Cultural Challenges
Thanksgiving and Family Dysfunction
While most articles about Thanksgiving start out with an approach to “what am I grateful for,” and we’ll get to that…, I thought I’d start this one with a look at family dysfunction and our national holiday, Thanksgiving. So I Googled the topic, “tough situations for families at Thanksgiving,” and there’s a lot out there [More…]
Feeling alone with parenting challenges? Why it’s worse for parents of teens.
By Guest Blogger FERN WEIS Parenting Coach www.yourfamilymatterscoach.com Working with parents of teens, especially when their child is ‘off-track’, they often share how alone they feel. Somehow it’s very different from the challenges of parenting a toddler or elementary school child. There is a unique sense of isolation when things go awry during the teen [More…]
Divided We Stand: 5 Tips For Parents to Navigate the Post-Divorce Road with their Children
This week we are pleased to bring you a follow-up guest post by Randi Levin, building on her post from last week, “What Your Teenager Wants to Tell You About Divorce.” Divided We Stand: 5 Tips For Parents to Navigate the Post-Divorce Road with their Children by Randi Levin, CPC The “D” words…divorced, divided, detached. [More…]
What Your Teenager Wants to Tell You About Divorce
This week we are pleased to bring you a guest post about what we can learn from our children about the impact of divorce on them, first posted on Fern Weis’ site, Your Family Matters. Randi Levin, a Certified Professional Coach, speaks from her heart and her own experience as a child of divorce. Fern wrote: [More…]
Getting Both Parents on the Same Page
This parenting challenge has been shared with us in various forms: Staying on the same page as my husband Getting my spouse on board Coming to common ground with my wife on decisions regarding our kids Being the disciplinarian all the time when my husband doesn’t want to be one Two parents who disagree on [More…]
Be Instead of Brag
“Be Instead of Brag” is an article in Brain, Child Magazine, written by Elizabeth Richardson Rau, that supports what we believe at Parenting – The Biggest Job: self-esteem and self-worth must be earned; we cannot give it to our kids. Nor can we take our kids’ accomplishments and make them part of our self-worth! Rau [More…]
Life Changing Failure
When I first heard about the notion of valuing both success and failure, I remember thinking, “Why would I ever want to value failure?” At that time in my life, I was very entrenched in the achievement culture. I had the perfect house, great vacations, my children went to great schools, were good athletes, I [More…]
How’s the mother of the worst kid in the 8th grade??
This comment was actually made to me by the mother of another 8th grade student, in church on Sunday, back when my son was in middle school. I was quite taken aback by the question, and I’m not sure how I responded. My jaw probably dropped, and I undoubtedly stammered a bit before coming [More…]
A Successful Holiday? What would that look like in our family?
I am very much looking forward to the upcoming holiday. My whole family will be together – my two grown sons, their wives, and their children. This doesn’t happen every Christmas, as we have to share them at times with their “other” families – meaning the in-laws on the other side. I realize I’m so [More…]
Join the Fight to Stop Teen Medicine Abuse
By Tammy Walsh of The Five Moms Did you know that one in three teens knows someone who has abused DXM to get high? Even more startling, approximately one in 25 teens reports abusing excessive amounts of DXM to get high—sometimes ingesting more than 25 times the recommended dose of these medicines. You might be [More…]
