Posts Tagged ‘Motherhood’
Is Your Kid “Looping” On a Negative Thought?
As a family therapist, I often hear parents complain of a child who cannot move beyond an interaction, incident or situation, even when it has been addressed. In fact, the parent may have already listened, empathized with the emotion, and talked the issue out. An apology happened. Reassurance was provided. However, the child just cannot…
Convey Hope for Children in Challenging Political Times
As parents and those who work with or care for children, we can agree that children should not be exposed to all adult conversations. Most adults try not to swear in front of kids or discuss parenting topics that could alarm or cause misunderstanding. The developing brain is not cognitively mature. Therefore, kids cannot understand…
When It Always Has to be Your Way, No One Wants to Play: Using Proverbs to Teach Children
As any parent, educator or child counselor can tell you, children enjoy short, catchy and true phrases. However, in the heat of an emotional moment, it is hard to retrieve what we want to say. So, we often “do” before thinking. In addition to learning academics at school these days, children are taught relationship…
How To Talk To Other Parents About Conflict Between Children
I am a successful businesswoman. I am a successful entrepreneur. I am a successful psychotherapist. And yet, in talking to other parents about conflict between my children and theirs, I frequently feel like a failure. Why is this such a challenge, and not just for me, but for most parents I speak to? How and…
The Dark Side of Motherhood: It Does Get Better
When I was pregnant with my son, I was was incredibly anxious during the entire pregnancy. I had miscarried before and was so worried that my heart would be broken again that I was on constant alert. I felt that if he was born, I would do everything in my power be a good mother.…
What if She Turns Out Like Me? Braving Toxic Anxiety as a New Mom
It can be very hard to see our own suffering as gifts. I will cut right to the chase. I wish with all my heart it were different, but I have found in my work with mothers that many use the suffering they’ve faced as the foundation for self-criticism and hatred. For some, it becomes…
Motherhood as a Rite of Passage
The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh Look I remember when I was a brand new first-time mom, like four days brand new, and went to a new mom group. I was in…
Autism, Motherhood and First Rejections
And maybe this is why autism scares people so much: the loneliness of an autistic life points to that thing we are all trying to avoid, escape, deny, shove back down—our own core aloneness. Our fear of feeling lonely, and all the things that lonely means: unacceptable, unlikable, unloved.
Mother’s Day for the rest of us: honoring our own stories
One of the worst things I had to do after my mother died was erase her number from my cell phone contacts list. I removed her number like you would a band-aid that has settled on your skin – quickly and almost without looking – to reduce the pain. At twenty-five, I had a new…
Parenting Is Not the Hardest Job in the World
Parenting or Motherhood, to be exact, is not the hardest job in the world because IT IS NOT A JOB AT ALL. I wonder sometimes if “JOB” helps parents feel valued by the workforce. Or maybe because relating with a child is hard to stomach so by calling it a job we get some reprieve…