Covid-19, Stess. amd Family Violence!

by Barb Harvey

Over the years as a parent coach, domestic violence group leader, and working with Child Protective Services in both Missouri and Georgia, I have learned that during times of high stress both domestic violence, elder abuse, and child abuse cases rise. Violence in these cases is used as a stress reliver for the abuser. Therefore, if you know of any family dealing with these issues here are a few thoughts on helping them during this time.

1. Encourage women to review and put into practice their Safety Plan.

2. Offer to take the kids for a few days.

3. Pay attention to how your elderly relatives are doing. Check in with their caregivers often, provide them respite and breaks to keep the stress down.

4. Call your local Child Protective Services Office is you suspect violence. Or call the National hotline at 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)

5. Get in touch with your local Domestic Violence Shelter and get information on emergency placements. For information you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233 or TTY 1−800−787−3224.

6. Ask questions.7. Be willing to listen and offer support.

8. Call the police if necessary.

9. Think first do not do things that will put you or your family in danger.

10. If needed be willing to deliver food and other necessary items anonymously, if necessary.

11. Trust you gut and intuition. Sometimes we think something is off and then we talk ourselves out of it. Even if we are wrong it is better to be wrong and work to protect friends and family.

Child abuse and domestic violence are serious issues which are compounded by stressful time. This is a worldwide stressor. Watching out for those we love is important during this time. So, as you watch out for the health and well-being of your elderly relatives to ensure they are protected from cobid-19. Also, pay attention to ensure they are also being protected from abuse. Check in with those you know and suspect who are victims of family violence and do what you can safely do to help them. Be kind, loving and supportive.

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8 Suggestions Parents to Quarantine with Kids!

The experts are telling us what to do to keep ourselves heathy and safe when dealing with this new virus. Thins like washing our hands more, using hand sanitizer, covering those coughs and sneezes, fist bumping instead of hand shaking, and beginning to stock up on things we will need should a quarantine be necessary. We here at Parents, Teachers and Advocates have some suggestions regarding keeping the kiddos happy should a two-week stay at home be necessary. This is just another thing to do in order to make a quarantine something that will later bring back fun memories and times when your family got time together to build relationships. Plan to make it fun.

1. Recipe Kits-put together kits of your kid’s favorite meals from scratch. Make chicken nuggets from scratch. What are their favorite cookies? When you net in the ki5chen with your kids you make more than food you make memories. Take pictures.

2. Boardgames-buy some boardgames. Monopoly, Life, and Cashflow, are all games it takes hours to play. This is a great way to spend and afternoon.

3. Audible-Download some of your favorite children’s novel to listen to as a family. Pop some popcorn, get some drinks, get cozy and listen.

4. Watch the Movie-download the movie version of the book to watch.

5. Expand Learning-Plan to watch some On Demand Shows regarding things your kids are studying in school. The History Channel, Discovery Channel, and many others have fascination documentary about a variety of topics.

6. Quiet time-Get set for quiet time get new: coloring books, graphic novels, prepaid cards so they can download new games, music, and books, art supplies, Lego kits, puzzles, and other things that involve kids working with their minds and hands to help them think and create.

7. Backyard Fun-Fresh air and sunshine are important. Your kids need about of hour outside each day. Plan some outdoor activities. If you are living in a cold climate it may be to play tag or run around looking for things to make nature collages. If you live in warmer climates things like cricket, lawn bowling, chalk drawing on the patio, tossing the football, baseball, getting up a game of soccer or even practicing. Whatever, your kids like to do outdoors.

8. Scrapbooking-Get a bunch of scrapbooking supplies. Pages, stamps, makers, stickers, letters, etc.

Take pictures of all the above and print them. Then, create our Quarantine scrapbook. It can be something kids can use to help tell the story of this monumental event.

Parents we at PT&A hope this list helps you to think about the things to help you prp for the kids in case of quarantine. Please share any other suggestions you may have in our comment section.

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Tje Six Components of Effectie Parenting

Over the years as I have been developing my philosophy of parenting, I have come to determine several things I think are very important. The first is:

There is outside of the issues of abuse/neglect in the realm of normal parenting there is no such thing as a good or a bad parent. Parents are either effective or ineffective. The children of effective parents grow to become adults who know who they are, what goals they have or want to achieve, how they want to live in society, and are independent thinkers who can make good decisions. This is what every parent wants to help their children grow into. I have come to think there are six things effective parents need to possess and pass onto to their children.

1.      Authenticity

The ability to live life true to yourself determined by your own sense of values and lived out by aligning belief, thought, feeling, words, and actions.

2.      Emotional Regulation

The ability to recognize how you are feeling and to not allow those feelings to control your behavior and actions. Rather choosing to only make decisions when you are in a calm and rational frame of mind.

3.      Communication/Listening

The ability to clearly share thoughts, expectations, and constructive criticism in order to help children to understand and be able to predict with 100% accuracy the resists pf disobedience and bad behavior choices. This also involves listening paying attention to body language, voice inflection, facial expression, and other nonverbal cues to know what your child is trying to tell you. This involves asking open-ended questions to probe what and how they are thinking. The purpose of which is to root out mistaken thoughts to help children think and understand getter how life works.

4.      Connection

Parents make the choice of putting relationship above all other aspects of their parent-child relationship. Choosing to build their relationship with every encounter especially when discipline is required.

5.      Discipline

Parents recognize the ultimate tool of discipline is to help children to develop the skills to control their own behavior. They use predetermined rules and consequences to set boundaries to help their children operate and make age appropriate decisions within the boundaries. When the boundaries are breeched they use emotionally regulated communication and listening to have a conversation about the breech and examine with their child the thought process which allowed them to ignore the boundary and discuss where the mistake was made and how to make a better decisions in the future. They then apply the consequence. Once the consequence has been satisfied, they move to speak the child’s love language to repair any breech to the relationship.

6

   Growth

These parents recognize they need to unders5tand more and more about kids how they think, where they might be mistaken in thinking and hoe to help them. They also recognize they may need support in a variety of areas; they seek help. They read books, take classes, hire parenting coaches, attend workshops and seminars on different topics and are constantly looking for ways to consistently improve in all the above areas. They own the fact tha5t the parent-child relationship is their responsibility and take seriously the needs their children have for them to be effective.

I say that every parent who chooses to can have a happy, healthy, deeply emotionally connected lifelong relationship with each child if they choose. The above six steps outline the way these relationships are achieved.

Holiday Cookies and Promoting Educational Skills

I love baking during the holidays. I especially like rememering my Grandma Harvey by baking her pecan puff cookies. At Thanksgiving while chatting about the benefits of cooking being both a life skill and a way to practice and enjoy education. Cooking is the onlylife skill I can think of that uses reading, math, science, direction following, and sometimes writing. This is why I think cooking with your children is so important.

If your child is struggling with fractions taking theminto the kitchen and working with them to mas a cake that is decorated with orange, clementine, or lemon segments by the time you have read and followed the receipe, peeled and segmented the fruit, and decorated the cake. Your child will have worked with fractions so mamy times they will have a better understandingg. especially if you take the time to point it our and ask questions. In addition, you will have spent undivided attenion whith your child and they can say at dinner they made dessert.

Cooking and baking with your kids works so well for extending their understanmging of how things  work.

Science Heat can change a liquid to a solid, A liquid to a gas and a solid to ashes.

Math Fractions or Doubling or Halving ingredients

Reading The receipe has directions for a list ingredients, what equipment is needed, and the steps for putting the food together.

Following Directions setting the oven temperature and following the steps of the receipe

Writing creating a receipe can be as fun and challenging as any puzzle. Kids who like say baking cookies  can work at adapating a receipe. Maybe they love peanut butter cookes and they wou8ld like to add honey rosted peanuts, or even try a different nut als together. This adds a challenge and fun to cooking.

Cooking is an important life skill. It makes life easier and even cheaper if you can cook at home. But, it is also a way to practice educational skills and develop self-esteem by making something that did not exist before. I encourage you to cook with your kids for all the above reasings. And frankly because it just fun.

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From generation to generation

For many years it has been my understanding that the Lord loves-- absolutely delight in Generations.  and psalm 33:11 he says this: 

The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.

I would go so honored and privileged this past Shabbat on November 9th to see that play doubt before me it was the bat mitzvah of a young lady in our synagogue. During the course of the service she heard her younger sister and her older sisters, their mother and grandmother all sang a song about how God blesses the generations. The Rassmuessens's   brought tears streaming down my face to see how G-d's people are able to know God and then to pass that love from mother to daughter, from mother to daughters; it just blessed me. The reason God dent me to the planet is to help adults to do just what I witnessed on Saturday. It blessed me.

Since September I have been teaching about work-life balance in combination with authenticity and just how important it is to be true to what you believe. Parents are the example for our children As adults children live out 85S% of what they observe and do int their homes. Thus, I encourage parents to be the living example what it means to be people of faith. It was obvious to me that thaos was a principle of the Rasmussen family.  They were together singing praise to the Lprd of Abraham Isaac and Jacob for their generations.

It reminded me of how blessed I am. My grandfather took me to church when I was 10-12 years old just as he took my mother. My father's father was a minister. The generation of my grandparents passed their love of Gpd tp me and my sister. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by thinking about from Adam and Eve Until the End of Time the generations that we will see. I often wonder if people in heaven will be wearing the clothes that were prevalent in their generation. I have concluded probably not, but it's still fun to think about. This brings me to the question and the purpose of my writing this blog.

You have a choice and your choice starts now. Because you do no have years to wait.

What kind of legacy do you want to pass on? Wha5t are you actively doining to pass it on today?

 The choice is yours you can be like the Rassmuessen"s you can pass your belief and your love of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob on to your children and their children and their children. It starts by deciding you're going to do so. You are going to read your Bible, you want to talk to your children about reading the Bible, you going to talk about God and what he expects of us, you are going to be the example for themm then will see you be the example for them teaching them to be the example for their children and --so on--so on. 

I believe that legacy has less to do with money and more than this. Becaise this the legacy that God expects us to leave. King Solomon said A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. Choose to leave an inheritance to your children and their children a legacy of faith. It is after a;; the most valuable inheritance you can leave them.

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Quality-time is a Myth!! Our Kids need Our Undivided Attention

Over the last week both the New York Post and Fox News reported that parents tend to spend more time with their phones than they do with their children which shows me the downward slope continues. I was alarmed by the findings a few years ago when Pew research noted that parent spend an average of 19 hours a week with their children and that included both discipline and general caring like bathing and feeding. Is it any wonder that the new Barna Research report that came out earlier this month shows that only 1/3 of young adults feel cared for by others?

The report says that Millineals and Generation Yers feel connected to the world on a global scale and are passionate bout what is happening out there. However, only 33% feel that someone they know personally cares about them and what is happening in their lives. This tells me that we as adults are failing to connect with our kids. When a whopping 66% feel disconnected in their lives I call that an epidemic. As a parent coach this has been my concern for many years as parents often talk about quality-time. Let me say this with as much honesty, straight forwardness and clarity as possible.

QUALITY TIME IS A MYTH THAT IS SENDING THE NEXT GENERATION INTO A SUICIDE RATE THAT IS THE SCARIEST IN HISTORY!

Our children are just plain lonely. It is so unfair to them. They tare not just accessories in our lives. They need real connection with their parents. Schools have become indoctrination centers where individual children are not important. Getting children into group think is.As a  person who is an expert in early childhood education I have seen what group think and grouping children together from an early age can do. We in our society are losing the value of the individual. It is time for parents and the church to get our heads of of the sand and begin acting in the best interest of our babies. The government not only can not do so they are not meant to!

So, what can be done?

• Limit your use of screens There is more and more research showing that interacting with screens are addictive. The interaction with screens stimulate the pleasure center of the brain. Many adults, teens and children are becoming addicted and this leaves those around them without the human interaction they need.

• Talk to your kids. As in have actual conversations with them right from birth and even before. Children especially those under the age of 5 need face to face interaction and communication. it is this communication that prepares them for literacy.Children need to hear 3 million + words to be ready to learn to read at age 5. This comes from conversations, cuddling to read books, bedtime stories etc.

• Do things as a family that does not include screens. Have a picnic at a local park and play games like tag and hide and go seek. Go on a hike and take lots of pictures you can scrapbook later. Start a family reading night. Where you read much loved children novels like Charlotte's Web, or Where the Red Fern Grows. Find a local festival to attend and talk to your kids about what this festival is focused on and why it is important.

• Make at least one night a week screen free night. Have everyone come in plug up and turn of their devices. Make dinner together. Sit down and talk about your day. Then either read your family book or play a boardgames.

• Listen, Listen, Listen Give your child at minimum 15 minutes a day of your undivided attention. Listen to what they have to say. Nothing makes a child feel more loved, accepted, and connected to an adult who they can communicate with openly, honestly, and with loving care. This is probably the number one question I get from parents. How do I get my children to talk to me? My answer make time to give them your undivided attention and do not just hear them listen to them and understand what they at re saying and why they tare saying it.

These five things are not the whole answer. However, they are things you can start doing today that will begin to curb the loneliness issue that is prevalent in our children's lives. I guess what I am trying to say is we are the solution we are looking for to create a space where our children are getting their need met and it takes lots of time and attention. The real problem is that quality time robs our children of what they most need and that is us!

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Becoming a Psalms 78:6 Parent!

Psalm 78:6 The Message (MSG)

6 Then commanded our parents to teach it to their children So the next generation would know, and all the generations to come—Know the truth and tell the stories so their children can trust in God, Never forget the works of God  but keep his commands to the letter.

Every Christian parent  hopes they are are raising children who will chose to serve God, and also teach their children to do so. However, achieving this goal takes far more than hope. It takes a steady and determined thought and behavioral pattern. There are four steps as outlined in Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NASB).

6 (I)These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 (J)You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. 8 (K)You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.9 (L)You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Be on your Heart

One of the important things about our faith is that we live what we say we believe. This is called acting justly. When we act justly our beliefs are just there. However, our relationship with the Lord is not simply what we do. It is about our daily interaction with Him. One mistake we make is to say that the Holy Scriptures is the word of God. The scripture only points to the Word of God. John 1:1 tells us that the word became flesh and dwelt among us Jesus (Yeshua) is the word of God. It is our relationship with Him that is  spoken of loudly in what say and do, in addition to the decisions we make. Most believers in the Messiah have no issue with this however we fail to follow the other mandates. Which leave our children in the dark. 

Teach them Diligently to your Children

Teaching is done in two ways first it is taught by observation. Children observe their parents; if our lives are speaking loudly of our relationship with the Word of God. Children are able to see and  copy what they observe. They do what we do. Children become better at being who we are than we do. The second way children learn is through discussion and parents asking open ended questions. Children need to think about their own values and their own relationship with the Word. So the question is are you diligently living out your relationship with G-d and are you constantly discussing and asking your children about what they think or believe. Do you ask you children what they think the scriptures mean?

Talk about the Statues

We are instructed to never cease talking about what G-d has to say, what, He means, and how we can live it out. Talking about how to live this life on a daily basis is an important part of what we are instructed by Deuteronomy to do on a daily basis. In modern vernacular when you get up, at the breakfast table, in the car, at work, at home, at our House of Worship, in the grocery store, etc. Please remember talking often takes place louder in how we act and react to a situation often speaks louder than what we say. Are you acting justly, loving  mercy, and walking humbly with G-d? Are you talking about what that means? How often do you talk about what is happening in your spiritual life? Do you talk to your spouse in front of your children? Do you invite your children to discuss what is happening in both your life and theirs? Do you study the scriptures as a family? How often do you discuss what the sermon was about at the service? Do you use that to lead family discussions on the issue? The goal is to talk about , pray and read together, and ask questions?

Signs and Reminders

This scripture tells us to bind things on our foreheads, tie reminders on our hands, and to put them on our doors and gates. In today’s world there are a variety of ways to do this. We have posters, paintings, t-shirts, plaques, throws, and a variety of other reminders we can place around our homes, offices, and automobiles. We all can have a variety reminders have you spoken to your children about why. My father was proud to be a Leo once he became saved and realized the error he was making and stopped collecting lions. Later, he realized Jesus was the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. He renewed his love of lions and our house became full of reminders which referred to Messiah as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. I still have many of those reminders. They are reminders to me and will be reminders to my children they have a heritage of faith.

Ultimately, living the life of a Psalms 78:6 parent is about teaching your children how important it is not to just live a life pleasing to God. But, to pass it on to the next generation. Teaching our children to live out their faith in front of their children, and so on.