
Hello brain people! I just have to say, I am so proud of all of the strong, hard working, flexible parents that I have the pleasure of working with. Times are tough and so up in the air at this point that you can’t really figure out what the future looks like. There are differences of opinion, concern, and projection that make it near impossible to figure out what is going on and where we as a nation are headed. When I work with my own patients I think of this as the WHAT IF. This is all the hypothetical, possible, and potential futures that we can sit and be concerned about. The problem is that the WHAT IF is hard to deal with because it may be that you spend a lot of time and energy on something that doesn’t happen (hello anxiety!). So, most of the time when I work with both children and their families, I try very hard to shift to WHAT IS. This is a problem solving approach that identifies concerns right now that you see and can put your hands on and tries to support those very real, very now impacts. With the variety of changes that COVID-19 forced and the fact that whatever the new normal looks like, it is probably not going to happen today, lots of parents are getting a birds eye view of issues that have been primarily dealt with at school. I would love for every family I work with (and my own, ahem) to focus on the big things they see as obstacles for their children that they can see right now after spending the last few months working with them more academically. On that note, I have blogged about ongoing issues that seem to be commonly discussed with parents. I hope those have helped. However, today in my email inbox I ran across a resource that I think may capture a lot of parent concerns right now in one convenient place. Guiford Press is a publisher that specializes in books for psychologists and parents surrounding children, parenting, mental health issues, behavior problems, etc. See the below link to their COVID-19 resource page, where lots of their brilliant authors have put together info for support. They cover a range of topics like mindfulness, parenting, relationship stress, and educational concerns. Enjoy!