For many parents, the return of children back to school is a mixture of relief and stress. We feel stressed because there’s a lot of prep work for the return to school and there is also a sense of relief when we can all get back to a set routine and schedule.
Leading up to the first day of school for your kids, you may notice feelings of concern, fear, and nervousness or even anger and irritability.
Depending on the professional with whom you speak, mental health can sometimes be referred to as emotional health or behavioral health. To me, they’re all the same. It’s hard to differentiate our cognitions (mental) from our emotions and our reactions (behaviors) because they are all interconnected and influence one another. What is happening in our environment impacts the way we think about ourselves and our surroundings, influences how we feel both physically and emotionally, and therefore causes us to react in our behavior. While emotions can oftentimes be recognized through non-verbal communication, we cannot read one another’s minds, and yet, the behaviors of children are oftentimes what gets the grownup’s attention. Challenging behaviors are usually why parents call us for support.
As the school-year ends, many families embrace a slower schedule, or lack thereof. Taking a break from the busy school schedule is well-deserved, but if you’re like my family, some structure and routine to the day can keep things interesting when day in and day out at home can seem boring after a while.
A summer schedule can also help set some boundaries around use of technology, which research shows is correlated to poor academic performance and higher mental and emotional health symptoms. And at least at my house, the more screen time there is, the more outbursts we have, which tells me their brains need less of it! If you want to include technology time in your summer schedule, you could designate a limited amount somewhere throughout the day.
When couples decide to end a relationship and it leads to the breakup of a family with children, the amount of information to process can be somewhat overwhelming. While the separation may be what’s best for everyone involved, how the information is shared with children will be a memory they hold forever. How this family change is shared can impact the trajectory of the entire transition for each child. This process should be handled with tender care and with an emphasis on how you, the parents, will provide physical, mental, and emotional safety for each child. Here’s a simple list to guide you through a very challenging decision making process which can help you share this news with your children in the most honest and gentle way possible.
As a Therapist who has spent over a decade working with families and children, I’ve had the great privilege of sharing the various journeys of many, many clients. Some journeys (especially at the end of my work with clients) take a positive turn; I cherish the moments when I see clients thriving and no longer needing therapy for the time being. Most people, however, begin their work with me at the start of a challenging journey, such as a journey of separation and divorce. Since I specialize in working with children, teens, and parents, the caregivers typically reach out to me after they’ve made decisions to end their relationship. They are oftentimes seeking out support for the purposes of best caring for their children through the transition. Sometimes they need support in developing c0-parenting skills, and sometimes they need support in how to tell their children about the divorce (and most times, both). If you need help in planning how to tell your children you are separating, this article may be helpful, here.
My partner and I have two children, who are four years apart in age. As anxious and loving new parents, we participated in our oldest child’s play as much as we could, and as early as we could. From infancy, we joined our oldest on the floor to show interest in his world, communicate with him in the language he speaks (play), and demonstrate his importance and value to us. As a Registered Play Therapist, I teach parents daily about the importance of child’s play and how children learn, problem solve, communicate, express, and work through their feelings, all through play. I also educate families about how much love and significance a child feels when parents join in the activities that bring joy to the child; it builds connection! And as we know, when children are more connected, they are generally more cooperative. So much good comes from playing with your children!
Have you ever wondered what a day at a play therapy conference might look like? I can assure you, it’s a lot of fun! I recently attended a fun Play Therapy Conference focused on Puppets in Play Therapy and Nature Play Therapy. Here are some highlights of the conference. After checking in I found my seat with some colleagues from Creative Family Counseling and some play therapists from Hazard, Ky. We chatted a bit and then our trainer, Jaime Lynn Langely, LCSW, RPT-S, started the class with a fun challenge. She had us list all the ways we might use a small brown paper bag in play therapy. I listed 11 which was the most of all the people in attendance. I won a prize for having the most responses! My clients will definitely use these prizes. This was a great way to start the conference!
Adolescence is a challenging time for most parents. Often in our therapy offices at Creative Family Counseling we hear from parents that they knew how to care for their children when they were small, but that they feel like estrangement or conflict are inevitable as their child navigates adolescence. While it is understandable that many parents feel this way, it is the cultural stereotype of teenager/parent relationships. The loss of connection between you and your child does not have to be inevitable.
A parent recently called and said she was looking for a “Feelings Teacher” for her two children. I explained that this was not necessarily a title I’d been given before, but that perhaps I could help. While discussing what exactly her goals would be for bringing her children in to see a “Feelings Teacher,” she identified what I would call typical treatment goals for counseling with children:
Creative Family Counseling is known for offering creative interventions to help clients and their families experience change and healing. Animal-Assisted Therapy is one of the unique modalities of therapy available for clients of our practice. Rebecca Street, LMFT and a sweet Doberman Pinscher named Archer are one of the two animal-assisted therapy teams at Creative Family Counseling. I sat down with them for a quick interview about the amazing work they offer to their clients.