In a recent article (“The Parent’s Top 10”) I reported that the second most important parenting skill is the ability of the parent to manage stress. This finding makes intuitive sense: A stressed-out parent is more likely to be irritable unreasonable unpleasant and even unkind. Kids thrive when parents are calm pleasant reasonable and loving.
Obviously every parent gets stressed on occasion. However parents who are chronically stressed probably aren’t doing the best job dealing with their most important relationships. Moreover they’re probably not as physically healthy productive or happy as they themselves would like to be.
While particular stresses come and go stress itself is here to stay (at least until Mashiach comes). Children need calm parents today. Therefore parents need to have some effective strategies for reducing the stress that life inevitably brings. Today we’ll look at one such strategy.
Push the Pause Button
It’s easy to find oneself drowning in stress. Exhaustion overwhelming pressure and a vague sort of injustice combine together in a dark cloud that settles over one’s psyche. When one is immersed in stress it is hard to breathe. Yet breathing can be the first step in gently dispersing the stress. Of course a person is always breathing – but rarely breathing in the gently-disperse-the-stress way that can be so helpful. Here is how the stress-buster-breath is done:
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