Set yourself up for summer ☀️
Ideas for summer vacation when your family is dealing with mental health challenges
Hello! Summer is here, and I hope you are looking forward to getting out of the school routine and hopefully enjoying good weather, fun times, and maybe some adventure.
At the same time, I understand that many times when we have a child with a mental health issue like an eating disorder, summer is loaded and fraught. It’s not your fault if you’re dreading certain parts of the summer—you’re not alone!
Here are 3 things to do for your child and 3 things to do for yourself to set yourself up for summer vacation:
For your child
1. Have a schedule
While summer is often seen as an opportunity for kids to be free of schedules, most kids, particularly those with mental health conditions, benefit from a schedule. This can vary from family to family, but in general you want to have set times and expectations for eating and sleeping. If your child has disordered eating, both mealtimes and sleep should be regular and intentional, not left up to chance. This goes for kids and teens, because as much as we’d like our older teens to be self-sufficient, they can’t usually uphold the structure they need without help. They need parental oversight and management to get meals and sleep.
2. Set limits on social media
As hard as it is, we need to establish boundaries around social media use. This is challenging for almost every family right now, but the evidence shows that beyond 3 hours (maximum) of social media time per day has negative impacts on mental health. After that, you’re more likely to see things like anxiety, depression, disordered eating, self-harm, negative body and self image, and loneliness. Setting limits on social media can be challenging, but keep in mind that we don’t debate about whether our kids wear their seatbelts. Like seatbelts, social media is a safety issue around which we can uphold limits and expectations.
3. Allow room for negative feelings
Our vision of summer might be endless freedom and joy, but it also includes all the normal negative feelings like boredom, loneliness, frustration, and anger. Negative emotions are part of healthy human functioning. Our goal isn’t to stop our kids from having negative emotions but teaching them to express and process negative emotions in regulated ways. We can encourage our kids to experience their negative emotions without trying to fix their feelings. This is one of the most important things we can do for our kids’ lifelong mental health because it builds self-regulation. I teach my clients to do this for their kids, as it’s a parenting skill most of us need help with—tolerating our kids’ negative emotions can be triggering! If you want to work on emotional regulation skills this summer, I’ve got some worksheets to help.
For you
1. Remember that you matter, too
When our kids are struggling with mental health issues it’s easy to put ourselves last. Believe me, I get it. And yet we know that parents’ mental health directly affects kids’ mental health. So as hard as it is, we have to carve out emotional and physical space for our own needs, too. Sacrificing ourselves can seem like the only option, but thinking like that is a symptom of burnout and it means you need more support and care. Balancing our needs with our kids’ needs is tricky but vitally important for everyone.
2. Wear the bathing suit and get in the photos
If you’re like many parents, you worry about how you look in a bathing suit and avoid getting in family photos. Look, I get it. I’ve been there and still sometimes have to hype myself up for it. But it’s so important that we show up authentically as ourselves despite any perceived flaws. Modeling that we accept ourselves and our bodies is more important than thousands of lectures about positive body image. When they see us showing up without shame, they learn to accept themselves and their bodies. I know this is hard in our culture, but it’s worth it!
3. Schedule time with people who see you as a person (not a role)
Many of us fill the role of caregiver and manager in our families. But we all deserve and need to be with people who see us as an individual rather than a role. No matter how much your family needs you right now, please find time to be with at least one adult who makes you feel good about yourself and as if you are enough exactly as you are. This is the equivalent of putting your own oxygen mask on before you help others with theirs.
If summer vacation feels like even more work than the school year, I get it. Please let me know if you’d like some support!
Ginny Jones Parent Coach / More-Love.org
Coaching Notes
Here are some stories from the last few weeks of my coaching sessions with parents who have kids with eating and body image issues:
I helped my client think through how to talk to her child with bulimia who binge eats berries. We sorted through her thoughts about finances, binge eating, and purging. This is complicated and very common right now, and berry prices keep going up!
My clients worked on a plan for grandparent visits this summer. These grandparents make hurtful comments about food and weight, so we discussed setting expectations, making real-time reminders, and how to disengage when the grandparents can’t control themselves.
A mom is struggling with anxiety and insomnia, so we identified the structural support she needs to navigate her daughter’s eating disorder treatment.
A Strategic Plan To Increase Your Child’s Health And Safety On Social Media
You want to raise a happy, healthy kid who is able to interact with social media in a regulated, safe way. Sometimes it seems as if your only options are to take their phone away or give them complete access to it. It’s so tiring to constantly have to debate and argue about phone limits, and it seems like your child is too fragile, explosive, or difficult for you to have any influence over their social media habits.
You want to raise a child who is part of this world, and that includes using social media in responsible ways. To do that, you need to understand your parental role and assert yourself in ways that may feel uncomfortable.
This printable Guide + Workbook provides you with information, practical tools, evidence-based solutions, and actionable steps that you can use today to set reasonable, responsible limits on your child’s social media use. With this guide you can stop feeling controlled by your child’s demands about their phone and establish limits and boundaries your child needs to be safe.
I’ve created a 7-page printable guide and workbook based on personal practice and my 1:1 coaching work with more than 120 families to help you navigate conversations with your child about social media. It includes information about social media use, how parents can keep kids safe on social media, setting social media expectations and limits, setting up a phone contract, and increasing social media literacy.
Click the button below to get your printable and start parenting with more confidence today.