New workshop in development! Click here to contact Carlita Singletary at leola.singletary@oaksintcare.org for more information. Is COVID-19 affecting your mental health?? Help is available 8 am – 8 pm 7 days a week. Text NJHOPE to 51684 or call 862 202-HELP

Nov 2019: Chores, Resiliency, Vaping

Dear Parents,

Welcome to the first edition of Let’s Talk, COPE’s new monthly parenting newsletter.  As part of our work in supporting area parents via workshops etc, we are always on the look out for useful parenting tips and important news that parents need to be aware of.  In addition, we regularly delve more deeply into various parenting-related topics that we post on our website SPENJ.ORG.  This newsletter is intended to share this information with you in an easily accessible format. 

Please reply to this email and let us know what you think of our newsletter.  Send us any topics or issues you want to learn more about.  We want this newsletter to be informative, useful, timely and worthwhile, so your feedback is very important!  

Thanks!

Susan, Ruth and Carol

COPE’s Parenting Team

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November’s featured parenting tip:

Time for a Parenting Re-set: Making Sure Those Chores Get Done (and Not By You) 

One cliché of parenting is complaining that no-one else helps around the house. Pay attention next time you feel like no one is helping. Every time you do the job that you’ve been nagging your child to do, not only are you making more work for yourself, but you’re reinforcing the lesson that they don’t have to do it. They are learning that procrastination pays off and that you don’t mean what you say.

Time for a parenting re-set. Once you’ve told a child to do something, you can’t do it for them! Next time your child disappears without hanging up her coat, fails to empty the dishwasher, or doesn’t put his dirty clothes in the hamper, STOP!!. Don’t do the job yourself and don’t yell up the stairs. Instead, track down your offspring, remind them of their responsibilities, and supervise the task to completion. If you fail to do this, you are teaching your child that your commands are meaningless.

You should also give some thought to consequences. They might be trivial, like leaving the laundry on the floor and shrugging when your son complains that his favorite t-shirt isn’t in the drawer, or more serious, like telling your daughter that she can’t go to the mall with her friends until her chores are done. Don’t let the moment pass because it feels easier to let it go; it only gets harder and you’re not doing your child any favors by skipping this opportunity to teach responsibility.

The Tip of the Week is updated on the website every week or two during the school year.  Click here to see the current Tip.  

Upcoming COPE parenting workshops:

November 17   Communication & Boundaries   West Orange Public Library

December 7     Active Listening          Union Congregational Church, Montclair

December 15     Active Listening        West Orange Public Library

November’s featured article:

Raising a Resilient Child

As a parent you know that a healthy diet, exercise, and a good night sleep are important for your child to grow and thrive. These are all about keeping the body healthy as well as nurturing social and emotional well-being. For a child to truly thrive, their mental health and intellectual development are two – but not the only other – aspects of development to pay attention to as a parent. And you can apply these same concepts to your own well-being. You’ve probably heard the term “resilience.” Resilience is, very simply, the ability to quickly recover from adversity. 

How does resiliency fit into your parenting goals? You can think about it as teaching your child to be a “half-full” kind of person and fighting the negativity of seeing the bad stuff in life as what defines you. Being able to adapt well in the face of challenges: turning around your day when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed; using “not doing well on a test” as a challenge to figure out how to do better next time and learn from less than satisfying results; not being devastated after losing the big game; how to mourn falling out with your best friend or breaking up with a girl or boy friend and not being defined by the ended relationship; as well as more serious adversity, trauma, or tragedy. 

What is the key to thriving in the face of the bad stuff? It is a kind of balance, of having the “muscle memory” of thought patterns and behaviors that replenish physical, mental and emotional reserves to bounce back.

Like so much of parenting, cultivating resiliency in your child means that your behavior and responses set the example that your child will mirror. Being resilient means developing your own emotional bank account.  click here to read more.

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Recent parenting news you may have missed:

We try to keep current on topics that are important to parents.  Teens and vaping are important news right now – here is some reliable information from trusted sources.  

Quick facts on the Risks of E-cigarettes from the Center for Disease Control 

Helping Teenagers Quit Vaping  from the NYTimes

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Looking for more parenting resources? Click here to visit our parenting website: supportingparentsessexnj.org. ___________________

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