This time of year, I read and hear lots of questions about how to teach children gratitude. Parenting magazines and websites are filled with suggestions and techniques, all adding yet another thing to our lists of what-we-are-supposed…
November and December can be stressful times for blended families. The Norman Rockwell holiday ideal surrounds us, and our favorite traditions inevitably clash with someone else’s. What is supposed to be a season of gratitude and…
In this season of COVID and demonstrations, I have been struck by the continual insistence on treating people as victims of “the system.” I first encountered this philosophy when I was in law school, where I learned about Critical Race Theory.
Over the past few months, I have been pondering the power of personal narratives. It is inevitable that people will view events through the prism of their individual experiences. My minority friends read stories of black men killed by police…
Parenting children of divorce or other childhood traumas is daunting, but the good news is that positive experiences can help neutralize bad ones. A recently-published study looked at almost 500 children over 10 years, starting in their…
This is National Suicide Prevention Week, and this year it comes amid reports of increased suicides and depression during the pandemic. If you are parenting a child who is struggling with anxiety and depression, you may hear your…
One struggle we all face, but especially when parenting traumatized children, is where to find the strength to keep going. Sometimes the problems our children face can seem insurmountable. The sheer magnitude of the damage they have…
One of the most important, and difficult, ways that we can encourage resilience in children is to allow them…
One topic that I have been pondering lately is how families manage adversity and teach their children to be resilient…
Bullying issues get a lot of attention these days, because everyone wants to spare children the trauma of true bullying…
In my last post, I discussed the 20+ years of research on the possible effects of adverse childhood experiences…
A pattern that shows up very often in studies of resilience is a high correlation between resilience and self-esteem…