Tag Archives: family

Dealing With Special Events During Quarantine

quarantine, health, family, covid
Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels

If they haven’t already, you are probably going to encounter some special events during the COVID-19 pandemic. From birthdays to anniversaries and cultural celebrations. Adults understand that we are living through difficult times, so having a birthday in quarantine isn’t too much of a disappointment. We accept that money is tight and getting out to the shops, planning celebrations or seeing our friends is out of the question. However, it can be challenging for our children even if it’s a parents birthday or special occasion. 

It’s essential to help guide our children through this time and give them as much normality in a crisis situation as we are able. So keeping to traditions in our household is important. If you always do something special for mother’s day, then you need to stick to the plan. If your child is used to birthday parties, it’s time for some outside the box thinking.

If you are tight on budget, then getting creative with your children is a great place to start. Re-purposing items you already own and presenting them as gifts, will not only keep your kids busy, it will also give them pride. You could create your own fathers day shirts or bake a birthday cake with your children for their sibling. Young children love to give, but this doesn’t have to be a vast, expensive gesture. Even collecting up flowers in the garden and creating a beautiful bouquet would work. 

If you’re worrying about birthday parties during quarantine, there are some great solutions to making the day special. You can send out invites to all the members of your household, including the cat or the dog. You could also send virtual invitations to friends and family, asking them to join your special party via a video call! Ask them all to dress up if there is a theme. What could be better than grandpa appearing on a TV screen dressed as a Disney princess or a wrestling character? 

With the technology we have, it’s easy to set up a karaoke night or a disco. So getting children in the party mood isn’t hard. You could also play games in the garden or have a competition. It’s worth considering what makes your child excited about birthday parties. Often it’s the small things we don’t think about. Like the party bags at the end of the night. So make sure you pay attention to all these elements. 

Food is the center of every event. Whether it is an anniversary breakfast, a birthday cake or a traditional day of celebration, get your kids involved in working out the menu and then helping you to prepare all the elements of your big meal. Make sure you create something unique and not just prepare a usual meal. Ask your children to lay out the table and let them choose where everyone is going to sit.

You can make events more memorable in quarantine and really help children to deal with this challenging time. Plus, you will have a great time too!

How Your Family Can Cope With Trauma and Build a New Normal After an Accident

trauma, accident, family, coping, life
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More than 50% of U.S families have experienced some disaster, and two-thirds of children encounter a traumatic event by age sixteen, according to SAMHSA. If you or a family member is involved in an accident, it’s normal to feel uncomfortable, confused and stressed. However, individuals react differently to traumatic events, and that may lead to disruptions in the family, including a lack of proper communication and lapse in daily routines. Luckily, your family can overcome post-traumatic stress by practicing daily habits that put your life back on track. The key is to ensure the entire family is committed to building a new healthy lifestyle.

Seek Legal Assistance

When dealing with the aftermath of an accident, it is easy to overlook the importance of hiring a personal injury lawyer. Keep in mind an accident of any nature will not have a psychological impact only, but also hurt your finances. According to the professionals at https://personalinjuryattorney-fresno.com/, if the injuries you or a loved one experience following an accident are due to someone else’s negligence, you are entitled to compensation.

Legal experts at JJS explain that if you have a high-stake personal injury case, an experienced attorney will assist you to hold the party at-fault accountable and seek a fair amount of settlement. Although filing a personal injury claim will not alleviate the pain and suffering, it will bring financial relief to settle medical expenses and compensate for lost wages. That way, your family can focus on healing. 

Stay Active, Together

Physical activity promotes the production of feel-good hormones to reduce stress, speed recovery, and improve appearance. Simple activities like playing soccer, basketball, swimming, and dancing with the kids enhance mood. Nonetheless, it is essential to learn how to exercise after an accident to ensure the injured person does not strain. Make sure to consult a physician about the best workout routine to keep your family healthy and safe.

Encourage Communication

It takes time to recover from post-traumatic stress, but you can help your family cope by creating a supportive environment. Your children, for example, may not feel comfortable talking about current events. In that case, encourage them to draw, write, or paint to express their feelings. Self-expression is particularly important in dealing with traumatic experiences, so encouraging your family to work through their emotions in whichever way works for them is key. 

Engaging in activities with loved ones is another excellent way to enhance communication. Start dialogues that are less serious and stressful. Then listen to your family’s concerns, do not judge, and reassure them it’s not their fault for the accident. But most importantly, manage your stress to achieve positive outcomes.

The Smart Box: Introducing Healthy TV Watching Habits To Our Kids

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Picture – CC0 Licence

When we consider the ways of keeping our kids healthy, it’s not just about the obvious things like eating right and exercising but it’s about encouraging healthy habits in life. We can look back and realize that we made certain mistakes or instilled unhealthy habits because we do them ourselves. A very good example is television. The latest Infinity Dish statistics show how television plays a role in almost everyone’s life. Perhaps there were a few times when you needed a break so you put your children in front of the television but this has now spiraled out of control and now you’ve got couch potatoes for kids! But when we look at the idea of watching television there are ways for us to encourage some healthy habits. 

Being Aware Of Questionable YouTube Content

It’s something that we think is pretty harmless, especially for toddlers. When we put on a kids YouTube channel that plays nursery rhymes we may not realize that there is a lot of unhealthy and questionable content out there that individuals are trying to sneak into the videos. We should monitor our children’s living habits but we should also think about the streaming services we use. If you have a Firestick it’s so easy to install apps that have various questionable shows and cedars. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is something that might help and if you’re wondering why would you use a VPN for Firestick it is a good way to keep yourself anonymous so you’re not easily targeted with specific content. Using a VPN can also be useful when travelling abroad, as some of your child’s favourite shows may be blocked by the local internet. For this reason, if you’re traveling to a foreign country like China, make sure to have a reliable service like ExpressVPN China at hand to ensure a fast and secure connection without encountering any common restrictions. Whether you are at home or abroad, once we get into certain viewing habits the algorithm kicks in and so we are suggested more and more questionable content, so having a degree of privacy can be important.

Turn The Television Off

It sounds obvious, but the television becomes a background to our lives. Turning the television off when visitors come by, eating meals, or doing other tasks means that you don’t rely on the television to become a babysitter of sorts. Our children can easily become distracted by what is on television and when our children are young, this is the perfect opportunity to make sure they don’t rely on this for the rest of their lives. This can mean a lot of harsh lessons for ourselves when we are used to watching television. But when you live by the rules yourself it’s far easier to enforce them. It’s a good idea to impose certain time limits. For example, if your children have started school, two hours should be the maximum. And when you start to schedule their day after school it gives you an opportunity to incorporate other important skills. 

Choosing Educational Content

This is such a difficult topic to get our heads around. It’s easier when your children are preschoolers because there’s a lot of shows out there about counting and giving your children certain nuggets of knowledge. But as your children get older it can be harder to monitor this. Not allowing your children to plan their own weekly viewing schedule can seem a little bit on the harsh side but when you allow a certain time limit consider incorporating things that you think are educational into their TV watching time.

Television can be a good thing, just as long as we approach it with the right balance.