Cultivating toddler emotional health (and ours)

How many weeks has it been already? 6? 7? I don't even know anymore. There has been a definite shift this week in the trajectory of the quarantine. While we may have been managing just fine before in previous weeks, many friends I have talked to this week, and myself included, have been feeling discouraged, drained, restless of being sheltered at home, and perhaps even a little hopeless--when will this be over? The new normal has felt like it has been normal for a very long time now. On Monday our governor announced the re-opening plan for our state, only to say that the hows and the whens can't be defined right now. The end does not look like it is in sight anytime soon. So alas, we are braving yet another week, together but apart.

This week more than ever, though, I have felt the invitation to press into the cultivating that I shared in my last post. Managing and developing our mental and emotional health is probably on the forefronts of our minds as we all try to cope, adults and kids alike. I thought it would be fun to share about cultivating emotional health, Silly Bean/toddler style, especially since this is our every-day regardless of quarantine. They call this the "terrible twos," but honestly I don't think it's that terrible; it's just that they're at the very beginning of their journey in uncovering and managing their emotions so everything is new.  At the same time, it means it's a ripe time to help shape their emotional health... even if it means mustering the patience in the midst of some seriously crazy (!?!?!) tantrums. Now is the time to cultivate and sow the seeds!

Identifying Emotions
Since Silly Bean was about 1 or so, we have been looking at lots of pictures of people and explicitly describing their faces (ie. "Her eyes are looking down and she has some tears in her eyes." "This boy has his eyes open and he is smiling.") and what the person might be feeling. Here's something I made for our fridge--again, reusing some random cardboard at home ftw!

I also got this book from Usborne Books that we look at often, which I absolutely LOVE. It shows lots of ethnically-diverse people of all ages (an important value to me in the children's books we read) displaying various emotions, and addresses things like how our body messages give us clues about how we're feeling, how are you feeling?, why are we feeling the way we are feeling, changing feelings throughout the day, jumbled up feelings, how to talk about feelings, and making choices about your emotions. The drawings and colors are also aesthetically pleasing. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this for young toddlers, as there are so many words and not for short attention spans, but I think this is a book we can continue to look at the pictures and grow into. It's a great book for us adults too!

It's difficult to manage our emotions if we don't know what they are. So, first step, grow in awareness of feelings and cultivate the practice of naming/talking about/sharing emotions. I think this goes for toddlers as well as us adults, who may be feeling a myriad of things in the midst of this quarantine!

Managing Emotions

Yesterday was a particularly difficult day for us on the toddler front. Prior to naptime, Silly Bean had meltdown after meltdown starting right when we woke up @_@ It was really tempting to give into discouragement, but instead I decided it was really time to lean in even more into cultivating emotional health for my kid and practicing the strategies we have been working on together.

I read in an article somewhere (sorry, can't remember where it was from and don't have a link to it, #mombrain) that talked about emotional health in kids 0-5, and it mentioned that between the ages of 3 and 5 is when you can really teach strategies/coping mechanisms to children to manage big emotions. Silly Bean isn't 3 yet but I thought, well, I'll try them and if they work now that's even better for us :) So we came up with making an "ideas wall" since Silly Bean absolutely looooves ideas--coming up with ideas, affirming others' or his own ideas, saying "I have an idea!" and having (or not having) an idea to share.

I noticed that Silly Bean would get very worked up when he was upset and unable to be reasoned with (haha! as if "toddler" is synonymous with "reasonable"! ;P) so we came up with 2 strategies of what he can do when he gets upset.  Well, I think so far it has been working! Sometimes we'll ask in the midst of a situation before the meltdown point happens, "Do you want to practice one of your strategies?" Silly Bean usually does both of them and afterward says, "I feel better now!" After that, we are able to discuss what happened more calmly ("Oh, so you felt upset because you wanted to keep playing but Mama said it was time to clean up before your bath? And that mad you feel sad and then you cried a lot?"). Not sure if the actual strategies are calming him down, or if he's just feeling proud of himself that he's able to do them, but we'll take it!

I also noticed meltdowns happening whenever Silly Bean needed to wait for something he asked for, whether I or my husband was busy with something at the moment or unable to fulfill a request immediately. This in particular happens when I'm preparing food or doing dishes, and Silly Bean wants me to play with him. We added a new idea category of "What can I do while I'm waiting?" and we brainstormed ideas together of some strategies. Silly Bean was particularly proud of #4 that he came up with all on his own. He even very happily practiced all of those strategies today!

writing on his drawing board

I'm feeling hopeful that these strategies and our discussions will develop into habits that will give Silly Bean both the tools and language to feel his emotions, acknowledge what they are, and be able to talk about them!

To the #toddlerparents out there... 

If you're a toddler parent reading this, I want to fully acknowledge that THIS IS HARD. Especially in quarantine. But my encouragement is that in the moment our kids are screaming and throwing themselves on the floor for the umpteenth time today, we can practice managing our own big emotions and take a few deep breaths, slow down, and help our kid learn to help themselves by teaching them a tool. Take heart--we can do this! It might not look like it is doing anything probably the first 10000 times we try it, but eventually, it'll make a huge difference!

What's been working with your kids (or yourselves) in cultivating emotional health? Or what hasn't? Would love to hear your stories!

3 encouragements in the midst of #toddlerlife in #COVID19

So many of you have asked me some variation of "How are you doing these days?" "What are you doing these days?" and "What is it like parenting a toddler during the pandemic?" Usually I say, "We're doing fine," because when you put it in perspective in light of those who are risking their lives to help people who have the virus, those who are performing essential duties and continuing to work despite the risk, those who are in difficult situations of quarantine (difficult family situations, domestic abuse, extreme isolation, depression), or those who live in areas where the order to quarantine is difficult or impossible, we really are more than fine... but there's also so much more. This post is going to be a little different from our usual posts, but hope it can give some encouragement or at the very least show some solidarity with all the parents out there!

On Friday, it felt like I hit a wall. After putting Silly Bean down for the night, I was exhausted and as my husband and I sat on the couch to catch up after a very long week. I could feel the tiredness and discouragement in my body. No, we really can't complain--our neighbors are great, we have access to the resources/food we need, we both get to work from home and our finances have not taken at hit in this time as it has for so many who we know--but when I saw that the governor of our state posted on social media saying that he thinks it'll still be a few more weeks of social distancing, my heart sank. The extrovert in me felt like it was dying a little more, and the practical side of me was asking, "Okay, so if we're going to be stuck at home for the next 2 months, what are we going to need?," immediately jumping to list-making and feeling overwhelmed by the mental load. Additionally, I pictured the day to day of the next few weeks and felt even more tired.

Day in and day out, I am with Silly Bean nearly the entire day as my husband's ministry has become even more demanding. I try to be as present as I can for the little guy, especially since he is so relational and leaves me alone/plays by himself only for maybe half an hour total in a given day. I've also heard that young children can feel and be affected the anxiety of this season, so who knows how much of that clinginess is just Silly Bean's personality vs. being affected by the stress of the world around us. We used to have playdates, library story time, and running errands to break up the day, so there is little besides outdoor time to break up the inside time. The evenings are the only time I have for Kevin and myself, or if I want to keep up a relationship and do a call or video chat. I don't have the bandwidth to keep up with very many people, and it's hard to practice self-care, let alone have energy to think about what I need to feel refreshed (esp when most of the things I would normally think of as life-giving involve things that can't be done during quarantine!). So all in all, I am dually grateful and very tired.

But even in the midst of trying to navigate and manage all of that, there are 3 encouragements that have been pressing on my heart that I'd love to share with you all.

1. Things are still growing.

our pinto beans are growing!

So many of friends are still beginning their marriages (and livestreaming their ceremonies), new babies are making their way into my friends' lives, my sweet Silly Bean is suddenly is too tall for his pants, our relationships with neighbors are somehow deepening despite the quarantine. The pinto beans we planted that we blogged about a few weeks ago have now been growing so much that we had to transfer them from the window to a pot, which we have been nurturing and checking up on every day. Life is still happening, our kids are still growing and developing even if they are driving us crazy at home. Progress is happening, even though the days creep by slowly and we may not feel like we can see the end.

2. There is still beauty.

we sure love finding dandelions!

We saw a mom squirrel and 2 baby squirrels on a walk in our neighborhood!
photo credit: Kevin Calkins

Nature around us is springing into life--we've seen new flowers blooming, baby squirrels, dandelions transforming, baby geese, so many different birds... A warm hello exchanged with a neighbor says so much more than just "hello" these days, but also "I see you" and "We're in this together." Sometimes we get a warm day and all of the neighbors are then out taking walks and smiling at each other. There are lots of little things to be grateful for, if we take the time to look for them.

3. We have the opportunity to be intentional about cultivating.

This is what I'm most excited about, especially with regard to parenting. Even though it is exhausting, even though there is little return on investment or evidence that what you're doing is making a difference, we have the unique chance especially now with our kids to teach them so much more than academic things. The extensive time we get to spend with our kids in these days are a rare treasure. They are learning from watching us how to emotionally respond in crisis. How to think creatively to help a neighbor. How to find joy in little things. How to cultivate gratitude in the midst of not being able to do what they want, go places they want to, feel cooped up at home. With a little thought and reflection on our part, we can help to cultivate their character through the way we are live our lives as adults and also by taking the time to talk about things.

I love this Target mug that says "Find me in the garden." Toddler life has found us outside on a daily basis, and picking flowers at that ;P, but in all seriousness I think there are some parallels between gardening and parenting. We water and tend to the seeds we sow in trust that our flowers will grow and our tomatoes will be edible, that our kids will become kind and loving individuals. Right now in our household we are sowing into developing emotional health, which we'll share about in a later post!

So take heart! What you are sowing into matters, and we'll see the beauty of it in the days to come.  We're in this together (albeit 6-10 feet apart ;D) and we got this! It's a crazy time (not to mention all of the emotional things in the midst of this pandemic that I didn't write about in this post) but it's a precious time as well.

Love in the time of COVID

Even in the midst of fear, anxiety, despair, and isolation, there is hope. Joy. Connection. Generosity. It's been a season of getting creative in extending love, and we've also been so blessed in the process!

Even before COVID-19, I have been thinking a lot about hospitality, how hospitality isn't just opening your home to some friends and cooking them a meal, but being open with your lives, to your friends but especially to strangers/not-yet-friends. Then the coronavirus hit, and we were all ordered to stay home... but it gave us more opportunity to think outside of the box.

My first idea was letter writing. I love writing encouragement letters and Silly Bean also loves to send people art, so naturally we paired this together and voila---

I posted on Facebook to see what friends would be interested in receiving a letter and also writing back. Friends from all different points in my life (people I am currently close with, people I haven't talked to really for years) responded, and we were looking forward to send them mail. Silly Bean loved writing their names, drawing little pictures, and sharing stickers on little index cards that nested perfectly inside the stationery envelopes.

It was also an opportunity for Silly Bean to learn how the mail system works. We see our mailwoman every day when we are outside and we always make it a point to tell her, "Thank you all that you do," and "Hope you have a great day!" She and her colleagues are also essential workers in this time, delivering letters, bills, packages of things we order online because it is "safer" for us but not necessarily safer for them, and we want to make sure they know they are seen and appreciated. Anyway, we have written and sent out about a dozen letters in hopes to strengthen and encourage others in their homes!

Silly Bean was also very excited to receive some replies. Our friends wrote the sweetest responses, complete with drawings, origami dogs, and stickers. Needless to say, Silly Bean thinks receiving mail is great 😁

We've also been trying to leave some indirect encouragement for our neighbors. On our daily walk, we always walk past a townhouse that has a few signs in the window that read "This too shall pass" and "We can get through this," along with little paper hearts that have motivational words such as "hope," "courage," "faith," and a rainbow that a kid drew displayed prominently on the front door. The first time we saw it, Silly Bean wanted to do the same thing in our windows, so here is what we came up with:

We ended up only writing "love" on all of them (Silly Bean's favorite word) and they face inward since Silly Bean wants to see the words, but he told me that each heart was for a person in our family (hence, the Chinese written on the back of a few of them). I also wrote "faith," "hope," and "love" on 3 of the paper hearts and faced them outward, explaining that we need to display it "backwards" so that our neighbors can see. We're on the 3rd floor though, so I'm not sure if anyone can really see them, but alas, the intention is nice...

As we shared in our post about welcoming spring, one of our daily COVID-19 activities has drawing with sidewalk chalk outside, mostly consisting of hopscotches (when I say it in the plural, I mean we would draw between 5 and 10 a day on the sidewalks). I wasn't sure how the neighbors were receiving this since the outside of our condo complex is public space, but no one complained so we have continued. Then the day before Easter, we opened our door to find a little gift for Silly Bean left by our neighbor across the way:

Silly Bean was of course ecstatic about having more chalk (not too enthused about the puzzle set) and  encouraged to go outside, rain or shine, to do more chalk drawings! We've been branching out a little from our usual and making drawings of flowers and writing motivational words out there as well to encourage.

How have you been able to love your neighbors, or how have they been able to love you, in this time?

Upcycling with Cardboard, Part II

Hope you and your families are all well and safe from your homes this week! The governor of our state signed an extension on the state of emergency, so we'll all still be sheltered in place for the next few weeks. We're thankful for the nice weather lately though, and we are continuing to choose to trust in God in this time.

As promised, we're here again to share some more of our adventures at home and show you what other fun we've been able to have with some of the random cardboard in this place!

One thing I just love about early childhood learning is the ability on the adult (or teacher) to help extend a child's learning, building off of what they're really interested in or already know to build more concepts, knowledge, vocabulary, and imagination. Silly Bean has been really into tea parties lately. We have been making up all these teas (blueberry, raspberry, apple, maple syrup...) even though he has really only had hot water with honey and lemon, which I refer to as "honey with lemon tea." We have all this birthday party stuff shoved in a box in the utility closet that we only pull out 3x a year for our birthdays, and I had a half-carton of eggs box that I thought would be PERFECT to be a pretend birthday cake, and voila! The "birthday box" came into being, and we have been celebrating birthdays every day since then. In quarantine, all of Silly Bean's "friends" have been able to attend the party, but he still does miss his real friends.

Of course then we had to explain to Silly Bean that it wasn't actually his real birthday, it's just pretend, and that led into a discussion of looking at our calendar, learning his own birthday date and learning other people's birthdates...

This second idea for a while now and was happy to finally be able to make it! In my mind, family board game time seemed like a good idea to bond with kids but being 2 1/2, there aren't many board games out there that are appropriate for a toddler attention span. So I knew I wanted to create my own!

It's very simple--you roll the dice (in our case, it's a soft number cube that was from one of those blocks that you put by baby to take pictures to count the months of baby's life-- happy to reuse that as well since I have no idea what to do it with now!) and move that many pieces, going from "start" to "end," which Silly Bean was happily able to decipher. I was also excited to be able to personalize it for Silly Bean's interests. The two Bullseye dogs I bought on a whim from Target in the dollar section one day that are intended as garden pot pieces, but I thought might be useful someday (which, as you know, Target is one of our favorite places to shop!). Silly Bean has been very interested in drawing houses lately, and really into tea parties (see above), so the start is home and the end point is a picnic in the park under the trees! I basically explained a picnic as having a tea party or lunch outside together 😄

Silly Bean loved the game and we played it about 3 or 4 times! He learned about turn taking--he was very excited to have his turn out of turn--counting, and representation of self symbolically with a playing piece (surprisingly, Silly Bean did not confuse the two dogs even though they look so similar), saying, "This is me!" Silly Bean has been continually asking us to play the game, which we have unofficially called, "Going on a Picnic game," but with the weather so nice our after dinner plans have consisted of taking walks around the neighborhood, and collecting flowers for our flower press.

Remember, just because we have to stay home doesn't mean we can't have adventures ;P We'd love to hear what fun or creative things you guys have been up to as well--I just love seeing all the fun ideas with kids popping up all over Facebook! Really brightens my feed in the midst of all of the other news. Until next time!

Upcycled Activities with Things You Might Have a Surplus of This Season

As we continue to follow the news about #COVID19 especially in our state and I see social media posts from doctor and nurse friends, our prayers go out to those on the front lines, those who either are affected themselves or have relatives who are affected by the virus. And of course as a mama of a toddler, my heart goes out to all the moms out there as well!

If you're WFH these days and the rest of your family is at home, you may have begun to accumulate a surplus of certain cardboard products 😏 (ahem, TP rolls, paper towel rolls, boxes from things ordered online or through delivery). I love coming up with ideas of how to repurpose/upcycle/reuse/whatever you want to call it such things to make a fun DIY version of something I'd rather not spend money buying if I can make it myself. Here are some things we've done at home!

Silly Bean loves cars and building roads out of blocks, Magnatiles, random things in his room, and we had a LOT of rectangular cardboard lying around, so I taped some together and drew a road!

Silly Bean was ecstatic about it, and we had even more fun "decorating" it after his nap. He got to practice drawing houses and writing his name.

I've been saving paper towel and toilet paper rolls since Silly Bean was born (we only saved a boxful since my husband thought it was a little much) to prepare for lots of fun art projects once he became a toddler.  Here's one little game I made for Silly Bean this week with a few of them:

 

 

We still haven't been able to figure out whether Silly Bean is left or right handed, as he writes and draws/colors with both. I've also been trying to find some fun ideas for him to practice chopstick skills with these training chopsticks we got from HMart (yes, we bought both righty and lefty pairs because we're not sure which he prefers!). Picking up the pom poms has given him an opportunity to practice, and it's really helped!

I've also been saving the cardboard egg cartons for art projects. Every day Silly Bean has been asking, "Mama, is it spring today?" We've been enjoying taking walks and looking at buds, smelling and picking flowers, watching the birds eat birdseed on our deck, and looking at earthworms. And so I decided to make a little bug art project!

 

Silly Bean seems very proud of his creation, and has been showing it off on every video call with (our) friends.

That's all we had time for this week, but I'm hoping to make more cardboard activities/projects for next week!