8 12, 2014

5 Ways to Weave Gratitude into Your Family’s Life

By | December 8th, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

To ensure that your children embrace the value of gratitude, you must immerse them in a culture of gratitude. You can do this by weaving gratitude into the very fabric of your family life. Our family has a “Mo’ Grat” ritual every evening when we sit down for dinner. In this case, it means “Moment [...]

3 11, 2014

5 Words of Kindness to Teach Your Children Gratitude

By | November 3rd, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

In my last post, I described five messages that parents can send to their children to instill the value and practice of gratitude. In this post, I’ll discuss how kind words can be another means through which you can convey the importance of gratitude to your children. My family’s ‘catchphrase’ for gratitude is “Mo’ Grat,” [...]

21 10, 2014

5 Messages of Gratitude You Can Send Your Children

By | October 21st, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments

In my last post, I introduced you to power of gratitude in the lives of children and families. In this post, I will show you how gratitude can be communicated to your children through many conduits. That' s a good thing because, maybe more than any other message, you're going to have to send the [...]

19 10, 2014

The Destructive Bubble of Sports

By | October 19th, 2014|Categories: Sports|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

If you have a child involved in sports or are a fan of sports, whether high school, college, or pro, this New York Times article should be really unsettling to you. Sports can be a wonderful world to instill healthy values, attitudes, and life skills. But, what has been spotlighted recently, from the Sayresville, NJ high [...]

16 10, 2014

Gratitude Fuels Your Child’s Heart (and Your Own)

By | October 16th, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments

One of the most important—and often neglected—messages that you want your children to get early and often is the power of gratitude. Consider a simple "thank you." Those two words offer a win-win for the sender and the receiver of the message. A surprising and robust finding in the growing body of research that has [...]

30 09, 2014

Acts of Compassion Speak Louder than Words to Your Children

By | September 30th, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

Developing the capacity for compassion and sharing is a huge challenge for young children. Because they are still in an egocentric stage of development, they lack the awareness of and empathy toward others necessary to see how not sharing impacts those around them. Yet, sharing, as an expression of compassion, is a message that your [...]

5 08, 2014

The Power of Words to Teach Compassion to Your Children

By | August 5th, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

Words have a powerful influence on children. What we say and the words we use impact their thinking, emotions, and behavior. Early in children’s lives, emotions and behavior are the dominant forces that guide them. But as they develop their cognitive and verbal skills, words begin to play a leading role in their internal and [...]

28 07, 2014

5 Messages to Instill Compassion in Your Children

By | July 28th, 2014|Categories: Parenting|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

Raising compassionate children is no small feat these days. Because of the egocentrism of children's early years combined with the increasingly prevalent messages of selfishness, narcissism, and indifference that popular culture communicates to them, children are not likely to readily learn compassion on their own. This means that you have to make an extra effort to [...]

8 07, 2014

The Best Way to Motivate People is…

By | July 8th, 2014|Categories: Psychology|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments

A fascinating article describes research that is both counterintuitive and has potentially important implications for the worlds of business, sports, education, and beyond. The basic finding, not surprising, is that internal motivation (drive from your values, meaning, passions) produces the best outcomes. What is surprising was the finding that when internal motivation was combined with [...]

4 07, 2014

Taylor Featured in Article about Video Game Violence on The Daily Beast

By | July 4th, 2014|Categories: Popular Culture|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

I was just interviewed for an article by The Daily Beast that described recent research that found that playing violent video games actually created feelings of guilt, produced an increase in moral sensitivity, and might promote prosocial benavior. I am skeptical, to be sure.