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Gabor Maté’s Approach to Parenting: 5 Tips to Improve your Relationship with Your Child.

Gabor Maté, a renowned physician and author, advocates for a compassionate and understanding approach to parenting that emphasizes connection and empathy. His recommendations prioritize building strong emotional bonds with children, fostering an environment of unconditional love and acceptance. He emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and validating children’s feelings and experiences as a fundamental aspect of nurturing their emotional well-being. This involves actively listening to children, empathizing with their perspectives, and offering support and validation for their emotions, whether positive or negative. By creating an environment where children feel heard and understood, parents can lay the groundwork for healthy emotional expression and self-regulation.

Maté encourages parents to prioritize open and honest communication within the family dynamic. This means fostering a culture of trust and transparency, where children feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, concerns, and questions without fear of judgment or reprisal. By cultivating such an atmosphere, parents can strengthen the parent-child bond and promote healthy social and emotional development.

In terms of discipline, Maté advocates for setting boundaries with empathy rather than resorting to punitive measures. This involves guiding children through challenges and conflicts with patience, understanding, and a focus on teaching rather than punishing. By approaching discipline from a place of empathy and understanding, parents can help children learn from their mistakes, develop self-discipline, and cultivate a sense of responsibility for their actions.

Maté underscores the importance of nurturing a relationship based on mutual respect and trust between parents and children. This entails treating children with dignity and autonomy, valuing their perspectives and contributions, and fostering a sense of partnership and collaboration in the parent-child relationship.

This approach to parenting believes that parents can create a nurturing and supportive family environment that fosters children’s emotional well-being, promotes healthy development, and strengthens the parent-child bond for years to come. Maté suggests:

  • Acknowledging and validating children’s feelings and experiences, rather than dismissing or minimizing them.
  • Communicating openly and honestly, creating a safe space for dialogue and emotional expression.
  • Setting boundaries with empathy, guiding children through challenges with patience and understanding.
  • Nurturing a relationship based on mutual respect and trust.
  • Providing emotional support that lays the foundation for healthy development and resilience in children.
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What Thoughts do Resilient Children have help them be Successful?

What is it about some children in that they are able to show resilience in the face of adversity better than their peers?  Cartwright Hatton et al looked at what thoughts those children have that enable them to be able to manage in their day to day interactions.  Here is a list of what they found.

  • I can cope with most things that I experience

  • The world is a pretty safe place

  • I have some control over the things that happen to me.

  • Bad things usually don’t happen to me.

  • Bad things usually don’t pop out of the blue.

  • People are generally pretty kind and friendly.

  • Other people generally respect me.

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Boy’s Outdoor Challenge

In our technological world, more and more children are spending time inside on devices and less time playing outside.  Spending time outdoors isn’t just enjoyable but it’s also necessary. Many researchers agree that kids who play outside are happier, better at paying attention and less anxious than kids who spend more time indoors.

Spending time in nature can build their confidence. There’s a lot less structure than most types of indoor play and they can choose how they interact with the nature around them. This gives them practice managing their own actions and encourages creativity and imagination.

Being outdoors can also teach them responsibility. For example, if they are in charge of watering a plant, they can learn that they must take care of living things to keep them alive.

Being outside gets kids moving, too. Regardless of what they’re doing, there’s usually more exercise involved than if they were sitting on the couch. Not only is exercise good for kids’ bodies, but it seems to make them more focused. This is especially helpful for kids with ADHD. Being outside also helps kids feel less stressed.

In the spirit of getting kids outside, here is an outdoor challenge for engaging boys in the natural setting. These tasks can simply be done in a backyard or at a park if needed.  Fire starting and foraging are omissions from this list for safety reasons. Good luck!

Learn to Tie the Bowline Knot

Knots come in handy for a slew of survival scenarios.  Tying snares, securing shelters, lowering equipment or yourself down a cliff face. Ideally, you should have an arsenal of knots, from hitches to bends to loops, in your repertoire. But if you learn only one, learn the bowline.

Build a Shelter

A shelter should be your top priority in a prolonged survival situation. To make a simple lean-to, find a downed tree/fence/rock resting at an angle, or set a large branch securely against a standing tree, and stack smaller branches close together on one side. Layer debris, like leaves and moss, across the angled wall. Lastly, insulate yourself from the cold ground–which will draw heat from your warm body–by layering four to six inches of debris to lie on. If branches aren’t available, get creative and improvise from stuff around your home.

Make a Solar Sill

Collecting water is imperative in survival situations. Try this method for getting water with the help of the sun.  For an idea of how to do this, see here for an example.

Navigating by stars

This one needs to be done at night in an area with minimal city lights.  To find the North Star (Polaris), which is the end of the Little Dipper’s handle. If you can find the Big Dipper, draw a line between the two stars at the outer edge of the constellation’s dipper portion. Extend this line toward the Little Dipper, and it will line up with Polaris. Face Polaris, and you’re facing true north. If there is a crescent moon in the sky, connect the horns of the crescent with an imaginary line. Extend this line to the horizon to indicate a southerly bearing.

Build a Bed

Find a dry area.  Frame your bed with rocks or logs (make this a bit bigger than you are). Plug cracks with moss, leaves, or bark. Gather dry leaves and other dry materials. Pile them into the bed until it bulges. Nestle into the leaves and keep a thick layer on the ground.
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Anxiety when Public Speaking? Try Some Of These Tips to Crush Your Next Presentation

Public speaking is one of the most common forms of anxiety that people experience with some estimates upwards of 73% of the population feeling some level of discomfort when speaking.  If you fall into this category, try some of these tips to help make your next experience a positive one.  Managing anxiety is best used in combination with thorough preparation and practice for a presentation.  Try accepting your anxiety instead of battling with it, and you may find it becomes much less of a problem for you.

Some Basic Assumptions about Anxiety

  • Emotions, both negative and positive, are a natural part of living and cannot be avoided or controlled, nor do they need to be.
  • The fear of failure and the desire to succeed are two sides of the same coin.  We feel anxious because we want to perform well.  This is a normal and healthy part of being human.
  • Anxiety is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but not unbearable.  It is when we start judging ourselves about our normal anxiety that we begin to create real problems for ourselves.
  • A certain amount of anxiety is beneficial to one’s performance because it motivates us and helps us to focus our energy and attention.

Destructive Beliefs about Anxiety

Have you ever found yourself thinking like this?

  • I should be able to control my feelings. I should be able to rid myself of anxiety prior to my presentation.
  • If I’m this nervous, there must be something wrong with me
  • There’s no way I can give this presentation until I feel more confident
  • I’d rather die than have to talk in front of the whole class

What happens if you think like this? It can be a vicious cycle. By trying to resist the feeling of anxiety, you prolong your focus on it.  That leads you to reject your feelings and your emotional self.  Your attention gets stuck on the anxiety and on yourself, increasing your self-consciousness and making you feel even worse. You’re critical towards yourself and your productivity to achieve the task at hand- the presentation.  Your belief that you can’t handle these kinds of situations is reinforced.  The next time you’re in the same situation, you have heightened level of anticipatory anxiety because of your previous difficulty.

Positive Self Talk

If you find yourself thinking these kinds of things, consider these more helpful and healthy alternatives to the above statements.  Identify the ones that are most relevant to you and repeat them to yourself whenever you start getting anxious about your presentation.

  • I cannot and do not need to control my anxiety
  • Anxiety is a natural part of being human
  • Anxiety is a cue to take action
  • It is okay to feel nervous and anxious before and during my presentation.  It reflects my desire to do well and succeed.
  • There is no reason to fight the nervous and anxious part of myself.  I will not resist my nervousness and it will subside in its own time.  I will perserve without avoiding my presentation.

Deep Breathing

Taking deep breaths will help to calm your self down in the lead up to the presentation.  Try to slow down your breathing and focus on big, deep breaths right up until you are about to present. We can reduce anxiety by breathing differently. Take slow inhalations and even slower exhalations with brief pauses in between. We’ll be more likely to use this technique if practiced in times of low stress.

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Ski therapy? An Outdoor Twist on Traditional Therapy

Imagine being outside with a blue sunny, sky while you feel the soft snow beneath your skis and you feel the wind on your face.  Any one that downhill or cross country skis will tell you that skiing makes you feel healthy and happy. But while the physical benefits of being outside in nature and skiing are obvious, it has only been in recent studies that science have proved that the mental benefits of snow sports are just as valuable. A study led by Stanford University found that city dwellers have a 20% higher risk of depression than rural residents and a 40% increased risk of mood disorders. 

No stranger to finding creative ways to connect people to nature, Heather Hendrie is a Squamish based clinician who offers Ski Therapy in addition to her regular clinical practice. As an avid skier, former ski instructor and outdoor guide, Heather hopes to add ski therapy sessions to her suite of offerings this winter.  Heather became interested in the healing power of nature through her healing journey, where nature provided great relief and a sense of perspective leading her to pursue a degree in Clinical Mental Health Counselling, specializing in Wilderness Therapy.  Ski therapy seems a good fit for Hendrie, who made headlines when she created the “Lifts of Love” event in Banff.  An annual singles speed dating event held at Mount Norquay. It follows naturally that she’d take her therapeutic work to the chairlifts and groomed trails.   I caught up with Heather to discuss this interesting form of therapy.  

What is Ski Therapy? 

Heather describes Ski Therapy as a playful, Nature Based  way to connect with a therapist while moving one’s body.  The therapeutic process is at work while breathing fresh air, taking in the surrounding scene and engaging in bi lateral movement that is proving to support significant reductions in the levels of both bodily distress and emotional stress. These combined emotional physical and physiological benefits could make ski therapy a real 2 for 1 type practice, and ideal for people who’d like to try a novel approach in therapy. 

Where do you offer Ski Therapy? 

Heather hopes to offer sessions through maintained cross country skiing trails at the Whistler Olympic Park in the Callaghan Valley.  Making this therapeutic modality accessible to more people is currently a passion of Heather’s, as skiing has historically been such an exclusive pursuit. 

Do you need to know how to ski?

While Heather’s background is as a guide and instructor, the focus of ski therapy is healing and relief from symptoms, rather than the technical aspects of the sport. 

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What theoretical approaches do you use? 

Heather applies a Transpersonal, humanistic, mindfulness-based, experiential approach to her work, inspired by such leaders as Rogers, Maslow, Van Der Kolk and Peter Levine.  

How do you manage confidentiality with others around? 

Confidentiality looks different outdoors than when sessions are conducted within the confines of an office, but fortunately, the field of therapy is increasingly being de-stigmatized. That said, Heather mitigates any concern in this area by always addressing consent and confidentiality with a client before beginning work together.  

 

Interested in learning more about Ski Therapy? Check out https://heatherhendrie.com/

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Physiological Effects of Nature Therapy

nature therapy

Physiological Effects of Nature Therapy

As a result of stressful situations in daily life a, research is pointing us in a direction of getting back to our roots. Nature therapy, a health-promotion method that uses medically proven effects, such as relaxation by exposure to natural stimuli from forests, urban green spaces, plants, and natural wooden materials, is receiving increasing attention.

 

It is empirically known that exposure to stimuli from natural sources induces a state of hyperawareness and hyperactivity of the parasympathetic nervous system that renders a person in a state of relaxation. This state becomes progressively recognized as the normal state that a person should be in and feel comfortable.  Could this immersion in nature be helpful for you?

 

 

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How do you develop Resiliency in Youth?

teen skating

How do you develop Resiliency in Youth?

Advances to the theory of resilience directs attention to the processes whereby individuals who face significant challenges interact with their environments to optimize personal success (Ungar&Liebenberg, 2011). Resilience is developed when there is significant exposure to adversity.

The APA outlines these 10 recommendations for building resiliency in youth.

  1. Make connections
    Teach your child how to make friends, including the skill of empathy, or feeling another’s pain. Encourage your child to be a friend in order to get friends. Build a strong family network to support your child through his or her inevitable disappointments and hurts. At school, watch to make sure that one child is not being isolated. Connecting with people provides social support and strengthens resilience. Some find comfort in connecting with a higher power, whether through organized religion or privately and you may wish to introduce your child to your own traditions of worship.
  2. Help your child by having him or her help others
    Children who may feel helpless can be empowered by helping others. Engage your child in age-appropriate volunteer work, or ask for assistance yourself with some task that he or she can master. At school, brainstorm with children about ways they can help others.
  3. Maintain a daily routine
    Sticking to a routine can be comforting to children, especially younger children who crave structure in their lives. Encourage your child to develop his or her own routines.
  4. Take a break
    While it is important to stick to routines, endlessly worrying can be counter-productive. Teach your child how to focus on something besides what’s worrying him. Be aware of what your child is exposed to that can be troubling, whether it be news, the Internet or overheard conversations, and make sure your child takes a break from those things if they trouble her. Although schools are being held accountable for performance on standardized tests, build in unstructured time during the school day to allow children to be creative.
  5. Teach your child self-care
    Make yourself a good example, and teach your child the importance of making time to eat properly, exercise and rest. Make sure your child has time to have fun, and make sure that your child hasn’t scheduled every moment of his or her life with no “down time” to relax. Caring for oneself and even having fun will help your child stay balanced and better deal with stressful times.
  6. Move toward your goals
    Teach your child to set reasonable goals and then to move toward them one step at a time. Moving toward that goal — even if it’s a tiny step — and receiving praise for doing so will focus your child on what he or she has accomplished rather than on what hasn’t been accomplished, and can help build the resilience to move forward in the face of challenges. At school, break down large assignments into small, achievable goals for younger children, and for older children, acknowledge accomplishments on the way to larger goals.
  7. Nurture a positive self-view
    Help your child remember ways that he or she has successfully handled hardships in the past and then help him understand that these past challenges help him build the strength to handle future challenges. Help your child learn to trust himself to solve problems and make appropriate decisions. Teach your child to see the humor in life, and the ability to laugh at one’s self. At school, help children see how their individual accomplishments contribute to the well-being of the class as a whole.
  8. Keep things in perspective and maintain a hopeful outlook
    Even when your child is facing very painful events, help him look at the situation in a broader context and keep a long-term perspective. Although your child may be too young to consider a long-term look on his own, help him or her see that there is a future beyond the current situation and that the future can be good. An optimistic and positive outlook enables your child to see the good things in life and keep going even in the hardest times. In school, use history to show that life moves on after bad events.
  9. Look for opportunities for self-discovery
    Tough times are often the times when children learn the most about themselves. Help your child take a look at how whatever he is facing can teach him “what he is made of.” At school, consider leading discussions of what each student has learned after facing down a tough situation.
  10. Accept that change is part of living
    Change often can be scary for children and teens. Help your child see that change is part of life and new goals can replace goals that have become unattainable. In school, point out how students have changed as they moved up in grade levels and discuss how that change has had an impact on the students.
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