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Remember: Calm is Contagious Former Navy Commander Rorke T. Denver tells a story about the final day of his Navy SEAL training when things were going completely sideways. The ranking officer was screaming his head off, and the students were responding with even more pandemonium. That’s when a master chief petty officer gathered the team together and told them something Denver never forgot: Calm is contagious. If the person in charge stays calm, the people looking up to them stay calm. If the person in charge is exuding chaos, the people looking up to them follow suit. It’s not just calm that is contagious — panic, stress and worry are, too. And for more intimate relationships, like those between parents and children, the correlation is even stronger. Kids don’t just mimic your reaction, they amplify it. This brings me back to Heroes In Waiting. One of their free lessons teaches kids they have the power to create more of the feelings they want and less of the feelings they don’t want by doing simple things like taking a deep breath, being nice to themselves and learning to respond to stressful situations in a way that’s helpful instead of destructive. That’s pretty great advice for us parents in this season, too. Editor’s note: For more information about bullying behavior and kids’ mental wellness all year long, check out the free curriculum, videos and resources at heroesinwaiting.org.
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Unsubscribe from Perfection Newsflash: There’s no such thing as perfection. When we feel completely out of control, our tendency is to look at everyone else’s “perfect” kids in the holiday program and feel like we’re failing as parents. That’s exactly when we need to take a little advice from the experts: Don’t compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides. The outsides aren’t always real. What is real is that life is messy, we’re all doing the best we can and sometimes – especially around stressful times like the holidays – life and little ones have other plans. At those times, the most helpful thing we can do is to let go of the false ideal that is perfection. In fact, according to mindfulness psychologist Dr. Elisha Goldstein, unsubscribing from perfectionism actually sets a good example for our kids. As role models for our little sponges, we can powerfully model for them that imperfection is a normal part of life.
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