Coping With National Tragedies

When tragedy hits our country, it hits all of us. Most of us experience a dizzying array of emotions from shock, sadness, disbelief, grieving, compassion, and even relief that the tragedy did not happen to us. The shooting at a small elementary school in Connecticut earlier this month shocked us all. How did this happen? Our children should be safe. How did that young man reach a point where he felt he had to kill his mother as well as innocent people and children? These are questions that have been asked since we heard about the shooting. These are the same questions that were asked when there was a massive shooting at the movie theater  at Columbine, at college campuses. Not only do we ask how these mass murders can happen, how can we prevent them, but how can we protect ourselves and especially our children? As the media uncovers more of the background story of this tragic event, and we hear and read stories daily, some will experience media induced post-traumatic stress. Everyone related to that school, students, siblings, friends, family, teachers, staff, neighbors, will develop some form of post-traumatic stress to accompany their grieving. It is very normal to experience stress in response to a traumatic event. However, if we buy in to the fear and begin to obsess about the event, keep our children from going to school, never go in to a movie theater  or back away from any public situation that involves large groups of people, then we reinforce the fear and make it part of us. In a way, that gives the shooter more power over us. To stay empowered, we must remember that we are no more vulnerable than we were before, we are just more aware of our vulnerabilities. These mass shootings are the exception rather than the rule, so they stand out. Think about all the millions of children that go off to school daily and are safe. Think about all the millions of people that go to the movie theater daily and are safe. If you have ever been in a car accident, you might recall feeling very jumpy when next you started to drive. Every shadow felt like a car crashing into you. It is not that you are more vulnerable to a car accident; it is that you are now much more aware that it can happen. If you give in to the fear and stop driving, it will be very hard to ever get comfortably behind the wheel of a car again. If you stop going to the movies, it will be hard to go back again. If you don’t send your children to school, you are telling them the world is too dangerous for them to go out. Yes, we need to be aware and take whatever precautions are available, but then we just have to go out and live our lives. 

In the county in which I live, there were rumors that kids were going to go to school with guns and there were going to be shootings. I sent my children to school with the message that we can’t cave in to rumors and stop living. As I dropped them off in the morning, I noticed that most of the parking lot was empty. At the end of the day, my children told me that most of their classes were virtually empty. What were we telling our children that day? We were telling them to believe wild rumors, give in to them, hand our power over to people that are not even rationale, and be afraid to live our lives. That is not the message we want to give our children or ourselves. We need to be stronger than that so we don’t live in the shadow of tragedy and fear.

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Family Rules for Consistent Parenting

 Children respond to structure and consistency. Any loop hole, such as not following through on a consequence, and your plan falls apart. If there are too many rules, especially if you have more than one child of varying ages, it becomes too hard to keep track. Behavior charts are great if you keep them simple and you are willing to be dedicated to them. However, many families find it too difficult to follow through with charts for more than one child. Grounding is also an option that many parents choose. However, there are two potential problems with this approach. First, when you ground a child, it means you have also grounded yourself in order to enforce the grounding. Since you did not do anything wrong, I don’t see why you should be grounded. I recommend a very modified version of grounding in which your child is grounded until they work off whatever consequences you have given them. Secondly, children often forget exactly why they are grounded, losing its effectiveness, and parents forget to enforce the length of the grounding or feel sad for their child, and lift the grounding. This also negates the consequence. For the family that wants some basic rules for parenting that does not involve too many steps or behaviors to keep track of, there is one basic principle and three general rules.

        

    Principle One: Tell your child exactly what you expect, when you expect the chore or work to be done, and how you expect the chore or work to be done. There is no guess work and no wiggle room to avoid the expected task. Remember, however, that we are working with children and it is unlikely you will get an immediate response. Let’s face it, whatever it is that you want your child to do is most likely not on the top of their priority list, competing with their favorite game, TV show, or playing outside with friends. It is perfectly normal and all right to have to remind your child of their chores or tasks. Therefore, incorporate one warning. Let your child know that this is their one and only warning. This means you do not give your child 5 or 6 warnings until you are worn down and start yelling. If you are yelling at your child, you most likely waited too long to intervene. Now your child just sees you as mean and you have to enforce your rule/expectation and deal with your inner guilt or anger. If you stay with one warning and then calmly give the consequence, you can avoid the anger/guilt cycle.

            Family Rules:

1. Show respect for parents and other adults. This means no arguing, even when you think you are right.

2. Do what you are told when you are told, with respect.

3. What you are asking for, when you argue, the answer is automatically no.

            Before you start a new program of rules and consequences, you will need to sit down with your child/children and explain the new program. Make sure they understand what is expected and what will happen if expectations are not followed. It is often helpful to have your child explain the system back to you and correct any misunderstandings. It is also important that you and your spouse or other caregiver collaborate on a list of chores and consequences you agree will reinforce your new expectations. Consequences should be immediate, concrete, and short. If you make the consequences long term, two problems may occur. First, your child may forget why they are being punished and just see you as mean. Second, as the parent, you are more likely to cave, diminishing the impact of your intervention.

            If you would like more detail about how to set up the rules and consequences in a user friendly way for your family, visit our bookstore and purchase our Interactive Worksheet: FAMILY RULES FOR CONSISTENT PARENTING. Happy parenting.

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New Year Resolutions

Happy New Year to everyone. With all the festivities over, the gifts given and received, family and friends visited, parties attended, it is time to get back to our normal routine. Or is it? So many people make a lengthy list of New Year’s resolutions and others, so discouraged from past resolutions that never went anywhere, have given up on making new resolutions. The end of the year is a good time to look back and see what your year has been about. How did you cope with whatever was not in your control? What was under your control that you actually changed or decided to keep in your life? Let’s start with the resolution list. If it is not a realistic list, you will be setting yourself up for failure. For example, if you state that you will never eat another carb, how likely is that really? If you want to change your life style, make small incremental goals that are more likely to lead to success. Many of us have either known someone or have ourselves purchased a gym membership with good intent. After a week of frenzied exercising, we are so sore that we are turned off and never go back, stating we don’t like it or we don’t have time. However, if you want to exercise more, maybe go for a 20 minute walk two to three times a week and gradually increase your speed and distance. As this gets easier, maybe increase your time or the number of times you walk. If you really want to join a gym, go slow. Have a trainer set up a program for you, possibly starting only 30 minutes twice a week and working your way up to a 60-minute session. If you do not like to exercise by yourself, check out a class. If you are self-conscious, go with someone and/or line up in the back so you don’t feel so exposed. Remember, the key is to set yourself up for success. If changing your eating is your goal, maybe consult with a nutritionist and learn how to eat healthy, allowing yourself to eat healthy carbs with some treats thrown in. If you feel deprived, your likelihood of success will go down. Maybe you want to read more. Again, telling yourself that you will read an hour a day may be very unrealistic. Look at your schedule and life style and set aside some time two to three days a week where you have some quiet time to read. Whatever the content of your desired change, take small, doable steps that you can gradually increase and set yourself up for success. Remember, success builds on success.

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Coping With The Holidays 

I hope this blog finds everyone having had a nice Thanksgiving. Some people love the holidays, some people hate the holidays, some people tolerate the holidays and some people are just overwhelmed by the holidays. Where ever you are on this continuum, you don’t need to adapt to the holiday season, rather, make the holiday season adapt to you. At this point you are probably asking yourself what I am talking about. Depending on where we are in our lives, our history will interact with and influence our experience of the holiday season. If we are older and have already experienced many losses, or we have experienced significant losses at any age, we may focus on the people we miss. We may miss past holidays that were good or we may remember in too much detail past holidays that were not so good, or even traumatic. We may feel pressured to make the holiday a certain way for our children, family members and friends, resulting in stress and anger instead of joy and happiness. We may also feel pressured to keep old family traditions alive, but they may no longer work for us. This is where we get back to making the holiday season adapt to you. It is so important to stay in the here and now. While most of us have people that we miss either due to death or distance, we need to focus on whom and what is in our lives now. If you don’t like crowds, don’t go to Black Friday and stay away from the malls in mid-day.

Go shopping at dinner time when the mall empties out or go to stores that are either not in the mall or have their own entrance. Give yourself permission to not overextend the holiday budget and make a plan of action regarding what you can spend for each person on your list. If you love to decorate, decorate. If you don’t love to decorate, then don’t. If you want to decorate differently this year, then do that. If you like holiday parties, then go to them, and if you don’t, then don’t go. If you like to entertain, then entertain and if you don’t, then don’t. Some traditions you may wish to keep and some you may wish to replace with new ones. I hope you are getting the message to embrace the holidays in anyway that works for you. Some years you may go away and some years you may stay home or visit friends and/or family. Each year does not have to be the same if you don’t want it to be, or it can be as similar to past years as you wish to make it. If you have children grieving, don’t minimize their grief, but don’t make the entire holiday about grieving. Show your children the balance of missing people, but still going forward and living life. If you have had trauma in your past associated with holidays, remind yourself that you are older, wiser, and stronger and your current holidays belong to you and not to your past. Patients often ask me for suggestions for gifts and activities for children. Here are a few suggestions for you to consider.

http://www.theshrinklink.com/Gift-Suggestions.html

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Coping with Peri-Menopause and Menopause

Welcome back to Shrink It Down. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Today I want to talk about peri-menopause, also known as pre-menopause, and menopause. So many women come to me in a state of confusion. It is not unusual for women to be referred to me to rule out a psychological problem, even though they have no history of psychological problems and no recent history of problems other than physical and psychological symptoms that are new to them. A thorough interview often suggests peri-menopause and a referral to their Gyn. Doc. On average, most women begin their journey into peri-menopause in their late 40’s and menopause in their early to mid 50’s. However, it can start as early as the mid to late 30’s or as late as the early 50’s. A woman is not in menopause until she has missed 12 consecutive menstrual cycles. Typically, your symptoms will tell you that you are in peri-menopause long before blood work validates what you already know. Peri-menopause is a natural transition of changes and loss of hormone levels. How you deal with this journey interacts with your personality, experiences and current life stressors.

Common symptoms may include irregular periods, hot flashes, night sweats, sleep difficulties, fatigue, irritability, depression, weight gain, fuzzy and foggy thinking, anxiety, headaches, poor stress tolerance, thinning hair or loss of hair, vaginal dryness, and even joint stiffness. Decreased sexual desire is also very common. Any combination of these symptoms is a lot to deal with, especially if you have other stressors in your life such as adolescent children at home, maybe taking care of aging parents, stressful job, money problems, relationship issues, or any loss in your life. I refer to peri-menopause as a scenic journey that involves some hazing into the next chapter in our lives. Everyone has their own collection of symptoms that are most challenging to them. I strongly encourage you to focus on acceptance with elegance and a great sense of humor. If you are hot, let yourself be hot without apology and your family will adjust to freezing for awhile. If you have night sweats, keep clean sleep wear by your bed side, along with a large towel you can use to cover the damp part of your bed so you don’t have to get up and remake your bed, somehow doing this around your husband or partner. Biotin is great for thinning hair, black cohash is good for hot flashes, and your Dr. can prescribe hormonal creams for dryness. Work with your Doctor regarding hormone replacement, natural remedies, and symptom relief. Make sure you are working with someone you are comfortable with and who is receptive to both traditional and homeopathic interventions. Many women find therapy to be very helpful as they learn to deal with the physical and emotional changes they are experiencing. Two main issues that women often address in therapy are their mood regulation when their children come home from school and the after school chaos overwhelms them. Often a mild anti-anxiety in the late afternoon on a rough day can be very helpful. The second main issue is what I refer to as swiss cheese brain. This is when you have holes in your memory and the holes keep moving, like in a carnival game. The most important intervention for swiss cheese memory is that sense of humor I mentioned, and good notes. Although this is not actually one of the major problems women bring in to therapy, decreased libido can present a problem for some couples. When women bring their partners in to discuss the situation, some education and suggestions are often all it takes to get partners on the same page. Talking to friends or relatives also on this journey can be helpful, as long as it is not just a litany of complaints. This is a time when you really need to take care of yourself with eating healthy, exercise, relaxation, and socialization. There is life after peri-menopause, I promise!

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 Coping With Aging Issues 

Welcome back.  Recently one of my patients asked me to write about coping with aging, so this is for her and everyone else who has had to deal with this issue either in themselves or with someone they love.  If we are fortunate, all of us will have to some day deal with the aging process.  There are as many ways to age as there are people.  However, there are some similarities that we will all face if we live long enough.  As people age they have to deal  with losses, often on multiple levels.  These losses may include loss of a spouse or partner, sometimes the loss of a child, loss of physical integrity and loss of income and life style.  The older we get, the more people we tend to lose. Not only people in our families, but friends and their family members as well.  As one patient told me, at 85, even losing actors and favorite authors was painful because it was one more connection with her world that was lost.  Grief tends to piggy back on other  losses and each time we lose someone, we may re-grieve other people we have lost.  As painful as this is, as much as this is the part of life that we do not like, it is so important that we focus on who is here, enjoying the newer members of our families, enjoying the new people we meet, and living in the present and not in the past.  While we never forget those who are gone, if we live in the present the loss is an ache rather than an acute and chronic pain.  It is important to stay as active and involved as possible.  Leave your house daily.  Don’t hide from life.  Reach out to others, such as through family, friends, clubs, volunteering, and church or temple.  If you are housebound, stay involved with people by inviting them to visit you.  Call family and friends, write them, read, watch movies, listen to the news.  If you live in a community that has social activities, go to them.  I once went to a local play in a seniors community and I was so impressed with some of the people who showed up in wheel chairs and with oxygen masks because they did not allow that to stop them from enjoying themselves.  This leads into talking about dealing with declining physical health or abilities.  Some of us stay active and in shape, some of us don’t.  

Some of us stay generally healthy, some of us have to deal with debilitating and chronic illnesses.  Again, try not to go to the past, but stay in the present and focus on what you can do.  Make your life as enriched as you can, even if you can’t leave your home alone, even if you spend much of your time in  bed or can no longer walk or get around on your own.  If you can no longer read, listen to books on tape, listen to music, record your life stories for your family, and again, invite people to visit you.  If you withdraw from life, everything is that much harder.  If you need to rest, then rest, but try and achieve as much stimulation as you can on any given day.  A major adjustment for many people is the loss of income, followed by downsizing.  Some people embrace downsizing, many others find it depressing.  Think about the pluses of downsizing.  Use this as an opportunity to give away anything you never really liked that much.  Think about what you really want or need.  If you have been storing items for years and not using them, you probably don’t need them.  While many may grieve getting rid of possessions, many also find that it is nice not be owned by their possessions.  Let someone else enjoy them.  If you have to move in with family or into a facility, make your room a reflection of who you are and surround yourself with the things that make you smile.  Remember, it is your turn to be older, wiser and revered by those younger than yourself.  Enjoy your wisdom that comes with years, and make aging a process to embrace and enjoy.  You are the role model for the next generation, and they are just behind you.

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    Raising Children and Staying Sane 

Welcome back to Shrink It Down.  I am frequently asked about methods and strategies for parenting children as they progress through their developmental stages.  The best overall advice I can give is to stay consistent.  Your child is a master at finding loop holes, making you feel guilty, and making you second guess yourself.  How do children do this?  It is actually quite easy.  Your child is born and you fall madly in love with them and you want to protect them from every little hurt and you worry about them, and take care of all their needs.  Your child becomes the center of your universe.  One morning, your child realizes they are separate from you and they can say “no”,  they can not cooperate, they can even voice different opinions and tell you that your are mean, wrong, and no longer remember what it is like to be young.  In other words, they have the power to hurt you like no other and they have no idea the pain they deliver to you.  You, on the other hand, still have the agenda of never hurting them if you can help it.  So what is a parent to do?  Set consistent boundaries for your child and as they develop, reassess those boundaries and expand on them.  However, you must be consistent with your follow through at a very young age.  If your child learns that they have a chance of wearing you down so they can get their own way, they will do it and most likely, do it well.  When your child is very young, consequences should be brief, concrete and immediate or your child will forget why they are being punished and simply state to themselves and anyone who asks that you were just being mean.  When my twin sons were between the ages of 2 and 5, if they would fight over a toy and not share, I would put the offending toy in time out and tell them that if the toy makes them that unhappy, we would put it away.  

My friends used to laugh at that, but at that young age I found it much easier to put the offending object in time out than trying to keep them in time out.  Always do debriefing.  When I would give the toy back, we would talk about why the toy was in time out and what they needed to do to keep the toy out of time out.  Even when your child is older, about ages 5 through 10, and you put them in time out, when you go to retrieve them, debrief and discuss why they were in time out and what you expect them to do differently the next time.   As for older children, I do not believe in grounding because than the parent is grounded and the parent has not done anything wrong. I prefer to tell the child they have no privileges at all until they finish a short list of chores.  If I approve of their work, then privileges are restored.  In essence, they are grounded until the chores are completed, and this can take an hour or a month and it is their choice, giving them some control in the process.  That allows you to start the next day new.  When groundings are too long, children tend to forget their crime, and if they act out during grounding, you really have no where to go.  All that being said, look at your expectations for your child and decide if your expectations are realistic.  Children are not little adults and it is really not a priority for them to clean their room , take out the trash, or put their laundry away.  That is your priority.  If you accept that, you may find you do not get as angry, and you may even be able to laugh and play with them regarding their “not done” chores.  To help you achieve this mind set, think about how you would want an adult to deal with you at that age in that situation.  If you stay consistent throughout their childhood and parent them, you will have very little reason to parent them as they get older.  Parent now and have a friend later, be a friend  now and parent for the rest of your life. 

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