Let's Talk About Parenting

I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season this year and enjoying some quality time with family and friends. Here are a few interesting articles I recently found on parenting and connecting with your kids.

Reconnecting with Your Child During the Holidays
by Cindy Reed (via SueScheffBlog.com)

Taking risks is a normal part of growing up, and worrying about the risks our children take is a normal part of parenting. The parts of the brain that govern impulse control do not fully develop until a person is almost 25 years old. So parents need to spend some time and energy evaluating where in the developmental stage the child is and communicating with the young person. The holidays are a good time for this assessment. Younger children are on winter vacation and older kids are home from college. The trick for a parent is to communicate in a natural way. The Centre for Suicide Prevention lays out four things that a parent needs in order to effectively have meaningful and important conversations. Holiday activities are a perfect way to set the stage.
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Don’t Yell at Your Children. But If You Do, Don’t Yell at Yourself.
By KJ Dell'Antonia (via Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting at NYTimes.com)
Personally, I wouldn’t yell at my children if they would just do what I’ve asked the first time, or maybe do the thing I’ve asked them to do 463 times in the past. Or if they didn’t chase one another through the kitchen at dinnertime, brandishing light sabers. Or if they got up when the alarm clock went off in the morning, or put their shoes on so we could leave the house, or moved that glass of milk, the one that’s right by your elbow and … too late.

This week’s lively online parent conversation revolves around a relatively recent study from the University of Pittsburgh in which researchers found that negative impact of “harsh verbal discipline” (defined as shouting, cursing or using insults) on adolescents could be “comparable to the effects shown over the same period of time in other studies that focused on physical discipline.”
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7 Tips for Helping Your Child Manage Stress
By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. (via PsychCentral.com)
Like adults, kids also struggle with stress. Too many commitments, conflict in their families and problems with peers are all stressors that overwhelm children.

Of course, “a certain amount of stress is normal,” said Lynn Lyons, LICSW, a psychotherapist who specializes in treating anxious families and co-author of the book Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents: 7 Ways to Stop the Worry Cycle and Raise Courageous and Independent Children with anxiety expert Reid Wilson, Ph.D. It’s normal to feel stressed about starting middle school or taking a big test, she said.

The key to helping kids manage stress is teaching them to problem-solve, plan and know when to say yes and no to activities and commitments, she said. It isn’t to “make everything smooth and comfortable.”

“If you don’t teach [your kids] how to manage stress, they will self-medicate with food, drugs and alcohol.” In other words, kids will reach for something to make them feel better right away, and usually it won’t be something healthy, she said.
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