Blog Posts Tagged "Parenting".

Have you ever wondered why couples talk baby talk to each other?

Its because evolution didn’t create a new system for bonding partners together, it just borrowed the system for bonding parents and children.

That’s why couples do a lot of the same things that parents/children do

e.g., baby talk, kissing, touching, eye gazing. Those things originally evolved because they helped encourage parents stay in close proximity to their child, helped the parent and child feel close, helped the child learn to talk etc.

If your relationship has gotten a bit stale and that lovin’ feeling needs to be revitalized, you can try the following.

Because the adult attachment system is borrowed from the parent-child attachment system, the things that people do to show love for their bubbies can also work for revitalizing the love between partners.

Examples

- Kissing

- Touching in a similar way to how parents touch children (e.g., I saw a Dad on the subway today who was touching his child’s feet while the child was sitting in her stroller).

- Playing

- Helping your partner when they are tired (e.g., just like a parent would carry a child when the child was tired, even though the child could walk)

- Helping your partner do something that they find difficult or frustrating.

- Providing comfort when something goes wrong for your partner.

- Giving your partner positive attention.

- Observing your partner with fascination and positive emotions - just like how new parents get super excited about observing their child’s behaviour.

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Understanding alertness

How alert you feel is determined by structures in the center of your brain.

These structures get input from the front and back sections of your brain (the cortex and the cerebellum, respectively).

The front section of your brain provides what’s called “top-down” input. When you use self talk to tell yourself to concentrate, you are providing top down input.

The back section provides what’s called “bottom-up” input. It carries messages to your brain from your muscles and joints. Its called proprioceptive input.

If you have been exhausting yourself using the “top down” type of input to regulate your alertness, then you can try some of the bottom-up type.

Like what?

The idea is that you engage your muscles and joints, whenever you want to speed up your engine (feel more alert) or slow down your engine (feel calmer).

You’ll need to experiment with what works best for you.

Ideas include:

- carrying some boxes
- doing some tricep dips using the edge of your chair (I really like this one).
- doing some press ups, or some standing press ups by pushing off against a wall.
- squeezing a (firm-ish) stress ball
- chewing something (You can chew gum but you might need to chew several pieces at once)
- eating something crunchy (ice?)
- taking some basketball shots, or playing a game of four square.

- You can incorporate this into your normal day e.g. by going to retrieve your recycling bins when you notice you need some help concentrating. (Where I live our recycling bins are the heavy, wheelie type, so moving them involves pushing and pulling).

- Pick activities that have a sense of being “heavy work” (e.g. hence the idea that you might need to chew several pieces of gum rather than just one) so that you really get your joints and muscles activated, and trigger them sending messages to your brain.

The super cool thing

Bottom up regulation works for EITHER speeding up your engine or slowing it down – whichever you happen to need at the time – whether your engine is running too fast to concentrate and you need to feel calmer, or your engine is running too slow to concentrate and you need to feel more alert.

This can be used for kids too

Adults should figure out how to use this for themselves first. Then you can also help your children learn to recognize, label, and use strategies for when their engine is running too low or too fast for the task at hand.

The idea is that bottom up regulation is a more efficient way to regulate your alertness than top down regulation.

The model described in this post is from a book called How Does Your Engine Run? by Mary Sue Williams.

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Ever hear the joke about how students’ rooms are cleanest when they’re supposed to be studying for exams?(because all of a sudden cleaning becomes appealing when compared to exam study)

How does procrastination relate to low mood?

When people’s moods get low they often get stuck in a pattern of ever decreasing circles of

low mood > withdrawal and avoidance (or excessive perfectionism)> lower mood + lower confidence > more withdrawal and avoidance

If your mood is low and you’re procrastinating doing a task

Option 1:

Do you need rest? If yes, do it.

Option 2:

If needing rest isn’t the issue, try doing an alternative task that gives you a sense of competence/achievement.

Doing a task that gives you a sense of competence might boost your mood enough that the task you’ve been putting off starts to seem achievable.

Also, doing something rather than nothing will help stop you from completely deactivating (doing less and less, and your thoughts becoming more and more negative, narrow, rigid).

Your alternative task doesn’t need to be fancy.

Here are a couple of personal examples for alternative tasks:

- I often write a blog post when I’m procrastinating doing something else work-related. [Not today. Today is because I haven't done one in over a week :-) ].

- I often clear an item that has been hanging around on my to do list for weeks. For example, last week when I was putting off other stuff I went and purchased the repairing treatment I use on my hair. I’d been out of it for weeks and the task kept getting bumped off my priority list. By getting it done I had a sense that I was taking care of myself.

- Or, sometimes I do a 1/2-1 hour blitz of some of the 5-10 minute jobs I’ve accumulated.

Option 3:

If you’re avoidance-prone, an INCREDIBLY important psychological skill is the ability to make avoided tasks more achievable and easier.

Think about a kid who is completely stuck learning their times tables (multiplication tables). The kid is likely to say “I hate times tables, can’t learn times tables, don’t want to” (when kids say they “hate” something its often code for “its difficult”). Not learning times tables is not really an option so a parent in this case would need to break down the task of learning times tables into an achievable next step that would allow the child to have a success experience and boost their confidence/motivation.

As adults we need to do this too.

For example, you might make one phone call about the task you most need to do.

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