This month I’m sharing 12 Tips to help parents manage behaviors (and still have fun!) over winter break!

Winter break gives you a lot of unstructured time.

For kids and teens who run a little more anxious or overwhelmed, that unstructured time can lead to stress related behaviors. Yes, there’s a lot of fun to be had with family and presents and dinners and toys… and there’s a lot of potential for overwhelm.

When your kid is overwhelmed and acting out, it can feel like they’re ruining the holidays.

And you maybe feel bad for even thinking that… but the truth is, we put a lot of time and energy into making winter break and winter holidays fun. When things don’t go according to plan, or when we have our little one throwing a huge tantrum in front of your whole extended family, it can feel overwhelming for you as well!

How do we help with this?

We set up a framework for winter break that’s easy for everyone to follow.

Tip 1: Prepare

Tip 2: Set Clear Expectations

Tip 3: Time Management

Is your lizard brain taking over?

Everyone has a pre-frontal cortex and an amygdala. When we take in information to our brain, we either send it to our “lizard brain” or our “wizard brain.”

The BrainWise curriculum was designed to help kids build social and emotional control and self-regulation skills - perfect for anxious, angry kids and pre-teens. When I previously worked in the Saint Louis Counseling School Partnership Program, I received training in this program, and still use components of it in my practice today. To be clear, I’m not TECHNICALLY providing brainwise as I’m not maintaining really strict fidelity with the model. And honestly, I felt parts of the program were not so helpful - but the framework can be good to keep in mind for parents and teachers, as you work on helping your children and students take a step back and make better decisions.

Below you’ll find an brief summation of the different BrainWise modules.

If you’re interested in finding more about BrainWise, or you have questions about the model that you want answered by an expert, you can email info@brainwise-plc.org

What language do you use when talking to yourself?

When you make a mistake, do you tell yourself, "Well, I can try again next time. I can address X, Y, or Z and that may help"? Or do you say, "I'm an idiot. This is useless. There's no point in trying"?

Not so surprisingly, one of those thoughts is more helpful than the other. And it's not just adults who engage in these negative, unhelpful cognitions. Children are particularly prone to negative self-talk, especially if positive self-talk or thought flipping is not modeled for them. 

As an anxious kid, teen, or college student, it makes total sense that you would want to avoid school.

Anxious minds tell us about all the bad things that could potentially happen, and schools are rife with possibilities when it comes to catastrophe. Just off the top of my head, you could worry about:

• Missing your mom and dad

• Getting a bad grade

• People talking bad about you

• People not wanting to play with you

• Getting in trouble

• Having a teacher yell at you

• Making a silly mistake

• Hearing a super loud fire drill

• Getting kidnapped on your walk home

• Forgetting all of your homework

• Taking a test

And on and on and on…

Those fears are legion - and as soon as you feel like you vanquish one school fear foe, another one can come up and take its place.

With all that in mind, of course it feels easier to stay at home.

Unfortunately, the longer you wait to get to school, the more and more challenging it will be to actually cross that threshold and deal with anxiety at school.

But we have to take that first step. And we can!

I specialize in both anxiety and anger management for a reason.

Anxiety and anger have a lot in common. If you've ever experienced feelings of anxiety before, consider those physical cues - racing heart, shortness of breath, dilated eyes, inability to focus or concentrate, muscles tensed and ready for action. 

Now, think about the last time you were angry. How your face felt hot and your fists tensed up. How your heart started to beat faster because you were ready for a fight. Your brain focused only on the thing that made you feel this way.

Some kids are a little embarrassed to have to go to therapy…

but nine times out of ten they become more comfortable with it after the initial session. On top of that, in my professional experience, younger children are super excited to go to counseling because they view it as an opportunity to play and hang out one-on-one with a safe grown up, and through counseling they learn the skills and tools needed to help manage their anxiety.

"From your perspective, what exactly constitutes anger management in children?"

Anger management means helping kids find the tools needed to manage their anxiety, frustration, and temper. I typically utilize CBT to help kids figure out how their thoughts impact their feelings, how their feelings lead to different behaviors, and how they can change that cycle.

Stress responses impact emotional and behavioral health in a few ways. 

Physiologically, a stress response leads to increased heart rate, breath rate, pupil dilation, and muscle tension. Your child’s adrenal glands are pumping to prepare them for a fight, flight, or freeze response. It’s a healthy activation. 

What happens with repeated stressors?

But when this stress response gets activated again and again, it becomes maladaptive on the body’s long term health. A higher amount of adverse childhood experiences (stressors) is linked to a greater chance of cancer, drug use, stroke and heart attacks. 

Often, the kids and teens I work with inherit or learn a portion of their perfectionism from one or both parents.

There’s of course the biological component of anxiety, and then the environmental. So if you have a perfectionist parent, you’re much more likely to engage in perfectionist tendencies as well.

That perfectionism often gets in the way of school performance, turning assignments in on time, or feeling incapable of handling unexpected stressors. So, how can we help?

Your picky eater may be a little annoying.

You go to a restaurant, you bring an extra meal for your kid. You and your partner make dinner, and your little one has a whole separate menu for themselves. You'd rather have them eat something than nothing, but you're a little worried that if they eat another chicken nugget, they're going to turn into one. 

Why are kids such picky eaters?

There are a lot of different reasons that kids can be picky eaters - but part of the underlying issue can be anxiety. 

There are always scary things happening in the world - some very close to home, and some very far away. 

Children are often aware of these scary things on some level, so it's important to talk to them, be it about terrorism, natural disasters, protests, violence, or even fears about nuclear actions. Especially with yesterday's news in Florida, which hits so close to home for so many of us with school aged children, or loved ones in Florida - it's hard to know what to say and how to say it.

Teens, pre-teens, even elementary school students are very aware of their bodies and appearances.

For some, they can become overly-aware of their body, and worry about being thin enough, even at a young age. This can stem for a multitude of concerns: bullying at school, well-meaning comments by relatives, or even commercials - but the impact can be huge. So what can parents do? 

Anxious or bratty kids?

Back in September, I contributed to an article entitled "Is Your Child Anxious Or Just Bratty? Experts Explain How to Tell," found on Romper, exploring the differences underpinning these two behaviors. What contributes to your child's anxiety vs. what contributes to them acting "bratty?" 

Kids and teens with anxiety, anger, or avoidance don't always volunteer information about their day. They may provide you with a few vague pieces of information about how school went, concerns they had with friends, or problems at class - or, they might not. It's helpful to have tools to actually hear more about their day. In this week's blog, I share some of the prompts that I often use in session to get kids and teens to dig a little deeper than just telling me "I'm fine." Click below to read more...

Counseling is all about making connections and figuring out goals. I work one-on-one with children and teens to make real change happen, but it's also important to take the time and see if your goals for your child or teen are the same as their goals for themselves.