#askalyson: setting boundaries can reduce stress in your family

the perfection story: that any mistake or doing something less than perfect is surely going to devalue them as a person, that they will fall from good standing in our hearts, that they will be loved or liked less. that would be a very stress inducing story — i’d cry too!

the antidote: show them that mistakes are simply a part of the learning process. model doing things poorly yourself and laughing them off lightly — don’t dwell on their marks, but instead focus on their efforts and improvements. celebrate being good enough.

the overwhelm story : a child may feel that they are so behind and have so many things due that they can’t do it all, so they collapse and want to do nothing. they’d prefer to drop out of school or not hand in anything since they don’t believe they can dig out from under it all.

the antidote : as the writer ann lamott famously wrote in her book of the same name, you take it “ bird by bird .” we need to break life down into small doable chunks and stop looking at the immensity of it all. a parent can help children break down the overwhelm by coaching them to stay in the small task at hand and leaving the thoughts of everything else that’s due behind them for the time being. we have to train them to silence the voice in their head that says, “it’s no use, you’ll never do it,” which kills motivation, and instead hear, “right now at this moment, i only have this to focus on.” it’s a skill set to develop our ability to manage our thoughts and emotions, but there are many kid-friendly apps that can help, including  kidevolve ,  calm ,  reveri , and mindset .

it’s ok to say no

another important way to reduce stress in the family is to learn how to keep good boundaries and say no. jane fonda once said that it took her decades to realize that “no” was a complete sentence. you don’t need to justify anything to anyone.