“Pay attention!” Teaching kids mindfulness has many benefits. It’s a phrase that is uttered dozens of times a week (if not more) in households where children between the ages of two and 18 reside. How is it that when they WANT to, oh say when they are playing video games or watching cartoons, kids can have a tremendous attention span. But at any other time, getting them to be present is harder than getting them to close the refrigerator door! While getting kids to pay attention can seem ...read more
How to Talk to Your Young Child About the LGBTQIA+ Community
How to talk to your young child about the LGBTQIA+ community is a timely and essential question. As a parent or caregiver, it can be difficult to know the right thing to say when kids question what we deem to be adult topics. Broaching topics of sexuality can be awkward for both parents and kids alike. Yet, it is a necessary conversation to have. When it comes to talking about homosexuality and transgender individuals, children should be given age-appropriate information. This will help them ...read more
How to Bring Up Resilient Children
How can parents bring up resilient children? Have you heard the phrase “helicopter parent?” It describes a mother or father that ‘hovers’ around their child 24/7, overseeing their life to keep them from every potential danger, pitfall and mishap. It looks good on paper, but this kind of parenting forgets one important fact of reality: life happens. Adversity happens to all of us. Those children who engage with adversity in their formative years learn how to handle it well and come up with ...read more
What is Positive Parenting?
“Because I said so!!” How many times did your parents say this phrase to you? How often were you spanked as a child? How much yelling was there in your house growing up? It’s safe to say that parenting styles have changed over the years. While spanking may have been deemed okay years ago, most parents agree now that hitting a child is not okay, for any reason. Shame and yelling are also, thankfully, out of fashion. Many of today’s parents are trying to use positive parenting techniques ...read more
The Benefits of Online Therapy
There are many benefits of online therapy. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in innumerable ways. But, as stressful as this lockdown has been for most of us, we have learned much about ourselves as individuals and as a nation. Another silver lining that has emerged from this crisis is a new awareness and embracing of treatment tools that have been available for some time. Telehealth (or telemedicine) and online therapy have been around for decades but are now experiencing a surge in ...read more
Could Your Family Benefit from Family Counseling?
Does your family love and support one another unconditionally? Do you have fun together? Do you find talking with your spouse and children is easy and effective? If you had to really pause and think about your answers to these questions, there’s a chance your family may not be as cohesive as you once thought or hoped. And that’s okay, not every family acts like something out of a 1950s television sitcom. Most have their own fair share of problems. If you’ve never considered working with a ...read more
The Mental Health Impact of COVID-19 on Families
The mental health impact of Covid-19 on families is building. If you asked any of us a year ago what would life be like in 2020, it’s doubtful anyone would have guessed we’d be going through a global pandemic, replete with lockdowns and self-quarantining. At the beginning of the year, some families might have thought of being forced to stay home from work and school would be a fun little vacation. But as the weeks and months have passed, we’ve all learned this has been anything but fun. But ...read more
4 Exercises to Help Teach Young Children Mindfulness
Let me help you teach young children mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of your body and feelings in the present moment. If you're silent for a moment, you will notice the subtle smell of your freshly washed clothing, the sound of your breathing, and watch a small leaf blow past your window. Mindfulness is an incredibly calming, relaxing practice that can help adults in numerous ways, and it may surprise you that it can help children, too. Studies have shown that children ...read more
4 Fun Activities for You & Your ADHD Child
If you have a child who has been diagnosed with ADHD, you know one of the main symptoms is hyperactivity. In other words, your child may seem to have an excess of energy, and all of that energy needs to be channeled. Let's look at some fun activities for ADHD. Unfortunately, modern kids are far less physically active than kids from just 20 years ago. It used to be natural for kids to be outside running around and riding bikes, but many of today’s kids spend their time sedentary, watching ...read more
5 Ways to Get Your Teenager to Talk to You
It's tough to get teens talking to parents. Science has shown that the teenager's brain has yet to fully develop the frontal cortex, which is the area that controls our ability to reason, and to think before we act. As your teen's brain develops, they're also learning new things about themselves and their surrounding world; simultaneously, they're dealing with hormonal changes out of their control. For all of these reasons and more, it can be difficult to find ways to talk to your teen, or to ...read more