Caregiver/Parent Self-Care
Overview
Knowing how to take care of yourself as a parent/caregiver is key to ensuring the most effective parenting/caregiving. The resources in this collection offer ways to check in about your feelings and make time for self-care.
Courses
Kindness Counts: Strategies for Self-Compassion
An introduction to mindful self-compassion as a research-based tool for reducing stress, building resilience, and enhancing wellbeing in the workplace.
Printable Tools
Action Plan
Achieving goals is easier when broken down into actionable steps. This worksheet is useful for teaching strategies to break down large goals into small and specific actions.
Butterfly Breath
The Butterfly Breath printable provides a guide and rhythm to help children regulate their breathing. Use this handout with children as a teaching and practice tool in order to help them reduce their stress, shift their mood, and prepare them to engage in classroom activities, sports, and social interactions.
Compassion Fatigue and Self-Care
It can be hard to take care of ourselves when we spend so much time providing care to others. We often consider self-care something we can only participate in when we have large amounts of time to devote to it. Download this tool for some ways to practice self-care, even if you only have a few minutes.
Taking Care of You
It is important to make time to support your own wellbeing. Use this printable to identify the activities that will allow you to be more resilient and present in day-to-day activities.
Videos
Setting Up Daily Routines
Learn how to set up new daily routines and change existing routines during stay-at-home orders.
Trainings
An Introduction to Mindful Self Compassion
Mindful Self Compassion is a skills-based program delivering mindfulness practices that cultivate self-compassion and interconnectedness. Experience a guided Mindful Self Compassion practice. Recorded on: 10/17/2018
Articles
Helping Families Minimize Their Schedules and Find the Space Between
My kids may never play the banjo. In truth, there are a lot of things in life that they may never do, and I'm okay with that. It can be easy for parents/caregivers to get caught up in wanting to expose children to more opportunities, more activities, etc. Parents sign them up for lessons and extra-curricular activities and try to coordinate schedules, so everyone gets where they need to be.
Reducing Parent Reactivity and Increasing Calm
Review four strategies to practice with parents in order to reduce their reactivity to certain situations and calm their nervous systems.
Restoring Normalcy During the Unknown
In our house, my husband and I use a white board with a monthly calendar to help our young child anticipate less routine happenings, such as days we will each be out of town for work, birthday parties, afterschool activities and the like and review it with my child each week. Since most of these events have been put on hold, like many other families, we have had no need to write down the specifics of each day because they're all the same.
Supporting Family Resilience
An unexpected or difficult event always has the potential to get us down; being resilient refers to our ability to move through tough times, grow and adapt in the face of stress, and support our overall wellbeing. Key skills that support resilience can be practiced as an individual or as a family. Communication, problem-solving, setting effective goals, and managing stress all contribute to resilience. Practicing skills that support resilience can be helpful, even when times are difficult. Here are a few of our favorite strategies.
Article Series
Planting SEEDS of School Readiness in 10 Minutes or Less
Learn skills and concepts that support young children's school readiness in 10 minutes or less! Children need help building their self-regulation skills in order to be successful in the classroom, whether they are in preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, or beyond! They need us, the nurturing adults in their lives, to help them learn how to manage their behaviors, their feelings, and their thinking processes. Kids learn their school readiness skills from adults – Prepare with SEEDS (Strategies for Enhancing Early Developmental Success) for kids to ...
Websites
iPrevail
iPrevail is accessible through any device connected to the internet. The iPrevail platform offers a one-of-a-kind network of mental health support. From interactive lessons and chats with peer support coaches, to topic-based community support groups, you can see your progress being made and connect with other people going through similar life experiences all in one place.
Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff
All-in-one resource for self-compassion. This is the official website for Dr. Kristin Neff, pioneering self-compassion researcher, author, and teacher.