Raising Critters focusing on giving the next generations a voice.  It is for developing positive, productive children, children that are kind, empathetic, and thoughtful.  If you have any suggestions or have topics that you would like covered from a Mental Health perspective,  please feel free to contact me using the "Contact Us," tab.  

Thank you and Enjoy, 

B. Yvette

051919 Fear and anxiety usually underline anger, which protests children from being too vulnerable. This usually occurs after mistrust or the absence of  consistency fromthe primary caregiver.   Although the child manifests the symptoms, the problem often lies in the environment.  - Unknown Author

022319

Children can feel powerless, and standing up to an adult is pointless, many will be quiet merely because they are smaller.  Give them the gift that keeps giving; make sure that they understand that the strongest part of them are their words.  Make them understand that if one person won’t listen for them to keep talking, to keeping telling an adult until someone listens. 

Words have power, and it doesn’t matter who is using them.

B. Yvette Myers

02/2019

Being in control can be compared to helium in a balloon.

 Does the balloon control the helium or does the helium control the balloon?

Arguments can be supported on both sides, but, you live in illusion if you believe that one is more dominant.  As with controlling behavior, you are delusional to believe that you are controlling your environment, and those in it are also delusional if the belief is that they are controlling you. 

 Step out of this cycle of belief.  What controls us is what is allowed to control us.

 Our goal is to control ourselves, to be responsible for ourselves and to hold those accountable when they cannot govern themselves.  Let's agree to raise critters to be responsible for their behavior, and the behavior of others become problematic only when it interferes with our ability to govern ourselves. In short, mind the business that pays you, your own.  

 B. Yvette Myers

02/05/19 - Tip 004

Parenting: providing for, caring for, loving nurturing and correcting.  

Those are the attributes that we are well aware of, now consider "creating a safe space to talk." 
Creating a safe space for critters, so they can tell someone what's happening to them.  Imagine how difficult it can be to tell someone is hurting you to a person that is also hurting you.  What if in the mind of your child there is difficulty finding the difference between the pain of being sexually assaulted and the pain of being ridiculed, beat or degraded.  

Telling them that they can talk to you isn't enough.  Being in a space that is comfortable and free of agony, even if it is well intent agony is ideal.
 And we have to create it.  

Allowing time to elude us and then find out months or years later that our babies had been assaulted, bullied or mistreated by another adult or child can be heartbreaking.  

And let me be the one to say it; there is nothing more painful than for your child to tell you that they were hurt when they were young, and they didn't tell you.  
Create a space where your critters can tell you what's going on in their lives, where the only emotion that is present in that space is love. 

B. Yvette Myers

02/03/19 - Tip 003

Children are reactors.  By definition, a reactor is something (an apparatus) that when under pressure responds to the pressure (paraphrased).  Using that definition, when anything happens to a child they will respond.  The first sign that something is going crazy in a child's life is their behavior can change.  They can go from overly quiet to the complete opposite.  Or from being an outspoken child to one that is docile.  Being able to identify a change in a child is key to finding out what has happened to cause that shift.  Keep in mind, when it comes to critters, everything that is happening is happening because something else happened.  Find that something else. 

B. Yvette Myers

012419

I was speaking with my granddaughter (8-years-old).  We were discussing things that bothered her.  She said to me, GiGi (that’s what she calls me) when things happen to me, and I don’t’ say anything it’s like my head is a bathtub, and it keeps filling up with water and won’t stop.  But when I talk about it, it’s like my mouth is the drain, and I don’t think about what happened much. Find somewhere where you can drain.  If you can’t find anyone or won’t seek professional help, begin journaling.  Journaling for me is synonymous with a mental dump.  Encourage your children to drain.  Find ways to get them to talk or get them in front of someone that will give them sound advice. The word for today is DRAIN...

B. Yvette Myers

012319

Being kind versus being nice. Being nice takes away choices, lowers self-esteem and gives the power of self to others. Being kind gives choice, increases self-esteem, increases self-awareness, improves decision making and allows children to know that they control their bodies. Teach kindness, not niceness.

B. Yvette Myers