7 Steps for College Academic Success: How to Ace College Even if You Weren’t a Good Student in High School   I’ve been working with kids going off to college for nearly 30 years. I did my PhD dissertation on what factors lead to a successful adjustment to college...

Getting Your Child Emotionally Ready for the Transition to College: 5 Essential Tips for Parents   This is the time of year when high school seniors are sorting through acceptances and making decisions about where to attend college. While we focus so much energy...

5 Steps to Stop Arguing with Your Kids Arguing with our kids is something that we all hate, but still most of us spend a lot of time doing it. In this blog post, you’ll learn 5 steps that have the power to transform any potential argument into an opportunity for you...

How Do I Get My Son to Practice his Musical Instrument? When I am asked by parents, “How do I get my son to practice his musical instrument?” they are frequently surprised by my response: “Don’t try.” Let’s face it, you have enough battles with your challenging son...

The benefits of Family Meetings far outweigh the hassle. Consider this: • Family Meetings Make Discipline Easier.  Children are more likely to follow rules that they helped create. Children are more likely to accept consequences as fair when they had a hand in...

5 Tips For Getting Your Son to Talk You want to be closer to you son, to understand him and his feelings better, but no matter what try you can’t get him to talk to you. Every question you ask gets a one word answer, silence, or an irritated grunt. Here are 5 tested...

Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, studied a sample of 600 parents and 1000 children (ages 8-18). The children were asked what they wished they could change about their parents’ work. The majority of the parents guessed that their children...

The best way to deal with power struggles, tantrums, and meltdowns is to have an emergency plan. An emergency plan is a procedure or script that is implemented in the heat of the moment of a struggle. Having a plan helps prevent us from overreacting to the situation...

The three top causes of power struggles are: difficult temperament, delays in language development, and deficits in executive functioning. Before discussing the causes of power struggles in more depth, I want to talk first about easy kids, kids who don’t get into...

The Most Powerful Tool for Ending Power Struggles: a Parenting JournalThe most powerful tool for solving power struggles is a parenting journal. In your parenting journal you will record a narrative description of each power struggle, explosion, or other type of...