Valentine’s Eve Celebration of the Family

By Christine Murray, HRI Director

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day! If you have a sweetheart, you may be spending time today planning how you’re going to celebrate them tomorrow. Flowers, chocolate, a special dinner out on the town…all of these can be part of a special Valentine’s Day celebration of romance. With all of the focus tomorrow on romance, our HRI team wants to encourage you today to focus on celebrating the family, and especially the children in your life.

People have differing views of Valentine’s Day. Some view it as an artificial holiday that was manufactured by greeting card companies, while other people view it as an important and meaningful celebration of their relationship with their partner. Even if you aren’t a total fan of Valentine’s Day, we invite you to view a Valentine’s Eve Celebration of the Family as an opportunity to role model an important part of healthy relationships for your children: taking extra steps to help your loved ones feel cared for! Of course, this is an important relationship skill every day, but Valentine’s Day offers you a unique opportunity to model it for your children because they’re likely already seeing and hearing a lot about relationships this week.

The skills and characteristics of relationships that your children see and experience during their early years can have a powerful impact on their relationships later in life. Your relationships with them, your partner, friends, other family members, and others are perhaps the most powerful way that your children will learn about relationships. If they experience unhealthy relationship patterns, they may come to view those patterns as normal. On the other hand, if they observe and experience healthy relationships, they will learn how to build and maintain strong, happy relationships throughout their lives.

Let’s say you aren’t a big proponent of Valentine’s Day…Even if this is the case, role modeling treating others (including your children and your partner) in a special way on Valentine’s Day can help teach them to care for others in the ways that are most meaningful for them. If you’re familiar with the widely popular book, The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman, then you know that people vary in the ways they express and receive love that are the most meaningful to them. Even if doing something to celebrate Valentine’s Day isn’t your cup of tea, it may mean a lot to your partner. Sometimes, making your partner feel loved and cared for means doing things that resonate with them, even if they don’t make sense to you!

To help you celebrate your family on Valentine’s Eve today, we’re excited to announce the release HRI’s free, new board game, Together Time! Our HRI team developed this game to offer families an opportunity to connect and learn more about each other through playing the game. Everything you need to play Together Time can be downloaded for free at the following web-site: http://www.guilfordhri.org/togethertimegame. We hope this will be a fun way to spend time together as you celebrate Valentine’s Eve as a family!

What if board games aren’t your thing, or if you’d like to do the game and something else to celebrate Valentine’s Eve? We’ve got several other ideas to share for how to make today special:

We hope we’ve given you some ideas to make today an extra-special celebration of your family! Even just a few small, simple steps to celebrate today can help your children see the value in celebrating the important people in their lives–on Valentine’s Day and every day!

How Do You Know When You Need Professional Help?

How do you know when you need professional help? People often struggle to know when is the right time to reach out for professional help when they’re experiencing a relationship or family challenge. The truth is, there is no clear cut answer, as every situation is unique. However, some signs that might indicate that it would be a good time to reach out for help are as follows:

  • You’ve tried to manage the problem on your own, but you haven’t been able to make much progress even after trying for a certain period of time (e.g., one month).
  • The problem seems to be getting worse.
  • In addition to the original problem, other secondary problems are beginning to arise related to the original problem, such as additional conflict, financial distress, or mental health symptoms.
  • You and another person have completely different perspectives on an issue and are unable to reach middle ground, and/or it seems you are unable to understand one another.
  • The problem is causing you a lot of distress and/or starting to impact your or another person’s functioning in different areas of life (e.g., school or work).

Even if you’re facing a relationship or family problem that hasn’t reach any of the levels described above, you can still reach out for professional help to guide you through more minor challenges. Professionals are trained to work with people facing all kinds of relationship and family challenges, and they can help you navigate the challenge and more toward building positive solutions to strengthen your relationships.

Keep Searching for the Right Source of Support

You may have to try a few times to find the right source of help, but don’t give up! Sometimes, people reach out for help for relationship and family problems, and if they don’t find the “perfect” source of help on their first try, they give up. For example, someone may seek family counseling, but they don’t connect with the first counselor they see, and then they become discouraged and give up. But, keep in mind that it can take time to find the right professional to help. Family counselors and other professionals who support relationships and families are all unique, so keep searching until you find a source of help that feels right to you.

A Part of Life

If you were sick or injured, you’d likely seek help from a medical doctor. If you had a problem with your house, such as a leaking pipe or a broken door, you’d call the appropriate service professional. If your car’s engine were breaking down, you’d take it to the mechanic. Many people who are perfectly comfortable seeking professional help for other problems are still hesitant to reach out for help for problems in their relationships or families. But, just as physical sickness, home repairs, and car problems are a part of life, so too are relationship challenges! So, seeking help for relationship and family challenges should have not more stigma attached than calling a doctor, plumber, or car shop. Professionals can help people through the challenges they face in all areas of life, and relationships and families should be no different!

Life Transitions

Life transitions can be especially challenging for relationships and families. You may have been doing great in your relationship or family, but then you started going through a major life transition–such as having a child, moving forward to a new level of commitment in your relationship, starting a new career path, or retirement. It’s completely normal to have a hard adjusting to a new phase of life! These are great times to reach out for help, such as counseling or a relationship education program. You can learn new tools and information to help you have a smooth transition to your new life circumstances.

#FindHelpFriday: NC 2-1-1

 

By Crystal Broadnax, MS, Community Impact Manager for Health and Basic Needs at United Way of Greater Greensboro

Are you, a friend, or a loved one in need of assistance and don’t know who to call? No matter where you live in NC, you can call 2-1-1 and a compassionate, trained NC 2-1-1 call specialist will help you to find available human services resources in your community.

NC 2-1-1 is an information and referral service provided by United Way of North Carolina and supported by local United Ways and public and private partners across NC. The service is available in all 100 NC counties. Accessible via an easy-to-remember, three-digit number, families and individuals can call to obtain information on health and human services and resources within their community. The service is free, confidential, and available in most languages.

Simply dial 2-1-1 from any phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to reach a      trained, compassionate call specialist. You can find help from more than 18,000 resources in North Carolina that offer:

  • food, housing, and utilities assistance
  • child care and youth programs
  • financial education and counseling
  • job training
  • access to health care, support groups, individual counseling, mental health and substance abuse services
  • senior services
  • disaster services and much more!

Are you comfortable using the computer and prefer to search for results online? The online database at nc211.org is the same database used by the call specialists. However, our call specialists are trained to search using specific keywords which may provide additional resources. If you don’t find what you need online, we strongly encourage you to dial 2-1-1. Call specialists are available 24/7/365 to help.

Useful Tips:

  • Have a pen and paper ready when you call
  • Take your time and tell the call specialist exactly what you need
  • Follow up with each of the resources provided. If you don’t get what you need from the first, be sure to call the others
  • Tell someone else about your experience

NC 2-1-1 is an important service to help our neighbors find help when they need it most. 2-1-1 can provide information to individuals who are facing unemployment, or direct people in need to lesser known resources, taking pressure off front line agencies. In times of natural disasters, 2-1-1 has proven itself invaluable in taking call volume off the 9-1-1 system for assistance needs that are not immediate emergencies. Make 2-1-1 the the number you call, when you don’t know exactly where to turn. We can help!

The Courage to Ask: Series Introduction

By Christine Murray, HRI Director

Can you guess how long the average couple waits from the start of having problems in their relationship to deciding to seek counseling? According to decades of research by noted marriage researcher, Dr. John Gottman, the answer is six years. Six years! Take a moment to let that sink in.

Think how deeply problems have become entrenched in couples’ relationships when they wait this long to seek help. It may not be impossible to turn things around after problems have been around for that long, but it certainly can feel impossible at that point!

Our mission at HRI is to promote happy, healthy, and safe relationships of all kinds and to prevent the negative consequences of relationship distress. One of the major barriers that can get in the way of happy, healthy, and safe relationships is the stigma that surrounds problems in relationships and families. This stigma can make people feel like there is something wrong with them if they face problems in their relationships, as well as that they should be embarrassed if they need to seek help.

At HRI, we’re passionate about ending this stigma and breaking down the barriers to seeking help for relationship and family problem. Of course, there are other barriers to seeking help beyond the stigma, such as financial barriers, transportation, language and cultural concerns, child care needs, and a lack of needed resources in the community.

We are also doing what we can to work with our community partners to continue to address those other barriers as well, but in the meantime, we are also working hard to end this stigma. The stigma surrounding reaching out for help for relationship problems keeps many people suffering in situations that could be improved with the proper support and resources. And, it can contribute to problems becoming much worse than they need to be because they aren’t addressed as early as possible.

While happy, healthy, and safe relationships are our end goal, we know that building and sustaining this kind of relationship takes a lot of work. It’s normal and expected that relationship problems will arise. That’s why our subtitle for our Courage to Ask campaign is, “Relationships are hard. Getting help doesn’t have to be.”

In the coming days, we’ll be sharing some additional tips and points about seeking help for relationship and family problems. In addition, our #FindHelpFridays series is an ongoing resource to promote the accessibility of local resources that support relationships and families locally. In this series, we feature local organizations to help community members get to know more about them and to hear from some of their team members.

It takes courage to ask for help for relationship and family problems in a culture in which there’s pressure to look like we’ve all got everything together. We hope that this series, “The Courage to Ask,” will help each of you think through how you can help to break down this stigma and make it more likely that you and the people you care about will reach out for help when relationship and family challenges arise.

Healthy Families All Year Long!

By Christine Murray, HRI Director

We hope our series this past week has helped inspire you to make healthy habits a part of your relationships and families this year. As we’ve seen all week, getting active together is a great way to connect with your loved ones!

Of course, we all know that New Year’s Resolutions can be hard to keep. Some of you may have even started to fall away from your resolutions already, just a week into 2018. Even with the best of intentions, it’s normal to struggle to make healthy changes in your life.

As we wrap up our “Your Family’s Healthiest Year Yet!” series today, we want to leave you with some encouragement for the year ahead as you consider how to prioritize your family’s physical, mental, and relationship health all year long.

First, keep in mind that you’ll be more likely to stick with healthy habits when you make them as fun as possible. If you’re trying to exercise together more, for example, try to pick activities that everyone likes, and make your time together enjoyable. Exercise doesn’t have to be miserable to be effective. The key is just to get moving! Try turning on some fun music or making up fun games or competitions to keep the mood light.

Second, adults can remember that kids learn a lot more by watching what you do, even more than from what you tell them to do. So, keep in mind that you can be a powerful role model for kids by practicing healthy habits and showing them that you enjoy taking care of your mind and body so you can have lot of energy for keeping up with them!

Third, it’s never too late to get back on track. If you go through a busy stretch of time when it’s difficult to keep up with your healthy habits, know that you can always get back on track. In fact, this is a really powerful lesson to teach children and adolescents–that they don’t have to stay stuck in unhealthy habits. Changing habits can be challenging, but you can help children learn that it’s possible by showing them how to get back on track even if fall back a little bit.

And finally, know that there are a lot of people and organizations in our community that want to help your family get and stay healthy! We’re especially thankful for YMCA of Greensboro for their partnership on this series, as well as for all their ongoing work to promote family health and wellness all the time. In addition to the YMCA, our community is rich with other health-focused organizations, as well as many great parks and recreation areas that families can enjoy together. Connecting with these resources can help your family have more options for being active together, as well as offer potential social support and new friendships.

We hope this series has given you some ideas and inspiration for making 2018 your family’s healthiest year yet. And, stay connected to HRI for more information and resources to promote healthy relationships all year long!