I'm sharing a parent question and answer video I made from my new Facebook group, Positive Parenting Q and A, today.

Today's video focuses on understanding why a child might be responsive and compliant with one parent and not with the other parent and how I address it in therapy. This is a very COMMON question!

I discuss three big reasons for this phenomenon. I also discuss how I approach healing the parent-child relationship to…

Dr. Blevins discusses why ADHD or ADD are commonly confused with anxiety. She talks about how this confusion can happen in the first place and

If you're like me, you've been a bit more stressed recently. It's hard not to be. On top of normal everyday life stress, we're having a pandemic and a long awaited social awakening to systemic racism.

It's hard to be present and feel 100% everyday. So, I wanted to share how I'm taking care of myself. I'm specifically going to focus on mindfulness and body awareness. They go hand-in-hand, of course. And if you feel this is a little woo woo of a topic, just hold on through the next paragraph...

Psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. wrote a New York Times Best Seller on trauma and the body, The Body Keeps the Score, that went into amazing detail about how our bodies hold the scars of emotional, verbal, and systemic trauma (in addition to physical trauma of course) through dysregulation of our fight or flight or freeze response. In the short term this can lead to poor sleep, digestive distress, and irritability. But, the long term consequences can be devastating. The ACEs Study found that chronic diseases, like hypertension, alcoholism, depression, drug abuse, eating disorders, obesity, and other poor future behaviors and outcomes, like high-risk sexual behaviors, smoking, and suicide and more likely to occur in adulthood with increased risk factors in childhood, including multiple forms of trauma. See ACEs Info here.

When I work with a child, I always consider …

I've been wanting to get to today's topic for a bit now.  Given the pandemic, I've felt that grief (unfortunately) is a timely topic for families these days.  Even if your family isn't touched by grief due to the pandemic, it doesn't hurt to be aware of how grief affects children.  It's good info to sock away if ever, God forbid, you need to know it.

A disclaimer about the info in today's video: it reflects my review of the literature, which focuses on children's grief of close family members.  If your child experiences grief of a more distant family member or friend, watches your personal grief of a lost one, or experienced a related loss (like the death of a pet) they may experience different or varied signs of grief from what I discuss in this video.  This video does not go into aberrant or complex reactions to grief. If you ever have concerns, please contact your child's pediatrician.

Grief is a healthy part of the human experience.  It tells us that we cared for and loved the lost one.  Young children experience grief too because they love too.  However, they have less developed language skills, more concrete thinking capacities, and learn how to understand experiences from watching those around them.  This video discusses how that makes children's grief look different than adults.

If you're going through grief, this video may be hard to watch.  I encourage you to skip it if you need to, watch it with a supportive person, or to seek your own supportive professional to interpret how you can best take care of yourself and any young children who may be grieving too.

Take care,
Dr. Blevins

Dr. Blevins discusses how ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, describes emotional blocks and supports individuals with pushing through them. She uses a personal example to help illustrate this learning topic and to support moms this Mother's Day as they might be working through heighten stressed due to stay home orders across the country. Emotional blocks can be when we're experiencing a block from our values and have negative feelings as a result.

Dr. Blevins discusses the first fear many parents encounter when learning their child may need therapy. Often parents want to know why their child has developed the difficulties they have. This is totally normal! Many parents also take on total responsibility for every outcome in their child's life, leading them to have a deep fear about their own involvement in their child's difficulties. This learning video is about Dr. Blevins experience with many families as they start the therapeutic experience, accept what they can control and what they can't, and learn to embrace self-compassion while owning responsibility for interventions.

Dr. Blevins interviews her good friend, Stephanie, a veteran home school mom of four children from kindergarten through high school. Stephanie has been home schooling for 12 years and currently has two elementary students, a middle schooler, and a high schooler. She discusses what her home school routine looks like normally, how it has changed due to the pandemic, and behavior strategies she uses to increase child motivation, to get her own work done, and to support working with multiple children at once. Most importantly Stephanie and Dr. Blevins discuss the value of parents participating in the education process and the silver lining and mindset shift that parents may want to embrace during the pandemic to emphasize child resiliency, emotional coping, and mental flexibility.

Learn about how to do self-care when you don’t have time to brush your teeth, let alone take a leisurely bubble bath.  Dr. Blevins uses Acceptance and Commitment Therapy concepts to teach psychological flexibility concepts as they relate to anxiety, overwhelm, and stress with rigid schedules and hectic responsibilities that parents are facing during normal life and especially pandemic life.  A focus on identifying value tokens, defusing from stuck thoughts, and committed action are addressed.

Dr. Blevins tells you how she's engaging in self-care this week. Needs may change as the pandemic changes or isolation is prolonged. Each person should consider where they need support in their life and strive to create ways to provide self-compassion and active coping through self-care that best suits them.

Dr. Blevins' personal strategies include:

1. Taking time for personal life every day. No more workaholic lifestyle. 2. Doing physical tasks/activities that create an inner monologue of caring for one's self, like cleaning the home, doing fun personal grooming, etc. 3. Daily outside exercise 4. Creating space for normal everyday topics 5. Using a heating pad as recommended by a pharmacist to reduce eye strain and tension headaches from increased online work 6. Call people in my social network more often. Recognizing that they are wanting the support as much as me.

Dr. Blevins, a licensed psychologist, invites Dr. Fried, a double Board Certified physician in Family Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine, to have a conversation about the intersection of mental health and medical factors with the novel coronavirus. We specifically focus on how to manage information overload, anxiety, re-framing social distancing to manage stress, prevention behaviors, and how to talk to your kids about the current and future risks and outcomes that may happen with COVID-19.

Learn how telehealth therapy is set up, specifically for therapy with parents and young children. Learn how Dr. Blevins thinks about approaching parent training and engaging children in telehealth, managing safety, and keeping care to provide medically necessary treatment.

Exercise is a well researched method to improve your mood and your physical health. During these stressful times we still have the option to go outside. Whether you want to do something active like running or hiking, or sit in the sun and take a leisurely walk, time outside can promote health and help you feel better.

Dr Blevins discusses ACT. She works with parents who have children experiences emotional and behavioral difficulties or developmental delays. ACT is an excellent therapy to help parents manage the many tasks they do daily, the emotions that come with supporting a child who is struggling, and helping your whole family feel better.

Dr. Blevins describes Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, which is a therapy used with young children and their parents to address numerous behavioral and mood difficulties as well as parent-child attachment. Learn more about Dr. Blevins child psychology practice, including assessment and therapy, at EnildaClinic.com. Enilda Clinic is located at 705 W 7th Ave, Ste.

What is anxiety? Learn about how your brain protects you and how that mechanism can go awry, leading to anxiety.

Dr. Blevins discusses how your everyday talk increases your baby, toddler, and preschooler's understanding of cause-and-effect and helps them build emotional awareness. Learn more about child development and behavior at EnildaClinic.com.

Dr. Blevins discusses the purpose of deep belly breathing and shows you an exercise to learn how to do deep belly breathing. Learn more about Dr. Blevins' child psychology, behavior, and assessment practice in Spokane, Washington at EnildaClinic.com.

What is going on in your bright kid's mind that lead her to worry so much? Dr. Blevins discusses development for kids who progress rapidly in one area. Learn more at EnildaClinic.com