Lori Lite - Stress Free Kids: A Parents Guide to Helping Build Self-Esteem, Manage Stress, and Reduce Anxiety in Children

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I am grateful to my children and husband for joining me on my parenting and writing journey. Their willingness to share intimate details of our stress recovery with others is an act of love that I am privileged to share in this book.

Stress Free Kids founder Lori Lite has created a line of books, CDs, and a curriculum designed to help children, teens, and adults decrease stress, anxiety, and anger. Her own experiences with stress sent her searching for techniques that people could utilize in their everyday lives. Her books, CDs, and lesson plans are considered a resource for parents, psychologists, therapists, child life specialists, teachers, yoga instructors, and doctors. Lori has been nationally recognized on programs such as Shark Tank and CBS News. Her sought-after practical tips and articles can be found in hundreds of publications such as Family Circle, USA Today, Real Simple Magazine, Modern Mom, the New York Times, and Dr. Sears. Her constant upbeat presence on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter @StressFreeKids make her tips real-time and accessible for todays parents. Her titles are available in Spanish and will also be released in Japan, Turkey, and South Korea.

In the happiest of our childhood memories, our parents were happy, too.

ROBERT BRAULT

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L ORI S L ESSON

I became very sick from stress while I was raising my young children. My son was hyperactive and it took me two hours every single night to get him to fall sleep. At the same time my daughter developed stress-related night terrors. This created a tremendous amount of stress for my entire family. My husband and I were fighting about who was going to put our son to bed, and nobody was getting any sleep. Fortunately, this experience was the catalyst for me to find solutions for my own stress and inspired me to write stress-management stories to help my own children.

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Helping your kids reduce stress in their lives begins with a stress-free you. Parents who practice stress-management techniques send a positive, calming ripple effect throughout the family. The first step entails looking at your stress levels and working to minimize them.

Parenting is one of the hardest roles to play. When coupled with jobs, household responsibilities, and the pressure to keep up or keep it together, its no wonder you feel like youre carrying a mountain of stress along with you as you move through your days! These stressors take a toll even on the best of parents, in fact, just trying to be a perfect parent can leave you feeling wound tight and short on patienceas opposed to open and relaxedwhich can lead to knee-jerk reactivity or saying things in the home that dont contribute to creating the loving, carefree environment you desire. Unfortunately, your children absorb your stress; they are affected by how you respond when youre in a constrictive state. They learn how to respond to life by modeling how you respond. When you learn how to implement a pause, you start to shift from reacting to responding.

Q: Will my own stress affect my kids? How can I handle that?

A: Stress is contagious. If one person in the house is stressed-out it will affect everybody. The good news is relaxation and calm are also contagious. If you are stressed-out and you are seeing that its affecting your children, the best thing you can do is acknowledge that you are stressed-outbe a good example! Tell your children, I am feeling too stressed right now. I am just going to take a minute for myself to sit down and do my breathing. Your child can sit next to you and do some deep breathing with you. It is such a gift to be able to identify your stress, acknowledge it, and then share with your children that you can manage it, you can take it down a notch, you can make yourself feel good again, you can control yourself Breathe in, 2, 3, 4, and out, 2, 3, 4. Children see you changing your energy and they want to experience it along with you.

In order to help your child enjoy the benefits of a relaxed life, you first have to find ways to cope with your own stress levels and minimize your reaction to them. And heres the good news: Its NEVER too late to make a positive change. You cant change the past, so its no use expending energy on worry or regret. And the future has not yet arrived, so planning how youll act differently does nothing to impact your life at this moment. Nowthis present momentis the only thing that matters! Now is the time you can make life dramatically better for yourself and your kids. All of your power is now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only now.

Are you ready to take a look at your stress? Take this quick quiz:

• Are you cramming more activities than you are comfortable with into a day?
• Are you saying yes to requests you wish you hadnt?
• Are you sleeping less?
• Do you find yourself yelling at your kids more?
• Are you forgetting things and misplacing your keys?
• Are you spending more money that you want to?
• Is there a change in your routine?
• Do you feel like you are living mostly out of your car?
• Are fast food restaurants your primary source of meals?
• Are you getting sick more often?

A yes answer to any of the above questions indicates an increase in stress. If you are experiencing an increase in stress then so are your children. An article published by the American Academy of Pediatrics points out that many parents believe that their school-age children are unaware of the stresses around them and are somehow immune to them.

Stress has reached epidemic levels. Unchecked, it manifests as dis-ease or imbalance, with detrimental effects on your mind, body, and spirit. Some less noticeable symptoms might be:

• Mood swings