During these difficult days, weeks, and months, we are all feeling the stress and strain of living with a ruthless pandemic that is also causing economic mayhem. If you think you're stressed, imagine how our children are feeling!
This episode points to the importance of helping our children learn how to manage their stress because they are certainly as stressed as you are--perhaps even more so.
I wrote a post recently on what you as a parent or a significant adult in a child's life can do to help ease their fear, uncertainty, and concern about what is happening and what the future holds.
The truth is that none of us knows what the future holds. All we can do is the best we can today. But our best must include managing our stress, controlling our tempers, and profiling positive role modeling for our young ones.
To learn more about my thoughts on this matter, please listen in. To read the post I refer to in the episode, check out below:
"Teaching Your Kids to Learn Stress Management During These Difficult Days" https://kittyboitnott.coachesconsole.com/show_client_newsletter/?utm_nooverride=1&utm_source=transactional&utm_medium=newsman&utm_campaign=TransactionalEmails-20200331&id=5e7f8f72fbb5816a3d11779c&cld=-1 #stress #stressmanagement #stressrelief #stressedkids #stressedchildren #stressawareness #emotionalwellbeing #wellnesscoaching #selfcare #wellness #teachersintransition
If you would like to download my eBook on stress and stress management strategies, take a look here: http://teachersintransition.com/ebook.
During these difficult days, weeks, and months, we are all feeling the stress and strain of living with a ruthless pandemic that is also causing economic mayhem. If you think you're stressed, imagine how our children are feeling!
This episode points to the importance of helping our children learn how to manage their stress because they are certainly as stressed as you are--perhaps even more so.
I wrote a post recently on what you as a parent or a significant adult in a child's life can do to help ease their fear, uncertainty, and concern about what is happening and what the future holds.
The truth is that none of us knows what the future holds. All we can do is the best we can today. But our best must include managing our stress, controlling our tempers, and profiling positive role modeling for our young ones.
To learn more about my thoughts on this matter, please listen in. To read the post I refer to in the episode, check out below:
"Teaching Your Kids to Learn Stress Management During These Difficult Days" https://kittyboitnott.coachesconsole.com/show_client_newsletter/?utm_nooverride=1&utm_source=transactional&utm_medium=newsman&utm_campaign=TransactionalEmails-20200331&id=5e7f8f72fbb5816a3d11779c&cld=-1 #stress #stressmanagement #stressrelief #stressedkids #stressedchildren #stressawareness #emotionalwellbeing #wellnesscoaching #selfcare #wellness #teachersintransition
If you would like to download my eBook on stress and stress management strategies, take a look here: http://teachersintransition.com/ebook.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Welcome back to episode 54 of"Teachers in Transition." My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm the owner of Boitnott Coaching and Teachers in Transition. And this week the topic is stress and what I want to address is how stressed our children may be during this particular time of upheaval, uncertainty, and a massive change in their routine and then in their experience yet one yesterday, one of my Facebook friends who's a teacher posted a picture of her empty classroom. She had been allowed to come back to school for one last time to get her stuff because schools here in Virginia have been closed for the remainder of the year. Our governor is a pediatrician and as a physician he has recognized the dangers of the Corona virus from the very beginning. He called schools off earlier than just about any other state except maybe Washington state and a couple of others maybe. And he made the call early to just close everything down through June as opposed to setting interim dates and then having to change them. And so our teachers are home for the remainder of the year. Our students are home for the remainder of the year and depending on where they are in their development, this massive change in their routine in their life experience will imprint forever. And as parents and as adults who have an impact on how they manage that up, people and uncertainty, I think we have a responsibility to remember that not only do we need to manage our own individual and personal stress at this time because adults are certainly stressed as well, but we need to be sensitive to and cognizant of the stress that our children may be feeling. And as a parent, it's your ultimate responsibility to help your child to navigate this particular period. To understand that it's not something that they have any control over or have any responsibility for. Because children have a tendency to take on massive responsibility for things that they have no control over and no responsibility for, but they internalize events in such a way that, you know, there are a lot of children out there who come from broken homes who feel that somehow they're responsible for their parents not staying together. And because of that tendency that children have, it's imperative. It seems to me that as a parent you would comfort your child, explained to them that this is something that no one has any control over. Uh, for a lot of adults, this is the first time in their lives that something this massive has occurred. Uh, the only thing that comes close in my life, uh, and I'm, I'm getting known up there would be nine 11. That was a major disruptor and a period of massive uncertainty for days following the event. And then there was the economic meltdown of 2008 and nine those that was also hugely disruptive and changed lives for a lot of people for a long, long time. And the impact of that is still felt for some people. So what I want to suggest to you is that as a parent and as a teacher, and at this stage of this particular period in our history, you as a parent are also your child's teacher because they're not going to school. Suddenly you're thrust into the position of managing your child's instructional needs as well as their other needs. So as a parent and as a teacher, I urge you sit down with your child and depending on their age and stage of development, their capacity to understand what may be happening. You don't want to tell them things that they can't comprehend or that they will somehow make worse with their own imagination. So you want to be careful about how you talk with your children depending on their age and their capacity to understand. Depending on that, you want to have an honest and transparent conversation with them about what's happening. The facts, the science that's behind why we are staying at home. Why your kids can't go out and play with their friends, why the theaters are all closed. So you can't go to the movies, why it's spraying and there's no baseball in the near term future. No, no soccer practice note, piano lesson, all of those things have been suspended. So you need to explain to them in a way that they can understand why that's happening. It's not their fault, they're not responsible. It is what it is. And we will have to ride it out. And when things start to get back to normal, you'll do the best you can to help them navigate that too. And in the meantime, this is a chance for you as a family to bond in a way that you never have before. Now that has its ups and downs. I know because not every family is uh, easygoing or you know, siblings have their squabbles and, and when you're in close quarters for a long time, people can start to get on each other's nerves and that's just natural and normal and that's how it is. But during this particular time when you can't go anywhere to take a time out or take a break, you as the adult also need to figure out what you need to do to manage your own internal stress so that you don't wind up blowing up. And not only taking it out on your family when they don't, they don't have any choice in the matter either. But you need to try to be a good role model and set a good example for managing your stress and therefore modeling for your children how they can manage their stress. And at this point eliminating the stress. I mean there's just, there's that's not ever going to happen. Eliminating stresses. Even in good times there's always going to be stress, but right now we are experiencing it in in a, at a level that is really, not only are we concerned about the public health issue behind the virus, that the economic down turn because of shops being closed in restaurants being shuttered and people being sent home unless they're considered essential employees. And certainly if you watch the news, there's plenty to be anxious about and concerned about and even upset about. But at the end of the day there is nothing you can do except stay home, stay well, figure out a routine that works for you and your family. If you're working from home, you need to manage that. If you have children who are doing online learning or they've gotten packets of homework from their teachers to be working on, you need to manage that. I know it's a lot, but at the end of the day, I have to believe that there's some lesson for us to learn in all of this. And maybe one of those lessons is to learn that sometimes we're just not in control the way we like to think. And that the other thing, the other lesson I think is that we're all interconnected in a way that we maybe didn't appreciate before. And this episode is demonstrating for us that we are human, that we are each part of the total humanity, not just of our state or country, but the globe. We are interconnected because we're human beings and this particular virus has figured out how to attack us as human beings. And in order for us to mitigate that attack, we need to stay apart. It's ironic that at the time that we need each other than most, we have to stay apart. But you know, life is full of paradox and that is the paradox. In this situation. We need to stay apart so that we can want to once again be together. And thankfully we have platforms like zoom and FaceTime and other other platforms where we can still connect even though we're isolated in our homes. And so we're not totally isolated. And the other good news I think is that if you had to be quarantined, if you had to be told to stay in place somewhere, at least you're allowed to be in your own home. I mean, I can think of a bunch of places that it would be worse to be quarantined in like a high school gym where people are sent after a natural catastrophe or tornado rips to a town where do you, you can't go home because the roof is off your house or that house has been demolished. You wind up in a motel or in a high school gym on a Cod that the red cross is providing. You know, being stuck at home is not the worst thing in the world. And there are ways that we can find, entertain ourselves and keep ourselves busy. And I get a giggle every time I watch one of the videos that's goes viral. There's the family in England that, that has rewritten the lyrics, um, to one of the songs from Les MIS. And you know, they've done a phenomenal job of performing that. And then there's the New Zealand family whose dances through the, a song about being stuck at home. And there's a another guy who's managed to change the lyrics to another song talking about all alone. So there are ways that people are finding to, to offer their creativity. And so maybe that's another silver lining and you may have something that you can offer the world to help lighten the load or lift, lift our spirits or provide us with a giggle or out loud laugh. And if you do, I hope you'll share it. This podcast is one way that I share some of the gifts that I have, the insights I have, the knowledge that I have in it in a hope that you'll find some comfort and solace and information that will be useful to you. And this week I wanted to be sure to mention that we need to pay attention to our kids. I'll post a link to an article I wrote last week. It went out this week, but I actually wrote it last week about helping our kids through these stressful times. So that's it for today. If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, please email me@kittyboitnottatgmail.com I'd love it if you'd leave a review or a comment for the podcast that helps other people find the podcast, uh, more quickly and thank you for listening. I appreciate you each and everyone, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to it on the podcast, teachers in transition is the podcast. You can listen to it on any of the platforms that you prefer for your podcast listening. Have a great day, have a great week. I'll be back next week. Until then. Stay well, stay in, stay, bye bye. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."