I know some parents who intimidated me as a young mother. They seemed to get everything just right. Their children were always immaculate, clean and well-behaved. They slept when they were supposed to and ate what was good for them. These same parents found the time to teach their barely toddlers to recognize their abc’s and still find space in a day to work out!

I felt honored to be interviewed by Anamarie Seidel, co-author with her husband Cory, of the upcoming book, “What You Don’t Fix … Your Kids Inherit.” Thank you Anamarie for making me think! The premise of this book is as the title suggests: we need to commit to personal growth during our lifetime if we [...]

As a person familiar with anxiety and all its ramifications I read Robin Marantz Henig‘s article “Understanding the Anxious Mind” in the New York Times with great interest. Henig primarily focuses on Jerome Kagan‘s longitudinal study beginning in 1989, which looked at whether babies were easily upset or not when exposed to new things. They [...]

Jennifer Kolari, author of her recently released parenting book “Connected Parenting“, posted a blog worth reading on justthefactsbaby.com. The blog entitled “And you thought you were just playing peek-a-boo” states that parents playing the age old peek-a-boo with their baby are in fact creating something quite wonderful. This “mirroring” interaction soothes and calms our baby [...]

Check out a lovely article in the NCAdvertiser.com written by Julie Butler Evans entitled “Parenting from the trenches – Learning the life lesson of letting go.” Julie beautifully describes the dilemma that many parents face. She says that knowing when and how to draw the line between holding on to our kids and letting go [...]

Love Our Children USA recently announced that bullying and teasing is at the top of kids’ issues at schools, and with school now open, parents, teachers and school administrators must take caution and sensitivity in handling these issues. Childhood should be a time filled with wonder and joy, but the reality for many kids and teens is often much different.

We usually think of bullying as physical aggression such as punching, hitting, shoving, but it’s way beyond that. If your kid is being bullied or harassed that means his friend or peers are hurting him intentionally. As a result, your son or daughter feels powerless, helpless, humiliated, shamed, and hopeless about the whole situation.

Parents will spend hours, days, and often months thinking of a name for their unborn child. It can be an agonizing and often unpleasant experience for many. The permanence of the decision feels overwhelming and we feel a weight of responsibility as we ponder the issues of name suitability. We often want uniqueness and conformity [...]

If it was possible to pass on just one piece of advice from the wisdom I have gained from parenting, it would be this: Embrace your child’s anxiety.

Many parents don’t do this because they hold two mistaken beliefs. First, they believe that it is their responsibility to make their child happy; and second, they believe that feelings of anxiety in their child means that they have failed somehow.

The experience of ourselves, others and the world is not bestowed upon us, but created by us. The objectivity of events is an illusion, an organizing force born out of our creative minds but attributed to our rational brains. We know what we think and therefore think that we know. Personal perception, however, is anything [...]