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Self Care For Children

Children, Families, Parents, Self Care

If you’ve been following my series on self care, you already know that I believe self care is really important!   Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we can teach children about the benefits of self care from an early age and set a strong foundation that will help them prioritize self care as they get older.

Self care is defined as purposeful action that an individual takes to ensure their well-being.   Well-being can include; emotional health, mental health, physical health, and spiritual health.  When our children are young, we support our children in achieving well-being in each of these areas, but as our children get older they will become more independent and need to have the skills to ensure their own well being.

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Effective Coping Strategies for Children & Teens

Children, Counseling, Families, Parents

In previous posts, I have written about helping children build their feelings vocabulary and express their emotions.    Today, I address coping strategies for children and teens.   The coping strategies that we find effective as adults may not be as helpful for children or teens.

What is a coping strategy?

A coping strategy is any strategy that helps us tolerate intense emotion, stressful situations or conflict   The types of coping strategies we utilize can be healthy or unhealthy (think overeating, excess drinking and more).   It is important to help children develop a foundation of utilizing healthy coping strategies when they are young.

Coping strategies are not one size fits all.   The type of strategies that may be effective and acceptable vary based on the child’s needs, the family’s expectations, the setting, the type of emotion being experienced, the intensity of the emotion and available resources. Continue reading Effective Coping Strategies for Children & Teens →

Self Care Revisited

Self Care Revisited

Parents, Self Care

At the beginning of the year, I decided to make self care a priority for myself and invited you to join me on this journey.   This included a commitment on my part to write a 6-month series of blog posts dedicated to the topic of self care.  This is the last post scheduled for the series, but I will continue to advocate for each of us to prioritize self care.  Self care is important!   In my previous post, I shared some of the personal benefits I’ve noticed from focusing on self care even though it was a struggle for me.

Here is the definition of self care that has guided the posts in this series:

Self care is purposeful action that an individual takes to ensure their well-being.   Well-being can include; emotional health, mental health, physical health, and spiritual health.

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Self Care: Walking the Walk

Self Care

It has been almost five months since I invited you to join me in making self care a priority and to follow this series of posts on self care.  Today, I wanted to share a post that is a personal reflection on my experience over the last few months.   In addition to blogging about self care monthly, I’ve offered two self care workshops and focused a portion of my posts on social media to the topic of self care.

Focusing so much of my energy and work on the topic of self care has had tangible benefits for me and my family, but it hasn’t been easy.    It seems like prioritizing self care should be easier, but I definitely struggled more than I thought I would.   As a mom, wife, therapist and business owner, I always believe I have something that I should be doing, but if I don’t focus on self care I can’t be as strong in each of those roles as I would like.  I am not just talking the talk, but actually walking the walk.

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Thinking Outside of the Box: Creative Ways to Help Children Express Their Emotions (Part 2)

Children, Families, Parents

In my last post, I asked you to start considering ways in which children may express their emotions in ways other than directly talking about their own emotions.   I promised a follow up post sharing some specific ideas and here it is!

The dictionary defines express as:

  • to put (thought) into words; utter or state
  • to show, manifest, or reveal
  • to set forth the opinions, feelings, etc., of (oneself), as in speaking, writing, or painting
  • to represent by a symbol, character, figure, or formula

The ideas that I share in this post could be used as ways to help children express their emotions, but can also be very helpful in processing and coping with emotions.   For the purposes of this post, I consider an idea creative or “outside of the box” if it goes beyond just expecting children to verbally share their emotions with us.  If you observe your children, you may realize that they are already using some of the techniques described below to process their emotions or situations that they have encountered.   Other children may benefit from being given permission to use one of the following techniques to share their emotions.

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Thinking Outside of the Box: Creative Ways to Help Children Express Their Emotions (Part 1)

Children, Families, Parents, Reflection Questions

At times, we all experience difficulty in expressing our emotions. It can be especailly challenging for children to express their emotions through words, so I encourage parents to think outside of the box about ways in which they can support their children in expressing their emotions. Continue reading Thinking Outside of the Box: Creative Ways to Help Children Express Their Emotions (Part 1) →

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Self Care Resources

Parents, Self Care

If you’ve been following my series on self care over the past few months, you know I have written about a variety of self care related topics from reflection questions to self care strategies.  This month, I wanted to share some helpful resources that could be utilized as you figure out how to incorporate self care into your life.  I invited some of my colleagues to share some of their favorite resources and blog posts on this topic, too. Continue reading Self Care Resources →

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Assessing Your Child’s Emotions

Children, Families, Parents

As parents or caregivers, I believe one of our most important tasks is to help our children learn to identify, share and cope with their emotions (feelings).   In a previous post, I wrote about helping children build their feelings vocabulary.

One of the best ways to help children begin to identify, share and cope with their emotions is by supporting them in doing so in the moment, as they are experiencing an emotion.   It can be helpful for the parent or caregiver to have a hunch about what the child is feeling and what the contributing factors may be.  Our hunches may be wrong, but they give us a starting point in trying to support children in sharing and coping with their emotions.

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Building Your Child’s Feelings Vocabulary

Children, Families, Parents

I often talk to parents about being open to having their children express their emotions (feelings) through means other than words.   Art, music and play are just a few of the powerful ways in which children communicate and share their emotions with us.  I have learned so much about how children understand the world by just playing with them.  Having said that, there are many reasons why it is valuable to help children build a feelings vocabulary  and comfort in discussing their emotions.

The Benefits of Building Your Child’s Feelings Vocabulary

  • When children are able to identify their emotions, they can more effectively ask for help when they are experiencing an overwhelming emotion.
  • Being able to speak about their own emotions helps children in their relationships with others because they are better able to communicate and engage in conflict resolution.
  • Being able to identify one’s own emotions is the first step in being able to develop empathy for others.

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Self Care Strategies

Parents, Self Care

Are you ready to stop making excuses for not prioritizing self care?   Are you looking for suggested strategies that may help you enhance your approach to self care?  If so, this is the post for you.    Not quite there yet?   Click here to read some quotes to inspire you or check out my last post on excuses for not prioritizing self care.

As you review the list of self care strategies below, I encourage you to remember that self care looks different for each person because we all have unique needs and interests.    I hope this list can be used to help you start thinking about and exploring which strategies may work best for you.  It may take some experimentation to identify which self care strategies you find to be the most effective.

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