In most of the workshops I conduct with parents of teenagers, I hear begging and pleading for help to "get the kids off those damn phones," and for parents with younger children, I hear "I'm tired of the screen battles."
Ours is an interesting generation because we grew up with maybe one or two screens in our homes. The Internet wasn't invented until I was in school getting my undergraduate degree! Some of us are using social media, smart phones, and tablets kicking and screaming whereas others have jumped with both feet into the personal computer era.
While watching an episode of Cityline, I heard Tracy Moore's guest Karyn Gordon, PhD say this line, "Seven percent of marriages are thriving."
Dr. Gordon went on to talk mostly about communication and that being in a successful, thriving relationship takes skills, which thankfully, are ones that can be easily learned.
I am hoping to shift a troubling trend by sticking with toys as a means to distract, connect and play with young children rather than using phones, tablets, TVs, or video games.
I am going to take my parenting "expert" hat off and put my mom of a three-year-old hat on. I've been feeling under the weather, and although I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal, started to write these to make myself laugh. I hope you have some chuckles too. And, yes, these did actually happen.
What can you add to this list? Feel free to post your Murphy-isms in the comments or on my facebook page.
Back in March I was interviewed by Toronto Star reported Alyshah Hasham about a recent study that found Canadian parents were spending "more time reading, telling stories, singing songs, drawing, and teaching new words and letters to their pre-kindergarten-age daughters than their sons."
The writers of the study wondered if this was a cause for boys lagging behind in academics in the early years of school.
Approximately 15-20% of the North American population are considered "problem drinkers." As a psychotherapist and someone who experienced problem drinking, I have lived and heard firsthand the stories of how easy it is to start, and just keep going down that rabbit hole. I hope to arm parents with tools to reduce the chance of addictions.
When children and teens ask about news headlines, it is a wonderful opportunity to provide filtered age-appropriate information for younger children. And for teens, it's a chance to get into a moral discussion without coming across as preachy. Here are some age-appropriate suggestions for answering "What is crack cocaine?"
When I was pregnant with my first child, I wanted to know as much as I could about starting off on the right foot with my baby and, given my background as a psychotherapist, how to create a secure attachment with my child.
I discovered the term "attachment parenting" and thought, Perfect! If I do the tenets prescribed by Dr. Sears, I will ensure my child is cooperative, resilient, gets along well with others, has high self-esteem, optimal development, fewer tantrums, and will be more empathetic.
Staying connected with our young children amidst the many challenges of this time period can be hard. Parents at home experience the endurance of repetitive feeding, pottying, cleaning, and tantrum times. Parents who work go through trying to get young ones up and out the door, peeling shrieking kids off a leg, the often-present mommy-guilt when it is time to say "good-bye," and the challenge of staying connected without being with the children throughout the day.
Frustrated kids can be hard to manage and hard on our sanity. I have had days where I did everything possible to reduce any frustrating experiences for my child, wincing at the first sign of an oncoming tantrum.
When a parent uses neutral words that help their child form quick associations, it really helps reduce frustration and improve the parent-child relationship.
When my little guys were both toddlers, I really struggled to get out of survival mode. I wasn't satisfied with clawing through each day so I invested time to find a way to enjoy my time in toddlerville.
A Latvian-based website called "Ask.fm" is allowing anonymous questions to be posed to the more than 30 million users worldwide -- the majority of which are pre-teens and teenagers. Some questions are innocent, but most contain disturbing, intrusive and abusive language about mature content.
You, your partner, and other primary child-givers are going to be teaching your children how to talk. Here are some tips to promote clearer communication and to help you foster increased self-esteem, confidence and understanding through this process.
As I drag myself off the floor where my three-year-old and five-year-old are happily playing, I am trying to summon motivation to help stop feeling sorry for my tired body that was kept up last night by a feverish child. Life has to go on today—no calling in sick here!
It can be hard to know what to do when our child's school marks start to drop.
As a former high-school teacher, I had many conversations with frustrated parents about how to get their child's marks to improve. There are many reasons the marks could be going down: learning disability, bullying, relationship trouble, or problems with the teacher to name a few. The first step to finding the cause of the trouble is an open conversation with your child and their teacher.
So how do the kids of a psychotherapist and trained parenting educator act? Well, if you were at my house today, you’d see a raging three-year-old kicking me, calling me “stupid” and you’d be pouring me some tea and providing a shoulder for me to cry on.
My day today consisted of many crying spells. I’m not too sure why but every time my son threw something, I broke into tears. Maybe there is a threshold for how much aggressiveness and back-talking a parent can take, and I’ve just tipped over that.
Having taught high school for many years, I have seen how brutal kids can be. I also experienced bullying myself as a gangly, braces-wearing, awkward fourteen-year-old. As my sons entered school this year, I had my bully-dar on high alert for the signs of feeling that pain.
To prepare myself for this stage, I sought help through a book called The Essential Guide to Bullying Prevention and Intervention by Cindy Miller and Cynthia Lowen. I also had the privilege of interviewing one of the authors, Cindy Miller.
For a long time, I would pick sleep. I considered our marriage to be satisfying when one day my husband, with a big smile, handed me a hard-cover copy of the book WHAT MAKES LOVE LAST? How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal by Gottman & Silver. I grinned weakly thinking, who the hell does he think he is giving me, a psychotherapist, a book about relationships? Well, it turns out he was pretty wise. We were doing okay, but not great.
Ever have to peel a shrieking child off your leg at drop-off time? I have. Wow, it feels terrible.
Attachment researcher Gordon Neufeld says we shouldn't make a habit of the peel-and-run. Although, there is a time to use this technique, which I will write about in a future post about tips to make drop-off time better. I have used some tricks including something called an attachment bridge to help reduce the number of times I am dashing out to the wails of my child.
