

15 Things to Tell Your Teen Each Night
There are certain things teenagers really need to hear from their parents. You cannot say these things when they would be most apropos. However, you can say them at night when the child is relaxed and going to sleep. They offer less resistance at night just before bedtime. They will remember what you said, and they will reflect on it when you least expect it. Having a teenager is one of the most challenging times in a parent's marriage - as well as their life. It is scary, fr


Raising Responsible and Considerate Teens
Teen yeas are a difficult passage for parents and teens. Teenagers are fighting for independence, dealing with peer pressure, and learning responsibility for homework assignments, relationships, and career plans. For parents, there’s additional worry and concern for their child’s safety. A recently released movie (Before I Fall) addresses the teen years through a teens’ poignant narration and exposed choices. The main character, Sam, experiences a continuous cycle of reliving


Keeping Score with Parenting is a Losing Game
Today’s child is more likely to grow up in a family where both parents work full time to make ends meet. Working parents report feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and complain about feeling unable to give their children, partners or friends enough time. The majority of these families have to do it all and that means a balancing act requiring long hours and little sleep. In the majority of surveys women are found to take on most of the household chores and this leaves couples s


Avoiding Parenting Conflicts with Your Partner
Parenting children is difficult, especially when parents have different forms of discipline. Parenting style is rarely talked about prior to marriage, and a couple that doesn’t experience conflict often can become distraught or frustrated when their partner has a completely different discipline approach. Marriage is a process and so is parenting. From the time your children are born your relationship with your partner changes. Although conflict between parenting styles will h


Dispelling the Myth of the ‘Perfect Mom’
Bad Moms is a new movie just opening in theatres and although it’s promoted as a ‘girls’/moms’ fun-loving movie, it carries a deeper message for all moms. The pressures of work, parenting and relationships at home have become impossible to manage. You can’t be all things to all people and when you try to be room mom, PTO president as well as your child’s best friend, you’re missing a fundamental part of parenting. Your child needs you to be their mom. They need you to set lim


A Dad’s Influence in Raising Empathetic and Considerate Children
When we think of teaching skills such as consideration for others and empathy, we think more of moms having the greater influence. But new research has shed light on the fact that dad’s engagement in the family has more influence with raising empathetic and considerate children. The researchers found that fathering was the strongest factor in determining whether or not children demonstrated high levels of emphatic concern for others, and these findings continued beyond childh