Empowering Parents of Babies & Toddlers to Improve Mental Health for the Whole Family
There are many triggers of stress and anxiety among parents including being new to parenting, COVID/pandemic life, feeling overwhelmed by daily responsibilities, transitions from home to day care or school, and so much more.
Children feed on the energy of the environment around them. They learn how to manage stress and anxiety from the modeling of the adults who care for them. Having the right strategies, routines, and tools in place can help parents lessen stress and anxiety for the whole family.
Keep your morning and evening established routines. If families don't have routines, it’s important to develop them. Routines help everyone know what to anticipate, which improves and organizes the brain to bring a sense of calmness.
There’s less morning anxiety if parents get themselves ready first (e.g., get dressed, eat, and computers and work-related materials are set by the door) before waking the children.
Pack all the babies’ items for the next day the night before so getting ready to leave the house in the morning isn’t so chaotic.
There should also be evening routines such as: dinner time, free time, bath time, story time and bedtime. Preparedness and consistency equal less stress and anxiety for the entire family.
Pre-plan activities and meals for each week. Coming up with ideas on the spot can be stressful. Avoid that stress by taking a day to plan for the month or week by week. When parents can look at their schedule and see what’s already planned or when they open the refrigerator and the meal for the night is ready to heat-and-eat, they have less worry.
Make sure to schedule self-care time, when children can be busy with a safe, unsupervised activity (or supervised by someone else), when they are napping, or at grandparent’s homes. Self-care can be different for different people, whether it’s gardening, going for a walk, taking a bath, reading a book…carve out that personal time. When parents are in more of a calm state, children feel more secure and safe.
It's incredibly important for adults to regulate themselves before responding to their child. How adults respond to their babies’ communication makes a huge difference in the babies’ mental health, behavior, and emotional regulation and how that baby will learn to respond to stress in their life.
Michelle Mintz, M.S., CCC-SLP, The Early Development Expert, is the Founder/Owner of Baby Blooming Moments®, a unique parent coaching program available virtually or in person, in the US and Internationally, empowering parents, siblings, grandparents, and nannies to enrich the way they interact with their babies and toddlers which increases communication, brain connections and social development. Michelle earned her M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from Boston University and is the author of All Done Binky!, a book to help support families with babies and toddlers weaning off pacifiers. Michelle is at babybloomingmoments.com or @babybloomingmoments on Instagram, Facebook and Michelle Mintz on LinkedIn.
