Megan Whitesides Coaching

When Your Child Is Upset… and You Feel It Too Have you ever noticed how easy it is to match your child’s mood? They’re annoyed… and suddenly you’re annoyed. They’re mad at you… and now you’re mad right back. This is called mirroring . And honestly, it’s something we all do. But here’s the problem when we mirror our kids, we’re not actually helping the situation. We’re just adding fuel to it. Instead of calming things down, everything escalates.  We’re often the ones left feeling guilty about what we said or how we reacted. What This Looks Like in Real Life The other day, my son told me I “ruined his hair” because I combed the back down. My first reaction? Roll my eyes. Get annoyed. Say, “Fine, do it yourself then.” Or when your child is upset with you, it’s so tempting to get defensive… or even have that quiet thought of, “ I’ll show you .” But that never works. It just makes things worse for them and for us. 3 Ways to Stop Mirroring Your Child 1. Notice It Awarenes...

We all know that if we want stronger muscles, we have to use them. We don’t get stronger by sitting still we get stronger by doing things that take effort. Our brains work the same way. If we want our kids to have stronger, smarter, more resilient brains… they need opportunities to use them. That means: doing hard things trying new things working through things that feel a little uncomfortable solving puzzles or figuring things out That’s how the brain grows. Simple, everyday activities can do this in a big way especially for young kids. One of those activities is using both hands at the same time to follow patterns like zig-zags or dots. It might look like just a fun little exercise, but there’s actually a lot happening inside the brain.  You can see an example HERE. When kids use both hands together, they’re activating both sides of the brain and strengthening the connection between them through the corpus callosum . And just like a muscle, the more that conn...