Seventy-three percent of parents polled said that they experience significant stress each day, according to the American Psychological Association. Stress can lead to health problems, obesity, and disconnected families. Learning to cope with stress in your family not only reduces the stress on you, but it also trains your kids to deal with stress in a positive way. If you’re trying to reduce the stress on your family, here are four ways you can do it.
1. Get Out and Play
It’s too bad that many adults think that play is something to be left to children. Nothing could be further from the truth. Play may change forms as you get older, but you don’t have to stop playing altogether. Good-for-you activities like biking, basketball, swimming, and hiking can become forms of play for the whole family.
To be successful in this, Today.com suggests implementing exercise and play activities that your kids will also like. This instills healthy habits and a sense of play into the daily routine. This, in turn, encourages your kids to use exercise and play to relieve their own stress as they get older.
2. Make Dinner Together
Making dinner from scratch doesn’t cause any more stress than making something pre-made. It takes about the same amount of time to cook a meal, regardless of whether it’s from scratch or pre-made. Here’s the interesting thing. Despite being a chore that has to be done, making dinner together can actually help to reduce stress. Picky eaters are more likely to eat food that they’ve helped make. Not only will cooking together relieve you of the burden of having to do all the cooking, it also helps to sidestep the dinner battles and the stresses that ensue because kids won’t eat. Aside from this, cooking together can be just plain fun!
3. Invest in a Hot Tub
You get all sorts of benefits from being in a hot tub. Most people find it to be an instant stress reliever and just a good way to have some low-key fun, especially if it’s part of a pool/ hot tub combination. Aside from helping you relieve your stress, hanging out in the hot tub after dinner may help your kids to wind down, too.
If you do decide to get a hot tub, do be sure that you keep it in good shape for when those unexpected life stresses hit you. You’ll want to contact a local pool and spa vendor, like Rocky Mountain Hot Tub Company services for the necessary repairs and service that you’ll need along the way.
4. Create Some Daily Rituals
It turns out that reading to your kids or giving them a bath on the regular can actually help to reduce your daily stress. These normalizers help you to bond with each other and provide security during uncertain times—such as starting a new school or getting a new job.
However, your kids aren’t the only ones who’ll benefit from having a routine. Having a sip of tea with your spouse before you go to bed or even meeting for lunch every Wednesday gives you the same benefits as it gives your kids.
Hopefully, the above tips will be able to help your entire family from being stressed out. Just make sure to include everyone’s opinions as you search for activities and things that would be good for your family.