With the Beijing Olympics just concluded, it is a joy to bask in the reflected glory of such youthful superstars as Nastia Liukin, Michael Phelps, and Usain Bolt. And with the U.S. Open Tennis Championships just beginning in New York City, we can look forward to intense battles between another group of otherwordly young athletes [...]
One of your most important goals as a parent is to raise children who become independent and self-reliant people. Certainly, in early development, your children count on you. As infants, they rely on you for nourishment, cleaning, and mobility. As your children grow, they become more self-reliant in these basic areas of living, but still [...]
Parents who want their children to achieve something called “success” may find that this goal conflicts with their desire for their children to also become happy. Achieving success, as typically defined by our culture, emphasizes wealth and social status, and is often at odds with what the research has shown to produce happiness. A perusal [...]
Setting expectations for your children is an essential responsibility of parenting. Expectations tell children what’s important to you and establish a standard toward which your children can strive. But expectations can be double-edged swords. They can be a tremendous benefit to your children’s development or they can be crushing burdens that hamper their growth, depending [...]
Popular culture may be the most powerful (and destructive) force in our society today. Whether through the media of television, movies, music, the Internet, radio, or magazines, popular culture is omnipresent, intense, and unrelenting. So who can protect your children from its Sirens' call? Though schools, houses of worship, and our government can help to [...]
A harmful aspect of raising children in our high-pressure, “only A’s are good enough,” win-at-all-cost culture is that parents can inadvertently (or intentionally!) convey to their children that they are worthy of their love only if they live up to their parents’ expectations. These messages create children who are “human doings,” in which their self-esteem—how [...]
Everyone needs and wants to be part of a culture. Belonging to a culture offers people a sense of identity, feelings of connectedness, shared values, and support when faced with the challenges of life. Children will seek out a culture that is most present in their lives and that provides the most rewards. You can [...]
Values have gotten a bad rap. When most people think of values these days, they think of hot-button topics and the divisive battle between so-called “red-state” and “blue-state” values. They think of politicians, media “talking heads,” and other groups using values to push their own agendas. As America’s discussion of values has focused on these [...]
Self-esteem is the most misunderstood and misused developmental factor of the past thirty years. Child-rearing experts in the early 1970s decided that all of the efforts of our society should be devoted to helping children build self-esteem. I couldn't agree more. Children with high self-esteem have been found to perform better in school and sports, [...]
You probably know that popular culture is a truly destructive force in your children’s lives. In a recent survey, three-fourths of parents believed that materialism and the negative influences from television, movies, and music were a “serious problem” in raising children. Over 85 percent of parents believe that marketing contributes to children being too materialistic, [...]