Hello

Greetings and thanks for coming to visit my blog.  By way of introduction, my name is Bruce Steven Dolin and I am a clinical psychologist working in Beverly Hills, California.  I am also a husband, parent of two boys now ages twelve and fifteen, and an ardent yogi (which I have found strongly informs my work as a psychologist, writer and parent).

The Privilege of Parenting is both a book that I wrote, and now a blog, but it is also a passion and an idea that I have been working on for eighteen years.   My work is informed by my work with troubled kids, “system kids,” special needs kids, gifted misunderstood kids, suffering and stuck children and families and mainly by listening deeply to parents and children for many years.  While I have learned a few things about what helps and what does not, I am looking to take my ideas into this wider forum in order to continue to learn, refine my ideas and put them to better and wider use—and to help you, the reader, be your best Self as a parent.

Because my practice has grown so busy, I find myself unable to take on many of the clients who come to me, therefore, I am expanding towards a consultancy approach, of which this blog is a part.  While I cannot offer psychotherapy in a blog, (as psychotherapy is a very different sort of relationship, and if that is something you seek, let me hear from you about that and I can offer help and suggestions on how to find the right therapist for you, perhaps in a subsequent blog); I can, however, help create a community that shares my passion for taking better care of all of our collective children, and of striving to leave the world a kinder, better and more conscious place than we found it.

It is said that if Mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy.  The Privilege of Parenting seeks to support mothers and fathers to be happier through taking better and more authentic care of those we love.  Therefore, this blog is an invitation to community, based on the premise that we all love our children and yearn to do our very best with them.

A corollary premise is that parenting, like yoga, can be engaged as a mindfulness practice; therefore parenting can be a path to happiness, enlightenment and even to God (which we may discuss in more depth in future blogs, for now it shall suffice to say that I choose to define “God” as Truth—as the inexorable mystery of what just is, whether we understand it, believe it, or not).  Truth contains all the different ideas that we have about God, ranging from there being no God but one or another particular God to there being no God altogether).

Perhaps our profound love for our children may be just the ticket to help us transcend our philosophical and semantic differences and live lovingly in the One world we share.  Thus The Privilege of Parenting seeks to love and respect the world that we actually live in, to align with Truth and be taught by it.  Truth, like the Chinese concept of Tao, cannot be explained.  Be it Truth or Tao, Privilege of Parenting strives to be carved out by this force into a vessel that may be of use to serve all who choose to join us in loving our children and caring for our world.

In future blogs Privilege of Parenting will strive to respond to you, the reader, to follow your leads and your needs.  It will be informed by yoga, spirituality and the intention we set together to be our best Selves as parents.

Namste, Bruce