One of my favorite ways to relax is to do a progressive muscle relaxation. To do a progressive muscle relaxation, you go through each body part, tense it, and then feel the difference as you relax it. So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to teach kids how to do a progressive muscle relaxation. Here are my thoughts.
Welcome to Little Elf Family Services! I’m Lara Elfstrand. I am a parent coach, and I am here to help parents to feel connected, rested, and thriving. I have a master’s degree in early childhood special education (and a clear teaching credential), and I am endorsed as an infant family advanced transdisciplinary mental health practitioner.
I became a parent in 2007, and it changed me and my life completely. I realized just how much a person changes when they become a parent. It changed my values, my priorities, and my marriage! The things I learned cannot be summarized in one blog post or even in one blog. But here are just a few things that I would start with:
Nesting parties ask us to re-think the way that we celebrate new parents and challenge us to focus on what the expecting parents need. It’s really less of a party and more of an opportunity to provide the family help.
Unlike baby showers, “Nesting parties shift the focus from stuff to support to help families prepare their homes and hearts for life with a new baby,” explains Lara Elfstrand, the pediatric sleep practitioner of Little Elf Family Services.
One way that we can practice gratitude is to create gratitude rituals associated with a time of day. For example:
Mealtimes: We can make a routine at mealtimes to share what we are thankful for. When we do this, we increase our ratio of positives to negatives, we increase fondness and affection, and we get to know each other better.
Another strategy that we can use to increase gratitude in our lives is to set an alarm or a daily event on our calendar that reminds us to stop and consider what we are thankful for. We could even consider adding an element of focused breathing... taking just one minute a day to breathe deeply and to think about what we are thankful for. We get extra credit for sharing what we are thankful for with another person when we are done!
Valentine's Day is a great opportunity to think about how we express our affection and thankfulness to the people that we care about. It's an opportunity to say, "I'm so thankful for who you are and for the joy that you bring to my life."
One way that we can do this on a regular basis is to use a strategy called "positive descriptive acknowledgements." We say something specific that the person did, with an adjective about how it describes the person, such as desired character trait or expectation.
A great way to start this month of appreciation is to take time to write down what we are thankful for. We can do this in a few different ways, such as a gratitude journal and thank you notes or even "you rock" notes.
One way that we can create a culture of appreciation is to keep a gratitude journal. We can keep a gratitude journal near the dining room table, so that we can add to it as a family each day, or near the bed where we can reflect at the end of the day.
This month our challenge is to create a culture of appreciation in our homes and in our lives. Each Monday I will present ideas, and I encourage you to let me know what works for you!
Why focus on appreciation? Creating a culture of appreciation is the antidote for contempt, which is one of the biggest destroyers of relationships according to research by Dr. Gottman at the University of Seattle. When we fight contempt, we improve teamwork in our relationships.
Experiment: Watch a movie and see if you can find examples of "The Four Horsemen" and/or their antidotes. What movie did you watch? What did you learn? Share what you learned!
What stonewalling means is that we become so upset by the interaction that we shut down. The listener withdrawals from the interaction, usually out of fear that speaking will make the problem worse. Stonewalling appears to be an attempt to withdraw to calm down or to self-soothe.
The antidote to stonewalling is to take a break from the discussion. As part of Dr. Gottman's research, he asked couples in his love lab to discuss a topic that they experienced conflict about.
When we are contemptuous, we make ourselves feel superior to the person we are with. We use insults or name-calling. We use sarcasm. We are cynical. We use mockery and hostile humor. Our body language may include sneering or rolling our eyes.
Contempt is the most destructive of the four horsemen.
The antidote to contemptuousness is to create a culture of appreciation. (Note that we talked about this during the 5:1 ratio challenge.)
Defensiveness means that we are denying any responsibility for the problem. We often use negative body language. We believe that the problem is all our partner's fault (or our child's fault, etc.) When we feel defensive, we respond to a complaint with another complaint. We whine. We feel attacked.
The antidote to defensiveness is to accept some responsibility for our part of the problem.
In order to create a home where children can learn and thrive, we are focusing this month on building a strong parenting team. There are many aspects to what it means to be a good team player. But for now:
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to identify when Dr. Gottman's "four horsemen" (criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling) are happening in your family, and to use their antidotes to defeat them.
Resources:
©Lara Elfstrand, MA ECSE, IF-ATMHP, CPSI - Little Elf Family Services, P.O. Box 5098, Auburn, CA 95604
