Following are some strategies that can help you make your way through this challenging time without being overwhelmed by its seeming enormity. These four simple strategies will help you with two critical tasks: learning to take better care of yourself and embracing hope—i.e. knowing that somehow, things will get better.
This holiday weekend we will celebrate the independence and freedom of our nation. Everyone knows [...]
Even diagnosed emotional and behavioral disorders are often linked to personality traits that can have a very positive expression. Knowing this can help you avoid misguided attempts to quash personality traits in your adolescent that may just be temporarily misdirected. It can also help you be an encouragement to your child when he or she is struggling and can't see the other side of things.
Short term, living on the edge a bit can help teens formulate their own adult identity, develop competencies and passions, and move forward in their journey toward independence. Long term, however, an immoderate way of life is associated with anxiety, unhappiness, health problems and even a shorter life span. As parents, we can’t—and shouldn’t—quash our teenager’s appetite for intensity. We can, however, temper and guide it.
Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters Recently, I have been thinking more and more how I can [...]
Unlike a visit to the dentist—“open, rinse, say ahhh, spitâ€â€”the rules for a psychotherapy session are not so simple or clear. Most therapists are unlikely to give you step by step instructions for engaging the session—“talk about your mother, cry, tell me a story from your childhood.†That’s partly because it’s the nature of psychotherapy for the patient or client to “show up†and initiate topics, set the initial direction, and open up. But that can be very difficult, especially if therapy is new to you or if trust is one of the issues you’re going to therapy to address. The question of how to “do†therapy is further complicated by the fact that there are many different therapeutic techniques, modalities, and styles out there, each one requiring a different type and level of patient involvement.
The average screen time for children and adolescents aged 8 – 18 now stands at a whopping 7 hours and 38 minutes per day! Given that this behavior occurs 7 days a week, this means that many children are spending as much or more time watching a screen as their parents spend at work.
