12 Tips for Winter Break: Week 2 - Preparing Your Emotions
Winter Break Tip #4 - Identify and Empathize
How many of us take the time to really figure out how we're feeling from moment to moment? It can be so easy to gloss over what we're feeling, and then, before we know it, an emotion has built and built until we feel like we're going to explode.
Our first step to helping our kids identify their emotions? You want to help them clue in to what you're noticing on the outside, and what they might be feeling on the inside. Try "You seem stressed," or "I'm wondering if you feel angry." Give them space to correct you. Help them build up their emotional language far beyond "I feel good/bad/fine."
There’s no such thing as a bad emotion. And, honestly, there’s no such thing as a good emotion. Emotions just are, and all emotions are healthy and helpful. We just need to figure out what to do about them.
Winter Break Tip #5 - Calm Down
Ok, ok, you hear all the time from us that you need to relax. But how do you do it? Come up with your own totally customizable relaxation plan. Make a list of all the ways you and your kids know how to relax. As therapists, we like to separate these out into three big categories:
Breathing, Muscle, and Meditation/Mindfulness
Relaxation helps to deepen down your breathing, loosen your muscles, and slow down racing thoughts, which is why it’s important to clue into those three areas.
Breathing is the foundation to allllllllll relaxation. Breathing slowly and deeply is key. In through your nose, and out through your mouth. A few variations:
Heart and Belly Breathing: One hand on your heart, one hand on your stomach. Feel the air traveling through
Fog the Windows: Great for all this cozy winter weather. Practice fogging up the windows in your house. Help your child notice that fast, quick breaths don’t really do it. When we slowly, deeply breathe in and out, we can get a much better fog on. This is the kind of breathing we need to do to help our bodies stay calm. Slow breath in through our nose… big sigh out through our mouth.
8 Count Breaths: Slowly, counting, help your child breathe in through their nose for three counts and out through their mouths for five counts.
Breathe in, 2, 3, and out, 5, 6, 7, 8.
In 2, 3, and out, 5, 6, 7, 8.
Muscle activities help your tense muscles to soften and relax. We recommend Progressive Muscle Relaxation!
And Meditation/Mindfulness is designed to help your brain and body quiet down.
For relaxation help, check out our favorite guided meditation scripts for kids and teens right here:
Winter Break Tip #6 - Game Plan
You can’t solve a problem when you’re feeling way overwhelmed, which is why you need to calm down before game planning.
Once you and your child have both done something to calm down your bodies (even if you don’t really need it, it’s great to model calming down strategies for your kid), you can figure out how to deal with the problem at hand.
You don’t want to just jump in as the parent and help your child solve all of their problems, especially over winter break. You have more time and space to guide your child to a better solution, rather than quickly trying to fix or remove the stressor.
Is Winter Break a challenge for you? Do you feel totally overwhelmed every year? It can be tough to keep things running smoothly when there’s so much time to fill - and especially tough for anxious, stressed out kids and teens (and their stressed out parents). We’re sharing with you our 12 Tips for Winter Break - but we’re available all year round for anxious child counseling, therapy for teens, and stress management for college students. Set up your free phone consult on our website at compassionatecounselingstl.com/consult
We work with kids, teens, and college students through the St. Louis region, including Clayton, Ladue, Webster Groves, Kirkwood, and Creve Coeur.
Thumbnail image provided by: Phillip Goldsbery