Parenting
Staying in Your Zone with Help Now! Skills
Contrary to popular belief, stress is good for you. But like red wine and dark chocolate, only in moderation. A moderate amount of stress can motivate you, give you energy, help you run a race, or gift you with laser-like focus for a challenging task. Heart rate and breath rate automatically increase to pump oxygen-saturated…
Read MoreListening For Change
“Listen. People start to heal the moment they feel heard.” —Cheryl Richardson Listening. It is one of my favorite meditative practices. I can sit outside for hours listening with a smile to the vibrant, and sometimes vitriolic, communication of the birds of my neighborhood. I cherish quiet moments sitting with closed eyes and open ears,…
Read MoreKids do well if they can
The Collaborative Problem Solving approach of Stuart Ablon and Ross Greene is a profound paradigm shift in working with children who struggle behaviorally. When we believe that kids “choose” to misbehave, “choose” to get in trouble, or “choose” to fail in school, we are coming from what I believe to be a flawed perspective. In…
Read MoreCultivating Gratitude
“Kids, what do you say?” It’s the most frequently asked question of all parents (maybe second only to, “Exactly what were you thinking?”) And the answer is inevitably the forgotten words, “Thank you.” It’s simply too easy to forget, to slip through life without making room for a gratitude pause. To take the ice cream…
Read MoreParenting: Are you a Seat-belt or an Air-bag?
I’ve been in a particularly curious season of childrearing and childworking. I have two kids at home with a lot of hormones, facing violently rapid brain development and occasional existential angst, and I have about 520 kids at work, many of whom are also in the throes of puberty and making some really wacky, seemingly…
Read MoreNurturing Competition
I am a fiercely competitive person. I enjoy racing triathlons and each race I run, I want to do better than I did the race before. (Although as I get older, I more frequently want to simply finish rather than PR!) But competition or “being competitive” is sometimes given a bad rap. The phrase “she’s…
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