Your children’s physical health is the foundation for everything they become and do. As corporeal beings, they, like the rest of humanity, are at the mercy of the fitness of their bodies to handle the ordinary challenges and extraordinary demands that are placed on them during childhood and beyond. You are responsible for ensuring that [...]
A really important NY Times article about the influence of excessive technology use on children, in this case, using iPhones and iPads to placate kids when they get bored or cranky. If you want to read my take on it, read my post about what I call iPhone Syndrome.
A great NY Times article describing research demonstrating the importance of face-to-face time in children connecting with others and developing relationships. What's fascinating about this article is that it doesn't just explain the importance of "real" connection with other at psychological, emotional, and social levels, but rather its role biologically and even neurologically in our [...]
Technology, such as the Internet, smartphones, and social media, can have great benefits in helping your children form and maintain relationships. At the same time, if not used with limits and guidance by your children, such use may prevent them from developing the essential relationship qualities and skills that have allowed us to make real [...]
As your children develop and enter the social world outside of your home, their peers’ importance to them will grow. In fact, as your children progress through high school, their peer group will exert a sometimes dismayingly great influence over them as you feel your own relationship with them diminish. Basically, being accepted and liked [...]
Nowhere is the impact of popular culture and technology on children’s relationships more noticeable than in families. Both influences have contributed to a growing divide between the traditional roles that children and their parents play while, at the same time, blurring those same lines between parents and children. Over the past two decades, children who, [...]
Selflessness and empathy are two of the most important ingredients for children to develop healthy relationships. Selflessness involves the capacity for children to place the concerns of others appropriately ahead of their own. It allows others to sense that, whatever children do, their interests will be considered. Empathy is the ability for children to understand [...]
More and more these days, young people are establishing and maintaining relationships online. These “cyber” relationships often arise because parents, out of fear for their children’s safety, no longer allow them to be “free range” to congregate in local parks, at malls, and on street corners. The only place that they have permission to “meet [...]
This article is a great read that demonstrates that good parenting is really important. Moreover, good parenting can be taught.
Popular culture and technology are redefining the meaning of relationships; what relationships are, how they develop and are maintained, and how many relationships we can have. Popular culture, for example, suggests that love can be found in a few weeks on shows like The Bachelor, real family’s lives mirror shows such as Kate Plus 8 [...]