The Holiday Season is here! For many families, that includes letters to Santa, nighttime drives down streets with houses trimmed in Christmas lights, and anticipation of gifts and sweet traditions to come. It’s time for joy, family, and happiness.

But even though we mean for December to be full of joy, it’s also a tough time for many people. The expectations put on parents to be happy and make others happy can be brutal, especially for someone going through grief, anxiety, or depression. People fight over the silliest things, especially when we are (yet again) amid record-high COVID cases, job insecurity, and inflation.

We’ve all seen the recent rise of the ‘Karen’: the irrational woman who turns up on camera demanding the world behave to their specifications. (Or the ‘Ken,’ the male version, frequently given to resorting to violence when he doesn’t get his way.) With politics so polarized since the advent of social media, it’s effortless for a simple misunderstanding to turn into an unfortunate, ugly altercation. Some people walk out of their homes like ticking time-bombs, waiting for one perceived grievance to set them off. The holiday season only makes this more fraught with negative energy, which our children can feel and sometimes witness. Plus, none of us want to raise our children to become demanding, stressed-out people.

For that reason, we need to focus not just on the trappings of the season but also on the spirit of community and kindness that Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Rohatsu, and Solstice engender. We need to extend love and understanding to people who are upset and angry toward others — and we need to show this to our children.  

Children can sense when people are stressed and upset; far better than we realize. Being a verbal role model for your children is the healthiest way to teach them how to handle big emotions. Talking to children about stress and labeling the actual emotions you or another person feels is critical to teach them how to accept, manage, and communicate their emotions; without tantrums. Helping your child label their feelings when they are mad is one of the best things you can do. One way to do this is to say, “Your face looks like this (show them),” “Your body is doing this (show them),” and “Your voice is doing this (show them).” “Are you feeling frustrated?” “Is your frustration turning into anger, or are you getting sad?” “How can I help you?” 

If a meltdown occurs, find a moment to hold your child while they are still upset and rock them until they can breathe a bit, and then talk about the things mentioned above, going through the labeling process with them. Then, once calm is restored, talk about the feelings again and how they feel now. Reassure them that it is always okay to have big emotions and that it is essential to practice managing them. Be sure to say you are there to help them.

Conversely, if your child sees you have an argument or is angry/frustrated with someone, talk about it afterward. It’s okay to tell your child something like, “My chest felt tight, and I was squeezing my hands into fists. My voice got loud, and I said things I didn’t really mean. At first, I was frustrated with that person, and then I started getting angry because they wouldn’t listen to me. It didn’t feel good, and I felt a little out of control. I’m still learning to manage my big feelings, too, sometimes. I’m feeling better now, and I’m sorry that I did that in front of you. Would you like to talk about how you felt about it?”

It’s a BIG ask. But in the spirit of the holidays, try to reset people, young and old, who are disoriented (having a meltdown/very angry) with love and patience. By coaching and labeling those emotions and their physical effects, you will raise self-aware children.

For more resources, check out these valuable resources: 

https://www.simplicityparenting.com/

https://www.mindfulmamamentor.com/blog/Resources/podcast/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b26fQNtr23Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9voQuCQDfg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG16UY-u4KQ

 If you’d like to discuss a place at Creekside Kids for your kids, we’d like to invite you to click this embedded link to schedule an appointment. Let’s get to know each other! Like us on Facebook to follow our stories for news and updates. We’re located at 1201 W Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80906, and we can be reached at (719) 635-9111. Our regular hours of operation are 6:30 am until 5:45 pm, Monday through Friday; however, we have a shortened schedule during COVID of 7:00 am to 5:30 pm.

Halloween conjures images of children running through the streets as October arrives, going door-to-door in small groups. It’s uncertain if this year will produce much of a “Spooky Season” turnout, but we’ll bet that kids will still be dressing up in costumes, watching child-friendly monster movies, and enjoying candy and a few good scares.

The spooky season is fundamentally good for kids. It’s a staging ground for dealing with fear and anxiety only once a year so that kids have time to process what they learned (fear is survivable, and I’m going to be okay) and feel braver the following year. Kids learn to trust their community, but they also learn to look for outliers and inappropriate people within their community too.

Sometimes, your child will hang on to their spooky season costume just a little longer than expected. They’ll want to play in their costume deep into November. We encourage you to let them enjoy their costumes! Here’s why:

• Costumes spark the imagination. A playworld surrounding a superhero costume can help a child develop problem-solving skills. The stories we learn as children generally involve a challenge to our happiness; kids will put on an outfit and invent their own challenges, only to defeat them.
  
• Costumes help with skills development. Our children develop many different skills when they play in costume together. To play cooperatively and make a storyline that makes narrative sense, they must learn creative thinking and social skills. As given characters come with behavioral rules, they learn self-regulation skills, communication skills, language development, teamwork, cooperation, and sharing.
• Costumes help children develop motor skills. The putting on and taking off of outfits can be somewhat hard to do, and children who play in costumes learn to work with velcro, buttons, and zippers.
• Costumes allow children to examine themselves differently. Even very young children understand that a Fireman dresses differently than a soldier, and both are responsible for different things. Putting on the costume allows a child to imagine themselves in a different role. In this way, it inspires empathy, too.

Ultimately, there will come a time when the kids have to give up costume play or restrict it to certain portions of the day– in part to preserve the work it can create for you, and in part to maintain their costume if they truly love wearing it. But try to let them hold on a little longer if there’s something on their mind; perhaps they are working out a mystery in their mind we can’t yet understand!

If you’d like to discuss a place at Creekside Kids for your kids, we’d like to invite you to click this embedded link to schedule an appointment. Let’s get to know each other! We’re located at 1201 W Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80906, and we can be reached at (719) 635-9111. Our regular hours of operation are 6:30 am until 5:45 pm, Monday through Friday; however, we have a shortened schedule during COVID of 7:00 am to 5:30 pm.

In this month’s blog, we’re looking into how to choose a preschool for your child. Choosing a preschool should be a process involving research and then interviews and tours. The work begins with finding a list of local preschools. We do not weigh in on Colorado Springs’ assortment of preschools today, nor are we providing a complete list, as this is something parents should do for themselves. Our purpose here is to help you make a good choice for your child– not to make that choice for you! 

Google and Yelp may contain reviews, but bear in mind that of all the reviews of businesses, the bitterest ones are likely to be schools and preschools. Take praise and contempt with a grain of salt. The critical part of a review is not the emotion behind it but the details left in the dialogue. Those details can inform you of what you need to look out for when you arrive for a tour!

When interviewing and choosing your child’s preschool, it’s important to remember, as a parent, that preschools know how to market to you. They know that parents will often get over-excited seeing new, pretty classrooms or brand new materials. Typically, everything you see on a preschool tour is planned to win your affection and trust. 

But that’s not what you want or need from a preschool. What you want is to know that your child will be loved and protected, accepted and encouraged for who they are, and given the strength to see that they can figure things out for themselves with the right encouragement. 

The reality is that, although they might get excited by a new playground or toys in the background, kids don’t care about new, bright, and shiny preschools. What they want is to be loved and accepted for who they are by caring adults. Even very young children want to feel emotionally secure when outside of their family. So parents need to pay attention to the children in the preschool center they are considering for their child.

Take a look at children’s faces and body language while they’re doing the tour. Watch the children walk through the hallway. Do the children have to be perfectly lined up and silent in the hallways? Or are the children allowed to walk in a relatively loose line or groups and are allowed to talk, laugh or even sing in a reasonable voice? 

Children cut through illusions quickly. Parents need to observe the way children and adult supervisors interact to determine just what kind of bonds they form with their charges. It’s important to know whether there are loving and kind interactions, or are the teachers just too formal or rigid? Are the teachers engaging and asking questions, or do they spend most of their time simply giving kids directions or passing them off unsupervised in activities?

Look at the walls, at the art projects that the kids have worked on throughout their time at the center. Are you seeing examples of open-ended art projects versus crafts in which all the children’s art looks exactly the same? Is there a sense of every child’s specialness being discovered and cultivated?

If you’d like to discuss a place at Creekside Kids for your kids, we’d like to invite you to click this embedded link to schedule an appointment. Let’s get to know each other! We’re located at 1201 W Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80906, and we can be reached at (719) 635-9111. Our regular hours of operation are 6:30 am until 5:45 pm, Monday through Friday; however, we have a shortened schedule during COVID of 7:00 am to 5:30 pm.