Taking Action

Give your college bound teen the link to CDC’s webpage (College Health and Safety), which addresses these and other issues:

There are all kinds of tests in college–beyond those you take for a grade.

• Social and sexual pressures.
• The temptation of readily available alcohol, drugs, and unhealthy food.
• The challenge of getting enough sleep.
• Stress from trying to balance classes, friends, homework, jobs, athletics, and leadership positions.

One way you can do this is to have them add it to the contacts list in their phone.

Worried that you’ve forgotten something? This checklist is a useful reminder:

• Make a plan – what do they do if they get sick?
• Make a contract – if you’re paying, what are your requirements? Have your teen sign consent for you to get grade reports
• Nuts and bolts – do they know how to do laundry?
• What supports did they have in High School that will disappear?
• Do they need to register with the Office of Students with Disabilities?
• Create a budget together; identify who is responsible for which expenses
• How will they choose classes? Plan their schedule?
• What should they do if they feel homesick?

Make time for family fun:

Cook together their favorite recipes, especially the easy ones that they can reproduce in their dorm’s kitchen to wow their roommates. Make index card copies of the recipes and an online version that you can send to them later in the year.

Sit down together to make a photobook online and order 2 copies, one for you at home and one to send with them to college.

Make plans to check something off of your child’s bucket list before they leave for school. If the whole family can participate, even better.

Mindful Parenting: Techniques for Practicing Emotional Regulation

(Drawn from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (Adapted from Rathus & Miller, 2015)

Understand and name your emotions; identify them and know what they do for you.

• Ask yourself questions about what you are feeling; what is it, what prompted it, does your emotion fit the facts?

Decrease the frequency of unwanted emotions, by changing them once they start

• Step back and get unstuck; shift attention away from the emotion you are feeling.

Decrease emotional vulnerability and increase resiliency

• Practice TIP: Change your body Temperature to change your automatic nervous system

Intensely exercise to calm down your body

Progressively relax your body

Reduce emotional suffering by managing extreme emotions:

• Accumulate positive emotions and recollections of pleasant events, build your emotional muscle through practice, anticipate strong emotions and map out your response.
• Physical well-being matters by practicing Please:

Treat Physical Illness

Balance Eating

Avoid Mood Altering Substances

Balance Sleep

Exercise

Build your reservoir of positive activities:

• Short term: do and feel things that make you feel good and, whenever possible, try not to focus on worries.
• Long term:
• Don’t avoid or procrastinate doing those things that you don’t want to face. Putting them off creates additional anxiety and stress.
• Set goals for yourself related to what you value. Make these things that you can
• Pick one of the goals and make a plan with achievable action steps. Include a way to measure and keep track of your progress.
• Get to work! Start immediately on the first action step.
• Give yourself credit for each action step and share your success. Celebrate the accomplishment of your goal.
• Reflect on how your achievement impacts your emotional well-being and regulation. You’re building a kind of mental muscle that supports emotional resiliency.

Curious to try meditation?

“Mindfulness of Breathe” from The Free Mindfulness Project. This website includes free guided meditation exercises, http://www.freemindfulness.org/

 

Preparation
Sit or lie in a comfortable position. You may choose to close your eyes or keep them open, if you are feeling tired it may be useful to let just a little bit of light in to keep you alert.

 

The Breath
Begin by gently moving your attention onto the process of breathing. Notice the sensations of each breath as it happens, whether you focus on the rise and fall of your chest or abdomen, or on the feeling of the breath at the nostrils. Really feel what it is like to breath, just observing it as it happens.

As you engage in this exercise you may find that your mind wanders, caught by thoughts or by noises in the room, or bodily sensations. When you notice that this happens, know that this is okay, and simply notice the distraction but gently bring your attention back to the breath.

 

Ending the exercise
Take a few moments to yourself, connecting with your experience in the present moment. Expand your awareness from the breath into the space around you, and as you feel comfortable to do so, opening your eyes and bringing the exercise to a close.

 

Reflections
Take a few moments to think about what your experience was in this exercise, and how you feel in the present moment.

Tips for Talking with Someone You Disagree With

• Before the conversation begins, use the techniques for regulating your emotions and relaxing your body. Remind yourself of techniques to counteract your emotional reflexes.
• Start the conversation with open-ended questions and statements: “Why do you feel this way?” and “Help me to understand your position…”
• Be respectful, even when you disagree. Try to understand why a person feels the way they do.
• Calmly present your own position or point-of-view.
• Create common ground, even if it is unrelated to what you’re talking about.
• Agree to keep talking even if no resolution is reached.
• Offer options for resolution or compromise
• Your goal isn’t winning the argument or convincing the other person; the goal is finding an agreement, which may just be an acknowledgment of differences.

 

Steps to Unplug and Tune out the Noise from Social Media and the News

1. Create a parking lot for your family’s technology.
2. Limit when you check your devices – even if you need to be on-call for work, carve out a block of time where you commit to not checking email or social media.
3. If the news is making you crazy, create playlists of music or entertaining (but not political comedy) podcasts.
4. Establish a routine for when you check the headlines. Don’t do it first thing in the morning, during the witching hour between the end of the school/work day and dinner.
5. Use a timer to limit the time spent on social media. If you’re really hooked, set up “parental controls” for yourself!
6. Don’t take your device to bed; even better, don’t use a screen for the hour before you go to sleep.
7. Find ways for your family to be together without cell phones in hand – family dinner or game night, outdoor play, or shared hobbies.
8. When you get together with friends, have everyone agree to not look at or use their phones or tablets.

Getting better at regulating your emotions isn’t only about control, it’s about action.

If there is an issue you care about, find ways to get involved.

Volunteer locally.

Get out and get active. If the gym isn’t your thing, find a friend to walk with regularly.

It can make your head spin thinking about all of the issues around technology and family life. A little self-evaluation is an important step in creating technology-life balance in your home. The key is to remember that we are just as vulnerable as our children are to getting lost in a fog of technology.

Your child may be so much more tech-savvy that you are, but you have the wisdom and life-experience to guide them through the challenges that technology poses, just like you help them learn how to be empathetic, thoughtful and productive people in other respects.

But you need to take the first step. Have you ever been on the computer or using your smart phone or tablet when: you’re having a meal with your child, they’re struggling to get everything organized for the day in the morning, they walk through the door after school, they’re telling you about the day or asking for help with homework, you’re watching a practice, game or performance (or even waiting for any of these to begin), they are answering a question you just asked them, they’re getting ready for bed, or you’re just hanging out together. The answer is almost certainly yes to at least one of these examples. And there are probably more you can think of for yourself.

Turn the timer back on yourself, and limit your own use of electronics. It is hard to resist taking the phone out of your bag to check for that work email while your child goes to find the library books that need to be returned. Resist the temptation. Be present so that you don’t miss the subtle cue your child may be sending when they walk in the door and you know to keep asking questions about how their day went. Otherwise, you might not learn what is making them sad or what help they need. When you ask your child to put their cell phone aside during family dinner or when you’re playing a board game together, you need to do the same. Unless you model the behavior you want, your efforts are doomed to failure.

This effort is an opportunity to get curious about what your child is thinking and feeling. The conversation may start about how hard it is to not feel like you have to immediately respond to every electronic ping and chirp, but with persistence, something magical may happen and shared experience may plant a seed that stays with your child forever and becomes a precious memory.

A simple outline for teaching your teen responsible decision-making:

1. Define the goal or outcome
2. Ask how to achieve the goal
3. Help them to implement their plan
4. Assess together whether the strategy is working

Tips for listening without judgment:

1. Ask your teen to define the problem rather than telling them what you see as the problem.
2. If the problem is a big one (I hate my life!), help to break it down into something manageable and tangible (I don’t have any fun plans for this weekend.)
3. Ask what is the problem.
4. Brainstorm solutions. The key to brainstorming is that there is not wrong answer. Just let all the ideas flow for five minutes, then evaluate the ideas and eliminate those that don’t work.
5. You, as the parent, are the one with the better developed executive functioning. Have follow-up conversations to make sure your teen is taking action. Discuss any modifications to the original plan. Praise your teen’s efforts. Keep the conversation going until each party is satisfied. There is a difference between win-win and compromise.