Happy 2020!  It's a brand new year.  And like most people, you might have made or are going to make some new year's resolutions for 2020.  Perhaps you want to learn how to meditate, erase your debt, eat more fruits and vegetables, go on long hikes, or be mindful when talking to your spouse and children.  

We start the new year and each day with the hope of attaining these goals.  But we are often really afraid to try because we have tried so many times before and don't want to be disappointed.  Recent research suggests that 88% of people fail to stick to their resolutions to change and improve their lives.

We often fail to change our habits because our brain craves consistency and routine and tries so hard to resist change.  It can be very discouraging to try to do things differently, only to find ourselves falling back into old maladaptive patterns.

Most people believe that if we are hard on ourselves, we will be motivated to change.  But the contrary is actually true.  Showing self-compassion, being warm and supportive towards ourselves and actively soothing ourselves, helps more when we fall short of our intentions and goals.  Self-compassion leads to less anxiety, less depression, and greater peace of mind.  Most importantly, it makes us feel more motivated to make the improvements we want to make.

Here are three steps to achieve your resolutions.

1. Forgive yourself

The first step to making lasting change is to forgive yourself for having failed in the past. It’s okay; it’s normal, even. You did the best you could with the skills you had. Take a deep breath and soothe yourself like you might soothe or talk to a good friend.   Use kind, reassuring words to ease yourself out of a stress response. Remind yourself that few people are successful the first time they try to change their routines. Explain to yourself that feeling bad about your behavior will not increase your future success.

2. Aim for an inherently rewarding target

The second step is to set the right resolution, whether that’s a big audacious goal, a new habit you’d like to get into, or a bad habit you’d like to break.

To begin, you might want to:

• Lose weight
• Get in shape or establish an exercise habit
• Spend more time with your friends

It’s important to figure out WHY you want to do this thing that you haven’t been doing so far. You might have a whole laundry list of reasons for wanting to do what you want to do, and that’s great. But right now, I want you to think of the single most compelling way that you’ll benefit from achieving your goal.

Chances are, you’ve come up with a super logical reason for, say, losing weight or exercising, like that it will lower your blood pressure.

Here’s the thing: Even though we all like to think of ourselves as rational people, logic doesn’t motivate us nearly as much as our emotions do. Why? Because we approach what feels good and avoid what feels bad.

This means that we tend to stick with behavior changes for longer when we aim for something that feels good. Doing something because we feel like we should do it doesn’t feel good. It feels like we’re being forced. It’s stressful, and stress makes us seek comfort, often in the very form of behavior that we are trying to avoid.

So, ask yourself in your heart of hearts, how do you really want to feel? Identify a WHY for your resolution that will motivate you over the long haul.

Maybe you want to lose weight, for example, and so you plan to cut baked goods out of your diet, which happen to be your favorite foods. How will that make you feel?

At first, you might feel great, because you’ve just made a healthy decision for yourself. But if you don’t cheat on your diet, you’ll likely soon feel deprived. And if you do begin to cheat on your diet, you’ll probably feel anxious and guilty. Both of these feeling states are not motivating and uncomfortable, which will make it easy for you to give up on your diet.

But maybe the reason that you want to lose weight is so that you feel healthy and strong. Feeling stronger and healthier are very motivating feeling states, which will make it much easier for you to keep your new habit.

With this in mind, rethink your goal or resolution: Restate it for yourself in terms of how you want to feel.  For example:

• “I forbid myself to eat baked goods” could become → “I want to feel healthy and strong.”
• “I have to get more sleep” could become → “I want to feel well-rested and energetic.”
• “I should spend more time with friends” could become → “I want to feel loving and connected.”

3. Refine your resolution

​What actions and behaviors have led you to feel what you want to feel in the past?

Maybe you tend to feel well-rested and energetic when you go to bed before 10 p.m. Perhaps you tend to feel healthy and strong when you go for a hike. Maybe you feel loving and connected when you spend one-on-one time with your sister.

The important thing here is that it is something that you already have experience with; we human beings tend to be truly terrible at predicting how something will make us feel. But we do well to use our own experience to predict how we’ll feel in the future.

Here’s an example of how we frequently go wrong: Say we'd like to feel stronger this upcoming year. This calls for a get-in-shape habit. So, what would be a good way to get in shape? We could train for a marathon! Fun! Ambitious! But before we start researching destination marathons (because why not make it a vacation, too?), we'd do well to stop and ask: How do we feel when we are training for a long run? 

On the other hand, I can think of two activities that DO make me feel stronger:

• Taking long hikes
• High-intensity exercise classes where I sweat a lot

Your “why” for your goal needs to be a rewarding feeling that you experience when you are doing your resolution or, at the very least, immediately after you do it. A daily hike must genuinely make you feel energized, for example, if that is the feeling you are after. 

From here, refine your resolution one more time. Make sure that your resolution reflects a really specific behavior, so that you know if you are succeeding or not. For example, resolve to take three hikes per week after work on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays instead of resolving to “go for more hikes.”

Finally, do a little reality check. Setting unrealistic resolutions is a sure path to failure. If it’s just not realistic for you to, say, leave work an hour early on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that you can do your hike, please don’t make that your resolution.

If you are now aiming for a target that is specific, realistic, and inherently rewarding (because you know it is going to make you feel good), you are all set to accomplish those 2020 resolutions!

Thank you to the kind reader who sent me the following links all about helping your child with autism to connect with their friends and join in on social activities such as birthday parties.

So, bust out the shaving cream, grab the dried rice, beans, and corn, and make your own fun!

7 Sensory Play Activities for Children on the Spectrum

How to Create the Ultimate Playroom for a Child With Autism

How to Explain Autism to Neurotypical Kids

How to Help Your Child with Autism Fit in Socially

Sensory Friendly Birthday Parties for Children with Autism

First love is an unparalleled phenomenon. Nothing can match it in terms of excitement, energy, and positive feelings. Romantic relationships expand adolescents’ social lives as they now spend more time with their boyfriend’s or girlfriends’s social group as well as their own.  They gain an intimate best friend, which needs their increasing friendship and intimacy demands. Teenagers now have someone they are open with and who is reciprocally open with them. They are deeply concerned with one another‘s well-being, which simultaneously feels good and somewhat cracks through their necessarily egocentric world. Trust and compassion are built up through their relationship.

As a parent, you hope that your child feels cared for, listened to, and respected as they navigate their romantic and sexual experiences.  It can be very difficult for parents to talk with their teenagers about this new uncharted territory.  In an ideal world, the road to sex is paved with lots of information and conversation about its mechanical and emotional aspects. Parents play important roles in many of the conversations. If you are too shy or embarrassed to talk about it yourself, you still need to make sure these conversations are taking place.

With this in mind, here are two podcasts that might help to open up the dialogue and increase your comfort level.

Mindshift: The Puberty Lady

Mindshift: Questions Boys Ask About Puberty

The most important thing is to start having these conversations with your children and to keep the dialogue open.
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Some kids acclimate quickly to new situations. They express excitement about meeting their new classmates at the start of the school year, jump right into the mix at birthday parties, and easily adapt if and when their regular routine is disrupted. For other kids, change is challenging. If your child fits into this latter category, you have a tougher job as a parent. Here are some tips for supporting the child who is behaviorally inhibited, struggles with transitions, and shies away in the face of new people and places.

Avoid Avoidance

What do you do when your child backs out of a playdate the night before because he's too scared to go to his friend's house?  As a parent, it's very tempting to call the other parent and cancel; but research shows that avoidance breeds more avoidance. By letting your child stay home, you would be telling him or her, "You can't handle it." Instead, try gradually building up to the playdate by setting smaller goals and praising each step along the way.   For example, you might sit down with your child and outline a "bravery chart" with smaller steps leading to the ultimate goal of the playdate; he or she could start with a playdate in your home, then in the friend's home with you present, then a short one alone, etc.

Model Calm

When your child is crying hysterically and shaking, it's easy to get anxious, frustrated, angry, discouraged, embarrassed or all of the above. It's even easier to lose it when you share some of your child's anxieties (read: "maybe something bad will happen to him or her  if I leave him or her there"). But in the face of uncertainty, kids look to their parents as guides, and they can be perceptive little individuals. Try to model calm and confidence through the tone and volume of your voice, your body language, and your facial expressions, even when you want to pull your hair out. Think of a few things that are relaxing to you (breathing, counting, using self-validating thoughts like, "this is just my anxiety, my child is ok," and imagining vacation scenes far, far away) and try them--repeatedly--until you find one that takes the edge off. When all else fails, faking it works too.

Refocus Attention on Approach (i.e., "Brave") Behavior

It's surprisingly easy to get stuck focusing on kids' anxious behaviors and reassuring them in relation to their fears. Yet reassurance tends to just reinforce anxiety. Instead, it's important to acknowledge the emotion and then refocus your attention and praise on brave behaviors or even small efforts toward brave behavior. For example, after acknowledging your child's anxiety, try to shift the emphasis by saying something like, "It sounds like you are feeling really afraid of going to Sam's house. What are two brave steps you could take to combat your fear?"

Seek Help if the Anxiety Takes Over
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If your child's anxiety seems to be pervading one or more areas, including school, relationships, or extracurricular activities, and has begun to interfere with his or her functioning, you should get help for your child from a professional.  

In the Bay Area, I am here to help children and teenagers who are struggling with anxiety.  Please contact me to obtain professional help for your child or teenager.

Being and practicing mindfulness for children, teenagers, and adults has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and anxiety, increase your ability to regulate your emotions and feel more compassion for yourself and others.  There is remarkable evidence that shows that when you do things like mindfulness and relaxation training and yoga, that you are setting your body up to not express certain genes that could cause a lot of illness and disease in people. 

​While there are several apps to help children and teenagers to improve their mindfulness, there are also some great books and resources that children and teenagers might also benefit from reading.

1.  Sitting Still Like a Frog by Eline Snel

2.  The ABC's of Yoga for Kids by Teresa Power

3. The Yoga Game: By the Sea by Kathy Beliveau

4.  The Mindful Child: How to Help Your Kid Manage Stress and Become Happier, Kinder, and More Compassionate by Susan Greenland

5. Little Flower Yoga for Kids: A Yoga and Mindfulness Program to Help Your Child Improve Attention and Emotional Balance by Jennifer Harper

6.  Yoga Pretzels by Tara Guber and Leah Kalish

Thank you to the reader who sent me these fantastic articles about vacation ideas for children with special needs.  Whether you plan a staycation or a vacation, enjoy it with your family, friends, and loved ones.

32 Vacation Destinations for Individuals with Special Needs

Finding the Right Hotel for Your Child with Special Needs

Backyard Camping for Kids with Disabilities

Playground Tips for Children with Special Needs

Teaching Swimming to Children with Disabilities: Benefits and Safety Precautions

The Best Bikes for Special Needs Kids

Take a day this month to explore that nearby beautiful garden or listen to a song, new or beloved.  

Pursue this delightful article by Oliver Sacks on the psychological and physiological Healing Power of Gardens.

No matter how confident your child is at the prospect of starting middle school, chances are there's something about it that has them scared silly. What concerns kids most—and how can parents help them work through their fears? An informal survey of parents, students, and experts who work with adolescents turned up the following:

• Combination locks. Many a preteen is terrified that they won't be able to get their locker open. As a result, they will be stuck with no place to put their books, or they will not be able to retrieve needed materials for the next class or at the end of the day.  What you can do: First, understand that this fear isn't completely unfounded, as students have limited time between classes. Try buying your preteen a combination lock over the summer to practice on, or see if the school will allow your child to come try the lockers out before the start of the school year.
• Being late for class. Yes, preteens have loads of energy, but even they find it challenging to move from class to class on time. The consequence for lateness can be detention. No kid wants to get in trouble because they weren't fast enough!  What you can do: Reassure your child that they are not alone. Brainstorm ways to streamline the process. What will they do if they are not sure where a particular class is located? Who can they ask for directions (for example, the teacher of a previous class, or an advisor)? Is your child good at keeping their books and papers organized? If not, help them to organize their binders and books so they don't waste precious minutes between classes.  And remind your child that they will have to save socializing for lunchtime or after school.
• Not having friends.  Often children worry at the start of middle school about making friends. Middle school can be an especially difficult time for girls, given the rotating nature of girls' friendships, the emergence of queen bees, and the shifting social order.  What you can do: Try to focus on this time of new beginnings. You might ask, "Do you know anyone from your old school who is going to be there?" If your child scoffs at your attempts to identify potentially friendly faces in the crowd, try to identify their fears and put them in perspective. You might say, "You had friends at your old school, what do you imagine might happen that you wouldn't you be able to make friends at the new one?" or "Are you worried that the kids from your elementary school won't want to be friends anymore?" Don't feel like you have to supply a steady stream of solutions. Sometimes it helps kids just to voice their fears to a sympathetic listener.
• Being too different. Nothing is worse for middle schoolers than standing out in a way they haven't chosen, which means anything at the far end of the "normal" curve. For a girl, it could mean being the tallest in the class or the most developed; for a boy, it could mean being the shortest or the clumsiest. At some schools, fashion is the arbiter of all things cool, and middle schoolers may live in dread of showing up with the wrong backpack, brand of jeans, or style of shoes.
  What you can do: First, understand that the tween years are a stage that marks the beginning of their search for an identity. Whatever it is about your preteen's personality or appearance that concerns them, don't say, "That's silly," or "It doesn't matter." Minimizing their feelings (even with the best of intentions) will only make your child feel more alone. Preteens' self-esteem drops during this time, due to a combination of hormonal activity (remember too that puberty is setting in) and brain development. Emphasize the positive as one way of boosting an insecure preteen's confidence. If, for example, a boy is small in stature but fast on the playing field, his parents could coach him to view his size as an asset rather than a liability.
• Tough classes. Some kids worry that they won't be able to keep up academically. A child who is nervous about the increased workload may worry that there will be too much reading, or that he or she got good grades in elementary school not because they were smart, but because the teachers liked them.
  What you can do: There's certainly nothing wrong with acknowledging that the work will be harder (it will be!), but assure your child that it won't be more than they can handle. Remind your preteen that while being a good student is important, they have other strengths as well — perhaps they love to draw, or play soccer — so that their entire sense of self isn't wrapped up in grades. Encourage them to let a teacher — and you — know if they think they need extra help or if they are  falling behind. That way you can take steps to address problems early on, perhaps by having your preteen meet with a teacher after school, or working with a tutor.