What prevents your messages getting through to your children?

Have you noticed that sometimes your children just need to hear a message once and they get it? And, frustratingly, you can send a message dozens upon dozens of times and it is as if they had never sent the message at all? Well, welcome to the real world of parenting where nothing goes as expected, what is supposed to work doesn’t, what isn’t assumed to work does, and what does work only works intermittently or only works for a limited time. Read more..

This summer I had an article published in Parenting: School Years about childhood depression. It was a long, arduous journey to publication, involving several years of serious consideration by no less than four other major magazines, one of which eventually nixed the topic because it was, ironically, “too depressing.” I know from experience that being the parent of a depressed child is no easy task, but I found out just how difficult it can be while interviewing other parents for my story. Read more..

Threatening kids is ALSO bad because it just doesn’t work.

This piece is not about parents who are abusive, who threaten kids physically, or who are hostile. We know about those parents and why they harm children.

This piece is about loving parents who use threats to try to get their kids to behave and why that often backfires and makes kids behave worse instead of better.

It builds on what I think is one of my best pieces: How to Create A Juvenile Delinquent With Materials Easily Available At Home, and uses one example from Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Moms to illustrate why threatening kids can backfire and teach them to misbehave MORE, not less. (For a discussion of both the postive and negative aspects of Chua’s parenting, read Flinching From the Tiger Mom.)
Read more..

Is this the year you have resolved to stop arguing with your kids?

Happy New Year! Is this the year you have resolved to stop arguing with your kids? Are you tired of feeling as though your teenager never agrees with any request you make? Does it feel like your third-grader is already practicing to become a lawyer, arguing and negotiating every request or rule that you make? Let me help you keep your New Year’s Resolution and understand what is happening between you and your children.

Before you have done anything as a parent you are already in conflict with your child. That’s right, as soon as you learn you are going to be a parent, you and your child are already in conflict. This is true whether you are becoming a parent through birth, adoption, fostering, step or blending families together.
Read more..

Probably one of the most challenging things parents face is putting our children to bed…..and helping them stay there. When they are babies, they don’t have a routine way of sleeping. But, as they get older, around six months or so, they start to sleep with a regular pattern, several times each day. By the time children reach elementary school, they usually go to bed, fall asleep, and sleep al night.

But, some children do not go to bed so easily. They fight sleep and get up again and again. They become crankier and crankier, as we become more and more frustrated. It’s a recipe for disaster. We can easily forget that this exhausted, out-of-control tornado running down the hall is really just a very tired, little angel in disguise.
Read more..