Just an interesting infographic...

 

How To Survive The Holidays With Teens

 

The holiday season is a time that’s supposed to be fun and memorable, but when you have a moody teen in the family, you may find it more memorable than fun—and perhaps not in a good way. Even the best of teens can be less than enthusiastic about spending extended amounts of time with the family. The daughter who once loved going to The Nutcracker every year may at age 15 tell you that she’s no longer interested in going. And, no amount of bribes may get your teenage son to the annual family cooking swap. So, what is a parent to do? Do you give away the ballet tickets to someone who will appreciate the performance? My answer to questions like this is a resounding…“probably.” Giving adolescents room to be adolescents is important, especially around the holidays. The process of becoming an adult is one in which children separate from their parents. It’s a painful process for both teens and their parents. And, when teens assert their individuality during the holidays, it can be particularly sad for the parents. Why is this so hard? Well, there are a few reasons.

full article

Webinar: Recognizing and responding to someone who is emotionally struggling.

 

Staying connected with pre-teens and teenagers

Positive relationships and staying connected

In adolescence parents and children often begin to spend more time apart. It’s natural for teenagers to want to spend time by themselves, as well as time with friends and other people outside their families.
But teenagers still need strong relationships with parents to feel safe and secure as they meet the challenges of adolescence. Knowing that you’re there to love and support them gives your child confidence to try new things, and explore new ideas, interests and relationships.
Staying connected with your teenage child is about building closeness in your relationship by being available and responsive to your child. It’s more than just spending time around each other.

Connecting can be:
- casual, which is when you use everyday interactions to build closeness
- planned, which is when you schedule time to do things together that you both enjoy.

It’s great to have both kinds of connecting in your relationship with your child.
If you stay connected with your child, you’ll be in a good position to pick up on any problems that your child might be having. Your child is also more likely to come to you with problems.

read the full article: https://raisingchildren.net.au/pre-teens/communicating-relationships/family-relationships/staying-connected-you-your-teen

Parenting Workshop - Nurturing Independent Learners

 

Healing Through Meditation: Free Event

Registration link

 

Webinar: Cultivating Healthy Habits

 Meeting Link: https://bit.ly/3nAisld

Ready to go! Parenting skills for the start of the school year.

 Parents want the best for their children when they start school. In this webinar, Therese will share parenting strategies which will help children develop important independence skills for a happy and productive school year.

Therese will talk about how parents can encourage age-appropriate social skills and independence, create healthy routines to use at home and on school days & she will share how parents can problem solve with their children.

Join Therese on Monday, September 27th at 8pm.

This webinar is free of charge. Please feel free to pass along to fellow parents who can benefit from this talk.

Register here

Back to School - Online Safety Tips

 

Some kids prefer remote learning. Why in-person is better, and how to help them transition.

Jonathan was an avid soccer player, a dedicated student and a social young man who enjoyed spending time with his friends. However, by the time he limped into our clinic after a year of chronic knee pain, he was not attending school, was withdrawn from his peers, had retreated to his room and was worried about the unpredictability of his future.

As psychologists at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Mayo Family Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center, we work with youths who have severe and debilitating chronic pain. Kids and teens who enroll in our program typically have withdrawn from everyday activities to reduce or avoid worsening their pain. We have dubbed this coping approach “comfortably uncomfortable.” Counterintuitively, returning to daily life while coping with pain is an essential step toward reaching the ultimate treatment goal: pain relief.

We see a parallel between our patients’ experiences and what many schoolchildren and their families have faced during the pandemic: Remote learning provided many kids relief from struggles such as academic pressure, emotional angst and social stress. Now, they or their parents may be resisting a return to “normal,” because they have become comfortable with this unconventional form of schooling.

We worry that this problem will become pervasive as the school year starts — that families will make the comfortably uncomfortable choice of sticking with remote learning to avoid confronting other problems. Some schools are returning to full-time in-person classes, but others are planning hybrid models, with both in-person and online learning. Although safety concerns or other circumstances may make a hybrid model or online-only schooling appropriate for some families, a knee-jerk choice to go remote can create a slippery slope of avoidance of what may have caused distress before the pandemic.

Keep reading

How To Help Your Child Adjust To Going Back to School This Fall: Helpful tips from a pediatric psychologist

After the challenges of last year, kids finally get to be kids again. This upcoming school year means being reunited with friends, having some sort of regular schedule again and finally having the chance to show off those new clothes, backpacks and clever school supplies. Good for them and good for parents, right? While there still are concerns about keeping kids safe from the latest COVID-19 variants, at least parents won’t have to worry about teaching common core math or listening to lessons in between conference calls. What a dream!

Unfortunately, some kids might be a little apprehensive about going back. For them, home meant a safe haven from several stressors that they faced at school. On the other hand, kids who are excited about returning to the classroom will now have to adjust to learning with COVID-19 protocols in place. Either way, the transition back to school might be a little stressful for your child.

So, what can you do if you notice that your child is having a rough time with this change? Pediatric psychologist Vanessa Jensen, PsyD, ABPP offers some sage advice to help make the process easier.

for the full article please follow this link

https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-help-your-child-adjust-to-going-back-to-school-during-the-pandemic/

Welcome Back!

 We are so excited to be seeing you all again shortly!!

Free Positive Parenting Webinar!

 Register here

Summer Wellness Tips

 

12 Top Tips to Support Mental Wellbeing Through Nature

 

5 Tips for Finishing the Year Strong

1. Stay Positive: Middle school students are often like roller coasters--they have rapidly changing highs and lows throughout each day. It is our job as adults to do our best to be a voice of stability and support that is a buoy for them when they feel unsteady. Many of them will feel apathetic toward school or possibly overwhelmed at times. Do your best to focus on the positive and encourage them when they don’t feel like finishing.

2. Don’t Procrastinate: Some students are perpetual procrastinators, but after the relaxation of spring break, many students will begin to slack off and put things off until a later date. Continue to be a source of encouragement, all the while reminding them that they are accountable for their work and preparation. It is important to continue to work on reinforcing the correlation between their preparation, effort, and end result. I see procrastination happen regularly, but this is especially true for AR reading requirements. It will be valuable for your student to finish this requirement early as it will give him/her more time to focus on other classes and preparing for final exams. Continue to encourage your student to use the OnCampus assignment calendar regularly and stay on top of work before it piles up and his/her best effort isn’t given.

3. Take Attendance Seriously: Not many things can be more detrimental to success at the end of a school year than attendance issues. When students are not at school, it can often take multiple days for them to “catch up” or get back on track in class. This is another thing that can cause them to feel stressed when they return or not even try because they feel too far behind. Yes, everyone does get sick and has to miss school occasionally, but the more it can be avoided and the student can stay on a regular schedule, the better the student will perform.

4. Focus on the Finish Line: Even though they may become apathetic and frustrated at times, remind them that there is an end in sight. Also if they have been successful all year, encourage them to continue doing the things that helped them be successful before. If your student used a planner during the first three quarters, the fourth quarter is not a good time to quit that discipline. Conversely, if your student has not been as successful as he/she would like, help your student set new goals for the remainder of the year and discuss what it will take to achieve those goals. Continue to help them see that they can do it, and it may even help to start a countdown at home. It is always nice to for us to check things off a list; the same feeling can happen as they count down the days until summer break.

5. Make Time to Talk About School: The end of the school year can be tough on everyone involved, and I know that it may seem like your student doesn’t want to talk with you, but staying connected at this time in his/her life is really important. This can be difficult at times, but how we as adults model communication is often where kids derive their skills from as well. Take time for everyone to put down their phones, make eye contact, and be great listeners. The more we as adults reinforce this with them, the better they will get, and when students know they can talk openly with their parents or adults, the pressures and challenges of finishing a school year well can be a little easier to overcome.

by
CORY MARTIN
4/3/2019
https://www.calvarydayschool.com/news-detail?pk=1013943

Free webinar: Understand the Function of Behavior and Help Your Children to Communicate

Register here https://kidsfirstmc.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ed49043f7b86d26c8261fcb76&id=123d9a4009&e=6160f4745d

Complimentary Webinar Live on Instagram tonight

 

Keeping Children Safe From Cyber Crime

 

Cultivating Healthy Habits - Webinar

 Meeting Link:     https://bit.ly/3tlNPzM

What parents need to know about Snapchat...

 

How to Care for Your Child's Mental Health - Free Webinar

 

Complimentary Online Support Groups - offered by The Lighthouse Center for Wellbeing

 We all need a little help sometimes. The Lighthouse Center for Wellbeing offers a host of online support groups that are facilitated by their fantastic therapists and are completely free. Please see below for the complete list of April offerings.

register and get more information https://www.lighthousearabia.com/events/

Triple P Parenting - Teens

 

https://www.kidsfirstmc.com/group-teen-triple-p-april-2021/

Parenting Teens is HARD work!

 Watch this fabulous presentation by Dr. Saliha Afridi on parenting teens.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mRwWzeYXwUSEHvTk2ZCcQSUsoJWyPlB0/view?usp=sharing

Free Webinar - Your Child's Mind Matters

 Meeting link: http://bit.ly/3pHbIAn

What parents need to know about the video game Among Us

You've heard your kids talking about a murder-mystery game called Among Us, and you have questions. Luckily, our simple guide has the answers.

https://www.todaysparent.com/kids/tween-and-teen/among-us-video-game-parents-guide/

Three Common Parenting Traps: and tips for avoiding them

Parenting. Even though we’ve been doing it for millennia, it’s still a work in progress. Despite generations of passed-down knowledge and experience, it seems like it always comes down to a situation where it’s after bedtime, you’re sleep-deprived and running on leftover mac and cheese, and you will do just about anything to get your kid into the bath. This is how any well-meaning parent can fall into certain parenting “traps.” Without some kind of course correction, these can become patterns that are harder and harder to break. Think of it like a quicksand—you get sucked in bit by bit until you’re stuck.


For the full article:

https://childmind.org/article/three-common-parenting-traps/

Back by popular demand. - Raising Brave Children

 Register here: https://kidsfirstmc.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ed49043f7b86d26c8261fcb76&id=ebc1d800ee&e=6160f4745d

Parent Webinar Rebroadcast: Raising Brave Children - Kids First Medical Center

Date/Time
Date(s) - Feb 24
8:00 pm
Course Instructor : Dr. Amy Bailey



Overview:

• Discuss anxiety as a normal emotion
• Increase awareness of how parents can inadvertently cause or maintain anxiety in their children
• Introduction of CBT model of anxiety as a way to help children manage stressful situations and practical strategies for parents to promote bravery will be offeredOld wiring

 registration link: https://bit.ly/feb_rebroadcast 

TEACHING RESPONSIBILITY TO YOUR CHILDREN

When asked what traits parents would like their children to have now and as adults, one of the most common responses is “to be responsible.” This is a broad term which means many different things, including:
    - being dependable so people know they can count on you,

    - keeping one’s word and agreements,

    - meeting one’s commitments,

    - doing something to the best of one’s ability,

    - being accountable for one’s behavior,

    - accepting credit when you do things right and acknowledging mistakes,

    - being a contributing member of one’s family, community and society.

Being responsible is a key to children’s success both in school and in the larger world when they grow up.

...for the full article click the link below.

https://centerforparentingeducation.org/library-of-articles/responsibility-and-chores/developing-responsibility-in-your-children/

How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers

 Many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally. We know our preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and we don’t want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. But adolescence is an equally important period of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention to how our teenagers’ use of technology—much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old playing with dad’s iPhone—is affecting them. In fact, experts worry that the social media and text messages that have become so integral to teenage life are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.

Click below for the full article.

https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/

Parenting Webinar Today!

 

Single Parenting During the Coronavirus Crisis

 The coronavirus crisis is tough on all families. But for single parents, having to suddenly manage kids whose schools and playgrounds are closed and whose caregivers can no longer come to work can be especially overwhelming.

Please click here for the full article

https://childmind.org/article/single-parenting-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/

Vision Board Workshop for Teens.

 

 REGISTRATION: HTTP://BIT.LY/35FGFN9 

5 Tips for Building a Healthy Relationship with Your Teenager

As any parent will know — or at least will have been warned — a child’s teenage years can be some of the toughest. It can be particularly hard if their parents are divorced or separated.

A whirlwind combination of puberty, hormones, high school years, and the growing need for independence can be a challenge for any parent. In a household with a teenager, every day can seem like a battle — sometimes over the smallest things. As a parent, you want to be able to love and guide your child like you always have, but you need to understand that just as they’re changing, your relationship with them needs to change as well. These are some of the most formative years of their lives, so it’s good for them to know that their parents are there for them, and are willing to realize that they have a young adult who deserves their respect and guidance.

For the full article:

https://psychcentral.com/blog/5-tips-for-building-a-healthy-relationship-with-your-teenager#1

Webinar Recording: Teen Mental Health

 

Please find a recording of this engaging and informative webinar here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EqSnML3yWlzQr4l9c6ZR9Kq75GmA7cUd/view?usp=sharing

Helping Kids Understand the Riots at the Capitol

We’re all shaken by the events in Washington, DC this week. As kids of all ages look to us for guidance, here are some ways to help them understand what’s going on and deal with any anxiety they may be feeling.

It may seem like you need to jump in and address things right away, but pausing to work through your own feelings before talking to kids about theirs is an important step. “Take time for yourself to process what has happened, how you feel, what your thoughts are — this is all exhausting and overwhelming for parents and the best thing we can do is model how we take care of ourselves first,” says Janine Domingues, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute.

When you feel ready to talk, kids will benefit from an open, calm conversation. “Connect with your child and be their safe haven,” Dr. Domingues says. “Talk to them from a place of calm and security, even when you are not necessarily feeling that on the inside.” Kids look to parents to see how they should react. Modeling a calm, rational response and making space for questions will help kids feel less anxious and help your family to process the news in a healthy way.

For the full article: https://childmind.org/blog/helping-kids-understand-the-riots-at-the-capitol/

Four things you can do to support your teen’s mental health

Whether you and your teen are getting along well or having challenges, it is important to show that you love and support them, that you can help them navigate tough times and that you are always there for them.

Here are four things to keep in mind when having that ‘how-are-you-doing?’ conversation with your teen and to show that you are always there for them.

https://www.unicef.org/parenting/health/four-things-you-can-do-support-your-teens-mental-health?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=coronavirus

Happy New Year and Welcome Back!!

 I hope that you have had a chance to rest and recharge a little. During these crazy times, it is important to pause, when we can, and take comfort from small simple joys. While a holiday does do wonders for your morale...you may still need some support with the various stressors that you face each day.

The Lighthouse Center for Wellbeing offers a great variety of online support groups that you may choose to participate in. Most are free of charge.

Please see their calendar of events here:

https://www.lighthousearabia.com/events/