General
Why the Good Advice in Parenting Books is Often so Hard to Follow, Part III
From time to time, all parents encounter resistance or even tantrums when they say no to a treat, a purchase, or an activity that a child really wants. And even families with easy, compliant kids and serene, Zen-like parents have fights that occasionally escalate in...
Why the Good Advice in Parenting Books is Often so Hard to Follow, Part II
We weren’t raised this way.Although positive parenting ideas have been around for decades, most of our parents did not believe that respecting, understanding and empathizing with a child’s feelings lay at the heart of parenting; neither did they believe in...
Why the Good Advice in Parenting Books is Often so Hard to Follow, Part I
Why the Good Advice in Parenting Books is Often so Hard to Follow, Part I By now you’ve probably read two, three, four or even more parenting books and you are reading this blog now because you are still searching for answers to the problems that you are having with...
Finding Calm in the Storm of Parenting: Parenting Tips Taken from Yoga
Finding Calm in the Storm of Parenting: Parenting Tips Taken from Yoga Parenting young children, especially challenging boys, can be physically demanding and emotionally stressful. If we do not take care of our bodies and our stress we can’t be at our best with our...
Understanding Why Your Son is Challenging.
“His greatest personal strengths are exactly those things that make it most difficult to be his parent,” mom of a challenging boy. Challenging boys have many great personal strengths. They are sensitive, empathic, energetic, driven, persistent, principled, and...
The Universal Need for Parental Acceptance
Child development is so complex that there are practically no certainties. There are experienced, well-meaning, well-credentialed experts lined up on all sides of almost every major issue in parenting. This uncertainty and confusion of conflicting expert opinion can...
Cultivating Positive Parenting
Carl Rogers was one of the most important psychologists of the twentieth century and his work, along with that of Abraham Maslow, formed the basis for the creation of today’s Positive Psychology movement. In 1957, Rogers described what he believed were the necessary...
The Power of Positive Parenting: Gottman’s Magic Ratio
The Power of Positive Parenting: Gottman's Magic RatioMarriage and family researcher, John Gottman, has observed that spouses in happy, stable marriages engage in positive expressions of feelings and actions towards each other about five times as often as they engage...
Stop Blaming Yourself: Work the Problem People!
Stop Blaming Yourself: Work the Problem People!As if raising a challenging boy wasn’t stressful, exhausting and difficult enough, parents of challenging boys also have to contend with the advice, judgment and blame of friends, relatives, and strangers at the...
Oppositional, Rebellious, Difficult, Defiant, Explosive, Spirited, Challenging … What’s in a Name?
Who are Challenging Boys? They are kids who get tagged with many negative labels: oppositional, difficult, defiant, manipulative, willful, noncompliant, rigid, angry, temperamental, and rebellious and they tend to make life difficult for their parents and teachers....