Tips To Help Your Children Deal With Stress

Image Credit: Pexels

{This is a collaborative post}

While we might think of stress as something that only adults deal with, stress is also very real for children. There are a host of things that kids can feel stressed about and when it happens you want to make sure you're there for them and can help them through the tough period in their life.

Whether they’re going through exam stress, or you’re splitting from your partner and going through divorce lawyers, any big change is going to impact them and you want to be ready. You want to ensure you’re on hand to have them feel cheerful and back to themselves in no time at all. Here are some of our top tips to help your children deal with stress. 

Ensure they know you're there for them

One of the most important things you can do during a stressful time in your child’s life is to let them know you’re there for them. Make sure they know that no matter how big or insignificant their stress might feel, it’s never too small to talk about and that you’re there for them. By having them open up and confide in you, you can rest assured they will continue to do so in the future and you can help them in the best way possible. After all, you know your child and will know how to help them get through this time.

Encourage them to have fun

Children are meant to have fun and it’s a great way to help them to deal with stressful periods in their life. Make sure they put aside time to go and play with friends and do things they really enjoy. No matter what the stress is, having time set aside to go and play or do something they love can help distract their mind and make them feel much better about the time ahead. This is equally as important for teenagers too, as they can become overwhelmed with stress, especially around exam time.

CyberMummy - why so much fuss for one day?

Anyone would think that something truly momentous was going to happen in my life on 25th June.  Am I getting married, about to have another baby, emigrating?  No, nothing quite so significant, I am just off to a blogger conference. For some reason I have gone a bit loony and am getting all excited, apprehensive, nervous, anxious, stressed that I am going to this conference.

Trish Shares the Stresses of being a Newbie Blogger!

Another day and another blogger....  and you won't be disappointed, this lady will make you laugh, she has a fabulous talent for it!  Or maybe it is just me who finds her funny?   Leave a comment and let me know.  So here is Trish from Show and Tell Ideas introducing herself -

I am a mother, lover, blogger and former professional CV writer. After falling asleep on my computer keyboard several years ago….and accidentally mass emailing the CV of a major bank executive to everyone in my email address book….I decided I needed a fresh challenge. As luck would have it, I found myself wading chest-deep in a muddy lagoon gathering frog spawn for my daughter’s kindy “Show and Tell” the very next day. Aha! A lightbulb went off inside my head. So I subsequently set out on my own personal mission to turn “Show and Hell” into “Show and Tell”. I now author my own website, offering fun and easy Show and Tell Ideas for kids and busy parents. I blog because I love writing about life, making people laugh and meeting new bloggy friends.

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Now Mich has invited me to guest post on her blog to cast a little insight into some of the more stressful aspects of life as a newbie blogger. “Wow, what a gig!” I hear you say. And, yes, you’re absolutely right. What a gig indeed. So thank you Mich for inviting me into this special space you have created at Mummy from the Heart.

I started blogging in early January 2011. And what follows is my story so far.

Now, let me start by saying that when it comes to some aspects of life (like blogging), you could call me a little naive….Okay, very naive….Okay, I still believe that my daughter didn’t eat that last chocolate biscuit in the fridge last night even though her face and hands were smeared in some suspicious brown, sticky, delicious, sweet stuff. (Well, actually, yes I do believe it. I just had trouble accepting it. Tears were involved….Mine not hers. Well, she got to the biscuit first, damn it!).

But I digress…..cravings for sweet things are another subject entirely.

Where was I?…..The stressful perils of being a newbie blogger and being naive.

Now, when I first walked out to the edge of the diving board of Blog World….and peered down into the lustrous, aquamarine depths of the Blogging Pool below….I was overcome with a very unfamiliar feeling. I poked around inside my head for a while trying to figure out what this unfamiliar feeling was. Eventually, one of those very useful little light bulb thingies went off inside my head.

Confidence. Yes, that’s what I was feeling. Confidence. Confidence that I could leap high into the air off the Blogging Pool diving board, execute a couple of extraordinary Bloggy acrobatic moves, and slip effortlessly into the Blogging Pool below….(all to the muffled sounds of the crowd cheering and applauding my incredible Bloggy success, of course). Seconds later, I would triumphantly emerge from the Blogging Pool to see Bloggy Judges holding scorecards, every one of them perfect Bloggy tens.

So, armed with my Bloggy confidence, I decided the first thing I needed to do was form a Bloggy Action Plan (BAP for short). Now this took only a few seconds.…but my BAP was very sophisticated nonetheless. “Build it, and they will come. ”What do you think? Pretty original isn’t it?

Still, I had to get this just right, so I decided to break my BAP up into two very important parts. The first part was “build it”. So I immediately went in search of free blogging software. Aha, success. Within a matter of minutes, I stumbled across numerous sites offering such software.

Now, apparently any trained monkey can get a blog up and running in a matter of minutes. And this actually turned out to be very true. What they failed to add, however, is that if you’re a newbie blogger with zero technology skills (such as moi), your new blog will also look like it has been put together by a trained monkey.

Now I call this phase of implementing my Bloggy Action Plan, “Serious Setback No. 1”. And it was a very stressful time. I mean, given that I had so much confidence when I first set out on my Bloggy Adventure, I had immediately made my blog public to “the world”. Now I couldn’t find the damn button to make my blog un-public. And that glaring bloody great “PREVIEW” button had somehow escaped my notice as well.

So, “the world” watched on as I fumbled around with my standard template, adding and removing gadgets, trying to upload pictures and hyperlinks and generally stuffing things up a good 80% of the time.

And speaking of stuffing things up, I am also here to tell you that there’s a damn good reason why so many of those “text colour codes” start with the letters “fffff”. Because that’s how many times you’ll say “the f word” before you finally hurl yourself on the floor in tears and accept that you’ve ventured into the “Advanced” section of your blog template designer way too soon. Unless, of course, you have tech skills, in which case all the “fs” might stand for words like fun, fantastic and fabulous!

Now, after enduring many days of incredible stress and humiliation over the fact that “the world” was so publicly watching me learn to master the technical aspects of setting up my blog, I then encountered Bloggy Action Plan “Serious Setback No. 2”.

Yes, this was the moment when I realised that in fact “the world” wasn’t watching me fumble around after all.
In fact not even my own family was watching!! This was indeed a serious setback, because it threw the whole second phase of my Bloggy Action Plan into serious jeopardy. Remember, “build it and they will come”? Well actually, no, they won’t come. Because no-one even knows I exist!!!!

Okay, I need to rectify this situation quickly if my BAP is ever going to work. How do I let “the world” know I am here….toiling away writing incredibly important and meaningful stuff that they simply must not miss another second of?

Now, somewhere in the depths of my memory I remembered that the words “Twitter” and “Facebook” had
become pretty popular in recent years. But what were these things? I decided to Google them to find out. A few hours later, armed with a wealth of new found knowledge, but with my stress levels still escalating, I decided it would be wise to take on only one of these new things at a time.

So I opted for Twitter. Yes, I signed up for my Twitter account….walked to the edge of the Blog World diving board….and dived right in. Holy crap!! Clearly I hadn’t paid enough attention to language classes at high school. Suddenly I was immersed in a world of English-speaking people fluently speaking to each other in another language. And, what’s more, once I’d figured out this new “secret language”, I realised that they weren’t always talking to me. They appeared to be talking to each other. Was I being rude? Should I listen in? Was it okay to interrupt the conversation with my own thoughts?

Now I have to be honest and say that while I’m still not always doing a great job keeping up with my tweeting, I’ve actually come to quite like Twitter. It allows me to plug my blog so that “the world” does know I exist. More importantly, through Twitter, I’ve met lots of great new friends around “the world”. Friends that do actually pop into my blog and read my latest blog post and leave lovely comments that make me smile.

Which leads me into “Serious Setback No. 3”. Now that “the world” is finally reading my blog, “the world” actually expects me to write something. Go figure!! And here’s the thing. Not just once. No. “The world” actually expects me to keep writing. In fact “the world” expects me to write something new at least 3 or 4 times a week. Every day even! Hell, what do they think I am? A blogger or something?

So, here I sit….only a month into this blogging gig….with everything just starting to come together rather nicely thank you very much….but with a mild case of “Post Traumatic Bloggy-Action-Plan Syndrome” nonetheless. Yes, sadly, I am feeling a tad stressed and overwhelmed from trying to keep all my Bloggy balls in the air all at one time.

And I know it could have so easily been avoided. I mean, I could have decided not to set up my blog and post my first bloody blog post 5 minutes later. I could have learnt the technology of Blog World “behind closed doors” instead of revealing to “the world” (okay, my cat) just how technologically inept I really am. I could have taken a night course in how to speak “Twitter” so that I understood that RT stands for Retweet and not Railway Timetable . I could even have pre-prepared a few incredibly witty, insightful or poignant blog posts about my life, all ready to upload at a moment’s notice, lest I feel under any pressure.

But did I do any of this? No. Sadly I’m a “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” kinda gal. So, instead, I walked right up to the edge of the diving board of Blog World and I dived straight in. An act of foolishness? You betcha. But I’m here now. And I am gradually starting to unwind and enjoy it now that I’ve clocked up my first month.

But if I had my time over again, would I do things the same way? Are you kidding me?? Hell no. I’ve almost driven myself insane in the past month just trying to keep up.

So you see, while it’s definitely too late to save myself, if you are about to jump off the diving board of Blog World and become a newbie blogger, I can almost certainly save you.

Thank you Trish.  Tomorrow will bring you another great guest post as part of new bloggers fortnight here at MFTH... Tomorrow we say hello to Ghost Writer Mummy who will talk about being honest and finding your own blogging voice.

No Idea....But Need to Let It Out...

So here is the crap that I need to get off my chest and out of my head. If I put it down here then I do not have to ponder on it anymore...

• I feel poop tonight, I think I have a cold coming and that is making me feel sorry for myself.
• The baby I lost would of been due in 18 days. I thought I was fine about this but it keeps popping into my mind.
• I can not seem to gain any long term abstinence at the moment. I wake up motivated and plan a good days food and then just give in too easily. I then feel guilty about that.
• I am very fat at the moment, I am back to 16st 9lb. I was down to 15st 2lb last December!
• I need to exercise but can not find the motivation to keep with it.
• My skin around my nails is as bitten as can be - not sure if this is stress, worry, anxiety or what?
• I am tired and I am going to bed in a moment. I have no desire to do anything but sleep tonight -I felt burnt out.
• I have been shouting at my kids too much, I need to gain some patience. I hate being on a short fuse with them.
• I felt completely disconnected at Church last night. I think sin is getting in the way of my relationship with God right now.
• I think I need a few days away from my blog. Just time to be and relax and be with my family.

Thanks to all who read my blog and support me. I expect to be back recharged very soon.
Mich x

I Threw My Toys Out of My Pram!!

I had a paddy at work this morning. I proper shouting and stomping type paddy. Yes you read that right, at 37 I acted like a 2 year old tantrumming!

Want to know why?

I did some soul searching last night and had a wonderful chat with my gorgeous, caring and handsome hubbie and then I could not sleep. I laid in my bed until 3.45am and that was the last time I finally looked at the clock - so I must have dosed off. Only to wake at 6.25am for work. That is not much sleep you know. I am not at all used to so little sleep. I am not good when I only have that much sleep. Add into the mix being hungry and I become a volcano about to erupt!

I had plans to be so good with my food today, to start taking control of that aspect of my life again. I had taken bread to work for my breakfast toast as I knew I had butter there. About 9.15am, after over an hour of ploughing through holiday emails I make my way to the kitchen to do my tea and toast. Bread in the toaster and I open the fridge - it is completely empty!

I see a sign on the door from last week (I have been on holiday 2 weeks), saying the fridge was to be cleaned last Friday and if you did not remove what was yours it would be binned. I was livid. I had a new tub of butter in there (with 6 weeks left on the date) that I planned to use for my breakfast and lunch and now I was left high and dry!

I stomped, I swore, I threw my bread across the room into the bin. I typed up a big sign saying 'Cheers for nothing! and stuck it to the fridge and then I seethed for a good 10 minutes to anyone who would listen to me....it is comical when I think about it now...

.....and breath. I felt better after my paddy. I still feel my in date food should not of been binned but it is small fry in comparison to other stuff going on.

So tonight I will go to bed early and become the normal Mich again. That's all. As you were.

Image Credit

Wishing the week away!

I know I should not and I am so pleased I caught myself doing it earlier and I am now posting this as a reminder to myself to stop projecting and thinking ahead too much. I was sat in Church waiting for the service to start when I started thinking 'oh I wish it was next week and then loads of stuff will be out of the way'.

This is completely stupid as logically I know this week will be fine but I am feeling a bit apprehensive. Shall I share with you my apprehensions? I think I will as it will put them in perspective and remind me there is nothing to fear. I just need to remain positive, pray and trust in God. He will make things as they should be. Stop being so willful Mich !

Tomorrow at work I am on an internal panel, it is the first academic interviews I have sat on and I am stressing about questions. Shall I remind myself how needless this is? For 5 years I managed a recruitment agency and every day I interviewed people and found them jobs, I was well respected and earned a lot of money as I was good at my job! Just because it is not something I have done for a while does not mean I have deteriorated at it. The last person I interviewed and employed is diamond and still works for me.

Tuesday I need to leave work early so that I can look after the kids as dh is off to a conference in Birmingham. I am stressing that work will be pissed off with me for leaving early as I was off sick for 1.5 days last week. Totally not related and we work flexitime, so again there is nothing for me to fear.

Then dh is away 2 nights and this means I need to get the 3 kids ready to leave the house for 7.30am on Wednesday morning to get to work. Now no offense babe if you are reading this, I do appreciate your help on my work mornings but we both know I could do it alone so again - why is it worrying me?

If I allow my scatty brain to get the better of me I could then start stressing about whether I should go to the gym before work on Tuesday morning or if I should go into work early and make up those 2 hours I will be off in the afternoon. Decisions, decisions... My sensible head says that because I am interviewing Monday ad can not do my aqua class then I must go to the gym in the morning and get my dose of exercise. My needs are important too.

Then my last worry, which I think is the one which is creating the rest of this crap is that I am organising and running a quiz night at JJ's school on Friday night. We have 115 people coming and 17 teams. I have never run a quiz night before and I am worrying about the babysitting getting her eon time, dh getting back form work to help me, the level of the questions, the food arriving on time, there being enough drink, remembering to organise everything, getting enough tables in the hall to hold everyone, the PA equipment working etc etc My spiritual gifts are administration and organisation, so I should not even be having this stress. My plans have been done for months. Many of the PTA poo pooed a quiz night and said it would not work, I knew it would and had faith and now we are on track for about £500 made for the school.

So that is what I need now, a good dose of faith please Lord. Help me put these stupid worries to bed and to hand them all over to you. I will play my part and diligently work to organise as best I can. The rest is your business. Amen

Too busy to love?

I read a good article in Christianity magazine a few days ago and it has stayed with me. The title was 'Too busy to love?' with the gist being that research has shown 90% of people think their relationships could be improved. Could yours? I know mine could. I am not saying I am terrible but I could certainly give a little more attention to those I love dearly. For instance I am on this PC way too much!

The emphasis was that basically too many of us nowadays live our lives in the fast lane and forget the really important stuff. I read a good post earlier about the wonder that kids see in everyday life (and I would link to it, but can I find it now!!! grr).

The author says that the people who do any or all of the following are the least stressed -

• go for daily walks
• start their day in prayer, reflection, reading the bible or silent contemplation
• take their full lunch hour
• make sure one day a week is spent 'not working'
• take all their holiday allowance
• say 'no' when they have to.

Guess what? I can tick 5 out of the 6. not bad huh?

How many can you tick and are you feeling stressed by all this snow?

I feels real nice to be able to tick those off. Anyone who knows me or has read my blog for some time will know I have trouble relaxing and I love to be busy. So it is good to know that I am making some headway in my recovery and my personal growth towards being a human 'being' instead of a human who is always 'doing!'

Snow, snow go away. Never come back another day!

I am fed up of the snow already and most people I speak to are as well - even the kids! I suppose us Southerners are just not used to or prepared for this kind of weather and whilst the novelty is there for 48 hours, beyond that it is a pain! I walked JJ to school and back today as his Head Teacher is ace and one of the very few who keeps her school open as much as she can but on route I saw just one snowman. Before Xmas when we had snow nearly every garden had a snowman and this time - just the one, that must tell a story.

Anyway I have had a pretty nice day at home today with the twinnies. JJ's school was open between 10.30 - 2.30 so he got to run off some energy and I only had 2 to annoy each other rather than 3. Actually, the girls behaved really quite well but did manage to wet themselves about 6 times in a matter of 2 hours - yes nappies safely back on now. No accidents yesterday and then this - they are so unpredictable and all the time this very cold weather is here I won't be officially potty training for a while yet.

The reason I want the snow to go away is that it is so hard to get out. On the journey to school this morning I took the girls in their tandem buggy and the wheels creaked under the inches of snow and it was so heavy to push - they are about 4.5 stone between them now, my back felt like it might break. So I decided I really must not do that again this afternoon and took the girls walking to school in the snow. This was too much of a novelty and they kept touching the snow and I knew that Miss M would melt down at any minute as she was cold and that stressed me out (isn't it funny how the thought of things stresses us out rather than when it actually happens we go into 'I am British I can cope mode!' lol). We had both girls fall falt on there face at least once, cheeks were blue, hands were bright red (the gloves kept getting removed) but we did manage to get home with no one crying. There was just one shouty Mummy who had used the bribe of chuppa Chups lollies to get the kids to walk home next to me and not to run onto the road, which of course just looks like the path at the moment.

I am seriously considering whether I will send JJ to school tomorrow, don't know if I can take the stress. Oh why do my parents not live just round the corner? I can hear my Mum saying now it was me who moved away............

Kids! arrrgghhh

They are trying me at the moment. I am working hard to keep my temper and patience and not always succeeding!

Miss M is the worst one - so defiant, always saying no, running in the opposite direction and not wanting to eat much at the moment. She has a cold and I assume feels a little crap but with the amount of fuss she creates you would expect her leg has been cut off!

Miss E is generally a little poppet, but she can whine for Britain. Happiest left alone, her brother and sister like to take over her games, steal her toys and generally annoy her.

JJ is so absorbed in his own world it is not true. We have blocked all the TV channels again except cbeebies, Nick Junior and Disney playhouse as we find as soon as he watches stuff like power rangers, Horrid Henry his behaviour just goes off the scale. TV is like E numbers for him!

I was so pleased for them to go to bed today as I need some rest. Miss M is having me up at least once per night and then waking at 6.30am. Me and dh just never seem to get a lie in.

I have attached a cute piccie to remind myself that they are not always complete pests!

She is soooo challenging!

For those of you who know my kids well, that title will be easy to decipher! Yes I am talking about Miss M.

Boy, is she challenging! So many times today she has been on the naughty step, we used to count to five for her to remove herself from her naughty activity and if she did not she went on the step, we have had to take it down to 3 as she is so clever and defiant that she is always leaving it until the very last moment.

Some of the naughtiness we have had today - dragging a pencil as hard as she could across one of my leather sofas, knocking a chair over onto Miss E's head, 'cleaning' my dining room chairs with orange squash and wipes, cleaning my loo seat with the bath sponge, cleaning her toy cooker with yet more orange, stealing toys from E, not listening to dh and I about various things, drawing over my dining room cabinet with felt pens, chucking bits of dinner on the floor............... need I go on! She really tires me out. Thank Goodness dh and I were both about today.

She is definitely the most defiant of all our 3 kids. Hopefully this is just the testing terrible twos and as she learns boundaries and the fact that dh and I are constant with her consequences means that she will start to tow the line a little. Am I hoping too much?

ahhhhhhh...

...that is me sighing a big breath of relief that I am home.

We went to Church this morning as the pastor and his wife are moving onto another church. We will be so sorry to see them go as they are very welcoming and inspirational. The Pastor's teaching will be very missed. In fact he was one of the main reasons we kept coming back to the Church when we first visited in June last year.

Anyway we had the service, we prayed over the pastor and his wife, I shed a tear, the kids had a good play in creche and children's church and Jacob got sung Happy Birthday to and received a nice new kiddies bible. Then it was time for the bring and share lunch - which looked fabulous. They decided to do the service table by table, which is a sensible idea but three small kids and an hour later it did not seem to sensible to us. Boy were the girls tired, bored and restless - running about everywhere and driving dh and I mad. By the time we needed to go up and get food there was not so much left, the kids were starving and dh did not want to eat - he is veggie and I think it just felt too much hassle. As we ate the kids were naughty and generally overtired. I got to breaking point and announced we were leaving. Packed all the kids up, cleared the table, grabbed JJ's birthday cake from the kitchen (yes it is his birthday and of course he could not understand why he was not first up there getting his food as he was the special 6 year old boy!) and left. I did not make a big scene before you worry. I quietly let the organiser know the girls were tired and no need to do JJ's cake. It is a real shame I did not get to give Phil and Elaine a cuddle but I have emailed and given them a card so I trust they know how much we will miss them and of course they have hundred's of people to hug today.

I dropped JJ and dh at the Galleria and they have gone to see Toy Story 3D, he will enjoy this much more than Church. He is then having a McDonalds after and we are going to pop into nanny and Grandad's to do his cake. Then home for some lego making as he got the toy of his dreams - the lego fire station. It was all he wanted and he was so overjoyed to receive it this morning.

Dh and I are going to enjoy a take away tonight and chill out together.

Feeling stressed...

It was one of those days today. I got to work after shitty traffic, remembered I had a meeting I did not want to attend at work, got handed over a load of work as my colleague had to be out all week and then just felt truly stressed. No good reason for it - but it happens sometimes - doesn't it?

I did pretty well all morning, got through the meeting, did some menial work and then went off at 12 noon to do my aqua. I enjoyed aqua and worked really hard. I resisted the call of the chocolate chip shortbread on the way back to work and had an apple instead. Then again back at work I felt stressed and this time gave in to the food. It has got worse and worse all day. I do not even want to type here what I have eaten - it was sooo much. I would love to just be hiding right now, but I know that is a downward spiral, so I am typing this and I will text my food sponsor and then I will start working through the massive pile of ironing that needs doing.

Also stressing me is the fact that I have not got to clean the bathroom today, which is something I always do when I get home from work on a Monday, but tonight A was not home and by the time the kids were bathed and read to, it was practically 8pm and I wanted my tea. I know these things are not important but I do struggle with not hitting targets.

I am already thinking about tomorrow and normally I do something before work - gym or swim and already I thinking I can not be bothered. I pray I wake in a better and more positive mood tomorrow so I can find the energy and enthusiasm to do some exercise. Maybe I will go to aqua in the evening instead, but then I worry that I will not get to clean the bathroom. How sad is that - to worry about cleaning. Surely living is more important!

Doing lots of thinking....

Sorry not to be around much, I have been doing lots of thinking. I just re-read my last post and saw I was supposed to chat to dh last night. I didn't. By the time the kids were asleep it was late and we watched a DVD instead but it was rubbish and I went to bed to be honest. Might try and chat to him tonight, it would be good for us to spend some time together chatting rather than just being in the same room and talking about surface things.

I am reading 'the shack' at the moment and it took me ages to get into it. Dh bought it for me at Easter and I read a little and was disappointed so it sat on the shelf. Then about a week ago I started reading some more and now it is really good. What an interesting book - it has got me thinking. Maybe not what I need, as I am so bogged with thoughts at the moment, trying to ensure that I sort out my eating, get a better marriage, be less angry, have a better relationship with God. I must be aware that sometimes when I think I am being helpful I am actually just bogging myself down more by reading and thinking too much.

So I am trying to work through things and feel I can not take on any more at the moment, time feels scarce and I feel a bit stressed really. Must work through that. So looking forward to this weekend and a night away with the girls - gonna behave like an 18 year old and really enjoy myself.