Adult Guild To Mindful Survival of a School Break

 School Breaks. Kids love them, adults stress about them (sometimes).

Unstructured time at home. Adults perhaps still working. Right now students are learning online and then over break they want to live online with games. 

How much screen time is OK? What else can a kid do when it's cold outside and they are at home?

This week I want to take some time to give you some mindfulness ideas for your break....and share a little research information regarding positive habits for kids.

Let's start with bedtime. This can be a hot button topic for some families. We all see bedtime differently. Some feel letting children stay up late is fine as long as they wake up and get going in the morning. Others want to keep a routine no matter what is going on with the next day's schedule. 

Research tells us that everyone should follow a similar bedtime routine no matter the day of the week and no matter the events of the next day. Children need more sleep than adults. Women need more sleep than men. And we all should go to sleep within an hour of the same time nightly and wake up within a hour of the same time daily. I know I like to sleep in ( when my 2-year-old lets me...which means 7:00am instead of 6:00am...oh well) but research tells us to only "sleep in" a little.

Below are a couple of charts to help get us all thinking about bedtime and routines.

Sleep is vital to our health. Recent studies suggest that good, long, deep sleep helps keep us heart healthy. Sleep is when our brains process short term memories and create long term memories (when that studying a student just completed becomes concrete knowledge). Sleep is when bodies grow, heal, and repair. Sleep helps our mental health stay positive and boosts moods. Sleep helps us survive.

It might be two weeks off of school but it doesn't have to be two weeks off of a routine. Don't feel guilty if you want to send your child to bed "early" during break. You're helping them stay healthy!

The next important thing to remember is a food routine. Remind your student that just because they are home not doing school work doesn't mean they can just sit and eat all day. Food plan for them. Create a list of healthy snacks they can choose from for a morning snack. Give them one fun snack. Provide options for balanced meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). No is a powerful word. Don't be afraid to use it with food. Helping your child create a healthy eating routine now will provide them support as they grow.

In the last blog we talked about SAD and what that means for Michiganders. With no school and a pandemic, your student might be feeling isolated and lonely. Time to get creative. It is ok to allow screen time. Set up some screen playdates with friends and family. Set up facetime, google duo, or another video calling platform to provide time to connect with others. 

The key to screen time is limiting the amount of time, setting limits. 

Remember we all need movement. We should be getting an hour or more of exercise a day. This means we need to move, get our heart pumping, and work out for at least an hour a day. 

Create a recess time for your kids. If the weather isn't bad encourage them to play outside. Make sure to check the temperature and recommended length of time outside based on temperature. Children can safely play outside in the cold, just bundle up and watch the time! Below is a handy chart for cold and hot weather.

Here is a link to a great article by a doctor, helping us determine length of time to stay safe outside in cold weather and hot weather. Safe to Play Outside

Finally, lets talk about reading and mindfulness. It might be a two week break from school, but we should never take a break from learning and mindfulness.

Setting a reading time requirement for your student will help them stay in "school mode" and have less of a struggle returning to school after the break. Below is a chart that shows words read based on how many days a week a student reads. Maybe you are reading to them, with them, or having them read independently; all ways are great and help. Reading doesn't (shouldn't) stop when school does. The more we all read, the more we grow our knowledge. 

After the word gap chart is another chart that talk about summer reading. While this break is much shorter, students can still have loss or set backs if they are not reading.

Don't forget mindfulness!

This is something that can easily be added to your students' day. Every morning when I meet with students I ask them for a goal and a gratitude. These are both parts of mindfulness. Having a goal set specifically for the day helps ground us in the day and gets us to focus on the here and now. Working on a plan to accomplish the goal helps create focus and attention, more parts of mindfulness. And gratitude. This is a great mindfulness practice to help boost mood and reduce winter blues. 

There is a mindfulness activity called Loving-Kindness. This is when you send warm wishes to yourself, those you care about, and those you struggle with too. 

Spending five minutes a morning to write out three gratitudes and send one loving-kindness thought can start the day with a positive mood and outlook. 

Guided Loving Kindness Meditation for Kids

I hope that this blog helps give you some ideas for the break and helping you keep your sanity while your student enjoys not doing work!

Helping Our Student with SAD

 It is likely that at some point in your life you have heard the acronym S.A.D. SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

SAD is a condition that often occurs in the winter months, when we see fewer days of sunlight and spend more time indoors.

Here is Michigan we have the added concern that, according to the Farmers Almanac, Michigan is the 7th cloudiest state in the United States. Michigan annually sees only about 170 sunny days a year. Of those 170 days, Farmers Almanac states that only about 65-75 of those days will be clear and sunny.

The sun is a great source of light which helps us balance chemicals inside our bodies, chemicals responsible for helping us maintain stable and positive moods.

The Mayo Clinic report that during the winter months, with the reduction in sunlight we often see changes in our biological clocks, reduced serotonin levels, and reduced levels of melatonin. Melatonin is the chemical which aids with our sleep cycle; sleep is key to reducing stress, anxiety, and helping to refresh and ready us for the next day. Serotonin is our brain's mood chemical; this chemical sends messages in our brains which helps us regulate and stabilize our moods.

With all of the internal changes to our systems comes a change in behaviors and moods. Someone experiencing SAD can see: social withdrawal, school problems, anxiety, eat disorders, and even suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

It can be challenging, as an adult, to handle our feelings and emotions. It is especially challenging for our youth. Our brains Prefrontal Cortex is not completely developed until around the age of 23-25. This part of the brain is responsible for reasoning our behaviors and making rational choices. We can help our students begin to train and grow this part of their brain. As we do this, we help them learn ways to cope with challenges such as, SAD.

One of the key ways to aid our students is to support them in their mindfulness and well-being.

Recent studies have shown that Exercise, more than even medication, is the best way to aid with mood. A daily exercise routine can help create a long-lasting positive affect on your mood.

Mindfulness, which means to be fully present in the here and now, helps us be more aware of our needs and how to meet them. A great mindfulness activity is a daily mood check in. Asking our students how they are feeling at the start of the day. Then ask them to set a positive goal (like was discussed in the previous post). And remembering to include asking them for a gratitude.

Our well-being can be lifted and supported with a daily gratitude practice. Once we start to help our students state one daily gratitude it is important to expand this practice and help them work on telling others they are grateful for them. Doing something kind for another person has been proven to boost our moods for months at a time (just from one kind act and one extended gratitude!).

Another way we can address well-being is to make sure to eat well. We are more likely to make health eating and life choices if we have a bowl of fruit sitting on our counters. 

Remember, the behavior team at school; myself (behavior specialist) and the social workers; have set up many social groups on google meet. Ask your students to explore the Mindfulness Google Classroom. They will find mindfulness activities along with posts on times for meets to socialize. 

I hope that this post has helped you to look at mindfulness in a new way. In a way that can help your student and you work on combatting SAD and attending to your positive well-being.