12 Tips for Winter Break: Is Your Parenting Lining Up With Your Values?

The final week of our winter break series is here! Join us as we dive into family traditions, forgiveness and gratitude!

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 #10: Celebrate Family Traditions

You know what we love about the holiday season? All of the family traditions! Spending time with your kids and making memories can be just as fun and exciting for you as it is for them.

Whether it’s matching pjs, a pancake breakfast, or watching the same holiday movies every year, every tradition is special.

And, it's always an option to add to your family tradition repertoire. Ask your kids for suggestions for new traditions and maybe those will become fast favorites. What matters most is the time you’re spending together and the family bonding that the holiday season brings!

Tip #11: Forgiveness

No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. The important thing is to remember to forgive and let go. By modeling forgiveness for our kids, they learn to forgive others when someone else makes a mistake.

We all know we have to pick and choose our battles. This holiday season, remember the importance of forgiving and offer that same grace to your kids. Setting examples early on will encourage that behavior moving forward.

Tip #12: Gratitude

Encouraging moments of gratitude is especially important during the holidays. It’s easy to lose sight of all that we’re thankful for when the glitz and glamour of the upcoming holidays are all around us.

This can mean more than just being grateful for physical things, we can also expand this gratitude to acts and emotions as well. A delicious home cooked meal, spending quality time with loved ones and quiet, cozy nights in.

Encourage your children to share what they are grateful for and share your own gratitude list as well! When we take the time to really figure out all that we're grateful for, and to model that gratitude for our children, we get this really great perspective and reminder of all the good things that we actually do have in our lives.

We want to express our immense gratitude to all of you for supporting us in our mission to help anxious, angry and stressed kids and teens!

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 Couer.