| The Parent Express E-Zine | ||
| < < Previous Issue | Issue List | Next Issue > > |
Parent Express for 27-Oct-2009
 |
 |
||
|
|||
Welcome to the start of fall which brings change each year, starting with the beautiful coloring of leaves. This issue of Parent Express is full of helpful information, whether you are a family support professional, parent, or donor. "5 Ways to Keep Stress at Bay" by Patty Pless, PCI Certified Parent Coach®, and PCI Certified Parent Coach® Kay Kimball Gruder's review of the book College of the Overwhelmed arrive in your hands at a good time. The start of school, whether preschool or college, brings increased stress for students and their families. Help is available from PCI Certified Parent Coaches®. Fall also starts a new chapter for the Parent Coaching Institute. We are seeing significantly increased enrollment in the PCI's™ Parent Coach Certification® training program, which translates into more PCI™ Certified Parent Coaches® bringing highly effective support to more parents. Are you a family support professional who is seeking a new approach to working with parents? Are you a parent who feels that there must be a better way to raise your children? Please contact the PCI™ to begin your process for self-improvement. We are just a phone call away. Gloria DeGaetano, Founder and CEO 
Apply Now for Spring Term 2010! Apply now to receive a $900.00 tuition discount for March start! (Spaces are limited. The tuition discount applies while spaces are still available.) Thank you to all those who are calling to apply to the PCI™! Our phones are very busy these days. We are now accepting applications for Spring Quarter. Review our program dates here including information on early application discounts. Word is getting out about our innovative, energizing, and highly practical Parent Coach Certification® Training. Because of the overwhelming response, we highly encourage you not to delay in submitting your application for spring start. By planning ahead, you will be assured of a spot if accepted into the program, after the enrollment process is complete. Please send in the basic application as the first step. Download the application here. Once we receive this document, we will contact you for a phone interview. Transcripts and reference letters can follow the basic application by a few weeks. Questions? Please call (425) 401-1519. Please note: Phone classes are in the evening time, usually at 5PM or 6PM (Pacific Time) to accommodate the work schedules of our students. Listen to an audio message from Gloria DeGaetano to learn about the five advantages of Parent Coach Certification®.
"…My PCI training was both practical and inspiring, and it is perhaps the single best educational experience that one could ever have."
—Kay Kimball Gruder, Woodstock, Connecticut
Working with a parent coach who has received Parent Coach Certification® through the PCI™ is giving yourself a valuable gift as well as a sound investment in your family's future. PCI™ Certified Parent Coaches® are caring, thoughtful professionals with years of experience working with parents. They have successfully completed the PCI™ Parent Coach Certification® Training Program—a comprehensive academic, one-year, graduate-level program in collaboration with Seattle Pacific University. Through a series of coaching conversations that can be either by telephone or in-person, PCI™ Certified Parent Coaches® help you re-discover your dreams and design your life for more joy and satisfaction. To find a PCI™ Certified Parent Coach® in your area, please click here or call (425) 401-1519 for a referral to a PCI™ Certified Parent Coach® selected especially for you. 
Visit www.parentappreciationradio.com to listen to programs featuring PCI™ Certified Parent Coaches® and other experts from around the country discussing topics of interest to moms and dads. Programs are available as podcasts. Listeners can download individual episodes directly, listen to them from this site using a Web browser, or access them via the iTunes podcast directory. iTunes subscribers will automatically pick up new episodes as they become available!  Five Ways to Keep Stress At Bay 
by Patty Pless MD
Hasn't excessive stress become a part of everyone's life? Parents feel the stress generated by their jobs, by taking care of the children, by needing to keep the household going—all at a running pace, of course. Children feel the stress of being overloaded with homework and getting shuttled from one activity to the next. Everyone ends up being irritated—stress is contagious! The key is to realize that your family is caught up in too much stress. For a minute, step outside of yourself and look at how you can improve the situation for your family and for yourself. 1. Take your time Stress is generated by not having enough time. Do you already feel stressed when you are trying to leave the house on time in the morning, to get everyone ready for school, to get yourself ready for work, to prepare lunchboxes for everyone, or to set up the gear for after-school activities? Did everyone eat their breakfast? What about making sure that everyone brushes his or her teeth? You have to go to the bathroom now? Everyone is yelling and running around your home. And, well, you are late. Let's try to reduce the chaos by allowing enough time for the critical activities. Is getting your kids out of bed in the morning part of the problem? Does it take 15 minutes until they finally crawl out of bed? Are those the 15 minutes that are missing later when you are trying to leave the house? So, let's set the alarm 15 minutes earlier, or even better, 30 minutes earlier. What could be better than having 15 minutes of spare time in the end? Of course, that implies that the kids actually did everything on time and in the amount of time you had scheduled for the task. Otherwise you might be happy to have started 30 minutes early! In general, make it your goal to arrive 10 minutes early anywhere you need to be that is important. Doing this gives you a little time to breathe. Some people find it helpful to set their watch five minutes early. No cheating—just because you know that you have a five minute grace period doesn't mean you can now arrive at 12:05 instead of 12:00! 2. Think about whether or not an issue is really worth getting upset about Is it more stressful to get upset about your son having wiped his chocolate milk mouth on his now no longer white shirt at breakfast or would it save you some adrenalin to just calmly let him know that he needs to change his shirt before he leaves to school? There is a pile of laundry that needs to be washed anyway. One more shirt probably doesn't make a big difference. I know that you are saying "one shirt doesn't make a difference, but seven do (one for every breakfast)!" I would, indeed, try to educate your son to better manners and provide a napkin in that critical moment. But this is something you can talk about in a quiet moment (maybe once you have everyone buckled in the car and they can't run away). Having an emotional outbreak at the breakfast table won't help anyone involved. This is just one small example of many situations parents face every day, at home and at work. Try to catch yourself when you feel you are beginning to get upset over something. For a second, consider if it's really worth spilling all that adrenalin. Can you just drop the issue without saying much? Could you talk instead of screaming? Or could you postpone addressing the topic until later when calmer feelings prevail? There are actions which certainly call for immediate action. They usually concern safety and the breaking of important rules (i.e., no hitting). A lot of the other scenarios that get parents upset include the so-called nuisances—repetitive or annoying behaviors. Getting stressed over these issues is most likely not going to change them—it's a vicious cycle. It needs to be interrupted by changing the parents' behavior and by discussing the problematic behavior with the child at a different time, when things are calm. The key is to relax the demands we put on ourselves. 3. Think and talk positively During a day full of challenges and stress it can be hard to stay positive. Parents end up nagging their children a great deal and at night parents end up talking about all the difficult and impossible moments of the day. Remember the song "always look at the bright side of life?" It does help to compel yourself to just leave the bad moments of the day behind and focus on the positive. When you find yourself thinking and talking about what didn't work that day, think and talk about something good instead. It will make you feel better and take some of the stress and worries away. If you changed your son's soiled underwear three times that day because he seems to be resisting potty training, think about the fact that this won't last forever and that he will not be soiling his underwear by the time high school comes around! Put things into perspective and choose consciously to look at them from the positive side rather than from the negative. It will enrich your life. This approach certainly will not ensure life's important challenges will fade, but it changes how you deal with them and that in turn will bring on less stress. |
Kay Kimball Gruder, PCI™ Certified Parent Coach®, launches a new parent coaching practice to serve pre-college and college students and their parents. Successful College Parenting offers parent coaching to parents seeking help and support as well as offering parent relations consulting, strategic planning, and parent education to schools and colleges as they partner with parents to prepare and guide students to make the most of the pre-college and college years. Kay's book review of College of the Overwhelmed is included in this issue of Parent Express. To learn more or to sign up for Successful College Parenting's monthly newsletter, visit successfulcollegeparenting.com.
Refunds for Baby Einstein Video Purchases
The American Academy of Pediatrics states, "As previously recommended by the AAP, babies or toddlers younger than 2 years should avoid all screen media." For more information on AAP recommendations, please visit here. 
November 5–8, 2009
Mark Your Calendar Now!
Workshop: The Gift Of Appreciation with Jamal Rahman
Friday, November 6, 2009
To register: Please call the PCI Office at (425) 401-1519.
8:30–9:00 AM
9:00–11:30 AM
11:30 AM–noon
Jamal will share insights, stories, poems, and discussion topics that demonstrate the power of appreciation in our daily lives. Being eternally grateful has roots in all spiritual and wisdom traditions because it is a focused way to stay connected to our Divine Source and the Divine Source in others. In this interactive, participative workshop, Jamal will highlight specific strategies that work to bring the gift of appreciation into our lives and into the lives of others we are blessed to influence. Jamal is a popular speaker and spiritual leader. We are very fortunate to have the gift of his presence for our PCI community. Jamal's books will be available for purchase at the event. About Jamal: Jamal Rahman is a Muslim Sufi minister originally from Bangladesh. He is co-minister at Interfaith Community Church in Seattle, co-host of Interfaith Talk Radio, and adjunct faculty at Seattle University. Jamal travels often, teaching classes, workshops, and retreats locally, nationally, and internationally. He is the author of The Fragrance of Faith: The Enlightened Heart of Islam, and a co-author of two new books: Out of Darkness, Into Light: Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with Reflections from Jewish and Christian Sources, and Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi, and a Sheikh. To learn more about Jamal, please go to: www.jamalrahman.com. 
The Parent Coaching Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and welcomes donations from individuals, organizations, and corporations who want to support its mission To transform the world by revitalizing parenting through prevention and possibility.™ For more information, please contact the PCI™ at info@thepci.org or (425) 401-1519. Visa and MasterCard are accepted. 
Back issues of Parent Express are available on the PCI Web site. There you can read articles by Gloria DeGaetano and PCI Certified Parent Coaches®, and easily send past issues to friends and colleagues via e-mail.
Book Review: College of the Overwhelmed
by Kay Kimball Gruder
College of the Overwhelmed: The campus mental health crisis and what to do about it
College of the Overwhelmed is a must read for parents of students who are soon to be entering or who are already attending college. We send our children off to college and ultimately wish for them to be happy and to gain new skills, knowledge, and perspectives, but college is not always a happy time. "What parents don't realize is that despite this appearance of comfortable status, secure environment, and pleasant social world, a multitude of hidden problems have caused a steady and alarming rise in the severity of students' mental health problems across the nation in colleges and universities large and small, public and private." (p.5) |
||
 |
|||
| To unsubscribe, send any message to parent-express-off@thepci.org. | |||
This issue of Parent Express was originally published October 27, 2009. Some content, contact information, and links may be out of date, and the conversion from the original email edition may introduce formatting inconsistencies.
| < < Previous Issue | Issue List | Next Issue > > |