Author: Ryan Peacock

Building Confidence in Your Children!

As a parent, it is important to make sure our children are feeling confident. But how do we do that? Here are some tips on how to build confidence in your children.

1. Setting Goals for your children. You can do this by establishing short-term SMART goals. SMART goals provide the detail, support, guidance children. 
   1. S: Specific: This will help them get extremely detailed about the goals they set.
   2. M: Measurable: Will help them keep track of their goals.
   3. A: Attainable: Make sure to set achievable goals that are challenging but are reachable goals.
   4. R: Realistic: Make sure their goals are at least within reason. Setting realistic goals can be done by little successes. Not all goals have to be achieved at one time. Just like recovery small steps matter. This will give children self-esteem and give them the confidence they need to strive for bigger goals.
   5. T: Timely: Help your children break their goals down into smaller steps to get there.
2. Don’t get upset at your children’s small mistakes. Mistakes are powerful and can be used as learning tool. When you increase children comfort making mistakes, you’ll build their willingness to think outside the box and interpret information with wider perspective. Help your children recognize they’ll build the confidence, problem-solving perseverance, and creatively by understanding that mistakes can be brain boosters.
3. Decreasing the negative chatter from your children. Encourage children to stop talking negative about themselves, saying I can’t do something, or saying I am terrible at something. Enforce to them they can do something they put their mind to and work hard to achieve. Also, reinforce to your children that you can get better at something by studying and reading more in school, practicing at something they are good at for example, sports or a musical instrument. By doing this, they will improve!
4. Be a good role model for your children. If you want your children to be confident, you will also have to do everything that you are preaching to your children. You will have to be confident as well, set goals for yourself, not talk negative around your children, and improve on your mistakes and apologize for your wrong-doings and grow from them. Your children will follow you in the way in which you behave and by your actions. Be a role model!
5. Make sure your children don’t get upset about their mistakes. You want to make sure they grow from their mistakes, and don’t make the same mistake next time. If they continue to be upset about their mistakes, and don’t do anything to fix the mistakes. The mistakes will continue to happen. Do something to fix those mistakes, to be confident you don’t make the same mistakes again.

At BCA Therapy, we have therapist who are experience in family therapy and children/teen therapy. If you are looking for a therapist learn more about our team by, click here. We have therapist who can support your needs in Yardley, PA and Wayne, PA.

Sources:

Use SMART Goal Setting to Build Self-Esteem in Kids (mysouthernhealth.com)

What to Do When Mistakes Upset Your Kids | Psychology Today

Self-Care For Parents Is Crucial!

Self-care for parents is not selfish, it’s crucial. You deserve to take care of yourself because, you deserve it! Each of us has a right to strive towards happiness and to value ourselves.

Taking care of your physical, spiritual, psychological and social needs will help you feel your best so you can be the best parent you can be. It’s important to set aside a little bit of time for self-care even when you feel like you don’t have a single second to devote to yourself. While there are many different self-care strategies for parents. It’s important to experiment with them to figure out which strategies work best for you.

 1. Spend Time in Nature

Nature and forest therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forest and other natural environments. You can participate on a guided nature and forest therapy walk.

2. Set Time Out of the Day to Be Alone

It’s important to give yourself a few minutes of alone time. Even if it’s 10 minutes each day that you set aside to relax by yourself, a little solitude can help you unwind. That can mean waiting for your child to take a nap or waiting until a friend or family member is watching your child, give yourself permission to charge your batteries with a little alone time.

3. Schedule Time with Friends or Family

If you schedule a future social activity for yourself, it gives you something to look forward to. Which is a good for your mental health and is a good self-care strategy in itself. Then, actually engage in social activity will give another boost to your psychological well-being.

4. Get Out of the House

That doesn’t mean going out to food shop or commuting to work. We need more than just our office space and our kitchens. Going out for a walk, walking your dug, riding a bike can reduce the feeling of confinement and clear your head. Consider having a parent night out once or every other week.

5. Treat Yourself

From time to time, it’s okay to treat yourself. Our kids get treats but shouldn’t parents sometimes as well. We can treat ourselves by buying a new pair of sneakers, going to a sporting event, going to the movies, or going out to get desert for yourself. Parent need treats too!

There are many ways to practice self-care for parents, we hope these ideas can help you think about how you can bring self-care into your daily life as a parent.

Tips For Overcoming Anxiety Related Procrastination

Do you struggle with procrastination? Is it causing you more anxiety? Here are some tips for overcoming anxiety related procrastination.

1. Improve your decision-making skills. Having good decisions making skills can help you avoid procrastinating when you have a difficult problem to deal with.
2. Head off fear that might lead to procrastination. Fears about falling can cause some people to procrastinate. By working on this fear, you may be able to reduce the urge to procrastinate.
3. Break your tasks down. Taking larger tasks and breaking them down into smaller, more manageable actions steps can help you beat your anxiety related to procrastination.
4. Focus on the progress not perfection. Rather than ending up bogged down in not attainable expectations of self-inflicted perfection, continue to build upon the progress that you made moving forward in whatever it is that you are doing. Finish the task at hand, and then, time permitting, go back to make it as close to perfect as possible.
5. Set boundaries for yourself. No matter how much you want to accomplish, sometimes you have to know when to say “when”. If you find yourself taking on the weight of the world, at one point or another you will probably find yourself at the bottom of it. Before you try to take care of anyone else, try taking care of yourself first.

Devon’s Closet Recovery Clothing Drive Starting Now

The 3rd Annual Devon’s Closet is support people in recovery. All the items donated will be going to Savage Sisters Recovery. We are now accepting donations at our Wayne office with final drop off on October 8th. Donations will be accepted at BCA Therapy, 983 Old Eagle School Road, Wayne, PA 19087.

Items that will be accepted include:

• Men’s and Womens winter clothing
• Wound care items
• New socks
• Personal hygiene care

The clothing drive is in loving memory of Devon.