The holiday season is here (at least we hope so!) and with it, many changes and interruptions. High schools and colleges will release students. Many will be returning to parental homes, while others will be traveling or looking for new roommates. Older students may be holding seasonal jobs.

While holidays are filled with promise, they can also mean kids at home needing supervision, and family trips. And stress. Whatever your winter holiday time means for you, there are tactics that can help ease predictable stresses.

You may be the student heading off for the unknown with a backpack, as I was many years ago, or the parent with uninterrupted work responsibilities and children home for vacation. You may be the parent(s) taking kids to visit relatives, or the high school junior looking for an internship to enhance your resume. In any case, calling upon the wisdom, advice or assistance of others to address your next steps and options can be a really good place to begin.

• If it’s younger kids at home, several families getting together to create a plan to care, jointly, for the children’s benefit is one kind of a Personal Safety Net (PSN) that can be helpful, not only in summers, but during holidays, after school and during school’s-not-in-session-today days.
• If it’s getting a job or internship, enlisting as many others as possible to broaden the search can bring surprising results.

The same steps that work when someone in an accident needs team support, can work during these holiday times.

1) Identify and define the issue

2) Decide on what could be needed to help

3) Think of who or what might provide this assistance

4) Ask for specific assistance

5) Don’t take “no” personally

6) Organize the help

7) Express appreciation for response (even a “no” may be evidence of support or take courage) or assistance

8) Keep giving to others!

Rather than facing a challenge alone, give pulling a team together a try (steps on what to do, and solid advice on how to do it in the most stress-reducing ways possible are given in our book.