Call Us: 630-832-6155
Parenting: Tilt-a-Whirl or Lazy River?

Parenting: Tilt-a-Whirl or Lazy River?

by | Jun 4, 2022 | Marriage & Family, Parenting, Wellness

For many families, the end of the school year means the start of trips to amusement and water parks. Unsurprisingly, my personal experience of those outings has steadily shifted as my children have grown from toddlers into teens. The change has been a pleasant one, but maybe not for the reason you’re thinking.

When my kids were small, visits to entertainment parks meant a lot of stress. As someone who’s easily overstimulated anyway, I had to brace myself against overlong days and too much of everything. Too much activity, too much noise, too much interaction. The depletion of my energy would begin just thinking about the variations of ‘too much’ that were about to drain my parental reservoir.

Beyond that, my natural tendency towards hyper-vigilance didn’t help matters. I tried to manage every facet of every moment. One of my kids was always on the verge of getting hurt, so I was always braced in the ready-stance that moms assume to prevent catastrophe. I frequently operated from a flight-or-fight mode, and I desperately tried to stay in control.

Metaphorically, it felt like a constant ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl. My hands stayed gripped tightly around everyone’s wants and needs, and sometimes I had to muscle everything in the opposite direction to prevent my family from spinning out. I didn’t know when I’d be able to stop to catch my breath, and during the brief calm moments, it was all I could do to try not to feel dizzy.

In fact…that’s pretty much how parenting very young kids felt for me in general.

Now that my kids are older, their immediate needs have lessened. They also (usually) do a better job of exercising responsibility, independence, and self-control. You’d think their new autonomy would allow me to loosen the reigns. But here’s the surprise: their blossoming maturity hasn’t reduced the opportunities for parental stress. It has just changed the source of anxiety and, needless to say, the stakes are higher.

At every new age, there are just as many moving parts and endless ways for me to try, and fail, to control the experience. Eventually, I figured out I had a decision to make. Should I continue to wear myself out by tightening my grip and trying to muscle things in the ‘right’ direction (read: ‘my’ direction), or just disembark from the Tilt-a-Whirl?

If you haven’t already guessed, I chose to hop off that ride. The Tilt-a-Whirl was supposed to be fun, but when it came down to it, it was mostly making me feel sick. I do accidentally step back on it sometimes, but I spend the majority of my time on a different attraction these days.

It’s the Lazy River for me now.

I’m liking the Lazy River parenting style much more. I get to relax, go with the flow, and savor the ride. That’s not to say I’m not actively engaged in the chaos of raising kids. I often crash and need to push off again in order to course-correct. I get turned around plenty and sometimes I’m seriously stuck. Even so, I know I’ll get back on track with a little space and some gentle momentum.

On the Lazy River, I’m still guiding the experience. But now I’m slowing down, taking things as they come, and happily soaking it in as I go. Best of all, I’m no longer dizzy.

About the Author

Kerry Galarza, MS OTR/L is the Clinical Director and a pediatric occupational therapist at Elmhurst Counseling. She provides specialized assessment and intervention with children of all ages and their families. Kerry engages clients with naturally occurring, meaningful home-based methods to empower autonomy and maximize functioning.

Grandparents Deserve Their Grandchildren

Grandparents Deserve Their Grandchildren

by | May 23, 2022 | Counseling, Marriage & Family, Wellness

When studying family therapy in graduate school early in my career, one of my most respected professors stated, “Grandparents deserve their grandchildren.” His point was to emphasize the generational transmission of both nature and nurture. Like a boomerang, our history gets delivered to the future. Our grandchildren are more than just products of our children and the way we parented them. They inherit the entire trajectory of whatever shaped those choices.

So, whether your little guy is an angel or a pain-in-the-@$$ may have been determined before he was born. He may be a host for Uncle Billy’s gene pool regardless of his parents’ efforts to keep him away from Uncle Billy. He may be inclined toward patience because Uncle Billy’s mother was a saint. It’s always a bigger picture when you take the time to widen the lens.

Nature and nurture are always competing for influence. There’s little you can do about nature, other than acknowledging its power. Nurture, on the other hand, is fully within your control. You have an immeasurably powerful impact, whether as a parent, a grandparent, or a trusted counsel in the family’s circle.

If you look closely, you can follow the line from the influencer to the influenced. Positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, the path is usually apparent. No one gets a pass. You either shape the kid’s direction toward success or struggle. Either way, we are all accountable for the outcome. Own that.

Life is short. Everything matters.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Why We Need a Why

Why We Need a Why

by | May 14, 2022 | Counseling, Wellness

Feeling happy is a pretty universal goal, but we can’t always put a finger on exactly what it means. Everyone has fleeting moments of joy or elation. But when we ask someone, Are you happy? we’re usually talking about a deeper sense of contentment.

We might feel it when we’re overcome with wonder about the world around us or when we notice beauty and love in our lives. Happiness can also go hand-in-hand with gratitude as we take stock of our good fortune. Although we’re able to recognize its presence, it can be strangely difficult to put into words.

A random poll of friends and family members would probably result in a different definition of happiness from each of them. But as I settle into my middle age, I’m beginning to feel that true happiness – the broader, longer-lasting, soul-fulfilling kind – is almost synonymous with another noun most of us take for granted: purpose.

Research increasingly suggests that having a purpose is the key to a meaningful life — and a happy life. Purpose and meaning are connected to what researchers call eudaimonic well-being. This is distinct from, and sometimes inversely related to the feeling of elation (hedonic well-being). One constitutes a deeper, more durable state, while the other is superficial and transient.

Way back in eighteenth-century Europe, a movement started to help people with emotional struggles rehabilitate through creativity. It didn’t take long to discover that the therapeutic value of engagement in purposeful activity was radically more effective than previous treatment models that were associated with brutality or idleness. This idea eventually became the origin of Occupational Therapy (OT).

There’s a reason the philosophy of OT has withstood the test of time. Having a purpose – something that makes us feel alive and absorbed – is as vital to our well-being as food and water. Purpose simultaneously connects us to the rest of the universe and brings us back into ourselves. We can find it both in a broader life-calling and in discrete events. Purpose becomes the link between us and our environment. We become more and, as Occupational Therapists see regularly, we become well.

Scale doesn’t matter as much as fit. The focus of your purpose can be solitary, quiet, and private. It simply has to embody something that fills you up and gives you a sense of personal enlargement, of swelling out beyond yourself. You know you are aligned with your purpose because your power grows. You feel a part of something bigger than yourself. Time flies.

You may find purpose by nurturing the relationships in your life, expressing your unique talents through the cultivation of a hobby, pursuing a stimulating career, or contributing to your community. The avenues are limitless. But if you’re feeling a gap, try asking yourself the question – and then, more importantly, take the important step of answering it.

What draws you in, ignites your energy, and pulls you forward?

About the Author

Kerry Galarza, MS OTR/L is the Clinical Director and a pediatric occupational therapist at Elmhurst Counseling. She provides specialized assessment and intervention with children of all ages and their families. Kerry engages clients with naturally occurring, meaningful home-based methods to empower autonomy and maximize functioning.

Just When We Thought We Had Seen It All

Just When We Thought We Had Seen It All

by | Apr 24, 2022 | Counseling, Marriage & Family, Wellness

As a clinical practice serving families for 38 years, sometimes our clinicians think they have seen it all. Two factors bring us to our senses. First, you cannot have a career in the human services and see everything. Human behavior is complex, and the complexity intensifies when you blend it into relationships and families. Second, the world has gotten more complicated, and the magnified stressors are affecting families like never before.

As a result, our therapists have committed themselves to being curious. With every client and each set of circumstances, we ask the question, “What would need to be true to make these struggles make sense?” More important than our educational training or theoretical orientation is our understanding of the family’s unique situation. You do not need an advanced degree to understand a complex behavior when you are willing to assess through the lens of curiosity.

Yet, three things remain universally true.

  • Symptoms intensify following trauma.
  • Resolution is easier when we can intervene earlier in the progression of struggle.
  • The struggle usually shines a light on the problem if you let it.

Symptoms intensify following trauma. ‘Normal development’ is only normal when everything goes smoothly. Disruptions are valuable indicators and frequently answer the ‘why.’

Resolution is easier when we can intervene earlier in the progression of struggle. Early detection is vital in every healthcare challenge. Once things take root and get normalized, the chances for a quick and effective solution decline.

The struggle usually shines a light on the problem if you let it. We live in an age of symptom reduction. Unfortunately, when you relieve the symptom, the path to the cause gets obscured. Let the pain last long enough to see why it is there if you want to know what to address.

Stay curious. Resist the urge to diagnose. As soon as you zero in on an answer, you eliminate other possibilities. We live in a complicated world and not knowing something right away can offer the gift of discovery. Human lifespans are simply not long enough to solve the puzzle of human relationships. But fortunately, we get to work on the puzzle together.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

I Get To…

I Get To…

by | Apr 14, 2022 | Parenting, Wellness

Spring activities have begun, end-of-school-year craziness is starting to fill your calendar, and your family’s long-sheltered immune systems are struggling to keep up against the season’s usual bugs. All of this is piling on top of the usual stressors: the house is a mess, the weekend grocery haul already ran out, there’s another note from school, the mail’s stacking up, and you have to make dinner again. You’re pretty much running on fumes.

Just for fun, let’s add one more thing to your list. You’ve probably been encouraged for the thousandth time by yet another blog or a well-intentioned friend to also “practice self-care”. The phrase is as overused these days as “unprecedented times” and “new normal”. But please try to hear me out as I join the bandwagon – because I’m about to propose a gratitude exercise.

Seems like a ridiculous suggestion when you can’t even shower without interruption, I know. I’m the first to admit that it feels impossible some (most?) days. Yet gratitude remains one of the most overlooked tools that we all have access to every day, and the benefits are enormous.

Dozens of studies tell us that feeling gratitude has a wide range of perks, including reducing stress and improving relationships. Scientists at Indiana University even found that it can change your brain, making you happier and less prone to depression. Maybe even more importantly, they discovered that it makes you more receptive to gratitude experiences down the road. In other words, it can kickstart a positive snowball effect.

So how can we realistically get more gratitude into our stressful days? Here’s a fairly easy trick to try out. The next time something makes you smile, just make note of it in your head, but start with the words, “I get to.”

 

Begin with the easy observations:

“I get to watch my son shine on the soccer field.”

“I get to enjoy a fun evening out.”

 

Once you have that nailed, do the same thing with the less obvious stuff:

“I get to have some alone time at Target”

“I get to savor this sip of coffee.”

 

Finally, the real challenge – apply the words to the moments that make you want to escape:

“I get to practice patience while stuck in bad traffic.”

“I get to help my daughter navigate this tantrum.”

 

No one can do this successfully all of the time, or even always believe the words in the moment (I’m looking at you, tantrum example). But those three little words – “I get to” – are deceptively powerful, because they lend you an important, subconscious shift in perspective. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace.  Even the tough stuff means that you get to experience life in all its beautiful and ugly splendor. And acknowledging that simple fact is the true essence of gratitude.

About the Author

Kerry Galarza, MS OTR/L is the Clinical Director and a pediatric occupational therapist at Elmhurst Counseling. She provides specialized assessment and intervention with children of all ages and their families. Kerry engages clients with naturally occurring, meaningful home-based methods to empower autonomy and maximize functioning.

How To Live In 1,440 Minutes

How To Live In 1,440 Minutes

by | Mar 9, 2022 | Parenting, Wellness

Back when my husband and I were first dating, he gave me a book entitled, “The Art of Doing Nothing.” At that time, I was a full-time college student with two part-time jobs plus a 3-times-a-week rehab course as I recovered from an accident earlier that year. Curiously, my mom laughed when she saw the book. “It seems like you’re really good at that already,” she chuckled.

Despite my hectic schedule, I found myself agreeing with her. It was true. I could spend forever on the porch swing just listening to birds or reading a book. I was also pretty good at saying no to plans and having quiet evenings staying in to do, well, pretty much nothing. The 42-year-old me now understands that the ‘nothing’ time I instinctually build into my day was refueling and protective…but the 20-year-old me simply felt shame over my mom’s comment.

It was another reminder that as a newly-minted adult, I was expected to productively fill my day – not to let the day fill me. No more slacking, I told myself. Nobody gets to where they need to go by staring out a window in the middle of the afternoon. As I buckled down, I came to regard my downtime (now mostly relegated to the late evenings) with alternating consternation and relief.

Like many people, I learned to stay focused on getting through my to-do list in order to reach some imaginary daily finish line. If I was able to get to the end of a sufficiently-long list, I could then get to my ‘indulgences’ – the things that called to my introverted soul. But instead of picking up a book or watching the birds with my precious extra time, I often found myself filling the extra time with ever more demands.

Unless I was intentional, I easily defaulted to habit. Even though I knew better intellectually, I still fell prey to the imagined expectation that quantity (checking off tasks) was more important than quality (fueling my soul). Finding one more to-do item from an endless list was somehow easier to justify than quietly listening to the wind rustling through the trees.

Becoming good at handling busyness begets ever more busyness, it seems. There’s always another task, always another email popping up, always another text awaiting your reply. Parents of young kids have to manage a particularly intense 24-hour influx of demands. It’s exhausting.

Yet we often wear our busyness as a strange badge of self-worth. We bond and commiserate with others by airing and comparing our lists. We might even feel an impulse to hide, account for, or explain our unstructured minutes and hours instead of simply relishing them. Oddly, refueling and self-care become secret indulgences.

Here’s the truth of it: we’re continually gifted 1,440 minutes with each rotation of the earth to fill as we see fit. What if we chose more stillness at the expense of productivity? Would those minutes expand and become more enriched by pausing often enough to completely absorb the people, activity, and environment around us? At the end of the day, the minutes I always treasure most are the ones I slowed down enough to notice.  

About the Author

Kerry Galarza, MS OTR/L is the Clinical Director and a pediatric occupational therapist at Elmhurst Counseling. She provides specialized assessment and intervention with children of all ages and their families. Kerry engages clients with naturally occurring, meaningful home-based methods to empower autonomy and maximize functioning.