Parenting With presence:

Untitled Slide

• Identify a common source of parenting stress
• Understand the impact of stress on you & your family
• Learn strategies to manage recurring sources of stress

Think of a common source of
parenting stress.
On a scale of 1-10,
how stressful is this situation?

What is stress?

How does stress impact your body?

• Heart rate, breathing, perspiration, blood glucose increase
• Blood shunted to muscles
• Digestion slows
• The body's physical reaction to stress is automatic

How does stress impact your emotions/behavior

• Stress can lead to -
• Poor eating choices
• Disrupted sleep
• Anxiety, anger, irritability
• Lack of motivation, low energy

How does stress impact your parenting?

• Lose patience with child
• Yell, become frustrated
• Don't make good parenting choices
• Gets in the way of taking care of your responsibilities at home

How does stress impact your kids?

• Kids who say their parents are always stressed are more likely to report having a great deal of stress themselves.
• Kids say they feel frustrated when their parents are stressed.
• Kids report that they turn to sedentary behaviors to make themselves feel better when they are really worried or stressed (watching TV or playing video games).

Untitled Slide

• Kids will mirror adult's coping strategies
• Stressed children also suffer from anxiety, sleeplessness and lower grades.
• Kids are affected physically by stress in the same way as adults

Stress Reduction is NOT Automatic

• The effects of stress build up over time.
• Intervention is required to calm the stress response.

Strategies to lower stress

How can you avoid your stress triggers?

BREATHE

• B-Breathe Deeply (mindfulness)
• R-Reconnect with friends & family
• E-Exercise
• A-Acknowledge & accept
• T-Take care of your health (get enough rest, eat well)
• H-Humor - when all else fails, laugh!
• E-Enjoy life - stay positive, have fun.

Breathe Deeply

What is Mindfulness?

• Mindfulness is paying attention on purpose to the present moment, nonjudgmentally & without striving to to think/feel differently about what is happening.
• With mindfulness, parents can learn self-management (responding rather than reacting to child's behavior) and kids can learn better emotional control and resilience.

Adopt Qualities of Mindful parenting

• Take a moment to pause. Breathe.
• Listen without judgement.
• Acknowledge child's feelings.
• Reflect feelings back to kids. They want to be heard.

Reconnect with family & friends

• When you are with your family, UNPLUG!
• Develop a network of supportive friends
• Seek counsel from someone you trust and who will not pass judgement
• Find someone to hug!

Exercise

acknowledge and accept

• Acknowledge what is happening in the present moment.
• Accept that there will be challenges and struggles in parenting.
• Acknowledge that your child is his/her own person and may have different ways of doing things.

Take Care of your health

humor

Enjoy life and be positive

• List simple things that make you happy and do them!
• For example: watch the sunset, read to your kids, work in the garden, talk with good friends, go on a date, take a walk around the block, color, draw, listen to music, play
• Keep a gratitude journal

Think back to that stressful situation you identified at the beginning of our time together.
Which of these tools
will work for you.
How will you put this into practice?