Parenting

A Gender Sensitive Approach to Violence

Dr. Don Meichenbaum, PTSD expert, discusses an individuals journey from birth, to engaging in violence in this exclusive interview series with Dr. Lisa Firestone. I’m a clinical psychologist and for thirty-five years, I had been involved at the University of Waterloo, which is near Toronto and we have developed what are called cognitive-behavioral procedures to work… Read more »

Siblings: Retaliation or Sadistic Pleasure

The matter of siblings is complicated. In family life they are our first peers. Consequently, we learn many of our problem solving skills and intimate social relating from these interactions and how our parents mediate them. There are millions of conflicts a week: Johnny breaks Suzie’s toy, Suzie calls Johnny a name, Johnny doesn’t want… Read more »

LGBT Youth, School Bullies, Youth Violence, homosexuality

The Link Between LGBT Youth, Bullying, and Suicide

In 1989, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a public report stating that up to a third of all teen suicides were committed by gay youth, there was a flurry of media attention and speculation surrounding the rising rates of teen suicide committed by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered youth. It… Read more »

Gang Violence, Violence, gangs, teenage gangs, Father Greg Boyle, Homeboy Industries

Preventing Gang Violence: Why Kids Become Violent

Read an exclusive interview with Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention group in the country. What Homeboy Industries Does: My name is Greg Boyle, I’m the Executive Director and Founder of Homeboy Industries, located in Los Angeles, the largest gang intervention program in the country. We serve about 12,000 people… Read more »

Learning from My Students

In honor of back-to-school season, here is a story from a PsychAlive reader about lessons learned as an elementary school teacher. As a teacher, it is easy to feel that you are better than the kids you are teaching. It is easy to feel that you always know what is right and know the best… Read more »

What You Need to Know About Disciplining Your Child

From sitting them in corners to sending to their rooms, from saying to “say sorry” to giving a time out, the methods are all different but the question is the same: What is really the best way to discipline a child? Disciplining our children is one of parenting’s least appealing tasks. Unless you intended to… Read more »

Exercise: Who Do You See When You Look at Your Child?

One of the biggest challenges for us as parents is remembering that our children are not us. In spite of the fact that they came from us, that they share our genetic makeup, and that they are shaped by the emotional environment that we are raising them in, they are not us. Our children are… Read more »

What to Do About Tantrums and Emotional Meltdowns

Dealing with your kids’ tantrums and mood swings can be one of parenting’s most frustrating challenges. From public meltdowns to prolonged fits, these extreme outbursts of emotion have the capacity to provoke extreme reactions in us. Methods that are effective in dealing with the child’s natural expressions of anger or frustration don’t work in this… Read more »

How to Approach Learning Challenges with your Child

As loving parents, we want the best for our kids. If we can afford it, we take our children to the orthodontist to correct their teeth, so they have a beautiful smile and keep their teeth to old age. I find this to be a helpful metaphor for learning challenges. Learning challenges are unseen “misalignments”… Read more »

Dr. Pat Love on Parenting

Dr. Pat Love on what it is to parent, and the mistaken conceptions of parenting that are endemic to our culture: There’s a lot of talk today about parents who hover, these helicopter parents. And there’s just one line that I like to say and that is: When you do something for someone else, let’s… Read more »