When kids steal

October 23, 2009

In consulting with parents, there is an awful moment that comes up sometimes where a kid is found to be stealing.  I’m not talking about a pre-schooler for whom “I see it, I want it” is developmentally normal, but rather for an older child who knows better. With a six or seven-year-old stealing is essentially […]

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Don’t yell at your kids

October 22, 2009

It’s obvious, right?  Yelling at our kids is not ideal parenting.  And yet virtually all of us do it, at least some of the time.  So, is there something we’re missing?   Firstly, I think we yell at our kids when they push our buttons—something they may do consciously as they mature, but which they […]

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To Medicate or Not to Medicate?

October 21, 2009

This is a big question that often comes up when I’m consulting with parents about their kids:  should they be on medications?  Firstly, let me say that as a psychologist, I do not prescribe meds and this is not my area of expertise.  However, I do work closely with psychiatrists to coordinate the psychotherapy aspects of […]

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Search for spirit—from the sippy cup to beer pong

October 20, 2009

Back in August I was touched by a piece in the New York Times Sunday Styles section titled “A Heroine Of Cocktail Moms Sobers Up.”  It was about writer, comic and mommy-blogger Stephanie Wilder-Taylor whose titles include “Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay,” and “Naptime is the New Happy Hour,” confessing that she realized that […]

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Divine Tears

October 19, 2009

In my one professional directing job, which the producer rightly assured me, “will lead to nothing,” I did have the opportunity to cast the show, and so I chose Divine, the John Waters icon of Pink Flamingos and Hairspray fame.  His character was a Tibetan Holy Man who comes to suburban New Jersey to anoint […]

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Super-colliders

October 18, 2009

For those who don’t follow trends in sub-atomic physics (not that I generally do), there is a radical multi-billion dollar experiment—the Large Hadron Collider—trying to power up on the border of France and Switzerland, an underground atom smasher—the biggest one ever built.  America opted-out on this somewhat whacky project cooked up by smart-smart folks who […]

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Sleeping Beauty and Precocious Barbie, bff?

October 17, 2009

A cigar may sometimes be just a cigar, but when it comes to fairytales there’s almost always interesting subtext to be found.  Take Sleeping Beauty for example:  a princess has been cursed at birth to die when she comes of age by pricking her finger on a spinning wheel.  Spinning wheels are banned from the […]

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So long Mary Ann, it’s time that we began… to deconstruct Gilligan’s Island through a Jungian perspective

October 16, 2009

To be our best Selves as parents, it is essential that we individuate—becoming our own, reasonably cohesive ego-selves, and striving to recognize and contain the multiplicity of the psyche—from Anima/Animus (the feminine within the male/the masculine within the female), Shadow, Mother, Father, Puer (eternal child), etc.  There are different ways of understanding this somewhat esoteric […]

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The Truth is a lonely hunter

October 15, 2009

I recently saw a movie, “The Invention of Lying,” and it left me thinking that perhaps it was as much a movie about Autism/Asperger’s as it was about lying. While the film is quite clever and funny, the central idea is built on the “what if” of a world where no one ever lies.  This […]

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Humanity… WTF?

October 14, 2009

At forty-nine years of age I am proud to report that I was able to have an enjoyable Sunday with both my parents and my children.  While for many readers this would not mean much, for those I hope to inspire today I suspect that you might know what I mean when I say that […]

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