Facing the Challenges of Screen Time

“Please tell me what to do about my daughter’s constant use of her cell phone!” “My son throws a fit every time I tell him to get off the computer.” “How many hours a day should I let my kid be online?" Everyone working with kids and teens these days is constantly being asked the same [...]

Beat the Back-to-School Blues: How You Can Help

A recent three-year longitudinal study confirmed what family therapists have observed clinically for decades: that patterns of family interaction have very important effects on children — both for better and for worse. Here's the bottom line: if you want your kids to succeed in school, build a stronger, more loving family. Melissa Sturge-Apple, a researcher from [...]

Who’s the Boss? How to Parent Strong-Willed Kids

Do you have to raise your voice, lecture or repeat yourself to get your kids to listen? Do your children ignore everyday requests when they just don’t feel like it? Have you tried to avoid spanking and yelling but nothing else seems to work? Are you exhausted and upset because your kids seem disrespectful, entitled or [...]

Family Rules

Rules provide a road map for helping family members get along with each other and with others in the outside world. They fall into several basic categories. First and most crucial are rules that keep children and teens safe. Protection is the reason for teaching small children not to get in cars with strangers and [...]

Too Permissive With Your Kids?

Family researchers have known for years that healthy families create environments that balance large doses of love and warmth with sufficient firmness and structure. Kids thrive in these settings. Without love and warmth they tend to feel abandoned and resentful, and without firmness and structure they will often become anxious and/or have behavior problems. Over the [...]

The Truth About Spanking

The vast majority of psychologists, researchers and parenting experts have come to the same conclusion: spanking and other forms of physical discipline can pose serious risks to children. The American Psychological Association discourages the use of any form of physical punishment, seeing it as both harmful and unnecessary. Thirty countries in the world have banned physical [...]

Too Much Family Closeness?

Parents are bombarded with advice these days about building strong bonds of attachment with their children. It’s natural for loving parents to want to feel close to their kids, but is there such a thing as too much family closeness? Too much involvement or connection? Studies on families It turns out that an important key to [...]

Go to Top