Parenting Styles: Is Your Relationship Over When You Disagree on Parenting the Kids?
As a couples therapist specializing in parenting issues, I often see parents who disagree about how to raise their children. The most common of these disagreements revolve around how to discipline their children.
Arguments about how to discipline kids can be about whether it's too much or too little discipline. Sometimes, one of the parents may feel their child is taking advantage of them, while the other parent thinks that more discipline will only create unnecessary conflict. Sadly, each parent can begin to feel they are undermining one another.
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Embrace Your Crazy Teenager
This was me.
Middle school and early high school stand out in my mind as one of the most difficult times in my life. I had no idea what a challenging time it was for my parents as well! I have been curious as an adult, about what was going on in my brain that made me a different person for those four years of my life. Fortunately, now we know that brain development and re-wiring, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex, goes through a turbulent growth spurt that coincides with the onset of adolescence.
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Welcoming a New Baby, a Multi-Generational Perspective
My daughter, Alison and her husband, Tom, just had a baby girl. She was born a month premature and is now about 10 weeks old. They live across the country from me and my husband, so I decided that we should relocate for two months to be close to her and her husband to help. Thank goodness that we did! It really takes a village to raise a family, from the very first days. As our daughter so aptly put it, “the best preparation is to learn to embrace the unknown with a spirit of wonder and adventure.”
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New Relationship Resolutions for 2023
The beginning of the New Year is a good time to think about goals for the year ahead. We can set goals anytime, but these built-in dates on our calendar are helpful. Just as Thanksgiving is a
time to focus on gratitude, New Year is a good time to focus on changes we want to make in
our lives.
The New Year provides an opportunity to clean the slate of past failings and look at life as a new
opportunity, no matter your age, or your experience. It’s a time to focus on the positive and
commit to specific actions, try to visualize your “best-self.” Think of a time when you’ve pulled
through a difficult situation.
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The Key to a Happy Adulthood
“More than any single factor that we can control, connectedness in childhood is the key to a happy adulthood” says Edward Hallowell in “The Childhood Roots to Adult Happiness”. He cites a comprehensive study in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Journal of the American Medical Association, 1997. This study, on ninety thousand students around the US, demonstrated the importance, above all, of feeling connected.
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Get Unstuck: Letting Go of Childhood Memories
In a session I had recently with a couple, a husband told his wife that he wants to help her find peace when she is “off the rails.” He does this by problem-solving and suggesting different ways of looking at the situation. They both agreed that this almost never works, but only escalates her anger and frustration. I asked him how he would feel if it did work? He replied that he would feel calm, successful, and at peace. Upon saying this, he realized that he was behaving this way to make himself feel better, not her. He hadn’t explored with her what would truly help her to feel better.
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What Are Healthy Boundaries and How Can I Get Them?
Boundaries are the root of self-care and are necessary for creating a healthy life. They are limits we create for ourselves to have the life we want and deserve as unique human beings. They are not the rules and limits that we have internalized from our childhood or by comparison with others. It’s a tricky thing to learn to know the difference because we are a product of our upbringing and messages from society, social media, and other influential figures in our lives.
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After the Affair: from Despair to Discovery
Albert Einstein said: “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” If handled well, a crisis can shake up the status quo, so that new resources and new ways of being emerge. We see clearly how this is true in business. The pandemic crisis caused the suffering of some businesses, like brick-and-mortar retail, health clubs, convention hotels, and cruise ships. At the same time, it brought about the rise of other businesses: bicycle manufacturers, building and design companies, and everything online and delivery-related.
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The Problem with Punishment
There are two big problems with punishing children. First, it is a bad model for problem-solving. It does not actually teach a person anything, and most likely instills fear and resentment. The purpose of punishment is to control someone’s behavior. When we use our superior status to control a child, it builds feelings of resentment, anger, and other negative feelings. Which potentially lead to worse problems like lying and revenge. Punishment is discouraging for a child and promotes feelings of worthlessness, failure, and inadequacy.
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5 Keys for Surviving Isolation with your Teen
2020 has been a challenging year for all of us, but I have particular sympathy for teens and their parents. I remember very well when my three kids were teenagers, and I can’t imagine having them all in the house with us 24/7 for ten months. We all thrived due to the physical separation that school, friends, and activities provided.
Since it looks like we have a few more months of isolation to go, here are some suggestions, based on what I’m hearing from families that are managing reasonably well with their teens through the pandemic:
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