THE PARENTING PROCESS     Strengthening Families Through Parent Education , borrowed from Eileen Paris, PhD

Eileen has been working as a psychotherapist with kids and families for 34 years. She is also an infant mental health specialist, a contemporary psychoanalyst, and co-author of “I’ll Never Do To My Kids What My Parents Did to Me!” A guide to Conscious Parenting (Warner Books) 1994.

 Conscious Parenting = Bonding, Mirroring and Differentiating 
Bonding: Establishing a relationship of safety and trust; a feeling of connectedness and closeness. 

 Assessing Your Family‘s Bond: To assess the health of your family’s bonds, ask yourself the following: + Do I make an effort to read and align with my child’s emotional and physical states? + Am I physically affectionate with my children? + Do I accept my older children’s needs for closeness? + Do I threaten to abandon my kids when they upset me? + Am I invasive and disrespectful of their feelings? + Do I become fragmented or withdraw when my children are upset with me? When you stay in the present moment you will be less vulnerable to parent in response to your past legacy, you will be less likely to invade or abandon your kids, thus creating safety, trust, and a strong bond. This satisfying relationship then becomes a model by which your children can establish and evaluate their present and future relationships. Mirroring: A feeling of being seen, heard and understood for what you feel inside; a feeling of being noticed, and taken seriously - of having your feelings validated. Mirroring helps a child establish his or her own identity. 
 Assessing Your Mirroring Skills: To assess your mirroring skills, answer these questions: + Do I recognize and reflect my children’s emotions even when their feelings make me uncomfortable? + Do I interrupt, frustrate, ignore, or deny my children’s feelings? + Can I acknowledge my own feelings? + Do I try to distract my children from their upset feelings or chastise them when thy are angry? + Do I under mirror or over mirror? + Do I mirror distortedly or critically?

                                                                 
The National Education Association estimates that every 7 minutes a child is a victim of bullying in the United States, and that 85% of the time there is no intervention by other students or adults. Other experts estimate that as many as 8% of U.S. students miss at least one day of class per month to avoid bullies.
To help parents gain a greater understanding about both the scope and the specifics of this problem -- and to equip them with skills to address this problem with their children -- our parent organization, CRC Health Group, has created a free ebook that we encourage you to download and share.
We do not provide treatment services for adolescents at Sierra Tucson, but we realize that many of your clients may be dealing with this problem within their own families. For this reason, we're happy to be able to provide this resource for you, your colleagues, and and your clients.
A Parent's Guide to Bullying: Understanding the Problem and Knowing How & Where to Find Solutions can be a valuable resource to parents and other caregivers of children who are being bullied, or who have been bullying others.

Information in this parent's guide includes the following:
    1. Introduction to Bullying: Facts & Statistics
    2. How Can I Know if My Child is Being Bullied?
    3. What Should I Do if My Child is Being Bullied?
    4, The New Era of Cyber-Bullies
    5. Oh, No! I Think My Child is a Bully!
    6. What Should I Do If My Child is Bullying Others?
    7. Appendix

Download the complete free ebook.http://www.crchealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CRC-EBook-A-Parents-Guide-to-Bullying.pdf?elq=0799f3474c184e3cbff6b7ee5fef3e16&elqCampaignId=330

from Sierra Tucson

This is from Time Health today:
HEALTH MENTAL HEALTH/PSYCHOLOGYYou Asked: Is Meditation Really Worth It?

• Markham Heid @markhamh

First of all, understand that “meditation” is a catchall term for a lot of different mental activities, many of which have nothing to do with sitting cross-legged on the floor and saying om.

“There are thousands of different types of meditation,” says Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and author of Words Can Change Your Brain. But while meditative practices come in all shapes and styles, Newberg says nearly all of them have at least one thing in common: They involve focusing your attention, a habit that’s been marginalized by our smartphone-tethered lifestyle of digital distraction.

“That focusing could be on a word or object or physical motion,” Newberg explains. “But regardless, the type of focusing involved in meditation activates the brain’s frontal lobe, which is involved in concentration, planning, speech and other executive functions like problem solving.” Studies have shown meditation can bolster all of these mental tasks. But the greatest benefits may spring from the interplay between your brain’s focus centers and its limbic system—a set of structures that manage your emotions and regulate the release of stress and relaxation hormones.

“Studies suggests your body’s arousal system is calmed and the flow of stress-related hormones is reduced [by meditation],” Newberg explains. “There’s also a softening effect when it comes to emotional responses.” Just as weightlifting allows your muscles to lift a heavier load, working out your brain with meditation seems to fortify its ability to carry life’s emotional cargo. That stress-dampening effect has tied meditation to improved mood and lower rates of heart disease, insomnia and depression.

Newberg says there’s also some evidence that meditation quiets the area of your brain that manages your sense of self and your relationship to others. That may sound like a bad thing, but this quieting may help you feel more connected to others and less isolated within yourself, he says.

“Basically, meditation helps your brain get out of its own way,” adds Dr. Judson Brewer, a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist. “It helps you escape from worry.”

Once you’re convinced meditation is worth a try, figuring out the right type for you is important, because the benefits tend to materialize only if you enjoy your practice enough to stick with it, Brewer says. Luckily, you have a lot of options—from Transcendental Meditation to Tai Chi. Even yoga counts, because it focuses your mind and blocks out distraction.

Mindfulness is one style of meditation that’s exploding in popularity, largely because it can be done anywhere and anytime, Brewer says. “It’s mostly about being aware of your thoughts and not running after them in your mind,” he explains. Awareness is a wedge that, with practice, you can place between your thoughts and unhealthy emotional reactions, he says.

That kind of vague, semi-abstract language can make meditation seem thorny and inaccessible, but it’s easier than you think. If you want a simple taste of meditation, Brewer suggests focusing your mind on your breath or a nearby object, refocusing it when it strays. “Your mind wanders, and you bring it back,” Newberg says. “That’s a mental push-up.”

Do enough mental push-ups, and you may be amazed at how strong your mind muscle can get.

I am borrowing a blog post from The Gottman Institute.  John Gottman, PhD is an eminent relationship expert.  And I happen to love the book this blog references.

In Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers*, a highly acclaimed guide to stress (for humans), Dr. Robert Sapolsky speaks about the latest discoveries in the field of stress physiology. From this wise and witty offering, scientists and nonscientists alike can learn the ways in which chronic stress – the twenty first century's black plague – has become one of the leading proximal causes of death, leading to strokes and heart attacks along with a variety of other sub-optimal outcomes, from decreased immunity to insomnia, anxiety, depression, addiction, obesity, heart disease, and serious memory loss. 

But there's good news too. We can also discover the ways in which certain lucky critters – from lab rats and monkeys to our fellow human beings – have adapted to living marvelously well under pressure and avoided developing these afflictions, even in their old age! An exploration of how these lucky buggers cope can help us learn to take control of stress in our own lives.

According to Sapolsky, these lucky buggers tend to have the following in common: 

1. An outlet for frustration
2. A sense of predictability
3. A feeling of control
4. An optimistic outlook 
5. Social support

If a tiny sarcastic voice in your head is grumbling, “Oh good, glad we’ve got those all sorted out,” remember this: 

• Knowing the destination is more than half the battle. The rest is one part perspective, and one part knowing how to get there.
• Luckily, if you’ve been following the blog, reading Dr. Gottman’s books, or seeing a CGT (Certified Gottman Therapist), you've got some perspective, and already know a lot about how to get there.
• Sapolsky’s ideas overlap significantly with GMCT (Gottman Method Couples Therapy). Particularly in the realm of stress and conflict mangement. So, dear reader, you and your wisdom are ahead of the curve!

Relationship problems can be a significant stressor, but our approach to love matters enormously. Believing that “Love is a battlefield,” or, even more dangerously, that “All’s fair in love and war” may not be the best strategy. 

By approaching our relationships from a different perspective – with a desire to overcome challenges by working together – we may achieve a far more satisfying outcome.

When we consider the parallels between Dr. Sapolsky’s research and GMCT, this makes a fantastic amont of sense. In GMCT, problems are divided into solvable, perpetual, andgridlocked. Getting a better feel for how our problems fit into these categories can help us enormously, as we can identify those we can solve easily and those we need to approach in a different way. While perpetual problems are clearly predictable, they don’t have to raise our blood pressure – we can use models like GMCT to reach mutual understanding.

When we truly listen to each other, we hold the key that unlocks potential in conflict discussions. We gain insights that grant us access to each other’s inner worlds, and also activate protective factors against illnesses caused by chronic stress. 

Your Weekend Homework Assignment:

This weekend, build emotional attraction through a heart-to-heart, stress-reducing conversation with your partner.

Actually understanding why we’re having the same arguments over and over can safeguard us from unnecessary stress, providing an enhanced sense of control and making room for a more optimistic outlook. 

From this position, we may begin to see alternate ways to approach perpetual problems in the future. By building Love Maps, we learn about each other’s histories and potential triggers, so that the ways in which our words and actions affect each other become clear. We can predict what will happen. This is especially helpful in overcoming gridlock and stress from within our relationships.

Finally, the social support we give each other in a heart-to-heart is a true source of vitality – making an impact far beyond our in-the-moment emotional state. Rather than bottling up our frustration until we feel hopeless, helpless, and totally haywire (see: NSO), we can reach out to each other to gain access to those outlets, a feeling of control, and an enduring positive outlook. 

When we feel truly seen, heard, and understood, we are soothed, lowering each other’s levels of stress hormones and cortisol, working together to weather any storm. 

In this way, we can live and love, enjoying not only radically improved relationships, but longer, healthier, and happier lives.

Have a great weekend,
Ellie Lisitsa
TGI Staff