Update On What Happens When You Hit Your Kids
Parents often justify spanking because they insist this is the only way to teach children the difference between right and wrong. Yet the results showed clearly that spanking was also significantly associated with lower looks at moral internalization ...
Distressed Children Need Our Help—Before It’s Too Late
We hear so much about the mentally ill. How our jails (due to regulations which sometimes have unintended consequences) serve as mental institutions where the ill are neglected, abused, and too often die (did you see 60 Minutes recently?). How the hom...
Kids and Divorce: Ten Tough Issues
Children have an especially difficult time with divorce. Many times, parents neglect to consider the ramifications of the effects of the divorce on their children. Understanding how children will view the divorce and the resulting parental relationshi...
The Upside of Adolescence
Parenting a teenager can bring some of the greatest joys of parenting. Haven't heard that too often, have you? That's part of the problem. Too many parents are warned they should hold onto their children while they can because adolescence will turn th...
Sleep in Children | Psych Central
Children have very different sleep needs from adults. Throughout childhood and adolescence, the need for sleep remains higher than for adults. Children spend more time in deep sleep and more time in REM sleep than adults. These two sleep stages are co...
The Strengths of Kids Who Have ADHD
All our kids have strengths, but kids with ADHD have unique sets of strengths. Kids with Hyperactive-Impulsive Type ADHD have a certain set of strengths, while kids with Inattentive Type ADHD have a different set. Regardless, these kids are awesome. H...
My Parents Want Me to Break Up with Boyfriend Who Hit Me
From Sri Lanka: I faced an argument with my boyfriend where he hit me. My mom & In laws to be involved in the matter aftermath. Now my mom is angry over my boy friend for hitting me and the way he argued. And his parents angry over me for compla...
Stepparents: Are You Trying to Fix What You Didn’t Break?
There’s a line I’ve read again and again when it comes to stepparenting… “You can’t fix what you didn’t break.” When thinking about how to wrap up this short series on stepparenting, I thought that this piece of advice was a good way to conclude the types of issues many stepparents face.
5 Ways to Lower Your Child’s Anxiety
As a child and family therapist, the concern I hear most often is I think my child may have anxiety, and I'm not sure how to help them. Quite honestly, I don't need to travel as far as my office to see the various ways anxiety affects children in toda...
Finding Professional Help for Victims of Bullying
With all the national focus on bullying, and the monies and time spent on anti-bullying campaigns, one would think that bullying is so prevalent as to warrant its own brand of "victim services." Think again. Recently, an adolescent well known to me be...
How to Tell When Children Are Stressed
Since the financial crisis of 2008, many polls have highlighted how much stress most American families are feeling and struggling with. In addition, parents in these families often find it difficult to tell when that stress is reaching unhealthy level...
How Children Make Friends (part 3)
A young, elementary school girl once told me, "I know how to make friends!" "How?" I asked. "You just go off by yourself and look very, very sad, and then people come over to you!" she explained. Well, that strategy might get the attention of the othe...
Rewarding Kids with Snacks May Lead to Emotional Eating
A new study finds that children whose parents use more controlling methods around food including withholding food but then using it as a reward may be more likely to develop habits of emotional eating. The findings show that when feeling stressed out ...
Is Parenting Drowning Your Marriage? 6 Tips to Help Reconnect with Your Partner
It's a too-familiar story. James and Cindy have come in for couples counseling because they worry they have grown apart. With three children under the age of 12, they want to see if they can salvage their marriage. They can't imagine breaking up the f...
3 Ways to Keep Your Teen Happy in Family Therapy
Seek understanding over authority. Seek peace over war. You will thank yourself later. Because fighting with a teen is exhausting. I recently found this out over the weekend when I brought my teen to a college visit.
3 Ways to Keep Your Teen Happy in Family Therapy
Seek understanding over authority. Seek peace over war. You will thank yourself later. Because fighting with a teen is exhausting. I recently found this out over the weekend when I brought my teen to a college visit.
7 Positive Ways to Help Kids Manage Disappointment
As a parent you never want to see your child experience pain. Pain can occur both physically and emotionally - both are equally challenging. One of the most difficult experiences for a child is disappointment. Children can be very enthusiastic, lookin...
The Unhappy Intellectually Gifted Child
What’s a parent to do with an unhappy intellectually gifted child?
Parenting High-Functioning Teens Around Drinking and Drugs
Many parents have questions and concerns about their teenager's alcohol and drug usage, including how best to set limits and rules within the household. These issues may become concealed and more complicated when these individuals are high-functioning...
How to Respond When Your Teen Wants Space
All parents reach that point when they hang their head in their hands and lament, "My kid hates me." For most parents, this moment either happens for the first time or a lot more often when their child reaches adolescence. Adolescents and teens have a...
3 Mistakes Parents Make with Technology
Can you believe that there was a time when people didn't spend hours of their day staring into glowing screens? Phones never left the house, television put itself to sleep at night, and computers were just fancy typewriters. Technology didn't come with you to the playground, school or on a family vacation. Everywhere you look, children are staring into cell phones screens, computer screens, tablets, ipads, etc. Probably by the time you finish reading this article, someone will have invented a new glowing screen for kids to stare into. The real question is this: has technology improved our kids attunement ...
When Parents and Children Disagree about College
There are many things to consider when parents and children disagree about college. The important question becomes, of course, "How are we going to decide which college the child should attend" How can we avoid making turning this discussion into an a...