One of the biggest challenges for us as parents is remembering that our children are not us. In spite of the fact that they came from us, that they share our genetic makeup, and that they are shaped by the emotional environment that we are raising them in, they are not us. Our children are… Read more »
Read More
Dealing with your kids’ tantrums and mood swings can be one of parenting’s most frustrating challenges. From public meltdowns to prolonged fits, these extreme outbursts of emotion have the capacity to provoke extreme reactions in us. Methods that are effective in dealing with the child’s natural expressions of anger or frustration don’t work in this… Read more »
Read More
As loving parents, we want the best for our kids. If we can afford it, we take our children to the orthodontist to correct their teeth, so they have a beautiful smile and keep their teeth to old age. I find this to be a helpful metaphor for learning challenges. Learning challenges are unseen “misalignments”… Read more »
Read More
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 »
Read More
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 »
Read More
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 »
Read More
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 »
Read More
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 »
Read More
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 »
Read More
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 »
Read More
