Wellness Resources for New Parents
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
Please feel free to use and share these resources and adapt them to your life and your child's unique developmental age!
For Children:
Head Shoulders Knees and Toes song and/or book
Helps with:
|
For Parents:
Body Scan Meditation is a form of Meditation that allows the brain to refocus and detach from emotions, judgment and stress
Creative ways to incorporate into your day:
|
Breathing Techniques
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
For Children:
Bubbles for Kids!
Benefits of Bubbles:
|
More Visual Breathing Techniques for Kids
|
For Parents:
Visual Breathing
How it can help:
How to fit it into your routine:
|
Grounding Techniques
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
For Children:
I Spy Game
|
For Parents:
Grounding Techniques help create space from distressing feelings in nearly any situation. Helpful for improving:
|
Using Music as a Tool
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
Research shows the benefits of music therapy for various mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, autism, and trauma. Music acts as a medium for processing emotions, trauma, and grief, but music can also be utilized as a regulating or calming agent for anxiety or mood dysregulation.
Neuroscience research supports the effects music has on our brain’s performance: watch TEDx Alan Harvey: Your Brain on Music and Alex Doman: Your Brain is Better on Music |
For Children:
Music can help with all areas of child development (movement, language development, teaching body parts, learning routines, calm tantrums) and make the day together more enjoyable.
|
For Parents:
Use music to pull you out of a funk, pump you up or calm you down.
|
Kindness
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
Kindness has been shown to increase self-esteem, empathy and compassion, and improve mood. It helps reduce stress, brings a fresh perspective and deepens friendships.
Kindness can increase your sense of connectivity with others, which can directly impact loneliness, improve low mood and enhance relationships in general. It also can be contagious. Looking for ways to show kindness can give you a focus activity, especially if you tend to be anxious or stressed in some social situations. Being kind boosts serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters in the brain that give you feelings of satisfaction and well-being, and cause the pleasure/reward centers in your brain to light up. Endorphins, which are your body’s natural pain killer, also can be released. It is not just how you treat other people — it is how you extend those same behaviors and intentions to yourself as well. I believe you can be kinder in your own self-talk. You wouldn't talk to your neighbor or best friend the way you sometimes talk to yourself. |
For Children:
|
For Parents:
Random acts of kindness for caregivers: Showing your children kindness is the BEST teacher and YOU reap the benefits of being kind as well.
Examples of simple and inexpensive ways you can fill your bucket and brighten others days at the same time:
|
Gratitude
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
Gratitude: the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness
Similar to kindness, gratitude lessens stress, anxiety, and depression. When you experience gratitude, you feel grateful for something or someone in your life and respond with feelings of kindness, warmth, and other forms of generosity…which then creates a foundation of happiness. |
For Children:
“Favorite Part of the Day” Exercise
|
For Parents:
Gratitude reflections, journaling, praying, meditation etc.
|
Art
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
Research shows that expressing oneself through art can alleviate depression, anxiety, cancer, dementia and numerous other mental and physical health problems. Art is an effective way to reduce stress, increase focus and improve self-esteem. Whether it's painting, dancing, writing or music, art in all of its forms can benefit your overall health!
|
For Children:
Coloring page (responding to what you see without judgment)
|
For Parents:
Mandalas: Adult Coloring Pages
“Coloring mandalas allows the brain to enter a peaceful state and to be focused on filling in the geometrical shapes instead of thinking about their worries.” -Carl Jung
|
Self-Love and Positive Affirmations
with Shelby Riley, LICSW
Using positive affirmations rewires the brain to be more positive and self encouraging.
|
For Children:
Positive Mantras or Positive Affirmations “I am ____” statements help us focus on the positive or what we aspire to be. “I am calm” when feeling anxious, “I am brave” when feeling scared etc.
|
For Caregivers:
Positive Affirmations and Self Love
|