By Larry F. Waldman, Ph.D., ABPP Clinical, Forensic Psychologist As you approach the age of our nation’s life expectancy, it’s natural to begin to consider end of life issues. How you might “pass,” is one of those considerations. My Zeide, as we called him, my paternal grandfather, was a strong, active man till the day he died. I [...]
The pandemic has changed the way psychotherapy is currently provided. My local listserve is burning up with colleagues talking about the problems, ethical factors, insurance questions, the extra energy required, and more, regarding telehealth. In business it is said that in a crisis many people suffer but some people become wealthy. For example, delivery companies (of packages and restaurant [...]
A major revelation to me from the current virus is the sad state of our digital system. Because many of us are house-bound, we are using the Internet more often for information, entertainment and socialization. Presumably due to this significantly increased demand, I regularly experience sites that don’t work, buttons that don’t function, pages that freeze or disappear, and [...]
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 [...]
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 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 [...]
I left the APA decades ago when I realized that as a clinician the APA was not my friend and certainly was not worth the expense to remain a member. I joined NAPPP as soon as I could. Nevertheless, the APA still plagues me. For more than a quarter century I have presented workshops across the country to mental [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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