4 Steps that Will Help You Guide Your Child Through All Life’s Challenges
To learn more about guiding your child through life challenges, download a PDF copy of this infographic by clicking here.
KWBS – Terry Fox
Next time you hear an inspiring story of someone overcoming adversity – notice that this is not by chance.
Take a minute and see if you can name the skills they used to do it. This is a great way to show kids which skills they can practice to get stronger. Follow us here at the Umbrella Project to learn about a new skill each month that will help your child grow from challenges.
Visit also the Terry Fox Foundation on Facebook and the local @WaterlooTFR Twitter account.
Positive Coping Skills
Do your coping skills bring people closer to you or push them away?
A big study out of Harvard has found that meaningful relationships are one of the best prescriptions for better emotional, mental, and physical health as we get older. Read the study highlights here.
Especially when our lives are rainy, we need good relationships to thrive. What happens to you and your kids when the stress picks up? Do you have positive coping skills that deepen your relationships through stressful times or do you end up pushing those close to you away?
Investing some time into building positive coping skills for you and your family could be one of the best investments you make into your future wellbeing.
Featured image by Andre Hunter on Unsplash.
![[Infographic] Achieving Stress-Free Behaviour Change](https://umbrellaproject.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Stress-Free-Behaviour-Change-Infographic.png)
[Infographic] Achieving Stress-Free Behaviour Change
Download a PDF copy of this infographic here.
Week 1
The kids estimated that they would need 16 boxes for the week based on the fact that they were bickering a few times/day.
Number of boxes coloured: 3.
Number of times I lost my parenting cool: zero.
This week we have reduced our success threshold to 8. Continue this process until the behaviour is held at an amount that feels age appropriate and try to have fun with it. A little humour goes a long way when it comes to getting kids to buy in!
An Example of Teamwork from Great Big Story
Can you see how gratitude, empathy, purpose, resilience and kindness are shaping the story of these two incredible humans and allowing them to weather life’s challenges? It’s not chance but skills that give us the power to thrive.
Children learn primarily by example and you can help your child build these powerful skills by sharing stories like this one.
Conversations with Kids – Rainy Days at School
School provides a wide selection of rain to help our children learn coping skills. A great conversation to have as school gets going is what some of the normal “rain” might be this year, emphasis on normal. Not all these things will happen to every child, but every child is likely to face some of these challenges.
What this conversation does is helps them to expect some level of adversity instead of being shocked when it happens. This can help them feel less like victims in these challenging situations. Once you have gone through a few examples and your child understands what you mean by rain, ask them what at school feels like rain to them?
Share a few things that felt like rain to you in school. Explain that mixed in with all the sunny days, some of these rainy days are normal and expected.
Here are some examples I use:
- Friends being unkind
- Feeling left out
- Strict teachers
- Pressure from teachers/coaches
- Making mistakes
- Not doing as well on a test as you hoped
- Having trouble learning something new
- Meeting new people
Featured image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash