Parenting Doctors Podcast

Part 1 emphasized the importance of family dinners.  Our second recommendation emphasizes the importance of daily moments of connectedness.  2 moments of warmth per day!  

This week's parenting podcast starts off my four recommendations for maintaining poise on the balance beam of family life.  What are those things that families can do to stay balanced?  Part 1 --- Family dinners!  

Helping our children manage their anger is extremely critical for well-being and the long-term success of their future.  There are several things we can do to help our children manage their anger.  The first and most important element for families is for parents to see "expressing anger appropriately" as a positive for family well-being.  

Youth deal with many stressors nowadays.  Social media pressures and over scheduling in academics, sports, and activities are just some of them.  The following podcast consists Five Pieces of Advice that Every Family Should Apply.  

The last thing kids need is conditional love. Instead, they need unconditional love.  No matter what kids do, healthy parents will love them no matter what.  Drugs, teenage pregnancy, juveline detention, not getting Ivy League scholarships, not winning, not breaking records, misspelling on tests, etc.  All of these things and more prevent unconditional love.  Why is that?  There are many reasons f...

There are so many advantages to losing a basketball game and as parents we can turn losses into life lessons, emotional resilience, and the ability to embrace adversity like amazing cancer survivors  Tiffany Powles Garber  or my sister  Katherine Colino  who embraced adversity and defeated cancer (with God's help). Let's join together and teach our kids life lessons as we value losing and failing...

Facilitating Courage In The Family: Bravery & Vulnerability Facilitating courage has to go beyond belief - and to personal impact.  I provide 3 Keys to applying courage in the family. 1.  Reinforce effort more than outcome. 2.  Share moments of breakthroughs with your children.   3.  Take the time to be vulnerable.   We are talking about acceptance and courage to be vulnerability.  

How to improve communication between a teacher and parent when a child has a behavior problem in the classroom. If your teacher is dealing with behavior problems with your child, and gives you a vague explanation, try to ask for a specific example.  If they can’t, ask him or her if they would be willing to write down the incident so you can walk your child through the incident and what could have...

I spoke to over 90 mental health experts in the Midwest during three days last week.  Many reports that parents put significant pressure on their kids when it comes to academics.  College scholarships depend on academic excellence.  Jobs depend on academic success. Likewise, parents put significant pressure on their kids when it comes to academics.  College scholarships depend on academic excellen...

This week's Parenting Podcast is titled "Parenting Teenagers With FOMO -- Fear of Missing Out." There are a range of stressors that tweens and teenagers are dealing with nowadays. FOMO is one of those stressors, particularly as it relates to teenagers and their cell phones. I identify five solutions to approaching FOMO with your teens.

Family dinners remains one of the best predictors of healthy families.  Discussing grief at dinner time includes accepting feelings and self care.  Other practical things to do in honoring the legacy of the loved one include: 1.  Slideshow 2.  Small remembrances 3.  Humor 4.  Identifying positive attributes 5.  Gratitude

Today's podcast is Five Action Steps to Help You Teach Your Child To Never Quit!   In My practice, I am seeing quitting happening quite frequently on the sports field or court.  It is not uncommon for kids to quit family games, from monopoly to the wiffle ball game, or the chess game with Grandpa.  Parents have to put forth some effort to reverse this trend. Here are some action steps parents can...

A man was going through a difficult time and his daughter remarked to the gentleman that she "wasn't proud of him."  What does a father say to this experience?  Is the only and "normal" respond sadness and despair?  Or, is there another approach he can take to the relationship? And, what does a parent - child relationship need to buffer against the ups and downs of life, the highlights and lowligh...

This 7-minute podcast focuses on the Top 10 considerations when addressing a child’s tantrum during family pictures  (1)   When parents take the short cut and reinforce the child’s refusal beahviors and tantrums with sour patch candy, a snickers bar, a twix, or some kind of gummy, this has the following consequences:  a.     Reinforces tantrums and other misbehavior. b.     Teaches a child that ca...

What makes a successful family?  (1) An occasional family meeting with open dialogue about how the family is doing.  (2) Regular family dinners.  (3) SCREEN FREE ZONES  - Each house needs screen-free zones.  This starts with the bedrooms.  Behavioral sleep experts recommend that adults get the TVs out of the bedroom.  Kids need their TV's out of their bedroom.  The American Academy of Pediatrics r...

I traveled around the state of Wisconsin this week.  I met some wonderful professionals – teachers, principals, school counselors and psychologists, mental health counselors, psychologists in private practice, social workers, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists.    So many people are working hard to make a difference and collaborate with teachers and parents to help kids achieve an ex...

Today's parenting podcast is a tribute to a movie favorite -- Back To The Future.   Parenting nuggets are discussed -- consistency, warmth, engagement...

All siblings argue and engage in conflict making sharing difficult sometimes.  Positive households with warmth, good communication skills, and unconditional acceptance by parents make repair attempts and subsequent sharing easier.  But, sharing can still be difficult.  The One-Child Mentality ("Syndrome") makes sharing even harder to develop.   Still, sharing is hard for everybody.  We can help ch...

Do you ever feel overwhelmed as a parent?  Do you ever feel like you have lost control or are on the verge of "losing it" in the face of chaos?  If that is you, you seem normal to me!!  But, we know that maintaining poise is key in the face of the pressures of life and parenting. Here are two techniques that can help you keep it together and regain control.  Most importantly, these techniques can...

Protective Parents: Five Nights at Freddy's?  I taught seminars with approximately 100 educators and mental health clinicians this week in Alabama.  One of the issues that came up this week is the issues associated with video games.  Parents use video games for baby-sitting purposes.  We've known for decades that video games increase aggression.  Lately, there have been some games that are increas...

We have seen the devastating effects of parental uninvolvement.  And, we have seen the research and media identify the concerns regarding over-involvement (i.e. snow plow parenting, helicopter parenting).  What about Pivotal Moment Involvement?  Common sense parenting tells us that Pivotal Moment Involvement (PMI) is critical in child development.  This podcast emphasizing the value of pivotal mom...

Does parenting decrease happiness?  Parenting is the epitome of inconveniences.  With regards to happiness, the pleasant life does suggest that happiness goes down.  But, the good life and the meaningful life cause happiness to go up.   Engaged parents, as opposed to disengaged parents, can do specific things to increase engagement, meaning, and subsequently happiness.  

Parents can do a lot to not embarrass their child or leave them out there alone for uncomfortable moments.  "Can we have another milk.  Lisa spilled it."  Instead.... Say, "Could we please have another milk, we spilled it." (Or, "I spilled it.").   This podcast emphasizes some of the keys to joining with your child.

To emphasize personality functioning minimizes the power of love in parenting.   There is a misperception in parenting – you are smart if you can describe your kid’s personality really well.    Shaping, reinforcing, instructing, teaching, guiding, instilling, strength-building are all more important jobs as parents than coming up with descriptions of your child’s personality.  

In Part 1, I suggested two belief changes for all parents: - Conflict is positive, not a negative in family life. - Promoting conflict as a healthy pillar in childhood development, maturity, and education.   - I suggested 3 phases of sibling conflict: problem identification, solution exploration, and solution focused agreement. In Part 2, identifying emotions, summarizing the other person's (sibli...