Month: January 2019

Be a Role Model

The number one way you can instill good habits of any sort is by modeling them yourself. Your kids are watching and analyzing your every move.  The best way is to create family habits and routines.

We have all heard “Families that play together, stay together.” It would also apply to families that eat together, work together, and holiday together.  Pretty much any shared activity will bring your family closer together and build cohesion as a family.

I bet if you think about it most of the memories you have from your childhood where built around a routine or tradition that happened regularly. Christmas?  Family Meals? Annual trips?  Or maybe it was around everyday routines, like favorite teeth brushing songs or bedtime stories.

My Grandfather had only two bedtime stories that he told us.  One of them was short and sweet:

Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear,

Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair,

Fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,

Was he?

Routines and traditions create memories and are not hard to create. Here are just a few I have come across when chatting with families

• Family game night
• Family dinner discussion (Two things that you enjoyed or went well and one that was challenging today)
• Taco Tuesday
• Sunday family activity
• Bedtime routines
• Bath routines
• Getting home from work/ school routines
• Snack time routine
• As your family grows up some of these routines will fade and you can start others.
• Drop off at daycare routine (I love you, I love you more…, or See you later alligator)

Get Them Involved

For older kids, it is a good idea to have a discussion around why you are trying creating a new habit and is beneficial to ask their input.

One of the kids I work with is constantly forgetting which books to take home at the end of the day so he can do his homework.  We sat down and he brainstormed a few different ways to help him remember. The one he decided would work was putting his schedule in Google calendar and an event in at the end of the day that read “Check what you need for homework” because he already had the habit of looking at his phone when he got to his locker, and then he didn’t have to think very hard because his schedule was right in front of him. He even started putting his homework in his calendar under each class in his calendar in the notes section.

When kids are involved in the solution they are way more invested in sticking to it.

Give Them Time

Give them time to adjust to the new habit and make it a routine. I’ve read that it takes 30 days for something to become a habit. You can help it stick better by noticing and commending them for doing the new habit because they then feel good about it and that feeling is a good enforcer.  I would recommend tackling one habit at a time, if you try too many it can get overwhelming.

Set a specific time and for long periods of time.

If you want to instill good homework habits early start in grade one or two by setting a time before or after dinner that is homework/ quiet time. It is the same time every day and that they do their homework for half an hour if they don’t have homework they can read. As they get older you can increase the time as they get more homework and it takes longer. The habit of starting can be enough that they will just stay until it is finished.

Avoid External Rewards

It has been shown that external rewards are not good for helping sustain long term habits: the novelty wears off.  That is why if you start potty training before a child is ready they seem to really well at first, but soon they just seem to stop caring. The reward isn’t motivating enough. It can be a good incentive to get them sitting on the seat if they are a little nervous, to entice them to leave what they are doing, but long term they need to be motivated to stay dry for themselves.

With older kids it is about having the discussion about forming good habits, what they look like, why they are important and then leading by example.

Healthy life Habits start at home, by modeling them, by creating family traditions and routines, by including your children in a conversation around the importance of such habits and making being healthy fun!

A habit is essentially any action we repeat over and over again. It often starts off as a conscious choice but then becomes an unconscious choice. These unconscious behavioral patterns can be directly linked to our nervous system. They are triggered by cue, followed by an action, that is followed by a reward. Often habits like nail biting, smoking, playing with keys in your pocket are often triggered by stress, and they all have a calming effect.

Bad Habits- Maybe not so bad after all

Some habits are brought on as a result of stress, such as pacifiers, blankets, stuffed animals and other self-soothing habits. There comes a time when most parents think, “Alright you are a big boy now you don’t need that pacifier.”  It is often thought that the best time to “drop “a habit is when you start a new routine, when they start preschool, or get a big girl bed”, when really that is probably the worst. Children have so little control of what happens in their day, and the routine of sleeping with a blanket, having the stuffy is calming, a routine they can count on, something they have control over in the day.  So unless a doctor or dentist says it is impeding on your child’s health, let them grow out of it. If you really need to change their routine do it when things are calm.

Key Steps to Changing Children’s Habits

Wait until the child is calm

If your child’s world is relatively stress-free, changing the habit will be easier because they won’t be triggered as often.

Understand why the habit is happening

For children show them you understand how they are feeling; “Seems to me you are really frustrated, and rocking helps calm your body”, “looks like you are nervous, you are biting your nails a lot.”

Introduce them to a new coping strategy

The hard part about this is that whatever you’re replacing the old habit with has to do the same thing, have the same reward. If the reward from the new habit is not as strong as the original habit then you or your child will go back to the original one. Involve your child in the solution, when they come up with the solution they are more likely to stick to it.  Some of the alternate strategies I have used with children for when they are stressed at school include:

• deep breathing
• rubbing a worry rock
• squeezing playdoh,
• having a dialogue with themselves (I can sleep without Teddy tonight, because I know I can sleep with her tomorrow when I get home)
• tensing up their body, clenching their fists and labeling how mad they are, instead of hitting or kicking a friend.

Encourage / Reward them for their efforts

This follows along the idea of positive reinforcement, rather than calling them out when they are sucking their thumb, which increases their stress and makes them want it more, congratulate them every time they are using the worry rock or choosing to take Dragon breaths.