12 Tips for Winter Break: Emotional Support

Welcome to week 2 of our 12 tips for winter break series! We’re here giving you our top tips for managing winter break at home with the kids. This week is all about emotional support - what to do and how to do it so that you don’t feel 100% overwhelmed.

Here’s your recap of all of our instagram posts for this week, all tidied up for you in one easy to find spot (and if you want to see this on insta, follow us over there @CounselingWithKelsey)

Tip 4: Create Some Space to Chill Out

Relaxing is kind of hard to do as a parent - you need to be on top of everything. But over winter break, there are so many great opportunities to just take it down a notch and chill out. And when you take the time to relax (and take care of yourself), you’ll feel so much more ready to be calm for your kids.

As a parent you have a million things on your to do list already, so I hate to add one more… But maybe it helps to view this more as an opportunity instead of a demand! When we’re calm, our kids are easier to calm.

Even better - if you are stressed, and you take the time to acknowledge that to your children and demonstrate how you're planning to calm down, you are DIRECTLY SHOWING THEM what to do when they feel overwhelmed, too. Model what you want them to do! It'll be a huge help - we promise.

Tip 5: Relax

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! Choose one strategy from each of the categories below and boom, you've got your plan. Let's walk you through it:

Group 1: Breathing Activities for Relaxation

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

• Circular Breathing: Plug up one nostril at a time, and breathe in through one and out through the other. This one makes me feel dizzy, but some people love it.

• 8 Count Breaths: Breathe in, 2, 3, and out, 5, 6, 7, 8. In 2, 3, and out, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Group 2: Muscle Relaxation Activities

Do you like yoga? Are you a runner? Ever lift weights? Hello, muscles! Make sure you're purposefully getting your muscles tense and then letting them loosen up. This really helps to burn off anger and stress tension. Other great muscle activities include progressive muscle relaxation and, hand to heart, doing the hokey pokey (you're shaking all those tensed out muscles!)

Step 3: Mindfulness and Meditation Strategies

We love a mindful moment! Take a beat to check in, slowly, with all 5 senses (notice 1 thing you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste). When you need a break, go on a phone-free walk and don't come back until you've seen 10 cool things. Or, download Calm or Headspace to get meditations right on your phone.

Relaxation works best when you've got a nice, big roster of tools!Check out my many, many relaxation walkthroughs (and my guided meditation series!) for a few starting points!

Tip 6: Identify Emotions

Hi! How are you? Fine? Good, good. Ok, but really - how many of us ever answer this honestly? 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.

It's a lot easier to cope with feelings when we can be proactive about them. And this is a huge skill that we need to teach our kids and teens as well. 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."

These are 12 Tips for Winter Break, but Compassionate Counseling St. Louis is here year round! Set up a free phone consult on our website to talk more about what’s going on and if counseling is the best next step. We work with anxious and angry kids, teens, and college students through Clayton, Ladue, Creve Couer, and all surrounding areas. We work with age 4 on up.