part of the problem. If part of the problem, which other role could you play to encourage your kids to handle the situation more responsibly? If your child has been accused of stealing again and you normally play the protector role shielding them from consequences by denying their culpability, could you take on the investigator role instead and look for the facts before deciding how to handle it?
Understanding that the roles you play actually set the stage for your kids’ behavior opens up entirely new options in changing yourself in hopes of encouraging more responsible behavior from them.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Kids learn more from you, especially at earlier ages, than from any other source
Stress for Success
January 17, 2012
Teaching kids how to manage their stress is a gift that will pay them dividends for the rest of their lives.
First build them a Stress Safety Net (SSN) so they can feel safe, secure and loved. This creates a springboard from which they can launch into their challenges and opportunities. The first component of this SSN is “Parents as Role Models,” (adapted from my audio program, “Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress.”)
Parents are their children’s number one role models. Kids learn more from you, especially at earlier ages, than from any other source. What has your own stress management style taught your children, who learn from both your effective and ineffective strategies? How you communicate, manage your emotions and handle conflicts teach your children something.
To become conscious of what you’re teaching your kids, ask yourself, “Is how I’m handling this stressful situation how I want to teach my kids to handle similar situations?” If not, you need to learn to better handle it yourself. You cannot teach what you don’t understand, so learn and practice stress reduction skills for yourself. Your children will learn from your example.
An essential tool to improve what you model is to understand that the role you play with your children largely dictates their role in reaction to you. A change in your role almost always brings about a change in your child’s behavior. For example, if you constantly remind your kids to do their homework – the reminder role - they’ll react by taking on the role of forgetful or dutiful child perhaps. If you’re not happy with the forgetful role you may nag that child to remind her to do her homework. But your reminder role keeps her in her forgetful role!
The point? To get a different outcome with her change the role you’re playing: stop reminding. Identify and announce a different role that would encourage her to take more responsibility like the supportive role. Only step in to help her with homework when she asks. This new role requires you to stop reminding her. If she chooses to forget she’ll pay the consequences. She’ll probably blame you for her own forgetfulness but don’t get hooked by that. One day she’ll figure out that you truly have stopped reminding leaving her to remind herself.
In situations that your kids aren’t handling well figure out if the role you’re playing makes you part of the solution or part of the problem. If part of the problem, which other role could you play to encourage your kids to handle the situation more responsibly? If your child has been accused of stealing again and you normally play the protector role shielding them from consequences by denying their culpability, could you take on the investigator role instead and look for the facts before deciding how to handle it?
Understanding that the roles you play actually set the stage for your kids’ behavior opens up entirely new options in changing yourself in hopes of encouraging more responsible behavior from them.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Create a stress safety net for your kids
Stress for Success
January 10, 2012
You can’t prevent your kids from experiencing stress (although many “helicopter parents” try their best) but there is much you can do to help them learn to handle it.
All kids need to feel safe, secure and loved. A 35-year study that followed 87 Harvard College men into middle age found the healthiest at age 55 were those who said their parents were the most caring. The young men who said their parents were less loving, and especially those who saw their parents as unjust, were most likely to have illnesses like heart disease and hypertension by age 55.
Parents are the main anchors in children’s lives. When kids feel cared for and loved, their moment-to-to-moment stress is reduced lowering their stress hormones thereby improving immune function, setting the stage for a healthier adulthood.
So, talk to your children. Find out if they feel loved. This isn’t about buying them stuff. It’s about accepting their perceptions of their relationship with you as the truth and acting in a way that your children may experience you as fair and loving.
Just as a trapeze artist can practice new moves with more confidence and less fear knowing there is a safety net below to catch her if she falls, so, too, can children take new risks, try new stress management behaviors, when they know they have a safety net to fall back on when something goes wrong.
Build a stress safety net for the kids in your life. There are six components (adapted from my audio program “Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress):
1. Parents as role models;
2. Unconditional love;
3. Values;
4. Hope and optimism;
5. Problem-solving;
6. Personal responsibility;
If you have a mostly loving relationship with your children you can begin immediately to teach them stress management skills.
However, if you have a distant and distrustful relationship, you’ll need to concentrate on establishing a loving and trusting one first, before they will be open to you teaching them the skills that will follow in future articles. Concentrate on creating the safety net for the next months. When more trust evolves, then you can teach them how to think and how to problem solve.
We don’t normally think about teaching someone how to think. Yet your stressors begin and end with your thoughts about them. Your thoughts represent your beliefs, the underlying source of much stress. Your thoughts trigger your emotional reactions, which dictate your behavioral reactions. For example, your 15-year-old is nervous about a Spanish test. He knows he’ll do terribly (his belief). He tells himself, “I’m so stupid. I’m going to flunk this test.” (Belief/perception communicated through his thoughts.) He feels great anxiety and fear (stress emotions) and feels sick to his stomach (the fight/flight hormones wreaking havoc on his body.)
As a parent how should you handle this? Tell him how smart he is? Confirm that he does poorly in Spanish? Over the following weeks we’ll explore how you can help him handle this and many other challenges.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Stress for Success
January 10, 2012
You can’t prevent your kids from experiencing stress (although many “helicopter parents” try their best) but there is much you can do to help them learn to handle it.
All kids need to feel safe, secure and loved. A 35-year study that followed 87 Harvard College men into middle age found the healthiest at age 55 were those who said their parents were the most caring. The young men who said their parents were less loving, and especially those who saw their parents as unjust, were most likely to have illnesses like heart disease and hypertension by age 55.
Parents are the main anchors in children’s lives. When kids feel cared for and loved, their moment-to-to-moment stress is reduced lowering their stress hormones thereby improving immune function, setting the stage for a healthier adulthood.
So, talk to your children. Find out if they feel loved. This isn’t about buying them stuff. It’s about accepting their perceptions of their relationship with you as the truth and acting in a way that your children may experience you as fair and loving.
Just as a trapeze artist can practice new moves with more confidence and less fear knowing there is a safety net below to catch her if she falls, so, too, can children take new risks, try new stress management behaviors, when they know they have a safety net to fall back on when something goes wrong.
Build a stress safety net for the kids in your life. There are six components (adapted from my audio program “Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress):
1. Parents as role models;
2. Unconditional love;
3. Values;
4. Hope and optimism;
5. Problem-solving;
6. Personal responsibility;
If you have a mostly loving relationship with your children you can begin immediately to teach them stress management skills.
However, if you have a distant and distrustful relationship, you’ll need to concentrate on establishing a loving and trusting one first, before they will be open to you teaching them the skills that will follow in future articles. Concentrate on creating the safety net for the next months. When more trust evolves, then you can teach them how to think and how to problem solve.
We don’t normally think about teaching someone how to think. Yet your stressors begin and end with your thoughts about them. Your thoughts represent your beliefs, the underlying source of much stress. Your thoughts trigger your emotional reactions, which dictate your behavioral reactions. For example, your 15-year-old is nervous about a Spanish test. He knows he’ll do terribly (his belief). He tells himself, “I’m so stupid. I’m going to flunk this test.” (Belief/perception communicated through his thoughts.) He feels great anxiety and fear (stress emotions) and feels sick to his stomach (the fight/flight hormones wreaking havoc on his body.)
As a parent how should you handle this? Tell him how smart he is? Confirm that he does poorly in Spanish? Over the following weeks we’ll explore how you can help him handle this and many other challenges.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her audio program Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress and her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Help your children feel safe, secure, loved
Stress for Success
January 3, 2012
Are your kids stressed? You need to know because they’re bombarded by stress and have fewer resources than adults to deal with it.
They’re also incredibly resilient, handling much stress and surviving parental missteps. Occasional parental screw-up won’t scar them for life. What’s most important is having ongoing, regular interactions with them – mostly loving and supportive - to weather the normal parent/child tensions.
Loving relationships require regularly spending time connecting with them.
To feel safe kids need you, your values and boundaries to define themselves. This helps them learn how to handle life versus feeling unsafe and reacting out of fear and anxiety, inhibiting learning.
Since you cannot completely shield your kids from stress, the best gift you can give them is to help them feel safe, secure and loved. Rather than tell them what to do teach them how to think through their problems, identify options and their consequences.
But first, recognize when they’re stressed. Here are some age-related symptoms:
· Birth to seven: They operate more emotionally than intellectually reacting to stress with fear and anxiety. They make up all kinds of scary scenarios like wild animals lurking outside. They aren’t sophisticated enough to solve most of their problems so you must comfort and calm them when they’re hurt and afraid, explain things to them, teach and protect them.
Their symptoms include changes in mood, behavior and physical health: e.g., more tantrums, greater fear of separation, stuttering, regression to earlier behaviors, refusal to play, sleeping and eating changes.
· 8 – 12: Their world is fast expanding with more responsibilities, choices, and fears of grown-up stuff. Fitting in with peers is more important so fear of rejection by them is common. Their independence/dependence battle also grows. They’re more unpredictable being loving one moment and lashing out the next. Take their sarcasm and insults lightly. Wisely pick and choose your battles.
They’re enthusiastic learners so purposefully teach them stress management skills. Offer your protection and guidance in a fashion that’s respectful of their growing independence.
Their stress symptoms include changes in mood, behavior and physical health plus changes in thinking. They experience more fear and worry, various aches and pains with no apparent physiological cause, perfectionism, refusal to go to school, lower grades.
· 13 – 18: They’re so sure they know everything yet want to be taken care of, too. They’re more independent, secretive and protective of their space. You’ll often feel shut out. They’re away from home more. Peer pressure has built and can get them into possibly life-threatening situations. Hopefully when faced with important decisions they’ll make wise choices.
Continue to offer your protection and connection though they may resist it. Replace forcing them with influencing them. Assertively state your expectations and the consequences if they choose to behave unacceptably. Follow through with your consequences to have credibility.
Their symptoms are also in thinking, mood, behavior, and physical health; e.g., increased aggression, withdrawal, eating disorders, mood swings, depression, truancy.
Next week I’ll cover creating a stress safety net for your kids.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
Stress for Success
January 3, 2012
Are your kids stressed? You need to know because they’re bombarded by stress and have fewer resources than adults to deal with it.
They’re also incredibly resilient, handling much stress and surviving parental missteps. Occasional parental screw-up won’t scar them for life. What’s most important is having ongoing, regular interactions with them – mostly loving and supportive - to weather the normal parent/child tensions.
Loving relationships require regularly spending time connecting with them.
To feel safe kids need you, your values and boundaries to define themselves. This helps them learn how to handle life versus feeling unsafe and reacting out of fear and anxiety, inhibiting learning.
Since you cannot completely shield your kids from stress, the best gift you can give them is to help them feel safe, secure and loved. Rather than tell them what to do teach them how to think through their problems, identify options and their consequences.
But first, recognize when they’re stressed. Here are some age-related symptoms:
· Birth to seven: They operate more emotionally than intellectually reacting to stress with fear and anxiety. They make up all kinds of scary scenarios like wild animals lurking outside. They aren’t sophisticated enough to solve most of their problems so you must comfort and calm them when they’re hurt and afraid, explain things to them, teach and protect them.
Their symptoms include changes in mood, behavior and physical health: e.g., more tantrums, greater fear of separation, stuttering, regression to earlier behaviors, refusal to play, sleeping and eating changes.
· 8 – 12: Their world is fast expanding with more responsibilities, choices, and fears of grown-up stuff. Fitting in with peers is more important so fear of rejection by them is common. Their independence/dependence battle also grows. They’re more unpredictable being loving one moment and lashing out the next. Take their sarcasm and insults lightly. Wisely pick and choose your battles.
They’re enthusiastic learners so purposefully teach them stress management skills. Offer your protection and guidance in a fashion that’s respectful of their growing independence.
Their stress symptoms include changes in mood, behavior and physical health plus changes in thinking. They experience more fear and worry, various aches and pains with no apparent physiological cause, perfectionism, refusal to go to school, lower grades.
· 13 – 18: They’re so sure they know everything yet want to be taken care of, too. They’re more independent, secretive and protective of their space. You’ll often feel shut out. They’re away from home more. Peer pressure has built and can get them into possibly life-threatening situations. Hopefully when faced with important decisions they’ll make wise choices.
Continue to offer your protection and connection though they may resist it. Replace forcing them with influencing them. Assertively state your expectations and the consequences if they choose to behave unacceptably. Follow through with your consequences to have credibility.
Their symptoms are also in thinking, mood, behavior, and physical health; e.g., increased aggression, withdrawal, eating disorders, mood swings, depression, truancy.
Next week I’ll cover creating a stress safety net for your kids.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.
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