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.
This 2025 client wins video highlights real progress families made this year. Small steps, big shifts, and moments worth celebrating. “Celebration” was one of my words of the year this past year, and this post is about pausing to acknowledge what worked for families and how hard my families have worked. These are families with children of ALL abilities. Let’s celebrate our wins!
Sometimes, the smallest moments—a deep breath, a hand on a forehead, a quiet pause—can create the biggest shifts. A mom I recently worked with had one of those moments, and with her permission, I want to share the story with you.
When we first met, this sweet boy spent the entire hour crying and screaming and whining, and sounding generally extremely overtired.
These last few weeks have been tough. I’ve gotten TOO MUCH ADVICE from people who meant well, but my body interpreted it as criticism and shame. It’s been impacting my mental health and my sleep. And then my neighbors had a party and I sat on the porch swing and cried because having company over has been too much for Charlie and I so LONG to have friends and family members over.
I was reminded this week of a strategy that I haven’t used much, but I am going to focus on this week with Charlie. It’s a strategy that can be used to celebrate your child’s accomplishments, or to point out the impact of their inappropriate behavior. I like to say that where we put our focus is what we get more of. So one of the best strategies to reduce a behavior is to be really aware of what behavior we want instead and then be sure to acknowledge all the little tiny baby steps along the way to that behavior.
My words this year are celebration, self compassion, and guts. And this week in particular I’m working on savoring the celebrations. That has just brought to mind a lot of fun stuff. One of them is this video of a father and son watching TV together and talking about what they see. This video just makes me smile.
A couple of days ago, I created a “Welcome to Little Elf Family Services” video. I thought it turned out decently well, and I posted it. I watched part of the captions and changed the spelling of “mountain cur” but only realized after I had posted the automated captions that they misspelled my name.
My name is Lara. It isn’t Laura.
I think it’s so important to take some time to celebrate. One of my many favorite quotes is that “Being acknowledged for her competence helped her become moreso (1).” And that is one of my personal goals with all of the families that I serve: to help them to acknowledge their competence. I love to have a final (or almost final) session that’s just 15-30 minutes long, where we just take the time to celebrate what’s working and what impact it is having.
I asked ChatGPT for ideas for how to celebrate a win without spending money, and I liked what it came up with! One of my favorite quotes is that “By acknowledging her competence, (s)he helped her become more so.” So this fits perfectly with that!
Celebrate Your Wins (Without Spending a Dime)
A reminder that every step forward deserves a moment of joy. Here are some free and meaningful ways to celebrate yourself:
This is a handout that I reference a lot both to generate ideas for myself and for my clients. I use it both for breaks and for celebrations! Which one are you going to do next?
This morning when I woke up, I was struggling to figure out how to celebrate Valentine’s Day with my larger tribe. I have been thinking on this for months, but honestly perfectionism got the best of me. Yet the celebration and the self compassion that I was looking for was waiting for me at just the right time!
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©Lara Elfstrand, MA ECSE, IF-ATMHP, CPSI - Little Elf Family Services, P.O. Box 5098, Auburn, CA 95604
