Sorry, Satan...

⚠️ STRETCHING IS IMPORTANT ⚠️

Something I never take seriously enough is

S T R E T C H I N G

My legs are killing me from running the past 3 days in a row and I haven’t been stretching. It’s so easy to just say “oh do your stretches!” So I’ve attached a few photos to help visualize what this should look like!

It doesn’t have to be fancy 🥂

Just get those muscles nice n’ flexible 💪🏼

What a smoke bubble looks like on water. Via here

1. The Best Defense is a Good Offense: Be proactive with children’s behavior. 

Don’t wait until a child is in the middle of a meltdown in the toiletries aisle of Target. Try to be aware of how different situations and stimuli might affect kids of different ages. A few tips: 

Kids, especially toddler age kids, struggle with transitions. Give them a clear time table and stick to it. Give them updates as deadlines approach. “We are leaving the library in 5 minutes.” “We need to go see Grandma in 10 minutes.” “Target will only take 20 minutes.” 

Getting toted around by adults can be exhausting and frustrating. Give kids tasks to do. Put them in charge of something. It can be something actually helpful (you get to hold the calculator and keep track of how much money we are spending in the store) or something fun to keep their mind busy (count all the blue things in this aisle.) Talk to your kids. Help them feel involved, instead of just a tote bag. 

Model self care and emotional awareness. Kids are often dealing with SUPER new emotions, and may not know how to recognize them, contextualize them, or act on them. Talk through your own emotions, or emotions you think they may be having, and show them how to deal with them. “Yeah, I know, mommy is really sad that we can’t go to the park because of the rain. It makes me feel really bad inside. I think if we color with crayons for a while, I’ll feel better.” 

Give kids choices. Obviously, age plays a big part here, but a reasonable, curated set of appropriate choices gives kids a growing feeling of agency and teaches making good choices. “Would you like peas or green beans?” “Penguin Shirt or Turtle Shirt?” “Water or apple juice?” This requires YOU to also speak with and listen to the kids. Always important. 

Be aware of how the children in YOUR care react to things, and find ways to mitigate “bad” behavior before it happens. 

2. “Punishment” is not the goal. Discipline means teaching. 

Your goal, as a parent, as a teacher, as a baby sitter, is not to punish kids. Your goal is to help teach kids how to become thoughtful, responsible, and kind people. The entire idea of kids “deserving” bad things because they’ve “been bad” is flawed. If a kid does something “bad”, then we should aim to help them not make that bad choice again. 

How? 

Identify any immediate stimuli or situation causing the bad behavior and remove/alter it so the behavior stops. This might mean leaving an errand unfinished, a time out, taking away a toy, etc, in order to STOP the behavior that is happening RIGHT NOW. 

Talk to the child about why their behavior was “bad.” What bad affects could it have? How does it affect others? What caused it? Kids, even very young kids, can understand complicated things if explained in terms on their level. 

Come up with a plan for what to do next time the original stimuli or situation happens. If Timmy tries to take your truck again, what can we do differently? The next time we are in line at the bank, what can we do to make it more fun? 

If the child is older, and the offense is more severe, you may feel the need for a tangible consequence. Remember that these should be age appropriate, reasonable, and negotiable. Give kids the ability to reduce their consequence with good behavior, and be willing to modify the consequence if they have a compelling and reasonable request. Listening to kids and being empathetic is not a weakness. It is a sign of respect. 

3. Don’t forget that kids are people. Kids are also kids. 

Kids will not be perfect angels. You will not be a perfect adult. Sometimes they will be cranky, angry, tired, hungry, selfish, or mean. You can be these things to. One bad day doesn’t mean you are a failure, and it doesn’t mean the kids are a failure. You have to let kids have bad days sometimes. You have to love them anyway and be willing to give it a fresh go tomorrow. 

https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/aap-press-room-media-center/Pages/Discipline.aspx

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201309/research-spanking-it-s-bad-all-kids

KPOP LEGENDS

1. When we see you after a long day, we might be all irritable and not want to talk

It has nothing to do with you. Outgoing introverts, though still introverts at their core, often need to recharge after a large use of social energy. After a long day of dealing with people, our social batteries are drained and we need to unwind and recover, usually alone.

2. We’re charming creatures and can be the life of the party, but…

You’ll be surprised how much we actually live in our heads. People often confuse us for extroverts, but we’re too introspective and over-think too much to be one.

3. If we like you, we really like you.

We don’t waste our time with people we’re not completely crazy about. If we agreed to go on a date with you, we like you. Take it as a huge compliment.

4. We have times when we’re weird with our phones.

Some days we can talk for hours, but sometimes we’re not so good at replying and talking on the phone. Don’t take it personally - we screen our phone calls, even from our closest friends. Outgoing introverts sometimes hate the phone because it’s all, like, intrusive and tears our minds away from whatever we’re deeply focusing on (and we are always deeply focusing on something). Our mind doesn’t change direction easily. Listening to one thing and seeing something else is a lot of sensory input piled on top of everything that’s already going on in our heads.

5. But don’t worry, in person we’ll listen to you for hours.

We have spectrums of introversion, so we’re good listeners. We’ll always be naturally in tune with how you’re feeling, so we’ll be able to see through any front you put up and make you jump into the deep end.

6. We need to dip our foot in the pool first.

We need time to warm up, so, like, chill. We tend not to outwardly express our feelings and spill our whole life story in the first hour of meeting you. Or the first year.

7. Our energy level depends on our environment.

Yes, we can get annoyed easily. If we vibe with the crowd, we can get our energy from human interactions. But if we don’t, we’ll start to get really introspective and reflective, and tend to withdraw into ourselves. It’s kinda like a hit or miss. We’re very selectively social. But it’s not because we dislike people - it’s actually the opposite. We dislike the barriers like small talk (which often comes with going out) creates between people, and try to avoid it at all costs.

8. You’ll think we are flirty with everyone.

Okay here’s the thing, when we inevitably have to interact with people, we make it seem like there’s nothing in the world we’d rather be doing. It’s ‘cause we’re, like, overly sensitive and so we go out of our way to make other people feel comfortable and happy. We’re intuitive and outgoing at the same time.