26 Mar The Julie Lythcott-Haims webinar – 10 tips for parents on sheltering in place without losing your mind

10 Tips for Parents on Sheltering in Place Without Losing Your Mind.

A webinar with Julie Lythcott-Haims & Deborah Reber – Today Thu Mar 26 2020 3pm EST/noon PST

Here are my notes on listening:

It was a good webinar, though not as many tips for K-8 parenting tips.
I will share the replay as soon as they publish it.
What was most refreshing – that you will see when you watch the replay – was that someone who is writing about all this stuff regularly is STILL struggling with the woes of helicopter parenting!

Here are her 10 tips:

1. Put on your own oxygen mask first: What do I need, to be what they need? Selfcare (something intentional, just for you) Daily. 2 good phrases in this section: ‘You are modeling how to deal with stress & anxiety.’ ‘We are our kids biggest role models. Are we the BEST?’
2. Assume everyone has COVID and act accordingly: Assume you are a carrier. Keep your distance even at home. Swab down anything coming into the safe zone of your home: groceries, deliveries, mail etc; wash your hands daily; swab down the counters.
   A great idea was to use this time to ask the kids to help tidy and even clean – longer term ‘adulting’ skills and life skills.
3. Do no shirk your authority: Excellent segment where she talks about how she parented her 19 year old. I will not do this section justice … you have to listen to the whole thing!
4. Keep your house clean: sometimes this gives you that power that you are in control of something in the midst of this uncertainty and chaos
5. Seek social connections: If you are taking a delivery or buying groceries, meet their eyes (from 6’ away!) and acknowledge the humanity in each other. Look up from your screen at your child when you are in conversation. Another got to listen to segment. Make phone calls. ‘Do you know what your loved one really needs? Don’t make assumptions. Pay attention to the love languages because we don’t ask for things the same way.
6. Give everyone their space – esp as we are all on top of each other all the time!
7. Set a goal of something to be done by the time we go back to ‘normal’ Here I am going to plug @robbieswale ‘s recent LinkedIn article

8. Delight in the small dividends (wins)
9. Support your local businesses. Is there a way you can do takeout, pay your hairdresser via Interac, keep small business afloat?
10. Serve those in need. Find ways and opportunities to spend time and money on worthy causes.

From the Q&A:

• Re seniors who may be making college decisions and cannot visit the campus: ‘Go with your gut. How did you feel when you opened that letter. Go for the one where your heart jumped. Listen to your intuition.’
• As parents if you need to vent, do with friends (or therapists) then come back to the home with a clear head. Acknowledge that this is unusual, and that you have to process your feelings too.
• On kids being bored. It is OK. Hopefully we will not return to overscheduling kids after this. If you are worried that you are not adequately enriching your kids, DONT.
  Let kids be bored – and then let them design their own way out of their boredom. That is how they develop a creative mind.

Lots of great stuff. I have more notes, but it is worth listening to yourself.

Here is the link to the replay

I happened on Debbie’s website as I was doing due diligence on my podcast Tilt the Future, focused on Future of Work, careers, GenZ and parents.

Hers is named Tilt parenting, and discusses parenting for differently wired kids – which is all of them!

I imagine her webinar with Julie who always talks straight will be of interest to many in my circle, so doing a straight copy/paste from Deborah Reber‘ s newsletter: I’m co-hosting a live webinar with NY Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims (How to Raise an Adult) this Thursday, March 26, at 3pm EST. The topic of the free webinar is “10 Tips for Parents on Sheltering in Place Without Losing Your Mind.” Julie is an inspiring presenter and has some thoughtful, and grounding, insights to share. Just sign up here to register.

Posted on LinkedIn