This post follows last week’s post about How to Give Yourself A Parent Check-UP. It offers you a way to take what you assessed last time and put it into a plan of action for growth. First, let’s consider the questions from your check-up. There were A LOT, I know. Let’s condense that information into a summary for you ...READ MORE »
This blog follows up on an earlier post on Pandemic Hangovers for Parents. It offers a checklist for a PARENT CHECK-UP that parents can use to assess their needs and form better plans for themselves as they emerge from pandemic restrictions. Recently, I was meeting with a school counselor who supported hundreds of kids and almost twice that many ...READ MORE »
In this blog post, I want to talk about the experience of being a parent who is taking their child to therapy and trying to track if their child is getting better or not. While I’m a child/teen therapist of 25 years and work mostly with parents currently, I’m also a mom of three kids. I’m a current and past ...READ MORE »
I am in the midst of reading a book called, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why it Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. I really like it, and especially relate to the content in Chapter 6, entitled “What the Hell: How Feeling Bad Leads to Giving In.” The general premise ...READ MORE »
There’s an old joke that goes, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” and the punchline is, “practice, practice, practice.” Oftentimes, in my work as a therapist for children, adolescents, and their families, the question comes up of “How do I remember to use this in the moment?” And the simple answer, as the above “joke” points out, is practice. Skills ...READ MORE »
So here we are. After 4 posts about contemporary sexual practices and expectations for our teens, we are ready to talk about how to promote positive sexual health with your teen. From my research, I believe that the sex positivity movement from the 1990’s lends us a hand in this goal. Sex Positivity: What it Means and How ...READ MORE »
This blog post is the 4th in a five part series on healthy sexuality for children and teens. Last post, we boosted parents up to tackle conversations with their daughters about sexual health. In this post, we want to add boys to the mix. First, let’s think about a framework for helping boys view themselves as developing young men (assuming ...READ MORE »
Each month I do a “Mental Health Monday” Q&A on social media, and each month some version of this question comes up: “How am I supposed to handle the sadness/fear/anger about the [insert most recent horrible current events] going on in the world around me?” Honestly, I feel this way too sometimes. The news is pretty grim these days. And ...READ MORE »
Calling all parents who are parenting girls! Please come GET REAL with me. I have an almost 14 year old daughter and her sexual development is front and center for me lately. She’s 5’5”, fully developed, and heading to high school next year. All I have to do is think back to my 14 year old self, and realize ...READ MORE »
As a child/teen therapist for almost 25 years and a leading mental health consultant, I often have conversations with parents and educators about how to have difficult conversations with kids. These adults come to me knowing that I’ve spent countless hours talking with children and teens about their problems, which often are due to painful experiences. And having treated ...READ MORE »
