The Ten-Minute Toddler Turnaround | Improving Sleep

The Ten-minute Toddler Turnaround | Improving Sleep: Changing your toddler’s sleep health in ten-minutes.

The book we’ve been waiting for!

STEP 001 [PLAN]

LEARN HOW SLEEP HELPS THE BRAIN

ONE HOUR OF SLEEP IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “A” STUDENTS AND “B” STUDENTS

REDUCE LIGHT AND SOUND

FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR TODDLER LIKES

STEP 002 [IMPLEMENT]

DEVELOP A CLEAR ROUTINE

START WITH HARDEST TASKS AND GO TO EASIEST (CLEAN UP TOYS Ü BRUSH TEETH Ü READ BOOK Ü BOTTLE)

DO IT THE SAME EVERY NIGHT, IT REDUCES ANXIETY AND TRIGGERS SLEEP

STEP 003 [CONTINUATION]

KEEP DOING IT

TALK TO OTHER PARENTS AND LEARN FROM THEM

DON’T BE TOO HARD ON YOURSELF OR YOUR TODDLER

MentalWellnessCounseling

We help angry kids, frustrated parents, and distant couples…

                                                             …and just about everyone else.

WWW.MENTALWELLNESSCOUNSELING.COM

9  ways to get better sleep

Sleep is when our brains organize what has happened. Most adults need at least 7 hours of sleep. People/kids in school need 8-10 hours to appropriately categorize what they have learned.

Less sleep = More anxiety/depression/academic failure

Don’t have a TV in your bedroom, it stimulates your brain to think it is morning and makes your brain want to be awake in bed

Turn off screens 30 minutes before bed, it’s like looking at the sun and wondering why you are awake

Keep a notepad next to your bed to write down ideas/to-do list, it frees up your brain

Go to bed and wake up around the same time every day

Reduce caffeine after 3:00 pm

No alcohol 2 hours prior to bed

Take a melatonin (talk to your doctor first)

Breathe deeply

Focus on something like tightening and releasing your muscles, to stop yourself from thinking about the day or tomorrow

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor and the owner of Mental Wellness Counseling in Traverse City, MI, where he helps families, kids, parents, couples, and individuals to reach their goals. He knows that sleep issues are prevalent with kids and parents, when families can have stronger bedtime routines, issues of behavior, anxiety, depression, and academic concerns all typically improve. He is also the author of Mental Wellness Parenting | A remarkably simple approach to making parenting easier

Joe’s New Book

Mental Wellness Parenting | A remarkably simple approach to making parenting easier

From Mental Wellness Parenting | A remarkably simple approach to making parenting easier:

Control vs. Voice

So how do we use this new information about guiding our kids to help them change their behavior? Ultimately, you have no control over your child. They make decisions every day. They are their own persons.

Webster’s defines “control” as: “To exercise restraining or directing influence over. To have power over. Reduce the incidence or severity of especially to innocuous levels <control an insect population> <control a disease>”

The part of this definition that I like is the “directing influence over”. I would argue that this comes less from control and more from having a voice in your child’s life.

One of Webster’s definitions of “voice” is, “wish, choice, or opinion openly or formally expressed.” So to have a “voice” in your child’s life is for your wishes, choices, and opinions to somehow take root in them.

Think about who has a voice in your life. Who can say to you, “Here is my opinion” and you consider it?

Is it your mom?

Dad?

Best friend?

Wife or husband or significant other?

How did they gain that voice in your life? Did they do something? Did they act a certain way? Is it because you have seen how they live their life and you respect that? Do you aspire to be like them or certain parts of them? What is it that allows them to have that voice, not control, in your life?

I believe that it is trust. They somehow built trust in you. Building a voice comes from trust. For kids, that trust comes from three specific things. To build trust as parents we must demonstrate:

1. Consistency and love
2. Set an example
3. Spur something in our children that brings life

Consistency and Love

In future chapters I will discuss more in-depth what this looks like and ways that you can increase consistency and demonstrate your love. One definition of “consistency” is “agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.”

To be a consistent parent, you have to have harmony in what you do. What does this mean? It means that it is better to say nothing at all, rather than a false promise. By false promise I mean not following through on things you say. If you give a warning to a child regarding their behavior, then follow through.

When you start thinking this way, two things will happen inside of you. First, you will slow down the frequency of threats that you make because you know that you need to follow through. Also, you will evaluate the intensity of threats.

One thing about threats: they don’t work.

Threats don’t work

Why don’t threats work? Think about it this way. Your boss keeps coming in your office for two weeks reminding you of a date that a report is due. She says, “If it’s not on my desk on November 12th, then I’m writing you up.” November 12 comes and goes, you had some crazy things happen in your family and you just couldn’t get it done.

Then in January she does the same thing for the report due January 29th. Again you miss the mark and it comes and goes, yet no write up. Imagine this happened over 18 years in the company. Sometimes she does write you up sometimes she doesn’t.

Now imagine a different scenario. At a staff meeting she announces that reports need to be timely. To try and help the staff keep it in their mind, if the November 12th report is in on time you will get an overnight at the hotel of your choice and if not, then you will be written up.

No more reminders.

Then she does what she says.

Often parents believe that they have a voice in their child’s life and that is enough, but really a voice is earned through consistency. Your action of giving positive or negative consequences will speak more than anything you could say ahead of time or threaten.

Even when threats do seem to work, it is usually not based on building a long-term voice in your child’s life.

The second part of this is building love. I trust that you love your child deeply; otherwise you would not be reading this book. So it is not how to build your love for your child that is the issue, it is how do children receive love?
Consistency in parenting helps kids feel safe. If you are about to manage a child in a grocery store and help her choose good choices there, then you can definitely take on any monster, bad dream, bully, and tornado. Kids fear all sorts of things.

A psychologist named Maslow created what he called the “Hierarchy of Needs”. His belief was that if basic needs are not met is it is harder or impossible to work toward higher needs. Thus, if safety needs of security aren’t met, it is harder to build feelings of love and belonging.

I had a client recently who had her apartment broken into. She was staying up all night because she was scared someone would break in, then she was sleeping during the day, but her classes were slipping. Her feelings of lack of safety made it harder for her to do more complex thinking like that which is required in school.

The same is true for kids, as they see that you can handle a variety of situations, they will trust that you can protect them…

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor and owner of Mental Wellness Counseling. He is also the author of the books Mental Wellness Parenting | A remarkably simple approach to making parenting easier
and Practice of the Practice | A Start-up Guide to Launching a Counseling Private Practice

1. Take them out for breakfast.
2. Give them 14 extra hugs.
3. Make a list of everything that they are doing right, read it to them at breakfast.
4. Treat their mother or father well, even if they are a jerk.
5. Have one-on-one time with them.
6. Play a family game.
7. Make their favorite meal for dinner.
8. Plan a family outing, go for a hike, or explore something new.
9. Do a craft together and then give it to someone special in their life, let them pick the person.
10. Read an extra book at bedtime, even if you are really tired.
11. Be home when they are home.
12. Make a list of what they have taught you and read it to them.
13. Do something playful that uses energy like playing in the snow.
14. Redirect your own frustrations and anger and respond as graceful as possible to situations.

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor and owner of Mental Wellness Counseling in Traverse City, MI. He is also the author of Mental Wellness Parenting | A remarkably simple approach to making parenting easier. 

Being a good parent is like making soup. For those of you who have never made soup, except out of a can I’m sorry. You are truly missing out.

When making a good soup you can of course follow a recipe. But, some of the greatest surprises are when you create a soup from what you have and then it is amazing. As you sip that steamy amazing broth and dip bread to absorb the flavor, you understand that you may never taste this exact soup again. You savor it. When it is gone, you attempt to replicate it, but only if you are lucky will you create the exact same flavor again.

When I make soup, I look in the fridge and review what we have and need to get rid of. If we’re lacking, I move toward the freezer. I may start with sautéing meat or onions, then I’ll add additional vegetables to create a depth of flavor. I may add some flour to the oil or butter to make a roux.

When I was volunteering in New Orleans at a shelter for people in the final stages of AIDS, I asked a number of the nurses, “Can I have your gumbo recipe?” They almost always replied, “Son, you just use whatcha got in da fridge, or you use Zataran’s.”

I had no working knowledge of the base of gumbo, how could I just throw things in? So I took a Cajun cooking class with some of the residents. I learned the basics of building flavor in a roux then adding onion, green pepper, and celery (the “holy trinity”), rice, and stock. From there, you add whatever you want sausage, turkey, chicken, shellfish, shrimp, or older veggies.

Building the Roux of Parenting

Parenting is the same as making a good gumbo or soup, you have to acquire a basic understanding of guiding principles. Once these are gained, your soup/children will usually turn out pretty darn good. Once you gain the flavors that build to a solid adult, you can starting thinking differently about what you are teaching your kids.

1. What does it take to be successful in adulthood?

We all define “success” differently. Where I went to school in Traverse City, everyone was expected to go to college. But why did parents value that over other things? To those parents, college represented being able to provide for yourself and have a career and standard of living that was more comfortable.

Is that what we should teach our kids, to be comfortable?

No, but I think the guiding idea was even deeper. The world is full of opportunities and challenges. Some of us are dealt better hands than others, but when we do something there is almost always a reaction that occurs. Some call this a “consequence”, others call this a “reward” or “punishment”, others call this a “speeding ticket.”

When we really look at the “roux” of life, when we do things there are almost always consequences, both positive and negative.

2. How do we teach this?

The more that we can outline natural consequences for decisions and let our children succeed or fail, the more they can learn those connections. The part of the brain (the frontal lobe) that connects behavior and consequence, does not fully develop in more adults until around age 22. Some newer research is showing that it may be even later. Thus, kids often need a parent’s help, even in college, connecting what they have done and what occurred as a result of it. Thus statements like…

They should know better.

Act your age.

Grow up and just do it.

…aren’t very helpful. Rather, describing children’s behavior helps them to identify what worked and did not work.

3. Failure builds confidence

Of course we don’t seek out to make our kids fail. However, we often seek to shield them from failure. To allow our kids to fail goes against our basic instinct of protection and safety. In our self-esteem-driven culture, a sense of entitlement has permeated kid’s and parent’s attitudes. When a child fails a test, the teacher is often blamed, rather than the child or parent. Working with your child to grow their own personal responsibility and experience appropriate failure will help them feel more in control. As they learn their own ability to make the world more how they want it, they will actually think more carefully about age-appropriate decisions.

Further, it allows the parent to step back and be more of a guide than a monitor.

With these basic building-blocks of parenting, you can try all sorts of new recipes for your own parenting soup.

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor and owner of Mental Wellness Counseling in Traverse City, MI. He seeks to grow parent’s knowledge of basic concepts of parenting to create a better environment for raising kids.

Do you agree? Leave a comment!

Thank you to Kevin Dooley for the image from Creative Commons

Print the 2013 Goal Planner

Mental Wellness | Why you keep failing

Even before you swallowed that final piece of Christmas dessert you knew that 2013 was
inches away. Why is it that we keep failing at our goals each year? Whether it is exercise,
weight loss, healthier friendships, or being a better parent, what is going wrong?

The problem is smaller than you think

People will tell you that this is the time of year to “change your life.” That is ridiculous.
Really, you should be making subtle changes that you hardly notice. That is how habit
change occurs. Habits take over in little almost invisible ways. It is eating the fruits and
vegetables in your lunch first or snacking on salty pistachios at your desk rather than chips.
It is a five minute walk. Habit change is a small step that you can sustain, not joining the
newest lifestyle change.

The problem is shorter than you think

Most habits take 4-6 weeks to feel natural. Your goal should not be all of 2013, but instead
get to March 1. What can you do every day between now and March 1? How will you
know success? When we clearly define what our goal is and then also make it very easy to
achieve, we will still with it. For example, I recently started eating a lower glycemic diet to
reduce likelihood of inflammation, cancer, and diabetes. Rather than stop eating everything
I loved, I have reduced those things. It’s been really easy!

The answer is within you

Remember when you got negative and positive consequences as a kid? Maybe it was a
timeout or a special gift for your behavior. We are not much different from our childhood
selves. What will be your positive consequence for achieving your daily goal? As you create
habits rather than lifestyle change, you will see a natural progress towards craving healthier
aspects of life.

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor in Traverse City, MI. As a kid, his dad had him write 10 goals for the coming year. It was something he hated, but now is glad to have had the guidance.

A Guide for times like these

What to do

What not to do

How to help your kids, friends, and self in a time of tragedy

Kids

Allow them to speak and ask lots of questions.

Allow them to draw and act out their thoughts.

Allow them to be sad and cry.

Give lots of hugs and tell them how loved they are.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

Try not to say, “It is going to be ok,” or, “Don’t worry.” For many families it will not be ok and kids may not feel listened to if we tell them their emotions are wrong.

Help them to be a part of something so they feel they are contributing. It could be making a card for your own city’s first responders, teachers, or principals.

Friends

Talk about your hurt and sense of loss.

Be sad and cry together.

Give lots of hugs and tell them how loved they are.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

Try not to say, “It is going to be ok,” or, “Don’t worry.” For many families it will not be ok and friends may not feel listened to if we tell them their emotions are wrong.

Be quiet and don’t feel you have to answer big questions right now. That time will come later.

Self

Talk to others about your sense of loss, hurt, fear, and sadness.

Recognize that you may feel guilt for your own safe children.

Limit your exposure to reoccurring images and news about crisis.

Give yourself permission to not keep up with the house and other expectations that will still be there next week.

Hug people you love.

Ask for help if you need it (friends, spouse, counselors) .

Allow yourself to be silent and not feel like you have to fix other people or yourself. You don’t have to answer big questions right now. That time will come later.

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC grieves as a parent, citizen, and fellow human with those at Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT. It is hard to know what to say and Joe was apprehensive about writing anything. But parents asked for help. Joe is a licensed counselor in Traverse City, MI.

Step 001: know what you want and what makes you happy

Step 002: tell yourself that no matter what happens, you are going to do your best

Step 003: prepare your family as best as you can.

Step 004: do your best to be happier, more helpful, and a better person. Try to let things go.

Joseph Sanok , MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor in Traverse City, MI, where he helps angry kids, frustrated  parents, and distant couples…and just about everyone else. He loves the holidays and can’t wait to eat pierogies!

The wonderful and scary thing about kids is that they say what they think. That
is why a hug from them is so wonderful and a critical comment can cut through a
parent’s heart. They are not censoring much of what they say and do.

With the holiday season upon us Santa, friends, and family brings gifts to celebrate
our holidays. How do we prepare our kids to reduce the likelihood of a meltdown or
inconsiderate word?

Lead By Example

Why is this season so special? Do you tell your kids the stories of your childhood
and why you find meaning? Does your behavior match what you articulate and think
about this season?

When parents are stressed and running here and there, kids pick up on that. They
know that shopping, cooking, and other expectations are freaking you out. That
sends them the message that those things are the focus of this season, not the more
important stories, traditions, and spiritual aspects.

Prepare Them

Running through scenarios with your kids, especially before holiday gatherings
helps them to know expectations and also know how to respond. Maybe ask
them, “How would you respond if you got a gift you didn’t like?” This is a great
chance to act, play, and also learn how to be grateful without lying, before they are
in the situation. Teach them to say something like, “Thank you so much, I will be
able to use this when I…”

Slow Down with Them

This last tip goes along with the first. Take time throughout the month of December
to have quality family time. Playing games, going for walks, and getting out of the
house (not to go shopping) allows for discussions, conversations, and finding depth
that is not found in the stress of the season.

Since kids are so honest, they are often a reflection of how we are approaching
the season. When stress, worry, and expectations drive this season rather than
the wonderful family, personal, and spiritual traditions, we not only short change
ourselves, but also our kids.

Joseph R. Sanok is a counselor with Mental Wellness Counseling
(www.mentalwellnesscounseling.com) in Traverse City, MI where he helps angry kids, frustrated parents, and distant couples…and just about everyone else. He can’t wait for his family’s Polish tradition
on Christmas Eve of celebrating Wigilia Dinner where the pierogis are the best!

 Picture used from Creative Commons, thanks asenat29!