The Most Anxious Day of the Week
Any guesses what the most anxious day of the week is? You got it. Sundays.
Sundays are the day when the fears of the week ahead sit heavy on our minds. What we have to do. What we haven’t finished yet. What we are dreading. Sunday is hard for adults. It’s hard for kids. It’s hard for everyone and about 5:00 Sunday evening things seem to fall apart at home.
A great way to help yourself and your child through Sundays is to:
- Know it’s coming. Don’t be surprised at the Sunday night fall apart – be ready for it. Get yourself mentally and emotionally ready. Be prepared to be more patient. Get your own things done so you won’t have to be rushing around trying to finish them up AND try and help your child.
- Plan something fun for Sunday night. Instead of doing what you usually do – run around cramming things in for the week ahead, plan to finish early and have something fun planned. A routine Sunday dinner or movie are great things to plan for. They help kids focus on the good thing – the movie or dinner – rather than the worries of the week ahead.
- Get to bed early. Weekends throw kids off schedule. They stay up later, become more tired from activities and don’t have the structure of the weekdays. It’s best to put that structure back in Sunday night by attempting bed time even earlier than during the rest of the week.
- Stay away from talking about worries before bed. The worry/nighttime trap is what parents often get themselves into. Right before bed, kids want to unload their week’s worth of worries on parents. It’s hard not to get sucked into this trap but I would highly recommend parents refer those worries to Worry Time the following day. Talking about worries before bed delays sleep, makes kids more tired and ultimately when kids are tired, they are more irrational. So trying to hammer out a plan for them usually doesn’t work.
Good luck everyone and hope Sundays going forward are much easier or at least more manageable!
