Go for walks together as a family before or after dinner. Sometimes we go for distance, sometimes we call them "safaris" and look for as many living creatures as we can find.
When you feel sad, mad, confused or in any way upset, go to a quiet place to catch your breath. If you can sit with it and let it tell you what it wants to tell you, then you become its friend. But if you try to deny the feeling, or numb it, it grows much stronger and it fights you.
Staying calm while under pressure or when you could scream in frustration - that is most of the battle. Sometimes the fact that you stayed calm qualifies as a win.
Work on controlling temper. Read books about how to reach this at a young age and keep updating the conversation as he grows. He needs to be able to control his temper.
“There’s a hole in the side of a boat.
It can’t be fixed, it’s never going away, and you can’t get a new boat.
This is your boat.
What u have to do is bail water out faster than it’s coming in.”
-Aaron Sorkin (Newsroom season 3 episode 6.)
I don’t remember much about my grandmother (Marie) but I recall her hands. Her ring fingers had a funny curve to them, bowed in a little at the top.
My ring fingers do the same thing. I think of her every time I notice it.
Talk about what patterns of abuse look like. Teach them to recognize red flags like love-bombing, isolating from friends and family, controlling behavior and threats of violence and/or self-harm.
“If you don’t know what hurts me, how can you say you love me?”
From a story told by Rabbi Levi Yitzhak
....Do you know what causes him pain or anxiety? What he’s afraid of?
In an age-appropriate way....Talk about our fears and the things that hurt us. He will see it’s normal to have fear and pain, and he will learn he can come to me with anything that troubles him.