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Being a parent can be stressful even during the best of times. Raising kids requires a lot of time and energy that goes into taking care of others emotionally and physically, in ways that naturally stretch beyond the care that you would just have to provide for yourself. Instead of scheduling just your own doctor’s appointments or cooking your own meals, you’re probably doing these things for your whole family. Instead of managing the time and finances of yourself, and maybe your partner, with kids you take on the responsibility of planning for them too. It can be easy to feel like your life has become about others, and to lose sight of your own well-being as you’re keeping the family afloat.

This is an interview with Tessa Palafu, Senior Implementation Research Assistant at our Implementation Research Division. Tessa recently celebrated two years working at The Baker Center!

Some children may experience teasing for not celebrating the dominant holiday, or they may feel left out or ashamed by not engaging in the same holiday traditions as their peers. For young kids, seeing signs of the dominant holiday all around them in these months, but not having that incorporated into the family environment can be emotionally challenging, and it is important to have open conversations with your kids about the reasons why your traditions might be different.

Holidays can be hard already, with multiple plans to manage, gifts to buy, decorations to put up, or religious celebrations to attend to. This time of year can cause stress for families, even without dealing with the loss of someone close to them. When a family is managing grief throughout the holiday season, the demands of the holiday season may be overwhelming. It can also be a really confusing time to manage, especially for kids, as they are forced to balance the joy that normally comes with the holidays and their feelings of sadness and grief from a recent loss. Holidays can also remind us of losses that happened a while ago. When families gather or we partake in traditions, we can often feel the missing presence of our loved ones as we remember the holiday’s past.

Dealing with toileting troubles is one of the most unappealing aspects of raising a child, especially when the challenges come with going number two. Encopresis, more commonly known as soiling, is a disorder where a child, age four or older, consistently poops in inappropriate places. Rather than using the toilet, a child with encopresis will eliminate in their underwear or on the floor instead of the toilet. For some children, the challenge can be constipation and for others, it may be anxiety or fear about pooping that causes them to hold it. Either way, holding in their poop for a long time results in a lack of control when their body can no longer do so. Overall, encopresis affects around 1.5 percent of young children, and is a manifestation of a complex interaction between the body and the experience of stress.