Tag Archives: parents

Teach your positive values to help your kids with their stress

The world is full of stress and it’s your responsibility to teach your children how to handle it.

To help you create a relationship that encourages your children to be open to your advice, create a Stress Safety Net (SSN) for your kids so they can feel safe, secure and loved. In recent weeks, I’ve covered two of the six components of the SSN:

  1. Parents as role models;
  2. Unconditional love;

Today we’ll consider teaching your children your positive values.

A positive value is a belief that produces corresponding behaviors that serve both the practitioner and those on the receiving end of their value-guided behavior. So honesty is good for the honest person and for those around her.

Values define you. They serve as a road map in deciding how to handle situations and to live authentically. For example, you’ve taught your daughter to respect others, which includes not harassing anyone. When her friends bully another child your daughter doesn’t participate and may even tell her friends to stop. Conversely, going against a held value would create stress for your daughter.

If your kids don’t learn their values from you, from whom will they?

To teach your positive values, identify a stressful situation in which your child is involved. Which values would be help him handle the situation? If he’s deciding upon which college to attend would encouraging values like curiosity and open-mindedness be potentially helpful?

Next, teach your values through these five steps:

  1. Role model the value yourself. The biggest teacher of your values is how you live your life. If you value privacy and get upset when your child walks into your room unannounced, how can he learn this value if you walk into his room unannounced?
  2. State your value frequently. When appropriate explain your value, whether during a conversation or a TV show. My father often said in response to certain situations, “There’s nothing worse than a liar.” To this day honesty is one of my strongest values.
  3. Praise your child when she abides by a value, especially in a tough situation like a friend pressuring her to cheat and she says “no.” Praise her courage (another value) for doing something unpopular.
  4. Discuss positive and negative consequences of living and not living by certain values. Positive consequences of being curious might include learning more, making life more interesting and fun, having friends who are also curious. On the down side, too much curiosity might find you poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Identifying both positive and negative consequences of a value helps define which limits might be wise to impose.
  5. Be honest about your lapses living up to your own values. Like the father who admitted to his kids that he isn’t always completely honest with his own mother when she asks him if he’s busy. Minimize your kids’ cynicism by admitting and explaining your lapses.

Values serve as anchors in this stormy world. Give your children positive ones to navigate successfully.

Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach.

Parents role models for children’s behavior

Kids learn more from you, especially at earlier ages, than from any other source

Teaching kids how to manage their stress is a gift that will pay them dividends for the rest of their lives.

First build them a Stress Safety Net (SSN) so they can feel safe, secure and loved. This creates a springboard from which they can launch into their challenges and opportunities. The first component of this SSN is “Parents as Role Models,” (adapted from my audio program, “Teaching Kids how to Manage Stress.”)

Parents are their children’s number one role models. Kids learn more from you, especially at earlier ages, than from any other source. What has your own stress management style taught your children, who learn from both your effective and ineffective strategies? How you communicate, manage your emotions and handle conflicts teach your children something.

To become conscious of what you’re teaching your kids, ask yourself, “Is how I’m handling this stressful situation how I want to teach my kids to handle similar situations?” If not, you need to learn to better handle it yourself. You cannot teach what you don’t understand, so learn and practice stress reduction skills for yourself. Your children will learn from your example.

An essential tool to improve what you model is to understand that the role you play with your children largely dictates their role in reaction to you. A change in your role almost always brings about a change in your child’s behavior. For example, if you constantly remind your kids to do their homework – the reminder role – they’ll react by taking on the role of forgetful or dutiful child perhaps. If you’re not happy with the forgetful role you may nag that child to remind her to do her homework. But your reminder role keeps her in her forgetful role!

The point? To get a different outcome with her change the role you’re playing: stop reminding. Identify and announce a different role that would encourage her to take more responsibility like the supportive role. Only step in to help her with homework when she asks. This new role requires you to stop reminding her. If she chooses to forget she’ll pay the consequences. She’ll probably blame you for her own forgetfulness but don’t get hooked by that. One day she’ll figure out that you truly have stopped reminding leaving her to remind herself.

In situations that your kids aren’t handling well figure out if the role you’re playing makes you part of the solution or part of the problem. If part of the problem, which other role could you play to encourage your kids to handle the situation more responsibly? If your child has been accused of stealing again and you normally play the protector role shielding them from consequences by denying their culpability, could you take on the investigator role instead and look for the facts before deciding how to handle it?

Understanding that the roles you play actually set the stage for your kids’ behavior opens up entirely new options in changing yourself in hopes of encouraging more responsible behavior from them.

Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S., is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach.

Teen Anger Workbook – Book Release

Whole Person LogoBook Release

Whole Person Associates
PHONE 218.727.0500
FAX 218.727.0505
WEB http://www.wholeperson.com
E.MAIL books@wholeperson.com
CONTACT: Carlene Sippola

Teen Anger WorkbookFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Teen Anger Workbook

Facilitator Reproducible Self-Assessments, Exercises & Educational Handouts

By John J Liptak, EdD and Ester Leutenberg

Whole Person Associates announces publication of The Teen Anger Workbook: Facilitator Reproducible Self-Assessments, Exercises & Educational Handouts by John J Liptak, EdD, and Ester Leutenberg. Teaching teens to handle their anger is one of the most challenging tasks of counselors, therapists, teachers, and parents. The Teen Anger Workbook provides tools to help young people engage in self-reflection, examine their thoughts and feelings that lead to anger, and learn effective tools and techniques to effectively manage the inevitable feelings of anger they will experience throughout their lives.

Divided into five separate sections, The Teen Anger Workbook provides a myriad of tools to guide teens through the exploration of a difficult topic and to learn more about themselves and now anger impacts their lives.

  • Teen Anger Triggers Scale helps individuals explore what triggers feelings of anger within them.
  • Teen Anger Intensity Scale helps individuals identify how prone they are to anger and how strong their feelings are of anger.
  • Teen Anger Expression Scale helps individuals identify their particular ways of expressing their anger to other people.
  • Teen Anger Consequences Scale helps individuals explore the adverse effects of uncontrolled anger on their relationships and life.
  • Teen Anger Management Scale helps individuals better understand their skills in managing the anger in their life.

The Teen Anger Workbook: Facilitator Reproducible Self-Assessments, Exercises & Educational Handouts is one of a series of 12 books covering mental health and lifestyle issues familiar to all professionals working with teens. Being released concurrently are: The Teen Friendship Workbook and The Teen Aggression and Bullying Workbook.

The Teen Anger Workbook

Facilitator Reproducible Self-Assessments, Exercises & Educational Handouts
Written by: John J Liptak, EdD and Ester Leutenberg
No. of pages: 122
Softcover:  Price $49.95
ISBN: 978-1-57025-250-1
Publication date: 2011

About the Authors

John J. Liptak, EdD, frequently conducts workshops on assessment-related topics. He has written three books on career-related topics which have been featured in numerous newspapers including The Washington Post, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Associated Press. His work has also been featured on MSNBC, CNN Radio, and on the PAX / ION television series, “Success without a College Degree.” John has many years of experience in providing counseling services to individuals and groups in a variety of settings including job training programs, correctional institutions, and colleges and universities. In addition, John has ten years of teaching experience as

an assistant professor. With Kathy Khalsa and Ester Leutenberg, he has written three other comprehensive books for teachers and counselors to use with their students and clients: The Self-Esteem Program, The Social Skills Program, and The Stress Management Program:  Inventories, Activities & Educational Handouts. John and Ester Leutenberg continue to co-write books to add to their Mental Health & Life Skills Workbook series, published by Whole Person Associates.

Ester A. Leutenberg has worked in the mental health field for many years as a publisher, author, and advocate for those suffering from loss. She personally experienced a devastating loss when her son Mitchell, after struggling with a mental illness for eight years, died by suicide in 1986. Soon after, as a way of both healing and helping others, Ester co-founded Wellness Reproductions & Publishing with her daughter Kathy Khalsa and began developing therapeutic products that help facilitators help their clients. Ester is the co-author of the SEALS series for teen-agers, Life Management Skills series for adults and Meaningful Life Skills for older adults, as well as a variety of therapeutic card games, board games, and posters. Ester has co-written GriefWork —Healing from Loss, The GriefWork Companion, and Creating a Healthy Balanced Life.

Ester and John have co-written the Mental Health & Life Skills Workbook Series, the Teen Mental Health & Life Skills Workbook Series and are currently working on a Coping Workbook Series, all published by Whole Person Associates.

About the Illustrator

Amy L. Brodsky, LISW-S, has worked assisting children and adults in psychiatric crisis. She is well known for her creative illustrations of the Emotions product line, over 35 therapeutic books, including the Life Management Skills and SEALS series, the Teen Relationship Workbook, Crossing the Bridge, GriefWork—Healing from Loss, The GriefWork Companion, Creating a Healthy Balanced Life, and the Liptak/Leutenberg Workbook series.

Other Links:

http://parentingteens.com/blog/2010/10/20/5-steps-for-teens-to-fight-anger/

http://www.troubledteenswizard.com/blog/anger-management

http://www.at-risk.org/blog/1032/teens-out-of-control/

http://www.lifeworksaz.com/counselors-blog/category/angry-teenager-anger-adolescent-angry-child/