Monday is Parent Affirmation Day at Help 4 Your Family! 6/11/2012- creative solutions
English: A day in lunch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Written by, Kate Oliver, MSW, LCSW-C
The day-to-day tasks that come with being a parent can make it difficult sometimes to stand back and see the forest for the trees. With all the chauffering, making of meals, time keeping, study supporting, and the coaching/ disciplining we can get into a rut and forget something important… we forget about creative solutions. Creative solutions are all around us.
I remember when my husband and I figured out that dates can happen during the day! We decided that instead of going out in the evening when we are already tired and ready to crawl into bed, we would get the babysitter for the day. That way we can go get lunch, when the restaurants are nearly empty, and see a movie or take a walk together, then come home and be there to put the girls to bed. We enjoy each other so much when we are not tired.
Sometimes creative solutions come from the outside also. I remember being very frustrated with dinner time. It is a real struggle in my home to put a meal on the table that is acceptable to everyone and I found that I was working hard to find meals that would work. Week after week, I tried different meals and week after week, between one and three members of my family would reject whatever it was that I made. I finally got so frustrated I decided my own attempts to fix it were not working and I needed to hand my problem over. I used today’s affirmation. Wouldn’t you know it? That night, I got an email from one of my favorite websites. In the email, a mom wrote about how she could not get her family to agree on what meals to eat. She decided to pass out index cards to each of the members of her family so they could write down a few meals they like and then she plugged those meals into the calendar. I could have kissed the screen! We’ve been following this suggestion ever since and it works.
Today’s affirmation is:
I am open to finding creative solutions to any problem.
If you are having a hard time believing this one will help, you can put it to the test. Think of a problem you are having right now. Put your attention on it and affirm that you are open to finding solutions, whether you think of them yourself, or they come from someone else. Say the affirmation over and over whenever you think about the problem and then see what happens.
Once you have done that, come tell me about it! I want to know about the issue and the solutions that came to you or that you came up with. Maybe by sharing, you will be giving someone else a solution they were looking for.
By the way, the website I mentioned with the helpful tips is www.flylady.net. After you finish looking at my blog, go check her out, she is wonderful.
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About me
Kate Oliver, LCSW-C (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) has been a clinician working with traumatized and attachment-disturbed children for almost two decades. She is co-owner of A Healing Place, a private practice in Columbia, Maryland, since 2007.
At the beginning of her career, Kate found that while some children responded to traditional child therapy practices, there were a significant number of children who showed little or no improvement in their overall emotional well-being. This led her to seek out specialized training to learn more about attachment, the bond between parents and children, and found that by using attachment-based strategies in addition to treating trauma, even the most challenging children and their parents, saw major, life-changing shifts, not only for the children she was working with, but the parents as well.
Early in her career, Kate was privileged to work as the clinical director for Tamar’s Children, a program that took pregnant, incarcerated women from prison to a treatment facility that worked on teaching the women to bond with and attach to their babies, while also helping the women to heal their own broken attachments, and history of trauma and addiction. This program was internationally recognized for having a successful, evidence-based practice using an attachment-based model. From working with some of the most severely disenfranchised parents, Kate received important information about how to help all parents maintain a happy, healthy relationship with their children.
In 2007, Kate co-founded A Healing Place, a mental health private group practice in Columbia, Maryland, where she focuses on working with families with children who have a history of trauma and/or attachment disturbances. A board certified supervisor, Kate has been an invited presenter to teach continuing education courses for other social workers and psychologists. In her courses, Kate teaches attachment-building techniques and presents about her sub-specialty, working with families headed by gay and lesbian parents. Kate has also worked as a trainer for Building Families for Children, a therapeutic foster care agency.
Kate is a former board member for the organization COLAGE, a non-profit group that works toward community building for people with gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgender parents. She is currently a member of Attachment Disorders Maryland, a group that works to educate parents and professionals about working with children with attachment related issues. She is a Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) Practitioner and Educator.
Kate lives in Columbia, Maryland is the mother of two amazing daughters, the partner to a fantastic husband, and the daughter of one mother and two gay dads. She loves to read any book that crosses her path, write (of course), and she recently started dancing again, a passion she has had since her youth.
Kate can be reached by email: helpforyourfamily@gmail.com for questions or you can find her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/Help4yourfamily.
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Great post. I’m going to use your affirmation today and let you know how it goes 🙂
Wonderful! I look forward to reading how it goes :). Thanks for reblogging.
I meant to let you know how this went 🙂 It’s the end of the school year and I was burned out mentally and even more burnt out from all the discharges, paper work, evaluations, and all the other host of reports that go along with ending a program. I decided to get creative and take a one day vacation! Not just a day off, but a true vacation! Instead of just staying home watching tv like I usually would, I went to a theme park, rode roller coasters and just let everything that had been causing me to feel stress go. The result was I felt so much lighter and freer afterwards and ready to get back to work. It’s amazing how one day of truely enjoying the moment can help and that idea was sparked by your affirmation! Thank you again for an amazing blog.
Reblogged this on Licensed Mental Health Counselor.
I am so glad this affirmation worked for you! I works for me every time if I let it. I appreciate the distinction between having a true vacation day and a day sitting at home on the sofa. It sounds like you knew exactly what you needed and didn’t you work so much better when you went back the next day? Thanks for following and sharing. Also, I shared your blog on my facebook page about children acting out in school to hide learning disorders and it was well received. Happy blogging 🙂
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