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What Stresses Our Children Out?

What is stress?  It is this feeling that you have when there are all kinds of challenges and things happening to you at the same time.  It may come from different things that you are up against and if will affect both your mind and your body.

The things that stress teens out the most are school work, parents, friends’ problems, romantic relationships.  On top of that, for teens, drugs in the neighborhood was a high stressor and for younger kids they name siblings as a stressor.

It is interesting how girls and boys try to cope with stress.  Boys more often use avoidance and distraction while girls tend to look for support and will try to actively reduce their stress.  Girls are more likely to find their stress coming from relationships and boys from authority figures.

Both sets of individuals use avoidance to some degree while more and more are seeing their stressed displayed with anger and aggression. Finding healthy ways of dealing with stress is very important to the health, both physical and mental for our young adults.  While a certain amount of short term stress can be good, the long term –  day in and day out feelings of stress, worry and anxiety are not healthy in any way.

What are your top 5 stressors?

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Brooks C. does best push ups ever!

At Balanced Life Skills testing for June 2011 at Quiet Waters Park, Brooks showed me his pushups. They rival any push ups done by a Marine. Oh yes his dad was in the Marines. Great job Brooks!!

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Child Safety Drowning Rescue

Balanced Life Skills Emergency Response to Drowning Children Can Learn

Each year according to the CDC 750 children will lose their life to drowning. It is important that children and adults be aware of what they should be looking for and know what they can do to assist.

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Verbal Judo Founder Passes Away, Leaving Us a Language to Make the World a Better Place

It is with great sadness that I must inform you of the passing of Dr. George “Doc” Thompson. For 27 years, as founder and CEO of the Verbal Judo Institute, Doc led the charge to elevate the professionalism and communication skills for crisis professionals, such as law enforcement and all first responders. His work gained many followers, in both the public and private sectors.

“The entire basis of Verbal Judo is to treat people with dignity and respect, most of all your family and close friends,” Thompson wrote in the forward to his book, “Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion.” (This book sold 250,000 copies and is scheduled for re-release later this year.) “Be ever so careful how you speak to them, as words can cut deeper and fester longer than sword wounds,” he continued. “Ironically, we often spend less energy being kind to those closest to us. Change it!”

Dr. Thompson has given us the strategies and the language to make the world a better place.

Knowing that words can cut deeper and wounds from words can last longer is the reason that Balanced Life Skills has learned from “Doc” Thompson to teach our students how to communicate when others are less than pleasant to us. Verbal Self Defense is the communication skills that everyone can learn and practice including children. It is this self defense that is the number one way we can teach our children to defend themselves from those that would like to pick on or tease them. It starts with understanding our own worth and having confidence along with “mushin”. If you do not know what “mushin” is visit us at Balanced Life Skills to see how this ancient Asian philosophy can affect how we deal with others.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. George Thompson here is a link to a summary of his life. If you would like your children to learn Verbal Judo, please contact us at Balanced Life Skills. We would love to have you be a part of our continued efforts to build a culture of peace in our schools and community.

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Child Safety: How to Stop a Nose Bleed

Teaching our children that they can help themselves and others in an emergency situation builds their knowledge and confidence. Stopping a nose bleed or other bleeding is one area of safety that every child should learn about.

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Austin C. has determination to jump rope

Austin has worked so hard on jumping rope. The 5/6 orange belts learn to jump rope continuously for 15 jumps without missing. Today Austin accomplished that and more. He will be testing for his green belt next week at Quiet Waters Park with his classmates. Congratulations!