As an experienced clinical child psychologist, I believe the ultimate goal of any parent is to rear an independent and responsible child. While at first glance this may appear obvious, if we observe most parents in action on a day-to-day basis, it becomes evident that many parents have no idea how to achieve this objective. Most parents never take [...]
Despite our dreams many of us fail to achieve our life ambitions. Many of my clients talk about starting a business, becoming financially independent, writing a novel, traveling, furthering their education, getting physically fit, or becoming a nurse, teacher, or lawyer. Most of the time their objectives go unfulfilled. Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Most people go to their graves [...]
The parent-teacher conference can be an efficient tool to communicate with your child’s teacher. Below are a few tips on how to make that meeting more productive: 1) Show up: My wife, now retired from teaching fourth grade for 28 years, often said that the parents with whom she most needed to talk rarely scheduled a conference. Children perform [...]
A parent tells their young child to brush their teeth. The child responds, “I don’t want to; I don’t feel like it.” It is perfectly normal for children to believe that they must be in a certain mood state (feel like it) to do something. Most parents, though, tell their child that they are sorry that they don’t feel [...]
For some time the divorce rate in the USA for first marriages has held at about 50%. This is a national tragedy. This statistic also means that many people have subsequent marriages. Common sense suggests that someone who remarries is older, wiser, more mature, has learned from their mistakes, and knows better what they want and need in a [...]
I have been working with children and their parents for 40 years. I began my career as a staff member for a boys’ home in the late 1960’s, taught “emotionally handicapped” teens in 1971 and 1972, served as a school psychologist for the Scottsdale (Arizona) School District from 1973 to 1979, and have since conducted a private clinical psychology [...]
Schools today are required to provide more services than ever before. For example, many schools across the nation offer a free hot breakfast and lunch to students. Some schools serve as a community mental health center and some even supply medical services to the neighborhood. One service I believe schools can and should provide is parenting training. Most parents [...]
The amount of on-going communication today is staggering. With email, the cell phone, texting, and social networking etc., the number of messages sent each day today is probably more than 100 times the number of messages sent per day compared to 20 years ago. With all this additional communication, are we as a society any better off? I don’t [...]
Anxiety is the second most common form of mental health disorder, next to depression. In many cases, though, depressed individuals also struggle with anxiety and many anxious people frequently feel depressed. Upwards of 20 million persons in the US regularly deal with anxiety, it has been estimated. Anxiety often is described as a feeling of tension and/or fear. Some [...]
Social Contact