There comes a sense, mostly with kids, “Am I going to disappoint someone?” What if I don’t reach the outcome of that goal if I don’t succeed in that goal? And then, if I disappoint someone, I’m not going to be enough for my parents. I know a lot of the families I work with; they’re like, “No, my kids …
The Power of Pen and Paper: Strengthening Parent-Child Bonds
One of my favorite suggestions to give to parents if your kid doesn’t have much self-regulation is that one really good starting point is to use a parent-child journal that you write back and forth to each other. What does that do? It gives you a kind of framework, a structure, to build communication with your child. And so you …
Adulting
“Adulting.” We never heard that word when we were kids. What is adulting, right? We just grow up, and we have to do our own thing. And as my children are doing that now, we’ve seen them haven’t had jobs or whatever, and now it’s so different from us. We could go to a job and sell ourselves. Right now, …
Embracing Awkward Silences: Navigating Teenage Interpersonal Skills
Teenagers lack interpersonal skills, but can you blame them? It’s what they prefer to text, versus even facetiming, so they’re not getting, they’re not calling, they’re not doing in-person hangout sessions, or whenever they are, they’re on their phones. So they definitely are not getting the interpersonal skill development that they need, kind of like the connection and the belonging …
Empowering Kids: Finding Authentic Goals and Overcoming Fear of Disappointment
There comes a sense, mostly with kids, “Am I going to disappoint someone?” “What if I don’t reach the outcome of that goal if I don’t succeed in that goal? And then, if I disappoint someone, I’m not going to be enough for my parents.” I know a lot of the families I work with; they’re like, “No, my kids …
From Screens to Dreams: Empowering Teens’ Inner Drive
Where do we help these kids to really go into that internal drive and start recognizing it? So first and foremost, we have to get them off their devices and spend less time on phones, scrolling mindlessly, and watching videos that aren’t really adding any value to their lives. Because in my experience, especially more recently, phones, silly videos, and …
Learning from Mistakes in Teen Development
A lot of parents asked me, like, “What do you mean by safe space? Does your child feel safe sharing with you?” Most parents, we all want to say, “Of course they do. Of course my kids want to talk.” No, not everything. And one of the key things that you brought up several times is the element of being …
Continuity of Traditions in the Family
What are some of the things or kinds of rituals you guys do with your family? Some of the things that I still do that I got from my mom are that, like, I never grew up cuddling, but, like, on the weekends because my mom was so busy, I would lay in bed with my mom and I would …
Balancing Support and Independence in Teenagers’ Lives
I read an article about how a lot of teens today actually have less independence than previous generations had. Because now parents can, like, track on their phones. You know, you’ve got college kids where their parents are contacting the professors, their parents are finding roommates for them, their parents. There’s actually a Facebook group for parents at different colleges …
From Expectation to Appreciation
Exchanging expectations or trading them in for appreciation. I never understood what it meant until I started to realize all the times that I was angry, all the times that I was frustrated, and all the times that I felt like I didn’t have control over things. And I realized that there were so many expectations that I had from …