Winter can feel like it drags on with small children and being stuck inside all day. Britney helps us know how to navigate the winter months in a more enjoyable way through fun indoor activities.
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Jen: Hello and welcome to The Parents Place, a podcast put out by The Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting efforts. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host, Jennifer Daly, the Education Director at The Family Place and my co-host is Sara Hendricks, a family educator at The Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us, now, let's get started with today's episode.
Sara: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast, I'm your host, Sara Hendricks,
Jen: and I'm your co-host, Jen Daley.
Sara: We are super excited about today's topic, it's perfect timing with the freezing cold weather outside, I guess depending on where you live. But here in Cache Valley, it's plenty cold and there's not a whole lot of snow right now, which is really surprising this time of year. But today we're going to be talking about activities that we can do during these winter months, where it's harder to be outside all of the time. Or maybe actually, I don't know if we'll go in this direction, but harder to be indoors doing activities during social distancing and masks. And so, we're excited to explore more ideas on what we can do during this time with our children. So, I'm excited to introduce our guest, her name is Brittney Bird, and she is going to tell us a little bit about herself.
Brittney: Hi, so like you said, my name's Brittany and I have worked at The Family Place in a bunch of different positions for about the last seven years and love everything that The Family Place stands for. I graduated in social work from Utah State and have one little guy. His name is James and he is six years old and we just have a lot of fun together and currently my position at the family place is in the kids place. So, I get to work with kids and play and have fun activities that we work on throughout the time there. So, I'm excited to talk to you guys today about what we do in the winter.
Jen: Thank you, Britney! Thank you so much for joining us today. First question I have for you because this I'm sure lots of parents just have a hard time coming up with new things to do with their kids. And as we know, kids get bored if we do the same thing over and over again. So why is winter so hard for kids and parents?
Brittney: Well, so when the weather's nice and you can go outside, it's super easy to get the sunshine, to feel better physically and mentally. But in the winter, it's difficult because for parents it feels like we have to entertain our kids all of the time feels like we have to come up with all these activities to do instead of sending them outside, letting them be creative. And when they're outside, they require very little because there's so much to do out there, even without your help. But when you're inside in a confined space, it's hard to get energy out for kids. So, we get hyper kids in an environment that parents feel like they have to entertain and so kids are hyper bedtimes hard. Kids aren’t going to bed is easy and so parents patience is low and it's difficult in the winter to really kind of figure out that balance between having fun but also staying mentally and physically well as parents, as well as having our kids do that as well.
Sara: Yes, I totally agree with you, especially with young children who don't have school to help them get some of that energy out there, just home all day long. Or maybe that's the same for children that are homeschooled and then they just don't have access to going outside as much to expand some of that energy and really burn off that build up for them. And so, it can be really difficult and taxing on parents to have to feel like they have to entertain their children all day, every day during the winter. So, can you give us some ideas of activities that we can do inside?
Brittney: Yeah, so the first thing that I want to make sure parents that are listening to this understand and caregivers that are listening to this understand is that you don't have to do these huge, big things in order to be successful at entertaining kids inside. I think, you know, some of the things that come up in my head that you can do sometimes can be these plans that take a lot of planning and preparation. So, one of those that I really like to do is I like to have parties, themed ideas and so we, for example, we did a Trolls 2 when that movie came out. We tie dyed shirts, we had we made snacks, all the Trolls, we played a full game and then we watched the movie together as a family. So as an entire day that was dedicated to an hour and a half actual movie that we turned into a whole day of activities and so those are really fun. I think some ideas to go around with having those full days of ideas is to have like a theme today. So today it's going to be Pirate Day, so we're going to build a pirate ship out of cardboard and we're going to make eye patches and said, know, pretend and have fun together. And if you watch Peter Pan, maybe you don't like to watch movies in your house so you do other activities and play games. I think finding fun is like, I think it's February 11th is National Inventors Day, and I just think how much fun could it be to have an inventor’s day where maybe you learn about inventions and inventors and maybe you invent something yourself with your kids? So just coming up with some of those different all-day activities can be super fun. It also, I think, gives parents especially like at least for me, it gives that feeling of like you're doing something really fun and creative with your kids. But to go back to what I started with, you don't have to do these big things in order to have fun with your kids and entertain them. So little things are like an indoor camping, right? So, you set up a tent and you have fun inside, my son's favorite is a paper airplane competition where we just make paper airplanes and you see who's can go the furthest or who's can do the best trick. So even, you know, simple, all you need is paper to do that, you can go board games, you can do Nerf gun challenges if you have older kids. Lego building competitions, my son loves to spend time painting rocks or even writing cards to family members or drawing pictures that you're going to mail to family members is something we've done a lot of. I think other ideas that include a TV, if you're okey with that in your in your family is if you exercise your dance videos from YouTube, we really utilize that in the Kids Place. There’re hundreds of thousands of yoga videos that are put on that kids can do together. There’re dance videos that are all clean, all family friendly and really fun because of COVID 19. There were some teachers that even created a whole bunch of content on YouTube that's all focused on doing P.E. at home. And you can find those free on YouTube, and they're really fun for kids because they focus on things that they enjoy. Harry Potter, Star Wars, Pokémon, Littlest Pet Shop, all of these different things that kids really enjoy are accessible on YouTube. So those are some of the ideas that I think you can go through and do.
Jen: Reminds me of when my parents had purchased this new entertainment center and it was for Christmas and my nephew was up and he had gotten a lot of things for Christmas. But what you wanted to do was be inside that box and so he was inside the box and we gave him crayons and markers, and he just had a ball in there decorating the inside of that box. But you also talked about writing cards and sending pictures. And I remember when my oldest nieces were young, my sister was really concerned with the fact that writing letters has becoming a lost art and mailing things and so that was one thing that she had her girls do was just choose someone to write a letter to an address an envelope. She's like, because more than likely these kids aren't even going to know how to address an envelope. And so that was a fun thing for me as an aunt on the other side of it, I loved receiving those little notes from my nieces. And we all love to get mail, so those are great ideas for kids to do.
Sara: I love that you gave ideas of like a big day centering everything around a theme or a movie, a party. But then you also listed smaller ideas, and one that you mentioned was the national whatever day. You know? How fun would that be to look up for every single day? What it is? That's national today and do something and what you were talking about, like, you can go big and do something all day, or it can just be something small that's only 15 minutes, but it breaks up the day and it gives that positive fun memory between you and your children that I love that.
Jen: And if you have older kids, you can assign them to come up with projects, yeah. And so, it's getting the older ones involved, helping the little ones do the activities as well. And what a great thing to have for the whole family and having some fun. So, what can adults do to keep from going, stir crazy? And then when you do get overwhelmed, what can you do?
Brittney: So, I think the first thing is, as you're going into this, have a plan, right? I get made fun of a lot because I'm a planner and I like to know what we're doing for the week and if we're going to have this or that, and I don't do well with schedule changes. And so, I definitely think having a goal that you want to accomplish in that day, even if it's just one goal, can really help you kind of get that focus. And so, if it's as simple as today, we're going to do laundry, we're just going to get it washed. Forget about getting a put away, we're just going to have laundry wash today. Then that's your goal and that gives you something to focus on, whether that happens in the morning, noon and night, it doesn't matter. It happens. I think along with that, accomplishing goals helps you feel like you're doing something. And so, if you're a person that likes lists, make some lists and that can help you in crossing it off and being able to see that, okay, I did all of this today. Or maybe you're a person that likes to relax, and that's okay, too. And you don't like list, it’s overwhelming to you, so then finally, do you like to do and add those into your day? I think the biggest mistake parents make is forgetting that they're people too, and they need to be taken care of as much as their kids do. And I think if you can find things that you enjoy that you can do with your kids, then it's all the better. So, if you like to read right, then cuddle up and read together. So many kids would love a snuggle party in mom's bed and read books together like that, something they don't always get to do. Or if you like to bake, find something that you can make together, even if it's a brownie box from Walmart, that's okay. Or go all the way and make homemade banana bread or something fun that the you and your kids can do together. My son decided he likes cooking through COVID 19, and like I said, he's six, so there's not a ton that six-year old’s can cook. And he's been practicing, and he found homemade mac and cheese is his favorite thing to help make, so guess what? How often do we have homemade mac and cheese at least twice a week because he loves to rip the cheese open and put it in the pot? So, find things your kids like to do that you like to do with them, they give you joy and that help you feel good. I also think it's important to have a plan for yourself, like this in the beginning. So, if you find yourself getting stressed in situations, then I'd like to have three plans. The first is I like to have a plan for myself of what I'm going to do before a stressful situation to help make sure I'm okay. So, for me, that's eating meals and drinking enough water for the day, simple as that. If I don't eat, I'm cranky, right? We all get that crankiness of my eating, so if I can make sure I'm going to eat, then I'm going to be able to deal with that stressful day better. My second plan that I like to have is a plan for what I'm going to do in the moment of stressful situations. I'm a fidgetier, so I like to move, I like to play with something, I like to have something in my hands. And so, for Christmas, my husband bought me a new wedding ring that spins the fidget spinner but it's a wedding ring. And so now I don't have to carry my keys around all the time, I have something I can do it with right on my hand, and it just always helps me, I don't know why. And then the third thing that I think a third plan that I think you should have and that I have is what are you going to do to recuperate yourself after a stressful situation? And so, this is an important one for me, I like to talk through stressful situations, so the end of the day, my husband and I always walk through what was stressful to both of us and how it worked out. Some people talking doesn't help, so find exercise or go on a run or do whatever you need to do to help yourself recuperate and come back from that so that you're ready for the next day because you need to be able to reset yourself. So, three plans have something to do before the stressful event, have something to do in the moment of the stressful event and have something to recuperate yourself after.
Jen: After I had a couple of thoughts when you were talking about make one goal. That is something that I have really latched on to, not only as a supervisor of people, because I feel like we always think we have to have so many goals to work on. But there's no reason why we can't have just one goal accomplish that goal and then make another one. Because lots of times I know if I make too many goals, more than one, really, I give up and like, I get overwhelmed just in that that situation. And so, I love that you're encouraging that one goal and then the other thing that I was thinking of is doing the laundry. And I had this, I thought, come to my mind of doing the laundry with your kids and having your kids work on, let's find all the balloon clothes, let's find all of the red clothes with your little ones that are going to be whole when you're doing laundry. And so, I just think that's another fun way that you can get your stuff done, but also have your child with you so they're not going crazy while you're trying to get a task done.
Sara: Yeah, I want to jump on to that laundry bandwagon with my kids when their little, especially they love to help. It's fun and exciting and to give them an assignment to help they feel big and so often it's if the clothes are inside out, it's their job to flip it right side out and that's such a good motor skill for them to be practicing. Like, we don't even realize how much that is helping their own development by having them do that, or I always throw all of the socks into a pile as I'm doing laundry and then meet them afterwards, so I might give that assignment to them to start finding the matches and again, that's so good for their development when they're little to be finding those matches and problem solving. So, you gave us so many great ideas, so I was wondering if maybe you could help us understand how important it is if there are two parents in a household? How important is it for both parents to be involved?
Brittney: Yeah, so like you said, they're not all families have two parents in the home, but if you're lucky enough to have two parents in the home, it's really important that they are both involved. And I think the most critical part of that is making sure that you're communicating the expectations between you and your partner. So, for my family, I'm the primary caregiver for my son throughout the day, and so I'm the one that helps him with the school and all of that. And my husband is the one that works mainly during the day, and we decided that together that was a choice we made together. For us as soon as five o'clock hits, he's done with work, and he helps take over that primary responsibility of entertaining my son. That way, I can do dinner and I can do whatever else I need to do for the day and so we work really hard at making sure there's really a balance of I choose activities, he chooses activities. And so, for us, it works really well for him to kind of be in charge of the evenings and the weekends, I always kind of defer to him that he gets to help pick those things for us to do and be involved. I think this really shows our son that we work together as a partnership and that we both like to do fun things. You don't want a child to think that, you know, dad or mom is always working, so they don't like to have fun. They don't want to do something with me and so it's really a fun thing that you know, my son gets to be, they get to do daddy some things and he gets to choose those. I also think that it's important as we're talking about communication, that children need consistency and routines and so that everybody is going to work best under that. And I know that we talked about that in another podcast and I think with those routines, kids do best if they can feel safe and they know what to expect, right? And so, with COVID 19 and the cold weather, those expectations have gotten so far out there for people, because no longer can we go outside and still in a way that the neighbors, as you walk past or things like that, you're inside and you're cold. And it's frustrating because you don't get to see the people you love like you want to and so being able to communicate with your partner about what you're doing is critical for you both to feel like everything's going well in the relationship and also in the family, because you never want to set your partner up to feel like you're not doing enough or vice versa. So, if you can just open and talk about it, the dialogue is going to be really helpful.
Jen: I think that's another great area of went with both parents involved of having a plan. I think plans are so important because when we do get overwhelmed, it's really hard to think about what to do. But if we already have a plan prior to the stressful situation, then we can be more successful. And I feel like when we're working as partners, having that plan, when we do have activities as a family, we do get overwhelmed in that. What are we going to do before, during and after so that we can help ourselves, take care of ourselves to where we're having a good time with our kids?
Brittney: For sure. I mean, kids feel that if they, if you aren't having fun because you're so stressed, it's not fun for them either. I think, we tried to go skiing a few weeks back and I was just stressed. It was kind of the first time being around a big group of people for a long time and things like that. And overall, I just could not focus or have fun, and my son definitely felt that. And then his anxiety heightens and things are just difficult, so you have to in order for your kids to have fun and activities, you have to make sure you're able to have fun and activities as well. And so, like Jen said, I would then communicate and be able to work together so that everybody can enjoy the activity.
Jen: And maybe not offer activities that you know are going to cause you a lot of stress because it’s Murphy's Law, that your kids will choose the one you don't really want to do. And so, making sure that you're giving them options that you are going to be okay participating in as well.
Sara: And being flexible because sometimes things don't go the way that we wanted to. Like when you went skiing and were feeling that stress, it's okay to go home and not continue to be in that stressful situation if nobody's having fun. And be forgiving of what happened and that it's okay that it didn't work out how you wanted it to.
Jen: You have given us so many great ideas. Do you have any success stories that you can share with us?
Brittney: Yeah. So, when I was first asked to be on this, I started asking around to some friends and some other moms in our area, and I do have a couple things that they had ideas of. So, the first is a mom with two boys, both under three said they like to similar to me, they like to have theme days. So, they watch a shark documentary on Disney Plus and then they play shark chase, so one of them's a fish and one of them's a shark, and then they run around. They make blue jello and put little Swedish fish in it, and they just had a lot of fun with that themed activity idea. They also just implement it in their household that they do reading time after lunch. So, it's kind of like a quiet time, so like I said, they're both under three, so they're little. Neither of them are in school and so they decided to set some time before nap to have some quiet time and what they do is they just let him pick some books and they just start reading and they read it until his attention span is done. And it just seems to work for them to have that quiet time and she loves to read, and so it's something they get to do together. Another idea that another mom said, this mom has three kids, one is six, one is four and a little young baby and she said one time they were just all feeling really depressed about the cold weather. It was too snowy to really go outside at that time, and so they decided to set up a little beach tent and put on their swimsuits and so they took a bath and played in the water, in the bathtub and then got out and they got to lay out on their beach chairs, in the living room with their towels, and they brought in all their sand toys and they just pretended they were on a tropical vacation. And it really gave them that time to separate, okay, we can be together, we can do something fun and it wasn't this huge planning moment. The same mom also said that every once in a while, she'll freeze with little toys inside ice cubes and then let the kids try and break them out. So, for the little kids, it's really just playing with the ice and moving it around. But for older kids, you can get a toy hammer and have them have to hammer the little toy out or things like that, and they love to rescue those toys out of the ice. Another mom brought up that they like to play doctor, so she created a little doctor's office box that they can pull out and play doctor with. So that one was simple, they went to the dollar store and they picked out anything doctor that they can find. So, they bought gloves and they bought little Band-Aids and masks and other things like that and they created their doctor kit together as a family and now they get to play doctor. And so those are a couple of the ideas, I think the biggest thing to remember and the biggest takeaway from this whole thing is just you don't have to go big to make a memory or to have fun with your kids. It's really about time, and it's really about giving them your focus and your attention and as a parent, I know how difficult that can be. I try to work as well as them as I'm taking care of and entertaining, my child. And so, I know that balance is hard, but really, the most memorable things that our kids have are the times that we're focused on that.
Jen: I think there's a lot of good little nuggets in that last, what you talked about around those successes of what parents have had. And it makes me think that, yes, these are activities and fun things that we can do because it is cold outside. So, we've got to have, you know, you feel like you have to be creative to do things inside but the thought came to me of what great relationships this is creating with our children. It’s going beyond just keeping them busy and things like that is creating that relationship to where I just think of hard things to come. Kids are going to know that you're going to be there for them, you have that relationship that you've created and they'll come to you when those big things, big hard things come and they need some help. I always believe we make time for things that we find important and so if we can really focus on our kids and decide what is the level of importance of our family and our children and the relationships that we have, we'll be able to find the time to do that if that is a top priority for us. I want to thank you so much, Britney, for coming and joining us on this podcast today. You gave us lots of great ideas and little nuggets that we can all take from this podcast, we hope that everybody has enjoyed this podcast. We look forward to having you come back next week, if you would like to reach out to us, you can reach us at Parents@TheFamilyPlaceUtah.org our Facebook pages, Jen Daly- The Family Place and Sara Hendricks with a “ck” - The Family Place. I just thought about this today of we've never given you the correct spelling, so you might have been looking for us and can't find us. So hopefully this is helpful, we hope that you have a great week and that you stay healthy and safe.
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