Dealing with Troubled Youth, Part 2: “Bullying”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This cliché does not hold true for children, teens, and young adults who are bullied on a daily basis. Words do hurt. This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed in our communities and society at large.
Many children, teens, and young adults have sat before me and disclosed issues of being bullied at school, home, and in the community. When I ask questions exploring this issue, the client usually sits with his or her eyes and head downcast and says, “What do you know about being bullied? You don’t know how... Read More
All too often, women and some men (in my experience, mostly women) experience the fatigue of “having it all.” More and more women, by choice or necessity, work a full-time job in addition to family and home responsibilities, leaving little, if any, time for them. Likewise, many of us in the helping professions struggle or have struggled with the balance of giving so much emotionally to not only clients, but also family and friends, and find ourselves depleted. In both cases, it is very easy to face burnout.
When discussing work, we often hear the term job burnout, but how often have you... 
Families need to be together. After all, the family as a group exists to provide support, nurturance, food, shelter, resources, and a stable future to each member. While most families have their ups and downs, even stressed, impoverished, chaotic families want to live with one another. When is it in the family’s best interest for members to separate from one another? Can leaving the family home for a short while ever bring healing to the relationships in the long run?
Family separations occur in American culture in formal and informal ways. Formally, families can legally be ordered to separate... 
I was talking to one of my colleagues about the age of my son and the age of his daughters. His daughters are much older than my almost 1 year old, but he was able to give me some great wisdom. The wisdom was that “friendship comes later.”
What I gather from that is when a child is younger, what they need is to be parented. Parenting is teaching, guiding, and leading the child to know how to make wise choices, to be disciplined when he is not making a wise choice, to be shown how to love self and others, to make friends, and to evolve into a wise young person.
There are a few parents... 
The decision has been made. You and your spouse are divorcing. There are a multitude of decisions to be made, and it is often difficult to know where to begin. You will be making decisions regarding when the children are with you and when they are with your spouse, whether to keep the family home and, if so, who keeps it. There will also be a host of other decisions you did not realize you made automatically on a daily basis that will now become conscious decisions because living in two different homes requires more coordination. While you are addressing these decisions and working to manage your... 
Over 15 million children live in homes in which 
Adolescence can be an especially stressful time. However, a series of recent studies suggests that having a 
Mothers are better able to handle stress than females who have never experienced 
Young children who witness 
The number of children born through surrogacy has increased dramatically in the past several decades, up from 2,000 just fifteen years ago to over 17,000 in 2007. Susan Golombok of the Centre for Family Research, Faculty of Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, has conducted prior research on 
A friend of mine posted on Facebook that her 2-year-old son wanted to have candy for dinner. She directly said “No”, and of course her son kept on asking and she continued to say it and so forth. I understand her frustration, but I responded differently. I asked her, "why not?" Yes, I know candy for dinner is not the healthiest, and that a child needs other foods, etc., but before you continue, look at the boxes of sugary cereal that you may be feeding your child in the morning and then think about your answer. Sometimes candy is the same as Trix, Frosted Flakes (which I love), Captain Crunch,... 
Do the holidays consume you with joy, merrily moving along, or do you find yourself rushing, pressed for time, anxious about getting it all done? Whichever way it unfolds for you, as we busily bustle through the holidays, it is important to remember that kids are doing the same thing right along with you, perhaps even to levels that create a sense of internal chaos and emotionality that they are unaccustomed to dealing with. This is especially true for those with sensitive natures or already existing anxieties.
While the list is long, here are some of the more common factors affecting a child’s... 
