Dr. Pat Love on what it is to parent, and the mistaken conceptions of parenting that are endemic to our culture: There’s a lot of talk today about parents who hover, these helicopter parents. And there’s just one line that I like to say and that is: When you do something for someone else, let’s… Read more »
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Recently several best-selling books as well as a number of child development experts have focused their attention on the growing trend of “helicopter parenting” and have described its negative effects on children and adolescents. These writers point out how parents’ tendencies to hover and overprotect their kids are destroying children’s initiative and making them feel… Read more »
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High school graduation is a culmination of emotions, a push-and-pull of opposing feelings on the human psyche. There’s a mixture of anxiety and excitement, happiness and sadness, regret and expectation, and relief and concern. And this doesn’t just apply to the grad either; parents are equally if not oftentimes more immersed in this emotional tug-of-war…. Read more »
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Every new parent experiences that first terrifying moment: your baby is screaming, not crying, screaming. You try to feed him. You check his diaper. You try to make him warmer, cooler, calmer, more comfortable, but to no avail. The complete mystery of this precious 8 pound, non-speaking creature rises to your consciousness, and, all at once,… Read more »
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Summer’s finally here, and while that may not mean a lot to the majority of the working population, children everywhere are rejoicing in the newfound (however temporary) freedom of their three-month vacation from school, homework, and all things academic. While you probably aren’t afforded the same release from work, as a parent, summer is the… Read more »
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In 1967, in order to study the relationship between stress and physical health, researchers Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe examined medical records of more than 5,000 patients. In order to determine whether stressful life events could cause illness, they developed a stress scale or “social readjustment scale” which assigned numerical scores of 1-100 to stressful… Read more »
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My 2-year-old nephew sat calmly amid the frantic atmosphere of the playground. Bigger kids clamored noisily around him: chasing, digging, screeching in delight and crying over newly scraped knees. My nephew appeared to be in some sort of trance. Slowly and meticulously, he lifted scoops of warm sand and poured them gently on his head…. Read more »
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Excerpt from Compassionate Child-Rearing: An In-Depth Approach to Parenting by Robert Firestone, Ph.D. It is vital for parents to respond as real people to their children, rather than role-playing or acting patronizing, strategic, or phony in their interactions with them. It is impossible for parents to “learn how to talk to their children” in a… Read more »
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Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale University, recently published a book describing her strict child-rearing techniques and experiences titled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin Press, 2011). Chua, a mother of two daughters, ascribes to a traditional Chinese parenting style that demands nothing short of perfection from her children: allowing nothing below… Read more »
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Be careful that your words match your deeds, your children are watching…and listening! As parents we attempt to teach our children the building blocks for personal integrity; the difference between right and wrong, thoughtful and thoughtless and myriad other nuances of this optimal human value….But we often fail to recognize the utter esteem in which… Read more »
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