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Self Care with Structures and Routines

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SELF CARE WITH STRUCTURES AND ROUTINES

This month’s theme is self-care – which works in conjunction with our 2022 theme of self-awareness and growth. Self-care encompasses many different aspects of well-being. Last year we spoke about the occupation of self-care, the tasks involved and how to break them down. 

This year I’d like to speak about self-care routines and how we can implement daily, weekly and monthly habits to ensure greater wellbeing. Optimal self-care is achieved through structure and routine. In doing so we are able to maintain balance, complete day to day activities and achieve goals.

There are so many positives to having a rhythm, structure and routine within our daily lives such as; comfort, security and safety, productivity and achievement. Our routine forms the structure and basis for everything we do. 

So, I’d like you to take a look at your daily routine. How do you spend your days? Is your daily routine supportive of you and your family achieving your goals? Does it give you a healthy and balanced structure? One that reduces stress? 

Take a moment to write down what a typical week day looks like for you and let’s discuss the ways in which you could enhance it moving forward.

The most important thing about establishing a routine is to remember that it needs to be tailored to your individual needs. Every single person on this planet is different. There’s no one size fits all, or right way to do things. The best place to start is with your value set. Identify what’s most important to you and then work backwards from there – are your routines supporting your values? If for example one of your values is family – what are your day to day routines doing to support and cultivate a strong relationship with those in your immediate and extended family? Can you do simple things like ensure that your family eats together each night with phones / technology removed to ensure open communication and connection?

Routines and structures that we put in place are vital, but life doesn’t always stay the same and we need to still allow for these movements and alterations as well. You have to be mindful of being somewhat flexible with your routine and remembering that life is about balance. 

Try to ensure that you follow routine 80% of the time and allow for movement within the other 20%.

Another key element of routine is timing and establishing structures. We live in a fast paced world that is ever changing. Finding structure in day to day life can actually promote a sense of calm in not only your life, but the lives of those around you. Establish clear boundaries within your structures eg: when you arrive home allot a time to check emails from work if needed but then switch off and remain present with your family – to ensure that you are tending to your value set. 

We aren’t perfect, things don’t always go to plan and you aren’t always going to maintain a routine. It’s important to be kind to yourself. Nothing is gained from you being hard on yourself if structure is not met on a certain day or even week. As occupational therapists, helping our families develop routines to support their goals is a vital part of our job. Doing so creates a sense of ease in daily life. If that’s something you think we could help you with, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask. 

When I began writing this blog, I was reflecting on my own routines and structures. These have changed and continuously evolved as I have moved locations, matured, started my business and transitioned into different phases of my life.

I want to talk to you about the three different levels of routine that I have experienced in the first 30 years of my life to date. 

Right now, I have had to rely on my ‘back bone routine’ due to each day being different with work, either traveling, working from home or seeing clients and increased demands over the last few months. This routine and structure is my bare minimum, it’s not enough to keep on top of everything, but it’s enough to maintain my sanity and organisation. I want to make it very clear that it’s fine to have times in your life where the ‘bare minimum’ is quite ok. 

The next level of personal structure would be my ‘mid level routine’ – this level for me involves basic self-care routines, structured in a more organised and less chaotic way. I am able to have my morning/evening routines, exercise and regular stretching routines, time to cook and structure my week with lists and goals. In this  structure, I am still busy but more of my own individual routines and needs are being met to increase my energy to be engaging in daily life demands more proactively. 

Lastly, my ‘Ideal level of routine’ involves establishing and adhering to almost complete structure within my day. It’s when I am able to achieve all required tasks and allow for sufficient time to tend to goals that facilitate my value set. I do want to make it clear that this is a rare occasion, as life doesn’t allow for it on an everyday basis. Within this state, there is more intention in each action throughout the day. 

I often get asked about people that are creative or thrive off a lack of routine, how do they find balance and ensure that their values and goals are being met? Structure is effective even for the creatives of the world – I am one of them. The most important element in this instance is to structure time for creativity itself and allow for freedom of choice. Maybe if you sit down to structure your day / week, give yourself an allotted time where you get to choose from a couple of activities – allowing for space and the freedom of choice.  I also like to have the freedom to complete the activities and jobs that are required of me in my own time. I will meet the deadlines required but how and when it gets done, I like to be in control of. I like the time and space to sit, create and develop to turn an idea to a task and complete it. But at the core of how I live my day, I still establish routines and structure that help me get through the day itself. This backbone and core routine is paramount, even for us creatives. 

So my challenge to you this month is to think about what routine means to you. Answer these questions and develop a new routine for you and your family…

What routines do you have daily, weekly and monthly? On a good day for your children, what do their routines look like?On a not so good day for your children, what do their routines look like? Is it different every time?

If there was one part of your routine at home that you would like help with, what would it be? Think about it, talk to us at Explore and Soar about it. We can help! We will support you, help establish a routine and structure unique to your needs and goals. 

A final note and friendly reminder, it takes 30 days to cultivate a new habit. 

Are you up for the challenge? Are you looking to make a positive change to your health – physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually. 

This is your sign to start a new routine today.

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 3, 2022

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Mindfulness for Parents and Carers

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MINDFULNESS FOR PARENTS AND CARERS

A new school term and managing busy schedules is never without its challenges. The new year means building and establishing new routines that will work with your families core priorities, needs and wants whether it’s work, school, sports, social or education centred. At times this can feel like an uphill battle. Please know you are not alone in this. We see you, we hear you and we acknowledge all the effort and work you have put into the start of this year. The flexibility, patience and even changes parents have made for their children’s appointments is amazing to see. 

As Occupational Therapists and Therapy Assistants, we visit your home to provide intervention solutions to support your child’s release of emotions and to promote emotional regulation, social awareness, sensory processing and overall well being. 

Our parents work incredibly hard to maintain routines, be present and continue to support ongoing therapy within the home. But what I’d like to reflect on today are some coping strategies for our parents. To offer some suggestions that allow you a moment to ground yourself and recharge.

Most of us struggle to prioritise time for ourselves but it is essential for our wellbeing to take a few minutes each day to increase and support a positive mind-body balance. The way in which we can achieve this is through mindfulness practice. 

Mindfulness has several key characteristics:

Mindfulness is defined as a state of being in which individuals bring their attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, in a non-judgemental or accepting way. 

  1. It involves a receptive awareness and registration of inner experiences (emotions, thoughts, behavioural intentions) as well as external events. 
  2. Mindful information processing is pre-conceptual. Meaning, in a mindful state, individuals are purely noticing what is happening rather than evaluating, analysing, judging or reflecting upon it. 
  3. Mindfulness is also characterised by a present-oriented consciousness where individuals focus on moment-to-moment experiences rather than thinking about the past or fantasising about the future. 

There are many benefits to mindfulness that include:

  • Stress reduction 
  • Increasing working memory 
  • Increase focus 
  • Reduced  emotional reactivity 
  • Increased cognitive flexibility 
  • Enhance self awareness 
  • Increase intuition 
  • Reduce fear modulation

This also supports the notion that mindfulness training addresses a basic skill in self regulation capacities. This is a vital skill as a parent who is often providing an example of healthy emotional regulation to their children.

In order to become more mindful, I thought I’d give you some specific strategies that you can try. These include: 

  • Setting intentions or positive affirmations each morning.
  • Keeping a gratitude journal. Think of all that you are grateful for in the present moment, this can make difficult periods of time easier.
  • Grounding your body by stepping outside for 5 minutes with bare feet. You can also practice grounding yourself by paying attention to the soles of your feet as you walk. With each step notice how your weight shifts from the center to the ball of your foot. Maintain steady breathing throughout this exercise. This is called “earthing”. 
  • While the kids are asleep or busy being kids, find a place where you can be alone and savor the silence just for a moment. 
  • Square breathing. Inhale, hold, exhale, hold with a count of 4 at each stage. This type of breathing supports deeper and slower breath. It works by distracting your mind as you count to four, calming your nervous system, and decreasing stress in your body
  • Colouring in is a way to focus your thoughts, focus on the current moment and decompress. 
  • Completing 5 senses work. Notice the world around you, via sound, sight, touch, taste, and smell. By doing this, you are grounding yourself by increasing your awareness of your body and your environment. 
  • Completing a body scan. Sit or lie down in a comfortable position. Close your eyes to reduce the number of stimuli. Start at the top of your head and work all the way down to your feet. Pay close attention to what each area of the body feels like, giving yourself increased awareness and bringing your focus to your own body and what it needs. 

It’s vital that we take time out to be mindful each day. Looking after your wellbeing only affects your child’s in significantly positive ways. We want each of our parents and carers to know that we are here to support you as well as your children – as we are always family focused. For any more information please don’t hesitate to ask your therapists or assistant any time!

References 

Davis, L. W., Strasburger, A. M., & Brown, L. F. (2007). Mindfulness. An intervention for anxiety in schizophrenia. J Psychosoc Nurs, 45, 23-29.

Hülsheger, U. R., Alberts, H. J., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. W. (2013). Benefits of mindfulness at work: the role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of applied psychology, 98(2), 310.

Until next time,
Maddie

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 4, 2022

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Health Promotion for our Families

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HEALTH PROMOTION FOR OUR FAMILIES

As occupational therapists we are trained to provide support to all our clients and their families, in order to increase their independence, grow their confidence and to live a happy and healthy life. 

More often than not, this is first done or activated when someone is starting to experience discomfort or challenges in certain areas of their life. For our children, self-care, play, schooling and their social interactions with their peers are where areas of concern often arise. As we’ve spoken about previously, when these challenges occur, they manifest in behaviours. For our children, the way in which they behave is in fact their method of asking for help. They are in turn telling us as adults, that something internally doesn’t feel right and they require extra help. It is then our role to determine what is going on and how we can provide effective support. 

But what if we could actually reduce these areas of concern and the amount of worry that comes along with them but being proactive rather than reactive? 

This is an area that as occupational therapists we are so very passionate about. Through health promotion we can bring awareness, education and support to all families and communities about child development, patterns to look out for and access to support services when you have questions. This should be readily accessible to every person in each of their communities. By having access to services that offer advice and support, promoting health and wellness for both the parent/carer and their child, inadvertently increases well being and reduces the risk of mental health. 

From an OT perspective; the definition of health promotion from the World Health Organisation is “the process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and realise aspirations, to satisfy needs, to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen as a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasising social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector, but goes beyond health lifestyles to well-being.” (1986, para.2). 

Something that we do as a company outside of providing intervention strategies and support to our clients and their families, is also providing them with a range of essential health promotion strategies to positively influence, empower and educate in order to further reduce the inequalities in our health industry. Therefore, significantly supporting positive interactions and emotional connections in our client’s support networks. 

Each of our OT’s provide strategies and supports to our clients, such as:

  • Teaching positive ways for your child to move their body that feels good for them, to increase control and awareness.
  • Teaching them to feel safe and comfortable sharing their emotions and sitting within their feelings.
  • Providing as many possible positive social interactions with other peers who are presented with similar challenges in group program settings.
  • Conducting skill based training for self-care so that children can be successful on school camps or overnight trips.
  • Teaching your child how to plan, organise and sequence activities or thoughts together, to help with positive inclusion in school – this makes them feel clever, smart, successful and allows them realise their worth. 
  • Providing strategies and support to be successful and confident in navigating their local communities.

Additionally, each of our OT’s provide strategies and supports to our clients parents/caregiver’s such as:

  • Providing connections and relationships within the Explore and soar family; other families, clients or health professionals.
  • Taking into account every parent’s well-being when working with their children, giving them emotional support, and interventions that are based both on the child and the parent, so as not to overwhelm and contribute to more stress.
  • Running parent groups, where like minded parents are present to talk about their own situations, so that they feel heard and they are able to build connections around them without feeling isolated, increasing their support network outside of health professionals.
  • Utilising parent coaching strategies to teach them how to do the interventions; positively reshaping their confidence in order to be able to manage all aspects of their lives with their children. 

Within Explore and Soar, we support and provide strategies to our local communities for health promotion such as:

  • Education nights at preschools for the parents and their educators. This is a regular offering as a part of our service to build awareness and health promotion for development – it’s one of the most consistent things we do. 
  • Work within our local schools; teacher professional development courses that support them in the classroom and the playground. This differs from early education nights, as rather than identifying areas of concern at a younger age, it’s more about working with difficulties that have already been identified and enveloping the right strategies.
  • Remaining very community orientated by sponsoring and supporting sporting events or team members. We do so, so that the community knows there is a point of access, that if information or support is needed, there is a place to ask questions. We always seeking to create a presence in the community to bridge the gap and get people openly talking about behaviour, emotion or social skills.
  • Promoting safe access within the community, so as to eliminate anxiety and stress.

This brings us to an exciting event happening at the end of this month in support of the Hunter Region! We are participating in the Hunter Disability Expo this May! We participate in local expos in the community to bridge the gap and bring awareness to the support that is offered.

The Hunter Disability Expo is open to anyone that would like to attend and it is on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd May at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre. 

Participants get to see all the different supports and companies within the Hunter that offer assistance to our kids, all the way through to adulthood, from allied health professionals to general support services. 

On a personal note, growing up, this level of awareness, education and events to support our local communities and families simply weren’t available. This is often still the case in our regional communities. So participating in events like this to share with others within a safe space, is and will always continue to be a passion of mine. 

So, if you have time and want to see us and many other local health professionals, join us at the Hunter Disability Expo and don’t be afraid to say Hi! We would love to see you there. 

Until next time,
Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 5, 2021

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Parent Therapist Relationships

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PARENT THERAPIST RELATIONSHIP

With 2020 now well underway and with intentions set for the new year, it’s finally time for us to reconnect with our clients and families after the Christmas and New Year break.

The beginning of a new year is always a cherished time for many. After a well deserved break, it’s time to go back to work, school and to start achieving those new found goals.

Over the summer break, our children have in fact been doing a lot of work – setting their new found skills acquired in 2019 into action. The implementation of these skills during the break is often unseen but it is still an important aspect of our intervention goals. Times of play and rest are when our children are integrating and consolidating all their skills and new learnt behaviours. The break from education and routine allows time for the brain to consolidate new pathways and integrate them into everyday life and activities. In fact, one of my favourite parts about returning to work after the Christmas break is hearing all the stories of growth and new found goals being achieved. 

As the new year and the new term begins, it’s important for us to connect with parents and caregivers and determine what their needs and intentions are for the year ahead. This is done by communicating and reconnecting through storytelling. We are evaluating and discussing with them what their child has achieved the previous year, what goals they would like to achieve for the year ahead and what the next 6, 12 or 24 month action plans are. 

This is the time where we ensure that our parents and caregivers are really heard. 

It’s important that we work in collaboration to support our children and their families to reach their desired goals. We pride ourselves on being open, honest and working through each challenge diligently with you. We are passionate therapists that will employee a range of strategies whilst working with individual needs, respecting your values, parenting styles and unique qualities to find success. 

How we achieve this is through negotiation, program planning, service delivery and treatment modality options and education on a range of therapy services (inclusive of all allied health services available, not just OT). After listening to your concerns, stories and goals, we will break down these conversations in a way that is meaningful and understandable to each families needs. We set out your ideal, real and individual world options, creating strategies to deliver ongoing services, to assist with the agreed upon plan.

What I love most about my job is being able to provide a service that suits your own individual treatment model. Being able to provide these services to families within their own home, school or local community is incredibly rewarding. Within the comfort of your own home, we are able to work towards you family’s strengths, support you to achieve success and then facilitate change in all desired areas. This continues to inspire and motivate myself to persist to push and support our communities families more. 

Working within the family home is the most desired environment for us as OT’s, as it allows us to work collaboratively with families and children during our sessions. We also work actively and are flexible in interacting with the child’s school setting. We have worked in a range of different schools in the Newcastle to Muswellbrook/Scone regions and are continuing to expand our outreach and support this coming year. 

Working with each school requires a different and individualised assessment. Each school and family have their own goals, strengths and challenges which require some flexibility and support on our behalf. 

We actively participate in goal setting and planning meetings with teachers, run groups and/or individual sessions within the school day, complete teacher training and we host parent and teacher information nights. It’s important for us as OT’s to recognise that the support offered to each and everyone one of our families is different, depending on their desired outcomes. 

As we are in the midst of these vital parent-therapist conversations, I am finding so much joy in hearing all the positivity and recent achievements from our families. Their goals, motivation and support to always seek the best for their children inspires me to keep seeking and searching for the best intervention strategies. The relationship between a parent and therapist is so special, and unique to each family. As parents, you all work so hard to assist your children and it’s truly a blessing to be able to help improve and empower your child’s life.

I am looking forward to further supporting our families this year and ensuring that each of their voices are always heard. In 2020 it is my utmost goal to continue to strengthen Explore and Soar’s parent-therapist relationships, to achieve physical, mental, social and spiritual growth for each and every one of our families. 

The positive feedback following the holiday period is a reminder that parent-therapist relationships really do matter. It is one of the most important aspects of any intervention with a child and their family. One that I and the team at Explore and Soar continue to live by. 

Please don’t hesitate to share with us how we can continue to support you and your family. May 2020 be a year of growth and success for all. It’s time to get to work!

– Jess

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 5, 2020

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