As we start a new year under the umbrella of COVID-19, Delta, Omicron, or IHU as parents, educators, and mental health professionals we are pondering the impact of COVID on children from infants to young adults. Lockdowns, cancellations, virtual, and asynchronous learning has shown us that reframing life day by day is our new normal. The impacts of COVID-19 on children ...READ MORE »
Thanksgiving is upon us, the annual time of year at the end of November when we gather with friends and family, eat Turkey, stuffing, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes…you get the point. Turkey is actually my least favorite Thanksgiving food. Give me all the stuffing and in my best Ron Swanson impression, “Wait, wait, I worry ...READ MORE »
What is Parent Management Training? Parent Management Training (PMT) is an evidenced-based psychotherapy intervention, designed specifically to teach parents behavioral interventions they can use at home when dealing with unwanted behaviors, emotional outbursts, or general defiance. PMT was developed in the 1960s by Alan Kazdin at Yale University. It has been thoroughly researched, particularly over the last 40 years. The most ...READ MORE »
This blog follows last week’s 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 parents during ...READ MORE »
As we begin to get vaccinated and anticipate returning to routines next fall, many parents are already angsting about how they will help their children break habits that have formed during COVID and be ready for returning to a busier routine. During my walks with other mom friends, we are already stressing over how to wean our kids off ...READ MORE »
I don’t know about you, but 2021 has brought hope and the realization that this has been a long long haul so far. I’m not someone who tires easily or gets discouraged quickly. And 10 months into this pandemic, I now feel it more than ever. While January 2021 brought hope as many started the vaccine process, it also ...READ MORE »
Winter has arrived! We have spent the last several months surviving, reacting, adjusting, re-adjusting, and working to make sense of some of the most stressful personal, community, national, and global times we have ever experienced. We are not always feeling prepared for more of the same as we begin winter. With each day, however, we are moving through it. Some ...READ MORE »
COVID-19 has impacted our world in numerous ways. Here in our nation’s capital and surrounding suburbs, children have had to adjust to remote learning. Some students are returning back to school at the time of this writing with varying “hybrid” schedules, while others are continuing remote learning from home. As a therapist working with young children and their families in ...READ MORE »
As I read the book, “The Rabbit Listened” by Cori Doerrfeld, to my daughter last night it had me thinking about what it means to really listen. As a child and teen therapist in Washington, DC I am often talking with parents about how to help their children listen more effectively. In this post, I’m going to talk about ...READ MORE »
I’m writing this morning on a topic that many of us are facing as we work to transition our children and teens into virtual learning environments during the pandemic. Screen anxiety shows up in children and teens when they resist, avoid, or shut down in the face of demands to participate in asynchronous and especially synchronous instruction during distance ...READ MORE »
