I was undiagnosed, but in retrospect clearly diagnosable, with depression from age 12. For much of my youth I “other-reflected” rather than self-reflected. I made the worst attitudes of others my own. I would say that I hated the way others viewed my depression but I really just hated myself.

We’ve all been there and often don’t know how we arrived. But one thing is certain, no parent enjoys being in a power struggle with their child. What brings us to this point?

Parenting is not a one way street. Two separate personalities interact to hopefully produce a loving parent-child relationship. Becoming a good parent is as much about us as it is about our kids.

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 [...]