Posts Tagged ‘Parenting’
Preschool as Therapy: 5 great ideas for adult wellness
1. All feelings are allowed. At my child’s preschool, they have a saying: You have to get the bad feelings out to let the good feelings in. In therapy, we know there are no “bad” feelings. However, feelings such as anger, sadness and hurt don’t feel good, and they need expression. To express your true…
Feeling the Pull: Dealing with Competing Needs for Happier Days with Your Kids
As fall approaches in the Bay Area, we never know what weather will come. Which is why, on a day as hot as this one was recently, a poor Gelato Scooper was scooping alone when there should have been two of him; and the line was stretched out the door. I’m sure his arm was aching,…
A Couples Therapist watches TV — Parenthood
Like many others, my wife and I are eagerly looking forward to tonight’s premiere of the new season of Parenthood, though with considerable wistfulness that it’s the final season. With our kids off to college, we forsook our basic cable last year for a streaming box. Not only are we saving nearly $100 a month,…
New Survey: Female Friendships After Motherhood
We are crafting an article about Female Friendships after motherhood and would like your input if you are a mother. Please take this 13 question anonymous survey. You have until October 30th to complete your responses. (Please note: one question truncated answer selections erroneously. Please do your best to answer.) Many Thanks!
Encouraging Discipline – Discipline that Helps Kids Grow
Left to my own devices, I am terribly afraid of making a mistake. Also, of getting it wrong, not knowing, and having to ask any question. A free-floating fear of punishment used to guide much of my decision-making. In fact, it took a lot of therapy for me to learn to keep those kinds of fears…
Discouraging encouragement: the kind of praise that doesn’t help
As I was ignoring my children and zoning-out on the old Facebook for a time recently, I found myself considering a post from the Conscious Discipline feed. Conscious Discipline is all about attuning to our kids and bringing them up – can you guess? – consciously. It’s a wonderful resource for parents, for teachers and…
The psychology of fertility
When Jennifer Seibel Newsom’s documentary Miss Representation came out in 2011, I watched it four times, recruiting as many friends as I could. Why? Because it captured something—in a fact-based way—about the chauvinism that lingers in our society, despite the advances we have made. A synopsis of the film says this, “In a society where media is…
Kids’ Feelings – A Parenting Manifesto
The reality is, if packs of kids are parenting themselves and the rest of us adults are not rolling up our sleeves, parent to parent, advocating for every kid who has gotten off track and helping them reset, then all we have left at the end of the day are perpetrators and victims. -Traci Ruble…
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…
Parent, Child & Our Emotional Lives: Finding Our Way Through Relationships
If you’ve ever tended to a child, you know what it’s like to watch someone fall apart and come back together again. A child is flexible; she has a tender heart; she falls in and out of joys and disappointments. She can go into the depths of feeling and return, sense of self and well-being…