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 I know that when I had the realization about my toddler, my lovely but also monstrous at times toddler, that he just doesn’t leave our house anymore. It helped me recognize what I was needing a lot more of, which is a little bit of time alone where I don’t have to take care of anyone but me. I’m sure we have all seen, and laughed at, the posts on Insta and Facebook about parents going to great lengths to get some time alone these days. Like the one about sending your kids in another room to look for a toy you have in your pocket? I definitely laughed and then realized that maybe we should all pool together ideas that parents are using to help themselves get a bit of alone time while we are all home together so much more. Here are some of my ideas and strategies I have been using:
These are just a few ideas I had! I’d love to hear more in the comments and for parents to share out of the box ways to get some time alone. Also, I want to remind everyone that it is perfectly natural to struggle without having time alone… If you have an ideal version of yourself as a parent who is always kind, patient, and loving and also around your kids 24/7 – you might be struggling with that as it is entirely unrealistic. In order to help ourselves be the best, most intentional versions of our parenting selves, we likely need some time to recharge our batteries and regroup. Especially during hard days and unfortunately, during a pandemic, there is just no shortage of hard days! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.
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 Talking about race to children can be a touchy subject. Some parents might not even have an option to talk about race because their children would have to learn about it by what they confront in their everyday life. Teaching your children about race early on is actually beneficial given that children as young as 6 months are able to notice racial differences! In fact, there have been research on newborns and infants showing racial biases towards members of their own race. Talking about race to a young child could be as simple as pointing out the physical differences they notice. For example, a 3-year-old might ask questions about skin color or hair texture. The hard part though… is the discussion about racism. The recent events might prompt children to ask questions. While some might wonder if it could be better to turn off the tv and shield their little young minds until they are old enough to understand, we have to remember that children notice and receive many messages around them no matter how much we try to control it. And importantly, if we are not discussing these kinds of topics, they will make their own assumptions and come up with their own ideas about why that is or how we feel. Even though it is challenging or might be uncomfortable, it is important to lean into these crucial conversations and explore together the questions they have and what we can all do to be better humans in the world. So where do we start? In order to feel comfortable talking about race to your children, you have to first be comfortable with talking about it yourself. It’s better to be proactive than to wait for children to ask you questions. While you have these discussions with other adults in your life, notice what comes up for you. What ideas or assumptions do you hold? Where did they come from? When you become aware of your own biases, it is more likely that you’ll be able to work on it and overcome it so you don’t pass it on unknowingly. And remember that this part is never complete. Gaining awareness of our preconceived ideas about racial groups and challenging the way we think about race is an ongoing process. When you speak to your children about race or racism, there are key points to remember. Let them ask questions. We all know children may not necessarily ask questions in the most polite or respectful way. But giving them a safe space to do so with YOU would be a good opportunity to start a discussion. Even when the questions are uncomfortable for you, embrace the question and encourage your child to keep asking them. When children are shamed about asking questions, they learn quickly to stop doing it. It’s also okay to be emotional. Because they are receiving information about themselves and about others, this can spark a lot of feelings. The most important thing about the emotions that may come up for you or your child is to normalize them. Tell your child that it is understandable to feel sad or angry about the injustice in the world and that you do too. And remember that this is a marathon. You don’t need to have all the answers and be able to have a discussion with them in the moment. For younger children, you can start by explaining what racial differences mean. They might say something like “his skin looks dirty…”. While your instinct might be to shush your child as you want to teach them not to be rude or disrespectful, you are unintentionally teaching them that talking about race is not okay. You can say, “His skin is brown, but it isn’t dirty. His skin color is just different from yours because we all have different levels of something called melanin. People come in all colors, shapes, and sizes”. Asking questions such as “what makes you say that?” or “why do you think so?” can help you understand where these ideas are coming from. And even though talking about physical differences (hair, skin color, etc) may seem like the most obvious, don’t forget to mention other factors that are important to diversity such as cultural practices or languages. This will help shift the attention away from looks and towards other qualities. I remember in Kindergarten, my teacher read a book about the different types of homes people lived in around the world and as an Asian American immigrant who had just moved to the U.S., it was so nice to see my teacher focus on something other than what I already knew was different about me… my skin tone or my eyes. Older children might have more questions as they start to observe the world around them. This is an opportunity to have discussion that involve more critical thinking. You can start talking about stereotypes and biases, and what they mean. Not only can you talk about how these statements are hurtful, you can also talk about inequality, inclusion, and exclusion. Why is generalizing a whole group of people bad? Does someone benefit from it? What can we do to help? How would you feel if someone was thinking or talking that way about you? Lastly, I encourage everyone to integrate more diversity into their lives. My favorite Disney princess is Mulan, and it always will be. I remember watching Mulan for the first time on VHS and I happily pointed out to my parents that there’s someone who looks just like me on TV! And sadly, out of all my toys, the Mulan doll was the only one I had that looked like me. Take this opportunity to notice what your child is exposed to. Who is portrayed in the media they consume? What do their toys look like? Do they go to a diverse school? Perhaps it’s time to intentionally include things that feature people from different races and ethnicities. Remember what I said about this being a marathon? It’s okay to make a mistake and to regret the way you answered a question. You are a role model for your child. Acknowledge that adults can make mistakes too and that you’re still learning to be better. This is a challenging topic to discuss, and like most uncomfortable topics, it is one of the most important conversations we can have. If you are interested in resources about how to further these conversations and help your child be an Anti-Racist, please check out our new resource page all about this topic. As always, we at Thrive are here for you and your families and hope to help you further your ability to have difficult, often uncomfortable, but important conversations in your families and address the topics that are coming up in our world. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  So, this has certainly been a wild ride for our family, as I imagine it has been for yours as well. While my husband and I both feel very lucky to be able to work and provide for our family right now, having our toddler son home with us full time while also working full time has been a challenge to say the least. While I do not have a ton of suggestions for families on how to make decisions about increasing their social circles in order to manage this situation better (for example through nannies or daycares or other sorts of supports), I do feel that we all need to recognize and weigh out the costs and benefits of these steps. As a parent myself and a therapist working primarily with families or parents, I am watching the dramatic impact of social distancing on all of our families. While I am relatively cautious about exposing our family to risk, I completely understand why families are choosing to make some exceptions to help themselves cope. This is one of the toughest situations we have all been in collectively and it is hitting families with young and school age children the hardest. I also have noticed that some weeks seem to be more challenging than others. My friends and I have said that we need to readjust our gages of how people are doing. Rather than 1-10 being a range of happy to sad (or something along those lines), it has now become more like 1 is in a pit of despair and 10 is keeping my head above water! While there have certainly been moments of true connection and joy with my family, there have been equally challenging times of wondering how the heck we are going to keep this up much longer without totally falling apart. One of my favorite ways to keep going during hard times is through affirmations and at times, I seem to find a “theme song” of sorts to help me cope and process my feelings. My current theme song is “Good job” by Alicia Keys. If you haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend this song as an anthem for parents right now. We are all doing a good job with what we have been given, which is a pretty difficult situation! Other than the theme song suggestion, I thought I would make a list of affirmations for families during tough times like this. Hopefully it is helpful to you on those tough days!
I also thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts about affirmations about our children during a time like this. As much as most of us know that this situation is hard on them too, it might be a good way to remember that!
I genuinely hope these ideas help motivate you to come up with your own list of affirmations, mantras, or intentions to help get through this situation. As we all know, this situation is so far beyond our control that the only thing we can control is our reaction. While doing so has certainly been a challenge, taking little steps every day to cope better will hopefully add up to this situation being less challenging in some small way! At Thrive, we are happy to help support you and your family if you are struggling right now! We are accepting new referrals both for individual therapy and parent consultation but also group therapy! We have three groups currently – Teen Anxiety, Young Adult, and Parent Support. Check out this page for more information. At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  An Open Letter to the Thrive Community and Friends
 For those of us who are parenting young children right now, the struggle is truly real. It has been and continues to be at times completely overwhelming to try to both continue to work as well as parent my own toddler. I am hearing the same from the families that I work with at my office (virtually of course right now!). I thought it might help to compile some of the things that my family has been doing to help support our son right now. The truth is this blog post came out of a particularly difficult morning where my son was struggling to adjust on Monday to having another “dad working in the garage” morning. I could tell during breakfast that he was sad and missing dad but just couldn’t say it. Of course, these feelings then manifested into some behaviors which are of course expected at this age but can leave any parent (including me) feeling completely inept. I wanted to offer support to other parents struggling with similar situations by sharing the way I have been trying to handle things as much as possible (believe me, I am not perfect either!).
This is a particularly hard time to be a parent to a young or school age child. As parents, we often are the ones setting the tone in our families and I notice that while my family is adjusting to this situation, we are much quicker to struggle than we used to be. I think this is just the nature of the situation so we are trying to be proactive in our self-care right now. If you are struggling to figure out how to engage in self-care because most of what you used to do is now unavailable (ex. Massages, nights out, time away, gym classes, beach days, etc.), try to start with thinking about your personal needs. And not what you think you should need but what you really need as a person to thrive. For me, I need some down time as well as time to feel connected with friends and our community. While this is by no means as possible for me as it was before, I have found that even a little bit of time by myself (even just a walk on the weekends alone) and just a little bit of time to miss a daily routine like bedtime has been helpful. I am fortunate that I have a partner who can help with this and recognize that some people don’t have that available right now. I would encourage you still to focus on figuring out what it is you are looking for in your life and strategies or ways to access it, even while social distancing. As always, I am of the belief that the more parents are feeling effective, peaceful, and calm within themselves, the more they can parent from a place of intention and less reaction. At Thrive, we are happy to help support you and your family if you are struggling right now! We are accepting new referrals both for individual therapy and parent consultation but also group therapy! We have three groups currently – Teen Anxiety, Young Adult, and Parent Support. Check out this page for more information about our groups! At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio. To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/dsgLNL.  "As it should be" |
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