Whinypaluza Wednesday - Helping Children Deal with Social Stress

Do you know what I have to do? Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday! No need to whine, it's Winey Palooza Wednesday! Have some wine and join us on Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green family! Thank you for singing. So I was gonna tell you before you leave that you see this wall behind us? I still have a stack of art to go through from last year to update the wall. You should. So maybe you could help me. All right. Okay, goodbye. If you want to sing me out at the end, that would be lovely, and if you don't, that would be okay too. So hello everybody, how are you doing?

Hello everybody.

Did you check the sound and everything from the kitchen? Ah, that's what I was trying to do. Okay, Seth is gonna go check the sound and make sure that he can hear me.

I can hear you.

Um, are you all as freezing as I am? How is your weather? I, I spoke to a lady yesterday who lives in Minnesota and she said it was like— I think she said it was like 20 degrees.

Yes. Did that make you feel better?

Um, It made me feel sorry. I was like, it's colder and in certain locations.

Yes, Buffalo is not the worst weather ever.

We were bonding over the fact that we don't have to deal with hurricanes, but her and I agreed that we don't like blizzards.

So blizzard over a hurricane, mudslide, earthquake, or forest fire?

Um, I would love none of the above.

So is there a perfect place in the middle, you know, where it doesn't have anything?

I don't know if you have figured out a location that is beautiful weather, and beautiful to me is like 70s, right? We like— I like warm. I don't like— I don't like super hot. My family can't deal with super hot. My dog can't deal with warm weather. No hurricanes. Let me know. Let me know. I am open to suggestions. I am about to suffer through my— I get to suffer through—

well, first of all, let's ditch the word suffer. That's part of the problem.

It's suffering or enjoyment.

Some of us enjoy it.

How am I going to enjoy? Okay, we're not going to get on to winter. I can do a whole topic on winter, but I'm about to suffer through my 46th winter in Buffalo. I get to. Congratulations, Miss Marta.

We are all so grateful.

Will you, will you keep me warm with your loving?

I'll do my best. I'll turn the heat up.

Um, so my body hasn't adjusted. I'm completely freezing. I froze at Friday night's football game. I was like this the whole game. We with a winter coat and blanket and left with no voice. So the cold weather took my voice. As you can tell, it's pretty much back, right? What do you think?

Mostly back.

Mostly back.

Much improved.

Much improved. I did very, I'm doing less talking to bring it back.

Yes.

So my topic this week is helping children deal with social stress. And this topic is like humongous. I have talked about it before. I should have gone through and looked at the other blog titles that I have done before.

Well, we're talking about a different part of it.

Right. If you look through, okay, so Lily's 10. So it's been like 9 years of blogs. Has it been 9 years?

That sounds pretty close.

Ish, ish. If you look through the page, the Whiny Palooza page, there are a ton of blogs. I'm sure there's more on social stress. I conquered some of it today that we're going to talk about, but there will be more in the future. My mother brought up social anxiety, which is not really in this, but that's a whole nother blog topic for another day. And my parents own a health food store, so people come in and talk about their kids' stress all the time, and she talks to me about it. And social anxiety is huge. Social stress is huge. I talk to my kids about social— talk to my daughters about social stress all the time. My son— I am sure that some of you have communicative boys. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. I'm sure that some of you have boys who you wish would be a little less talkative. I will tell you that my brother and my son are not those people. And I don't get a lot out of my son. He is 15.

A lot of communication.

I don't— yes, I don't get a lot of, "This is what happens at school. It happened at school. This is what happened at football. This is what stressed me out." I don't get a lot of that, but my daughters tell me a lot.

Yes.

And I pick them up at school and they jump in the car and it's like, brrr. You should try it one day, honey.

I have. That's how I knew to make the brrr sound.

So my own, I'm going to tell you this really briefly. My own high school experience has made me very empathic and understanding because my middle school friends went to a different high school. I went to high school with, um, like zero friends and was very stressed out about it. And, um, it took me a few months to— took me a few months to feel like I had friends. And those few months were so stressful. I mean, tears. I'm not going to school. My parents were wonderful. They supported me through it. Um, when our parents— you as parents when they know that they can come home to their safe place at home. It makes such a difference. Even if school is stressful, even if activities are stressful, I knew that I was coming home to my parents, that I could talk to them about it. My mom reached out to the guidance counselor, she reached out to my teachers. Everybody got me through it. And my friend dragged me to cheerleading tryouts and everything changed. I joined cheerleading, made some of my best friends that I'm still friends with today, and my whole life changed. So I'm going to start with a huge, enormous plug that if your child does not have a lot of friends, if your child is stressed out socially, make them join something. And a club, an activity, a sport, Ella reminded me that a club tends to only meet once a week, which doesn't really give them much. So something like a sport— your kid's not sporty, there's stuff like drama club and art club and other stuff, but, um, sports meet every single day. So healthy for my son to be with a group of boys every day after school. Um, I just want to start with telling you that it changed my school experience, so I, I'm living proof that we need to make people join things. And friend dragged me to tryouts. So thank you, friend. So that's my story, but I want to move to my kids. And Seth has his own story and his own knowledge that he brings to our kids. So between the two of us, we really do our best to be there for our kids and talk to them about all their social stressors. And I tell my kids, you know, I don't want to project my needs onto them. So like, if I think I need, you know, a lot of friends, that doesn't mean that they think they need a lot of friends. And what that means is I talk to them about quarters versus pennies. Like, all you need is a couple really good friends. Now, the challenge there is that we don't want them to spend all their time with one person. And it's more challenging if, if you're living this with me, it's more challenging than it sounds because they they tend to have like their favorite person that they want to see all the time, and we don't really want them to put all their eggs in one basket because what happens if that basket goes south? And then that's stressful for them. So I want them to diversify their friends. And I had a lady tell me at the football game that her daughter does swim team at various locations, at school, at the Y, and joins clubs. And she said she just like collects friends at all these places that she goes to, which is like the perfect scenario. But even if your kid has friends, there's stress. So I want to talk about when your kid has friends, what is stressful, and when your kid doesn't have friends, what is stressful. And if your kid has friends, there's still conflict. They still come home, they're still upset with their friend, there's still things going on. And I had a mother say to me, once they go to middle school, I'm done. Like, they need to handle it themselves. Now, I mean, Seth, you can tell me I'm wrong, but I don't think it's cut and dry. Like, I appreciate her words. I think she's, I think she's on to something. I think we do need to back off. But my kids don't always know what to say. And we roleplay with them. You've done it too. I've seen you do it. And it's like when your friend says X, what are you going to say in response? And kind of like showing them how to have a conflict and resolve it. And, you know, as I'm, you know, having conflict with you, I have to remember that they're watching me and learning from me how to have conflict. Yep. You're like, you're like, sometimes you're good and sometimes you're not so good. Is that what you're thinking back there?

I said nothing.

He's afraid to talk because I told him to say something nice before we started. Honey, say something nice.

I, I love you very much.

Thank you, honey. Thank you, honey.

I'm sorry that you've been out of it this week.

I don't think I've been out of it. Have I been out of it?

No, not at all.

I don't know why I said that. Maybe not my normal energy level.

You're the Energizer Bunny.

Not true. Not true. Today I felt much more energetic than I have. So I'm doing 110% better. And Glad I can talk. So we talked about quarters, we talked about conflict. You know, my daughter brought up the word— there's inclusive and there's exclusive, right? And inclusive is we're including people, like we're trying to teach kids at school to include people. And exclusive is this is my group and you can't come in this group. And, you know, I tell my daughter, you need to have an open circle. Okay, first of all, you can have a lot of best friends. I don't want you to have one like, "This is my best friend." Well, you can have a lot of best friends, and you can have a circle of friends that is always inviting new friends in. Like, we welcome new people. I don't want, you know, I don't want you to think, I don't want you to assume that your child is being included, and I don't want you to assume that your child is being inclusive. Does your child even know to be inclusive? Have we taught them that? Is school teaching them that? Um, I talked to my daughters about that and when people are being inclusive and not including them, how to deal with that. And, um, I just had a conversation the other day, like, if there is a group that is not being inclusive, like, do you even want to be friends with them? I don't know. I don't know.

It makes it more challenging if the door is not open.

Well, but do you want the door to be open? Are those people that you even want to be friends with? That's just a question, right? That's a question that I have, that are those even people that you want to be friends with? So you have pushed your child to join things. Your child goes to school every day. You've pushed your child to join clubs and activities and sports. And you're still very concerned they don't have friends. Okay, I would look to their social skills. Do they have social skills? Do you see social skills? Are there things that you can build on? Because I'm trying, I'm always trying to model. I'm not always good at it. I'm not always perfect, but I'm always trying to model the behavior that I want them to do outside of the house. So I want them to see me talk to people. I want them to see me be nice to people. I want them to see me include people.

They've definitely seen all of that, right?

I want them to see me give eye contact, have manners, have a conversation back and forth, show people empathy, show people good listening skills, like have them see the ping pong of what a conversation looks like. Um, it actually, it starts, I mean, like, if you're watching and you have a baby, it starts when they're in the, in, in your arms looking at you. Like, I started trying to ping conversations then.

And yes, I kept wondering, asking you, why are you talking to them? They can't talk back yet. You said it's part of how they have their development and how they learn, right?

But they were also making sounds, okay? So you weren't hearing words, but we were talking. We were talking.

I think you thought you were talking, but it worked out. They all can speak and read and walk and chew gum at the same time.

Yes, but I am telling you that when you have a baby, whether your kid is 16 or your kid is 6 months old, when you're talking to them and they're making sounds back at you, you are teaching them how to socialize. So you may not know that, but I know that.

You know that from your training.

I know that because yeah.

Papa. I just said something nice to you. You don't know it though.

I can't even tell you the amount of times that Seth made fun of me for talking to our babies. I had conversations with them.

I treated them like they were a rational adult from the second they were born. It might have speeded up their development.

I think it paid off.

They are all functioning members of society.

So pay attention to your own social skills, like what are you showing them, and pay attention to how they are with other people. Like, oh my God, things that I have seen. Okay, so things are very different. Okay. And I didn't write at all about social media. I think social media is like— social anxiety is another blog. And, um, social media is another blog. And like, what is their etiquette on social media? Like, how are they behaving online?

No one's got any manners, honey. You gotta go after them.

Well, no, I'm— we're— I'm not worried about the world. I'm worried about how are my children communicating with people. So like, my girls, my kids have cell phones, so An example is my daughter was on the phone the other day. And she like hung up on somebody because she was done talking. She was done talking. She was done. So she just like hung up the phone in the middle of the call. Yeah, she just hung up with me sitting right next to her. And I reacted, I could have, I could have handled that calmer. Seth knows that this is a button. I like manners. And I was like, uh, you need to call them right back and apologize that you like just hung up the phone. Like, that's— I'm like, you have to say, okay, I gotta go, or I'll— bye, I'll see you tomorrow. Like, you have to end. Like, you can't just hang up on people because you're done. Like, click.

I personally blame the parents that she does that. She hasn't been taught manners.

I haven't talked to them about phone etiquette. Like, I have said to Max—

I'm gonna say Lily's on the phone all the time. We should start some etiquette.

Um, I have taught them a little bit, but like Max, for example, I'm like, you have to answer people. You— he will have 50 text messages, and I am like, you have to answer people.

Yeah, but in his defense, one of those, that might be a group chat with 27 messages that he does not need to reply to.

Right, but Etiquette is— it's like, he will have all of these unread text messages on his phone, and I'm his mother, like, I'm responsible for his manners. So his grandparents will be like, I messaged Max, and I'm like, good luck. No, you have to reply, especially if it's your parents or your grandparents. If you want to be rude to your friends, that's on you, but His grandparents will be like, I texted him yesterday. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I'm trying it. Like, it's like, Rebecca, you're the mother, get him to text me back. So anyways, teach your children etiquette, teach them social skills, role play with them, pay attention to what you hear. Are they having conversations with people? Are they being rude? Are they being flippant? Is that the word I'm looking for?

It might be.

It might be the word I'm looking for. So build on their skills and empower them. So like I said to my daughter, you are so sweet, kind, and friendly. Anyone would want to be your friend. And when I said that, her whole face lit up. And do you know how much confidence that one line gave her? So like, I'm like, we're writing their stories. So like, if you're telling them a bad story, they're going to believe it. If you're telling them a good story, they're going to believe it. So help them write a good story. So my story is, you're sweet, you're kind, you're friendly. Anyone would want to be your friend. So I believe that. I put it out there. I told her, and she's going to go to school and she's going to believe that too. Are you trying to say something? No. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm trying to watch you behind me to see when you're trying to talk and just cut me off.

It'll be obvious.

It will be obvious. You're not shy.

No.

Seth is not shy. So I also think it's important for us to point out to them that they can overcome adversity and it gives them confidence that they can overcome things. So like if I see that they had a conflict with their friend, which happened recently, and they worked it out, and they got past it and they shared their feelings and they talked about it and they felt better at the end, then I'm going to say, "Oh my goodness, I am so proud of you and how you guys got through that, and you're showing such good conflict resolution skills." And then I can build that and show her that she overcame something. It's never—

teachable moments, teachable moments.

It's never dull. It's never— I shouldn't say that. If I want it to be dull, I shouldn't say it's never dull. Correct. Okay, so for today, like I said, this is like pages and pages of a topic that we could talk about forever. But for today, let's just summarize some stuff that hopefully that you can take away and can help you with your kids. It's helping me with my kids. I will continue to use all of this with my kids. I have to remember not to project my needs and my friend's stuff has nothing to do with them.

Right. Don't give them your issues.

They're all different. They all have— all three of them have different strengths and weaknesses, wouldn't you say? Amen. Hello, Tanner. Help them to diversify friends. It's good to collect friends in different areas of your life. Like, Lily goes to Hebrew school, she goes to dance, she goes to Girl Scouts, she goes to school, so she can collect friends as she goes around, right? Like, I've been— um, people make fun of me that they think that I know everybody in quotes. I have lived in this very area for 46 years. So I have collected people. Right?

Yes, for sure. Always run into somebody.

Um, it's fun to always run into somebody. Unless you have like 5 minutes in your schedule. So help them learn to keep their friendship circle open. Make sure they're being kind and inclusive. Don't assume that your child is being inclusive, and don't assume that your child is being included, because they don't tell us everything, right? Um, encourage friendships that are good influence. Uh, my daughter told me that her friend told her to do something even though I said no. We'll do it anyway. I don't expect their friends to be perfect, but, um, I keep my eyes and ears wide open. What about you? Do you do that too?

As much as I can, yes. You are better at that and more— you would hear more and see more than I would.

You're kind of busy.

Just a little. Not that you're not.

Um, I have told you this 50 times. I will say this 50 more times. Sign your kids up for stuff. Tell them they have to pick something. Don't say What do you want? Don't say, do you want to do something? Say, what do you want to do? And like, make them sign up for something. And remember that if they sign up for swim, like Ella was talking about trying swim, if she signs up for swim and she doesn't like it, then maybe there's something else that she can try. So don't give up. There tends to be something for every kid. Ella was talking about crochet club. Right?

I mean, I didn't know that was a thing.

I want to go to crochet club.

Oh, if you start carrying needles, I'm going to watch out.

What are you going to watch out for?

It's all fun and games until somebody gets poked in the eye.

Oh my God, what am I going to do with you?

You told me earlier.

Impa— I don't even remember. All I remember saying is say something nice. It was before that. Moving right along. Oh, marriage isn't all roses and sunshine, is it?

Not every second. Not every—

most of the time. Most of the time. Most of the time.

You have lots of sunshine in Rosebud.

I do have lots of sunshine. Empower your kids that they're capable of making friends and point out their strengths. If you don't believe that they can make friends, they're not going to believe that they can make friends. Teach them social skills. If you don't have social skills, go get some and teach it to them, right? You can learn together.

Yes.

I love the humor. Model the behavior you want to see, and I really hope that everyone watching's children Did that, did that make sense what I just said?

No.

Okay. I hope that everyone watching has children who have at least one friend.

There you go.

Did that make better sense? That makes better sense. I hope that your kids have a good friend. It only takes one or two. And I don't expect them to have 10 best friends. Some kids make friends so easily. But maybe they're like struggling in school. Like everyone is just so different and I never assume that anyone has the same challenges or strengths and we just like touched on the surface of a very complicated subject. But every child has social stress whether they have friends or don't have friends. So even if your kids have a bunch of friends, they're still going to come home stressed out about something, and they're still going to need you, and they're still going to want to talk about it. And yes, um, when my girls get in the car after school and they tell me that they have had a fantastic day and they tell me good things about their day, I'm like, yes! I mean, I want them to tell me the good and the bad. I'm not saying that I don't want to hear the bad. I'm just saying that I love when they have like good things to share. I need some good things too. Yes, right? Yes. Um, so I hope that you can take something away from this. I hope that, um, we were helpful, and, um, I will do more on this topic because I think it's a very important topic. You bet, right? Yes. Um, I think everybody is probably sleeping because It is getting dark earlier. It is so cold. I think everybody is already in bed. Maybe we need to do—

about our kids.

I'm talking about the women who normally watch this who are probably already watching us under the covers. Take us to bed with you. Okey-dokey, I'll be— on that note, Ella, where are you? Ella's gonna come and sing us out.

Yep.

Um, come and find me in all the places, people. I am on Instagram as Whiny Palooza Mom. I'm on Facebook as Whiny Palooza. On Facebook, there's the free Whiny Palooza Mom group that's free and fun. And listen to my podcast, and the Whiny Palooza podcast. And listen to my beautiful daughter sing us out. Thank you for watching Winey Cludes on Wednesday. Bye! What?

Thank you for watching Winey Cludes on Wednesday with the Green Family. You don't need a cha-cha chicken and stuff.

She threw me off. I think, I think Ella is yawning and exhausted. I don't know how to stop this. You got to come and stop this and teach me.

You gotta get out of the main— that big screen and then go to end broadcast. Bye everyone!