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.
Routines have been a fundamental part of my life since I got married (25 years ago!) and especially during times when I’ve had a young child and/or a dog at home (the last 16+ years). Here are some of my favorite sources of my favorite routines. The challenging part is to not try to do them all at once! Pick one or two to start with! Break things into small pieces, and if you need some support, reach out to me and let’s chat!
At Little Elf Family Services, I believe that parenting isn’t about perfection—it’s about connection. Families thrive when they feel supported, equipped, and empowered, and my work is designed to help parents move from exhaustion and frustration to confidence and joy.
As a sleep consultant, marriage and parenting coach, and early childhood special educator, I blend evidence-based strategies with compassionate support.
While we are on the topic of breathing, here are some other breathing strategies that I recommend to my clients often:
Kira Willey’s Mindful Moments for Kids
Conscious Discipline breathing exercises for kids and parents (YouTube playlist)
While researching for this blog post, I also found this cute puffer fish that goes up and down as you breathe and I kind of love it!
Stress. We’ve all got it. We sometimes prefer to ignore it. Our bodies need a way to manage it so that it doesn’t make us sick—either physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Lately I’ve been working with my coaching clients on the concept of completing stress cycles. What that means is that we need to tell our bodies that the stress is done.
When you become a parent, you want to feel calm and confident, but that’s often harder than you expect. Obstacles can get in the way, and unprepared parents may feel overwhelmed. While your moods may fluctuate, your overall happiness level is like a muscle: it gets weaker or stronger over time. If you ignore symptoms of depression or anxiety and hope that the problem will go away, you are likely to find yourself feeling more depressed and anxious.
Sometimes I struggle to describe the challenges of early parenthood because I never want to scare people or make anyone feel like they aren’t enough, or that they won’t be a good enough parent if they don’t do certain things. As a new parent sanity specialist, one of my primary goals is to help each of us as new parents to grow in our growth mindset, being able to ask for help, to make mistakes and learn from them, and to keep learning.
This week I spoke with Dr. Hannah Flammang about C-section scars. We talked about self care and things that we can do to help with recovery and healing after a c-section.
Dr. Hannah is a local chiropractor. She is opening her practice in Rocklin, but she does a lot more than just chiropractic. She really likes to work with women’s health patients, specifically in the prenatal and postpartum periods.
Three of the top skills of a value driven professional—a person who excels in their workplace—are: they know how to de escalate drama; they know how to accept feedback as a gift, and they know the right way to engage in conflict (according to Donald Miller in his book Business Made Simple). And you know what? Those are skills that I teach in my coaching and in my Gottman Bringing Baby Home classes. They're also skills that make for a great parent and that help us to have a more peaceful, nurturing postpartum period.
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©Lara Elfstrand, MA ECSE, IF-ATMHP, CPSI - Little Elf Family Services, P.O. Box 5098, Auburn, CA 95604
