Imagine… times three hundred and sixty five

June 15, 2009

Let John Lennon’s “Imagine” waft into your mind.  It’s easy if you try…  …above us only sky. It is a song about being happy and conscious in the here and now, in the service of the oneness that we already are a part of.  So whether you follow yoga, or Jesus, or Torah, or Tao, […]

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It’s Cool to be Kind—Understanding Bullies and Victims

June 14, 2009

In yesterday’s New York Times there was a piece on bullying ( http://tiny.cc/m3kHd) that is well worth every “parent” (i.e. anyone who cares about kids) reading.  In addition to the excellent points made in the article, I offer a few other points to consider in the service of more compassionately parenting all of our children. If […]

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Picky Eaters and Power Struggles

June 13, 2009

A reader asks for help on “power struggles about food choices (I only like restaurant pizza; I want candy, etc.).” When I was a group home therapist we would cook and eat with the kids, and it was one of the most important bonding rituals that we had.  One day we were planning to make […]

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When Hands get Aggressive

June 12, 2009

A reader asks, “What to do when your kid hurts one of his friends and the parent calls you.  My six-year-old son laid hands on one of his best friends, choking her around the neck when she didn’t want to give him something that he wanted.”  She reports that there was another incident of pulling […]

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The Gold is in the Poop

June 11, 2009

In Rumplestiltskin a miller brags that his daughter can spin straw into gold, and she’s locked in a stable by the king, where she must do the promised deed, or die.  Rumplestiltskin does the magic for the girl and she is made queen.  When Rumplestiltskin later comes to claim her first-born child, she manages to […]

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Good Feelings That Last

June 10, 2009

If there was a second tool, after a bowl, that I would wish for parents it would be a compass of the heart, or perhaps of the deeper Self. This compass has four corners:  GFTL (good feelings that last) facing where north would usually be; south is BFTL (bad feelings that last); east is BFTDL […]

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The Colander and The Bowl

June 9, 2009

If there were one gift, or tool, that I could bestow upon every parent it would be the consciousness of a bowl.   The individuated self is like a bowl—solid and able to contain whatever one puts in it.  With a bowl, good feelings fill us up and bad feelings are held without negating or […]

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The Killing Game

June 8, 2009

Last Holiday Season my wife and I relented to kid-pressure and wrapped an electronic game about killing in ribbons and bows and gave it to our children as a “gift.”  Trying to encourage personal responsibility, I set the upper time limit at a ridiculous three hours per day, with the assumption that no one in […]

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For Moms of Daughters Graduating from High School

June 7, 2009

In parenting the days often take forever, but the years fly by.  Today I wanted to share some excerpts from my friend Nancy Reinisch’s recent presentation to a group of mothers of daughters about to graduate from high school.  This is a season of graduations, so the ideas apply, to some extent, to graduations of […]

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Let’s Start in Child’s Pose

June 6, 2009

A grown-up client came in recently and said  that it had been a hard week—one in which she had felt “like a bruised peach,” and had wanted to call her mother just to hear that she was loved.  My client added that while she knew that her mom loved her, she couldn’t really call her […]

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