Why Kids Are Smarter Than Cats
I've been a Dad to over a dozen cats in my adult life. The cat in the photo is Cookie, one of the three cats in my family right now. All three display signs of intelligence. I see this in the way they make decisions. For example, at a certain time each afternoon,...
Coach Your Child to Learn from Experience
The great thing about a mistake or any bad experience is that you can learn from it. But it's just as easy, if not easier, to not learn a thing. Kids make go through a lot of emotions on the way to growing up. They have so much to learn and the road can be pretty...
Parent-Child Communication Skills: Start Developing Them Now
At about the age of 12, plus or minus, a child's body and brain are flooded with growth hormones to begin the physical development needed to become an adult. The growth period lasts about ten years. We call it adolescence. During this gradual transformation, the child...
Share Your Thinking
Growing up to be a happy, successful, independent adult means creating a self. This includes life skills, relationship skills, thinking skills, learning skills, character strength, values, attitudes, and more. it's a lot, and every child has to do it. Some leave home...
Feel the Emotion, Shift the Thought
I was in a hurry to get home, but so were many other people in rush hour traffic. I had to wait in line to turn right and then immediately I had to wait in a long line at a stoplight. When the light turned green, the car in front of me didn't move. The driver was...
It’s Amazing What Your Child Has to Learn.
Heman Bekele is a 14-year-old boy who won First Prize in 3M's Young Scientist's Challenge for working to create an affordable soap that could treat skin cancer. Read more about him here... As a young man, he wasn't focused on being popular. He wasn't on social media...
Awe and Joy
My wife and I once spent a lovely vacation near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. One night I woke up and went to the back porch to look at the stars. I saw them more clearly than at any other time in my life. As I let the reality of the vision sink in, I was filled with awe,...
My New Definition for the Term “Lean In”
Have you ever heard somebody use the term "lean in"? It quickly became common as a business motto in 2013, taken from the title of the book. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, and Nell Scovell, a...
Teen Advice from an Unusual Source
A classic conflict: a teenager who is discovering who they are and wanting to be popular is tempted to give in to peer pressure to do things that are ill-advised or even dangerous. It's the kind of conflict that few teens know how to deal with. Have you tried ChatGPT,...
Teens Who Take Their Future Seriously Have a Huge Advantage While Growing Up
An obvious fact: very young children don't understand about the future. If they're 6 years old, they simply can't conceive of the fact that in a few years they will be in high school. This inability to comprehend their own desired or possible future extends into...
The Secret to Mastering a Parent-Child Communication Skill
I recently talked with a mom who was discouraged because her attempts to try some new listening techniques hadn't worked for her. She said they felt strange and she often forgot to use them. So she gave up trying. This is not an uncommon story. And there are reasons...
For Your Child: the Top 5 Power Skills
As i write this, swallows have built a nest above our front entrance way, and the momma and poppa swallows are busy catching bugs and feeding them to their three hatchlings. On occasion, we see three little heads peeking above the rim of the nest. Before long, the...
A Teen’s Huge Window of Opportunity
At puberty, a child's brain is primed to develop the kind of critical thinking that will make them successful as adults. This fact of adolescence is massively important but all too easy to forget. At puberty, the brain cells in their prefrontal cortex, the part of the...
Tolerance and Patience Change the Game
A friend of mine wanted me to help him with a project. We met and talked about what might work, but we didn't agree on what to do. I told him, "Why don't you give more thought to what you'd like to do, and we can meet again to nail down the details." It was a good...
Saying Nothing: A Powerful, Underappreciated Skill
Both my sons are in their 50s, still pursuing highly successful careers in IT. But I'm still trying to communicate with them effectively, being aware of moments when a particular skill will work best for me -- with my sons, my wife, my business partners, and friends....
Before You Hand Over the Car Keys…
60 years ago, I drove the family car through the heart of Stuttgart, Germany. No one else was in the car. I was a responsible kid, and I was doing my best to stay safe and arrive home without a mishap. But like every young driver, I had a lot to learn. I was ignorant...
The Awesome Power of Vocabulary
Humans began speaking over 100,000 years ago. Archeologists have found no evidence that Neanderthals had language abilities; if true, perhaps that's part of the reason why they became extinct. As a parent, here's what you need to know. A concept does not become real...
Their Products Are Addictive, But They Don’t Care
Today I read a disturbing article. The truth: the executives of tech companies that create social media don't care. They not only don't care if their technologies are addictive, they're counting on it. They don't care that vulnerable children become sad and depressed...
What Do I Take for Granted?
I sometimes reflect on what I'm grateful for. And not just on Thanksgiving. Number one for me is the fact that I'm still alive. I've sidestepped death a few times in my life. Plus, the lives of several dozen of my friends have already ended. But I'm still here,...
Talks: The Window of Opportunity for Wisdom
I had the chance to interact with a niece recently, a high school freshman I hadn't seen in a while. These encounters are rare, since both of us have busy lives and she lives 50 miles away. So I couldn't help myself. I had to take the opportunity to gift her with some...
My Empathy On-Switch
Someone said to me recently, "Nearly all the problems of the world would be solved if human beings were more empathetic." It was such a bold, broad thing to say that I really had to reflect on it for a while. Ultimately, I found the statement hard to disagree with....
How to Be Sure YOU’VE Been Heard and Understood
In Chapter 4 of Connect with Your Kid, I explain how to summarize what you think you're hearing, so your child can confirm whether you really understand what they're trying to express. The skill of listening to understand is powerful, and the impacts are huge. Kids...
The Dreaded Unwanted Teen Pregnancy
Some pretty awful things can happen during adolescence. One of these tragedies is an unwanted pregnancy. I believe that parents need to "get real" about the risk that their child could get involved in an unwanted pregnancy. Think about it: At puberty, kids begin...
Listening Moments
Truth-telling time. The most common mistake parents make when interacting with their child is failing to recognize when they should be listening, and they miss the opportunity. I call these opportunities listening moments. Here are some of the most common parent-child...
Help Your Teen Learn Life Skills
True story: A young couple got married, and after the honeymoon the guy discovered his new wife didn't know how to boil an egg. Yes, he should have known this about her. But as a former Boy Scout, he got to work to help her learn to cook. Also, the young woman's mom...
What to Do When Communication Doesn’t Go Well
Youth is a time of growth, and it also needs to be a time for lots of learning. I've explained how with "4 Magic Questions" you can help your child get stronger from successes and mistakes. Being the parent you want to be can also mean learning for you. These same...
The Precious Window for Teen Brain Development
When asked about teen brain development, I'm challenged to boil a huge amount of research down to a few facts. Here's how I explain it: At the onset of puberty, a child's body and brain are flooded with growth hormones. The resulting changes in the body are visible;...
A Heartfelt Rant about Race
Children are miracles. Loving parents know this. But kids start out life innocent and only learn what they observe and they're taught. And these days, slogans such as "Black Lives Matter" are visible everywhere. When required to declare race on a form, my wife and I...
The Top Two Secrets for Improving How You Communicate
Almost everything you do as a parent involves communicating with your child. If you do it poorly, very likely you'll get a result you don't like. If you do it with skill, the results will amaze you. I wholeheartedly believe this. Every parent can benefit greatly by...
Why Parenting Can Be Painful and The Two Best Things You Can Do to Make it Joyful
A hard truth: One of the toughest things about being a parent is the mistakes we make. When I was a parent, I got lucky. I followed my best instincts and made some good things happen. But nobody's perfect, as they say, and I also lost my temper quite a few times. I...
The One Thing That Beats Peer Pressure
Teens need to be liked and included by friends. And in all sorts of ways, friends can pressure your child to conform and get involved in what they're doing. Not all peer pressure is bad. If your child's friends have good values, they can influence your child to do...
The Truth about Your Teen’s Brain
If you like to read, here's a good article from the Stanford Children's Health website about the developing teenage brain. It attempts to explain how teens eventually grow out of thinking emotionally to thinking logically. As the article says, not all teens develop...
Violence: Swimming Against the Current of Our Culture
It's June 2022, and we are learning about mass murders. Almost on a daily basis. Innocent people dying. Even little kids. Did you see this coming? If you didn't see it coming, maybe it's because you didn't want to believe the signs all around us. What do two-year-olds...
Recommendation: Work on These Two Communication Skills First
I guess I'm a natural introvert, meaning I spend most of my time in my head, not interacting with people. Not that I can't engage; I just prefer reflecting about the world around me. It's a pattern that has served me well in learning, researching, and writing....
Teen Suicide Can Be Prevented
As I write this, I'm aware that these are troubled times. So I was alarmed but not surprised at reports of a rising trend in teen suicide. The CDC says that suicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers. The word "unthinkable" comes to mind. A teen...
Puberty Changes Everything: Some Help
Across the street lives a beautiful family: a nine-year-old boy, a four-year-old girl, and parents who spend a lot of time with them outdoors teaching them things. A lot of fun. A lot of love. I've enjoyed watching the kids grow up. I sometimes wonder what the kids...
My Favorite Parenting Websites
Knowledge doesn't appear out of thin air. Thanks to my experience as a dad, my 30-year passion for learning about the brain and interpersonal communication, and the work of many, many experts, I have learned a great deal about parenting; experience-based,...
Life is Hard: Raise a Strong Adult
As I write this, Vladimir Putin has decided that he wants Ukraine to become a part of Russia. The people of Ukraine don't want this; they want to remain their own nation, separate from Russia. But rather than enter into peaceful relations with Ukraine, Putin has...
The Many ‘Listening Moments’
In Chapter 4 of my book, Connect with Your Kid: Mastering the Top 10 Parent-Child Communication Skills, I place special emphasis on the skill, "Listening to Understand." The main reasons is that a parent's ability to listen well is crucial in so many situations. These...
How to Cure Your Kid’s Screen-time Addiction
The pandemic has been tough on kids. Online classes, more time at home...kids could be excused for spending more time in front of screens. While it's true that technology has some amazing benefits, there's this: It's addictive. The rewards from using it make a child...
Nurturing the Parent-Child Bond: Magic, Truth, and Hard Work
So many of the emotional flare-ups and conflicts that arise between parent and child are triggered by the failure to communicate effectively. Instead, we react emotionally, with frustration or anger. It's only natural, but it alienates your child. It's an old story....
Your Child’s Growing-Up Journey
I often reflect on what my life was like as a kid. My early childhood happened in the 50's and my adolescence happened in the 60's. It was, I think, a typical lower-middle class upbringing. I had five brothers and two sisters and a father and mother who loved me and...
Help Your Child Learn to Love Nature
Photo of Tywi Forest in Wales by Roger Kidd Fresh air! Today is a cool, sunny day and the air I breathe is delicious. Of course I'm not conscious of this all the time. But my diaphragm works to fill my lungs with air several times a minute, whether I think about it or...
My Favorite One-Two Skill Combo
While each of the ten high-impact parent-child communication skills described in Connect with Your Kid are amazingly effective, their power magnifies greatly when used in combination. Without question, my favorite one-two combo is open-ended questions to encourage...
Not Your Typical Parenting Book
The last time you visited my website, did you notice the banner at the top of the page? Along with my smiling face, it displays two books: Connect with Your Kid and Parents Coaching Parents. Parents Coaching Parents is a brief, easy read that explains how one parent...
The Most Powerful Way to Influence Your Child Is the Simplest
All my writing these days is about how you talk to your child. But parents communicate in other, very powerful ways. When my two sons were small boys, I had never heard the term "parenting." I knew nothing about techniques or skills that would make me a better parent....
The Mindset of a Power Communicator: 10 Things You Need to Know
A common consequence of parenting an adolescent child: the alienated teen. It's natural for a growing child to seek more independence. After all, becoming an adult and creating a happy, successful life of their own is the goal. But you want your child to remain open...
Your Child Can Learn to Listen, Too
The book, Connect with Your Kid, is a how-to manual for improving the 10 most important parent-child communication skills. And listening to understand is at the top of the list, for several reasons: When your child is trying to express something, you need to hear it....
For Your Own Mental Health, Pick Your Battles
Trying to conserve on electricity, you ask the family to turn off lights when leaving a room that they don't plan to return to soon. But most of the time your son/daughter forgets to do this simple thing. You remind them and they agree to try harder. But when you walk...
Does Your Child Think about the Future?
Driving home, I saw a young man walking on the sidewalk. Shirtless in the midday sun, he sported a tanned, muscular body. He seemed oblivious to a future consequence: excessive exposure to solar radiation (sunlight) can cause skin cancer. The sight reminded me of a...
The Top 5 Fundamentals
Helping a young human being grow up to be a happy, successful, and independent adult has to be the hardest thing you can do. People are astoundingly complex; even kids are complex, growing more so year by year until they leave home. And yet, few parents have had the...
7 Big Truths about Empathy
One of my favorite parenting experts is Deborah Gilboa, MD. also known as Dr. G. In the past I've shared several of her posts. In this video, "The Big Lie about Empathy," she shares some eyes-wide-open truths about EMPATHY. Probably nothing is more important to the...
The Difference-Maker: Really Connecting with Your Child
What if you had great communication skills? Some parents do! But most don’t. When parents connect in ways that strengthen the bond with their child, kids are more open to parental guidance and wisdom. Most parents struggle with this. Learning powerful communication...
The Magic of an Apology
Have you ever been exhausted, under pressure, and upset - all at the same time? If you have, then you know how easy it is to lash out, yell, or say something you later regret. This is a perfectly natural reaction. But consider what your child would feel on the...
Be a Coach, Not a Critic
Fifty years ago, I began my graduate work at Duke University. Although I was an Army captain, a graduate of West Point and the Army Ranger School, and a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, my main interest was literature. I was a published poet, I won First...
The Encouragement Inoculation
Discouragement is when someone experiences loss, adversity, or failure and as a result they lose confidence in their own strengths and abilities to cope. They lose heart. This happens to kids a lot. Every day, a child struggles with the painful struggles of growing...
Parents: You Have to Be the One
Many years ago, my business partners asked me to change my behavior. They claimed that I sometimes lashed out at them. When one referred to my behavior as verbally abusive, I became defensive. I thought they were exaggerating. They gave me an example. Once, in a...
The Key to Empathy: Imagining the Unimaginable
Have you ever looked up at the night sky on a clear night to see the North Star? If you can spot the Big Dipper, follow the line from the dipper to a very bright star named Polaris. This star helped seafarers navigate for centuries. It's very, very far away - over 300...
Parents Coaching Each Other: Improving Parent-Child Communication Skills
In many ways, I'm thrilled to put 2020 in my rear-view mirror. The awful Covid-19 pandemic. Also, this was the year my family moved to a new home. It's a nice home, and that's the good news. The bad news is that moving was a mentally and physically arduous process...
‘Take Off Your Mask,’ He Said
As I write this, the Covid-19 coronavirus in the U.S. has been killing about 3,000 people every day. I know several people who have become infected. A member of my extended family died from the infection. This pandemic has brought out the best and the worst in our...
How to Talk to Your Kid about Sex
The human species, like all other species, exists because of its ability to reproduce. During the fertile years, men and women feel the urge to engage in sexual union, which is necessary to produce offspring. When I was much younger, my friends and I would joke about...
How to Handle a Discouraged Child
Even though kids are a work-in-progress, their current knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and motivation can lead to more learning and achievement. They may also bring a unique set of core personal strengths, such as patience, self-confidence, persistence, and many...
Connect with Your Kid
Communicating well is a foundation element of effective parenting. How can you be a parent to your child without communicating? Whenever there are problems between parent and child, ineffective communication is almost always a contributing factor. And yet, when you...
3 Keys to a Harmonious Home
Once again, I'm delighted to feature a guest post from Elisabeth Stitt, author of Parenting as a Second Language and esteemed parent coach. Elisabeth is the founder of Joyful Parenting Coaching, which specializes in helping parents understand and communicate...
Must-See Documentary: ‘The Social Dilemma’
Smartphones are flat-out amazing. No, miraculous. A voice gives me turn-by-turn driving instructions to get to a ranch outside a small town 750 miles away. That's incredible. Also, the ability to shoot a video clip and send it to someone in Nepal instantaneously, day...
Podcast: Dealing with Your Child’s Excessive Screen Time during Remote Learning
It's well documented: how kids with growing brains can be adversely affected - for life - by too much screen time. It's a scary issue for parents, because the new technologies are both amazingly useful and amazingly dangerous. And practically every kid loves them. The...
Is Your Child Ready for College – Really?
One parent I know pushed her child hard to punch all his tickets in high school. He was a smart kid, but lazy. She felt she had to manage him to meet his requirements. His real love was playing video games, so he decided he wanted to be a game programmer. At college,...
Disconnected: How to Deal with Teen Smartphone Issues
As Tom Kersting points out in his new book, Disconnected, kids graduating from college these days are the first generation to experience their entire adolescence while owning a smartphone. As a result, they spend hours a day glued to the small screen while engaged...
Here’s to the Hard-Working Young Adults out There
Maybe you've heard about helicopter parenting until you're sick of it - parents who prepare the road ahead for their kid instead of preparing their kid for the road ahead. Julie Lythcott-Haims wrote a fine book about the phenomenon: How to Raise an Adult: Break Free...
Would Your Child Send Someone a Nude Selfie?
If your child should receive a request for a nude pic, how do you think they would react? You'd be surprised how many young people would laugh and consider it a harmless, fun thing to do, perhaps a way to be included with the cool crowd, never thinking about the...
Boys Who Act Like Girls, Girls Who Act Like Boys
During the COVID-19 shut-down I heard reports that many LGBTQ college students who have been forced to study at home are experiencing unusual stress levels caused by their parents' failure to accept their gender identity. They believe that their child has chosen a...
Jane Parent: 4 High School Parenting Mistakes I Made
For several years now I've promoted Your Teen online magazine on my website. If you're like me, Your Teen has become your trusted resource for parenting teens and tweens. Jane Parent, senior editor, is one of my favorite authors, and she generously agreed to share her...
A Modest Proposal: Adult Skills for Kids
ADULTING: "The practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks." I borrowed this excellent definition from an online search; the term is too new to be included in the Merriam-Webster...
Dad Talks to Daughter…About the Future
"There's nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly." - Buckminster Fuller This quote made me think of my West Point class. Before I arrived there, I had made straight A's for 12 straight years, graduating as valedictorian. But during my...
Teens Need Lots of Talks
It seems like yesterday when I published Conversations with the Wise Uncle: The Secret to Being Strong as a Teenager and Preparing for Success as an Adult (First Summit, 2012). Eight years ago! It's a series of stories about a young boy named Chris and his uncle Ray,...
With Your Help, Your Child Can Learn from Experience
It’s often said that experience is the best teacher and that the value of mistakes is that you can learn from them. There’s a lot of wisdom in this. It's why we don't want to protect our kids from every mistake and failure while they're growing up. If an activity...
A ‘Dumb Phone’ Could Be the Safe Solution until Your Child is Mature Enough to Use a Smart Phone Responsibly
If you found out your teen daughter was experiencing pressure from the cool kids to "hook up" with boys, would you encourage her to go along in order to be well-liked? I admit, it's a silly question. Of course you wouldn't. The many risks are life-altering, with no...
Planting Empowering Thoughts
A young father was telling me about his two children, a seven-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. "My daughter is an angel, but my little boy is a terror. He defies me every chance he gets. At lunch I asked him to come to the dinner table and he refused. That...
Wisdom, Choices, and the Life Path
With every choice, there is a consequence. And the situation of that consequence sets up another choice. One choice after another, we create our life paths and become who we are. It's a process that continues throughout one's life. It's how a child gradually becomes...
What Path Will Your Child Choose?
I've lived long enough to be aware of the sometimes remarkable paths that lives take. When I was a West Point cadet, my activities and achievements were quite a bit different from my high school experience. I know the same was true of my classmates. For example, a...
The Kid Got Lucky: From Loser to Legend
"I was a terrible student," he said, "always staring out windows or looking at the clock, waiting for class to be over." From a very early age, the only thing that interested him was excitement, danger, and risk-taking. He considered schoolwork pointless, and...
Elisabeth Stitt Encourages Clarity, Connection, and Consistency
Helping an adolescent child grow up to be a happy, successful, and independent adult has never been easy. Try doing it without a spouse. Or both parents having to work a full-time job. Or the disturbing influences of rapidly innovating technology with its shiny...
Do Youth Sports Really Benefit Kids?
I once had a conversation with an intelligent woman about the value of team sports. She said emphatically that the idea that team sports promoted teen development was utter nonsense (not her words) and that team sports promoted aggressiveness and generally callous...
Phonics – The Gateway to Strong Reading Skills
When I was a little kid, my mother read child's books to me. I loved the stories, and I begged her to read them to me over and over. But on my first day of school, I told my mother I wasn't ready, because I didn't know all my ABC's. As she helped me put on my jacket,...
Kids Who Love Reading Have a Real Superpower
My wife has an amazing mind. She's always my first reader for feedback about my work. She catches nearly all mistakes, points out ways to improve my writing, and makes helpful recommendations. I know why she's so smart. According to her, her mother read to her while...
Outshine Every Star
On a clear day Rise and look around you, And you'll see who you are. On a clear day How it will astound you That the glow of your being Outshines every star. As I listened to Barbra Streisand sing "On a Clear Day (You Can See Forever)," written over 50 years ago by...
Watch Out for the Crazies
For years now, instead of saying "Drive safely!" when people I care about are getting into their cars, I tell them, "Watch out for the crazies!" I know, it sounds a little weird. But not really. What I'm referring to are the "other guys" on the highway who could be...
The Simple Shift to Love
It's hard enough managing everything in a life - home, meals, bills, etc. Add to that being exhausted from a stressful job or raising kids. Or both! And further, add to that the pain of frustration, disappointment, or discouragement when your child doesn't do what's...
The Responsibility Talk – 3 Years before the Driver License
In another post about teen driving, I made this recommendation: The key is for your prospective young driver to prove that he or she is responsible enough for you to trust them to leave your driveway in your car. This trust has to be earned over a period of years, not...
The Good Thing about Regret
My wife and I were going to visit a friend. Our route took us to a stop sign at a T-junction at an Interstate access road. We could turn left or right to get to our destination. My wife said, "Turn left." I replied that the shorter and quicker route would be to turn...
Teens Need to Get Good at Future-Thinking
As I was coaching a twelve-year-old girl, I concluded with this summary: "In the future, some of your friends will want you to conform, so you'll need to stand up for yourself and be the kind of person you want to be." Her reply: "What do you mean by 'in the future'?"...
Before You Hand Over Those Keys…
Getting a driver license is a rite of passage. Because of the way a vehicle empowers independence and how the license amounts to a badge of maturity, many teens look forward to this certification. And you want them - maybe you need them - to be able to drive...
Adolescence – A Time for Skill-Building for the Big League Game of Life
Here's a quote worth reading and thinking about, from Frank Martin, head coach of the South Carolina men's basketball team: "You know what makes me sick to my stomach? When I hear grown people say that kids have changed. Kids haven't changed. Kids don't know anything...
How to Help Your Child Become a Better Thinker
This weekend we're headed to Corpus Christie to celebrate our niece's wedding. Since our go-to cat sitter isn't available, we found a 15-year-old young man who wanted the job. He came to our home to be briefed, and I had a chance to talk with him. Me - "School starts...
What Our Daughters Need to Know about Beauty
Young girls want to be pretty. They believe it will help make them popular and well-liked, and therefore be included in the fun and excitement with friends. And they're probably right. Because every aspect of popular media promotes a classic form of female beauty. For...
Toxic Questions – How Parents Hit Back Verbally When Frustrated, Tired and Overwhelmed
Both my sons are 50 years old (plus or minus), have successful careers in IT, and in many ways are smarter than I am. They certainly do make more money than I do. But honestly, I can't take credit for how they turned out. Yes, I was mostly a kind father, I probably...
Reactivity – A Parent’s No. 1 Mistake…and the Cure
I know several parents whose child is fast approaching adolescence. Even raising a sweet child can be difficult in many ways, but after puberty the challenges change. Middle school-aged children don't want to be treated like sweet little kids anymore. Far from being...
Growing a Stronger PFC during the Years Before Puberty
My book, How Your Teen Can Grow a Smarter Brain, and most of the hundreds of articles on this blog, address how to encourage, support and coach a young person during the adolescent years to wire their prefrontal cortex (PFC) for the thinking skills that they'll need...
Pot – It May Be Legal But It Can Damage Your Kid’s Brain
You don't want your teen to smoke cigarettes. You don't want your teen smoke marijuana. There's the danger that normal development of the prefrontal cortex will be disrupted, with permanent consequences. Damage to lungs. Addiction. Gateway to other drugs. Why do they...
Why Most Teens Don’t Care about Getting Smarter
First, here's what I mean by "smart." One long-accepted understanding of "smart" involves acquiring knowledge: learning facts and basic principles. This is the primary business of middle school and high school. Kids understand this aspect. It's the kind of "smart"...
Sexting – Exciting, Dumb and Dangerous
Imagine this scenario... A well-rounded, accomplished teen boy raised in a wholesome, supportive family is asked by a girl he believes is romantically interested in him, a stranger he met online, to send her erotic photos of himself. The reasoning part of his brain is...
News Flash – Teens Don’t Have to ‘Sew Wild Oats’
A friend once told me a story about his older brother. My friend was a top student and multi-sport athlete in high school, and he eventually got a football scholarship and later had a successful career as an executive. His drive to achieve in class and in sports kept...
Growing Up Smart – You Can Take Luck out of the Equation
Not long ago, I had a conversation with a local physician. Happily, we didn’t talk about my health. Instead, he spoke enthusiastically about his three children, two boys and a girl, all of whom have left home. He told me something unbelievable about them: all three...
Who Am I? A Teenager’s Strange Search for Identity
I saw something striking while shopping for groceries the other day. A young boy, about 13 years old, was walking just ahead of his parents. No, not walking. Sort of dancing, as if he were a lurching, broken robot. A green bunch of hair shot straight up from the top...
Your Unique, One-of-a-Kind Child Needs Help to Leave the Nest
What does it mean to be a parent? Every spring, a pair of swallows arrives at our front porch to update their nest and nurture offspring. A month or so later, their young leave the nest to learn the fine points of flying and finding food. This cycle sometimes repeats...
Nurturing Your Teenager’s Brain Development
What's happening as an adolescent child matures toward adulthood is complicated, so it's important to know what's going on. But when parents are given insightful information, their first question is: What should I do about it? In this post I share a guest article from...
The Adolescent Gauntlet
I recently had breakfast with some friends who have a graduating high school senior. He's a great kid who wants to be a speech therapist and has been accepted into the right university for that training. Also, I pointed out that in addition to this wonderful outcome,...
Parents: Give Yourself a Break
Caring parents who consider the advice of experts are on a journey to "get better" at raising well-adjusted adults who succeed in life and work. But it's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. The culture is working against you - the teen culture and the larger...
Teen Brain Development Really Is a Race Against Time
As you may have noticed throughout your life, not every child grows up smart. In this brief article, some straight talk about adolescent brain development. Each area of a child's growing brain has a sensitive window for development. For the kind of adult-level...
Raise Your Son to Have Compassion and Respect for Women
With a new documentary, the "Lorena Bobbitt story" is in the media again. Do you remember her - the woman who, almost 30 years ago, was raped by her husband; and then while he slept, she cut off his...with a kitchen knife and tossed it into a grassy field? For a while...
Don’t Handicap Your Children By Making Their Lives Easy
In my book, How Your Teen Can Grow a Smarter Brain, I explain that adolescence is a sensitive time window for developing foundation thinking skills in the prefrontal cortex and how to maximize that development. Important insights, I assure you. But establishing the...
Smartphones for Teens – Eyes Wide Open
Recently I stood gazing out a street-facing window of a restaurant. A couple sat at an outdoor table on the sidewalk. Both were busy interacting with their smartphones. Across the street, a man stood next to his car, doing something with his smartphone. A young woman...
Good Outcomes for a Teen Come from Using Good Judgment
Every parent I’ve ever met hopes their teen will grow up to be a capable, successful adult, even though we all have seen instances of the opposite. Realistically, wonderful things can happen during the second dozen years of growing up. For example, a teen can: Become...
How a Child Can Get Really Smart without Getting Really Lucky
I recently had a conversation with a local physician. Happily, we didn’t talk about my health. Instead, he spoke enthusiastically about his three children, two boys and a girl, all of whom have left home. He told me something unbelievable about them: all three...
New Skill for Parents – Encourage Your Child to Think
It happens on a regular basis. Someone you know - a friend, a spouse, a child, a co-worker - will come to you frustrated because he's having problems. If you're in a hurry and if you have superior experience and wisdom, maybe you can make the problem go away. And...
3 More Gems from Dr. G
People sometimes ask me, "What's your favorite book about parenting?" It's a good question, because there are hundreds of parenting books to choose from. But for me, it's not a hard question. At the top of my list of favorites is Get the Behavior You Want...Without...
Encourage Teens to Think for Themselves
Should you give advice? The answer is the same whether you're relating to another adult or to a teenager. One of my friends has an interesting idiosyncrasy. Whenever we talk, his way of interacting with me is to give me advice. I think he does this because he's...
Why ‘Grow a Smarter Brain’ Is Not a Metaphor
As you may have heard, my new book, How Your Teen Can Grow a Smarter Brain, is now available on Amazon. Several people have commented on the title, that "growing a smarter brain" is a clever metaphor for the process of building vital thinking skills. I continue this...
Parents: Beware of High-Speed Changes in Gaming Culture
First, a new word: "esports." Makes you think that playing video games is a legitimate sport, something like poker, which is featured on ESPN and in the sports sections of most newspapers. So, mom and dad, maybe it's ok, right? Dozens of small universities now promote...
A Most Revealing Story about a Modern-Day Feral Child
A "feral child" is one who spent a significant part of early childhood isolated from civilization, often raised by wild animals. A consistent theme of these stories is that the foundlings had no language or social skills, which are normally learned early in life, and...
A Strategy for Managing Your Child’s Screen Time
In my posts, "Video Game Addiction and Brain Damage" and "Teen Smartphones and Social Networking - Buyer Beware" I described potential threats to normal teen brain development. If you read these articles, you know there are serious downsides to potentially beneficial...
Video Game Addiction and Brain Damage
My doctor asked me if I drink alcohol. I told her I usually have a glass of red wine with dinner and another glass later. She said, "That's probably OK. The research says red wine has a number of health benefits. Men can drink up to two glasses of red wine each day,...
Parents: Your Kids Are Forming Habits – Constantly
My wife and I share a lot in common, but in one interesting way, we are quite different. She drinks a lot of water every day. Wherever she goes, she carries a bottle of filtered water. She's always hydrated. I, on the other hand, rarely drink water. I've been this way...
Teen Nutrition – Healthy Choices Start at Home
This guest post comes from Paige Johnson, who advises on weightlifting and strength training. . . . . . . . The nutrition habits your teens develop now will impact their future health. Here are a few quick tips for instilling the values of a healthy body and mind. Let...
A Fun Game that Develops Kids’ Minds
In my first draft of the above title, the word "Underprivileged" appeared before "Kids." But the game I'm talking about is chess, which can help make any kid smarter, not just at-risk kids or kids from low-income families. That's right. While a lot of people think...
Teens Can Choose to Make Their Brains Smarter – The Stakes Are High
One of the underlying themes of my writing is that parents of teens need to be realistic. But being realistic doesn't necessarily imply some kind of worst-case scenario. Because realistically, lots of really wonderful things can happen during adolescence. For example,...
How Parents Can Penetrate the Separateness
Billions of human beings follow their separate paths, steps followed by steps largely unknown to the people around them - even friends and acquaintances. This limited ability to know for sure what's happening in the lives of others in any given day — actions,...
Perspectives on Teen Sex – a YouTube Video Playlist
After puberty, every normal child will develop the ability to procreate, which includes this necessary element: sexual desire. This is a good thing for the young person and the human species; but the physical changes and new feelings aren’t easy for an adolescent to...
Our Culture is Pressuring Parents to Do Something Really Dumb
"Every year, teens are asked about their general happiness, in addition to how they spend their time. We found that teens who spent more time seeing their friends in person, exercising, playing sports, attending religious services, reading or even doing homework were...
Building a Loving Bridge of Communication with Your Teen
During the first 12 years, you may have enjoyed a close, affectionate relationship with your child. But after puberty, things change. Your child wants to put early childhood in the past, and the push for self-definition and independence begins. The older teens get,...
Distracted Driving – How to Save Your Teen Driver’s Life
The other day I pulled up to an intersection where I turn left to leave my community - something I've done hundreds of times. I looked both ways, began my turn, and almost instantly I was surprised by a loud honking behind me. I instinctively swerved and looked into...
Sexual Harassment/Assault/Misconduct/Abuse – The Cure
As I write this, it seems as if the news reports a new story of high-profile sexual misconduct every day. A few days ago, a story of over 180 sexual assaults by therapists employed by the spa chain, Massage Envy. Yesterday, Matt Lauer is fired by NBC. Today, Garrison...
Your Teen Is Fighting a Hard Battle
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." I love this quote. For me, this plea for compassion hits home more than any other quote on the subject. It's often attributed to Plato, but it comes from Ian Maclaren, 19th-century Scottish author and...
A Must-Hear Message for Teens: You’re in Charge
It’s true that when you came into this world, most of your situation was beyond your control. You didn’t get to choose the time in history you would appear or the place where you would grow up. You didn’t get to choose your parents or other members of your family. You...
The Teen Brain – 3 Big Mistakes Adults Make
About the teen brain, I have some good news and some bad news. First, the good news. Nearly every adult I talk to these days has heard about the teen brain. Fifteen years ago, this was not the case. At the turn of the century, the fact that the prefrontal cortex (PFC)...
Be with Your Child – Right Here, Right Now
The past, the present, and the future. Here are some things to keep in mind. The past doesn't exist. Once you've experienced something, that moment is lost forever, except as a stored memory. Also, the images you've stored in memory are likely to be modified each time...
The Developing Adolescent Brain: My Discussion with Andrea Zacharias
I recently had a fascinating discussion about the adolescent brain with parent coach Andrea Zacharias. If you want to know more about what I do and think about every day, listen in! We talked about my new book: How Your Teen Can Grow a Smarter Brain. More...
Why Teens Are Vulnerable to Peer Pressure
What is self-esteem, anyway? Why is it important to a growing child? Why does it turn out to be a tough issue? What can parents do to nurture stronger self-esteem? Physically, I was a late-bloomer. When I was a freshman in high school, I was the shortest boy in my...
Radical Naivete – Where the Teen Journey Begins
How much wisdom did you have when you were 13? What did you know? More to the point, what insights about life - which could have helped you a lot back then - wouldn't come until much later? I was always considered the smartest kid in my class. I took learning...
How to Monitor Your Child’s Smartphone Use
Smartphones are an amazing window into a world of countless marvels and dangers. Since kids have a lot to learn, giving a child a smartphone needs to be done with exquisite care. In this guest post, Scott Reddler (father of three and author of an infographic about...
How to Buy a Basic Cell Phone for Your Young Teen
If you read my post about the mixed bag of wonders/dangers of smartphones and social networking, your eyes are wide open about pornography, cyberbullying, stranger danger, sexual predators, identity theft, and sex trafficking. And yes, social networking - an addictive...
Teen Smartphones and Social Networking – Buyer Beware
Today, most phone calls are made using wireless smartphones, relayed by Wi-Fi devices in your home or distant radio towers. What we used to call telephones are now called landlines, and these are steadily disappearing. The smartphone technology that people carry in...
Share the Secret – Help Your Teen Care about Developing the Prefrontal Cortex
If you've read about the teen brain, you know it's mostly about a child's final stage of brain development, during which the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is wired for foundation critical thinking skills. In one respect, wiring the PFC is like every other aspect of brain...
How Our Teen Daughter Learned to Manage Money
Money matters can get complicated. Buying what you need and want while living within your means. Purchasing the right amount of insurance. Investing wisely and saving for your child's college education. Minimizing debt and maintaining a strong credit rating....
Sexualization in Children’s TV Shows
When it comes to sex education, parents need to learn more about how our culture sexualizes their kids. This guest post, which addresses this "blind spot," comes from Elizabeth McDade-Montez, Ph.D. a Senior Research Associate at etr.org (Education, Training, and...
What Every Parent Needs to Know about the Brain – a Fun Introduction
You see those beautiful eyes and that heart-melting smile. What you don't see (and probably rarely think about) is what's going on in your child's brain, which is steadily growing, preparing itself for the challenges of adult life, and will continue to do so until...
It’s a Jungle Out There – Raising Strong Kids
We were excited. Bewick's wrens had been building a nest in the little house we had put up to attract them. We watched for days as the male and female flew back and forth with nest material. It was a great location, and this would be our first nest here in the Texas...
The Top 10 Fundamentals of Parenting
When I was a kid there were no parenting books, unless you want to count Dr. Benjamin Spock's classic on baby and child care. Parents were guided by their instincts, sense of responsibility, judgment, and family traditions. Today, parents still rely on these, but they...
The Top 10 Fundamentals of Parenting (Part Two)
Parenting Fundamentals 1-5 were presented in Part One. Here are 6-10: 6. Help your child build a strong work ethic. When I was 15 I mowed my aunt's lawn with a borrowed motorless reel push mower in the middle of a Kansas summer. Whew! She was so impressed with my...
Adulting – Hey, the Kids Are Trying!
I’ve been researching, studying, and writing about parenting for several years now, and the other day I was taken by surprise by something new. Adulting I had never heard the term before. I discovered that it’s used by young adults to mean learning to do things adults...
Growing Kids Need to Believe in Their Future
A few years ago I wrote a book for middle school boys, called Conversations with the Wise Uncle. I then wrote a similar book for young girls. My purpose was to model some of the key conversations young people need to guide them along their journey to being adults....
‘Dating Smarts,’ by Amy Lang
In the adult world, dating is like an audition. An acquaintance asks you out to dinner or an event, which will give you time together to learn more about each other. Will you enjoy each other's company? Will you have shared values and common ground? Will you want to...
Get Stronger for the Challenges in Your Life – Every Day
I know that not everyone wants to "be all you can be." Not everyone is serious enough about personal growth to do something about it. A whole lot of people are happy with who they are, thank you very much, and wake up to each new day content to consume whatever the...
Strong Self-Esteem – The Antidote to Peer Pressure
Why would a teenager do something as stupid as engaging in one of the teen challenges, such as binge-drinking, or swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon, or snorting a condom. Quite a few kids have ended up in the hospital and a few have died. Part of the answer is they...
Talking about Sex with Your Teen
One evening when I was 14, I was sitting on my bed reading a novel when my mom walked past my door. Then she came back, stood in the door, and asked me, "You know about sex, don't you?" Her question took me by surprise. I answered, "Uh, yeah." Her question made me...
Father to Son – What It Means to Be a Man
Once upon a time, when my youngest boy was about 18 years old, we were walking together and he asked me, "Dad, what does masculinity mean to you?" A loaded question. I sensed that he was aware that he was growing into manhood but was unsure what it meant to be a man -...
Video Game Addiction & Child Development
How could viewing over 25 paintings by early San Antonio artist Julian Onderdonk make me think of video game addiction? It happened. The San Antonio Museum of Art recently featured the collection of Onderdonk, an American impressionist painter who died in 1922 at the...
Warning Signs – Teen Drug/Alcohol Use
The surveys and statistics bear it out: teens are misusing drugs and alcohol at younger and younger ages. Parents are often unaware that it’s begun, since the warning signs can take time to appear. The physical, emotional and behavioral changes come on gradually. Now...
Disconnected – The Potential Horrors of Excessive Screen Time
Disconnected, a new book by Thomas Kersting, documents the horrible effects of excessive screen time on children. One of the most insidious technologies is video games, because of its ability to quickly addict the gamer. Here are a few shocking stories excerpted from...
Simon Sinek’s Insights for Parents
Simon Sinek is an author and brilliant speaker who has important messages for corporate America. So why am I recommending that parents listen in? The answer: Millennials - a new, really different generation of entry-level workers that employers aren't sure how to...
To Kill or Not to Kill – That Is the Question
If you read news articles, you know that it's not uncommon to read about murder. I learn about such incidents all too often; I reflect on the loss of life, how the killer's life will be horribly changed forever, and whether the tragic event could have been prevented....
The Girl in the Rain & the Value of Hard Work
I stood under the front entrance canopy of the H.E.B. grocery store as I watched cold rain pouring onto the parking lot. Slowly moving toward me was a young woman pushing a train of about fifteen shopping carts. Her head was down as she leaned into the carts,...
Get Real about Video Games and Excessive Screen Exposure
I recently spoke with a mother of three boys, ages 11, 13 and 15. She told me she and her husband plan to give all three sons video game consoles for Christmas. Of course, they'll win a lot of “best mom and dad” points with these gifts. She and the father believe that...
Teens Abusing OTC Cough Medicine Can Cause Permanent Brain Damage
Doctors routinely warn women to avoid smoking and using alcohol or drugs during pregnancy. Why? Because the unborn child’s body and brain are slowly developing, and the mother’s blood provides materials to the placenta, which nurtures the growing fetus. If the mother...
Girls and Make-Up – 5 Tips to Help Your Daughter Try It the Right Way
This guest post comes from Mercedes Samudio, LCSW, a parent coach who helps parents achieve dynamic parent/child relationships, ending the shame around parenting and giving parents the confidence to raise healthy children in today’s world. She is a leading parenting...
Dialogue – The Effective Alternative to Arguing
I learned to never disagree with my dad. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, the few times that I expressed a contrary point of view — when I was old enough to feel confident that I had something to say — he physically attacked me. He never hurt me, because I was...
Erratic Teen Behavior – It’s Not a ‘Phase’ They Outgrow
Since the 1990’s, when Dr. Jay Giedd and his colleagues at the National Institute for Mental Health published their pioneering research about adolescent brain development, more than a dozen authors with different backgrounds have written about “the teen brain.” For...
Grandpa Opened My Eyes to the World of Achievement
It was the summer of 1960, and I was 15. Elvis’ active duty service in the Army was behind him, and John Kennedy was running for President. My father, a chief warrant officer in the Army, had been reassigned to Germany and our family would follow six months later when...
5 Ways to Prevent Teen OTC Medicine Abuse
When teens abuse any kind of drug - legal or illegal, prescription or OTC - it can disrupt ongoing brain development in the prefrontal cortex, with lifelong consequences. This guest post comes from Blaise Brooks, a mother of one, caregiver of two and a contributor to...
Intellectually Powerful Minds Are Developed, Not Inherited – 5 Things Parents Can Do
In a separate post, I quoted Dr. Jay Giedd, the pioneering brain researcher who discovered that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is still under development during a child's adolescence, that this is the "smart" area of the brain, and that wiring the PFC will vary greatly...
What Adolescent Brain Research Pioneer Dr. Jay Giedd Has to Say…
For readers who are unfamiliar with Dr. Jay Giedd's work, he entered the Residency Program at the Menninger School of Psychiatry, transferred to the Barrow Neurological Institute and completed his residency in psychiatry in 1989. He was a postgraduate fellow in the...
10 Things Kids Need to Be Able to Do on Their Own by Middle School
The second 10 years of a child's life is their last opportunity to prepare for the challenges of adult life. This guest post was written by Elisabeth Stitt, a parenting expert who focuses on middle school adolescent children. She is the author of Parenting as a Second...
From Good Dad to Great Dad – The Impact of Imminent Death
Remember the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in 2009? And the heroism of the pilot who kept his cool, saving everyone on board? In 2016 Clint Eastwood has created a thought-provoking movie about this real-life hero, who was later investigated and...
Why and How Children Communicate
Abraham J. Weiss, MA. is a marriage and family therapist on the staff of Family Enhancement LLC, in New York City. In this brief article, he shares a vastly important insight about the true nature of children. There is a profound difference between the way children...
A Story of Family Love
My wife and I often go to Corpus Christi to visit her sister and husband. Since their son now has a young daughter and their oldest daughter has two daughters and a son, they've been thrilled to be grandparents. There's a lot of love going on there. Love is what it's...
Conscious, In-Control Parents
As a parent, you have four ways of taking action... You do what other people tell you to do. Husband. Friend. Relative. Your TV. You react instinctively, emotionally. You unconsciously act out of habit. Your brain is wired for a particular behavior pattern. You...
How Your Child Learns Skills
When your child gets involved in an activity, it will probably involve learning certain skills. Home/life skills? Relationship skills? Athletic? Musical? Artistic? Mechanical? Construction? Academic? Thinking? Managing? If some of the skills your child has to learn...
Wisdom for an Adolescent Child
Epictetus (c. 55 – 135) was born a slave in Turkey nearly 2,000 years ago and then lived in Rome until he was banished to Greece. He was one of the Stoic philosophers. Epictetus taught that philosophy had to be more than theoretical; it had to be the way you lived...
How Swimming Makes Kids Smarter
Kids learn better when movement and exercise are a part of their day. This guest post comes to us from Lizzy Bullock, writer and swim instructor for AquaGear. Children in a school setting are often told to "stop fidgeting," to "sit still," and to "stay seated." But...
Your Teen’s Brain Is Being Pruned – A Red Flag for Parents
I have a 15-year-old nephew. The last time I saw him he was doing what most kids his age are doing: sitting on a couch browsing his smartphone. At the time I was thinking that a lot of unused brain cell connections were in the process of being "pruned" from his...
Dr. Lynne Kenney’s Work Prepares Young Minds for Adolescent Brain Development
I've written extensively about the development of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during adolescence. At puberty, a child's PFC undergoes a "second blooming," which begins a roughly 12-year period of development. During this period (adolescence) unused brain connections...
How Parents Become Confident
This guest post comes from parent coach Fern Weis. After teaching middle school for 13 years, she trained as a life coach and founded her business, Your Family Matters, in 2008. Since then she’s been teaching and supporting parents on the parent-teen relationship....
So You Want Your Child to Be Resilient…
Is your child resilient? Do you want your child to be more resilient? A non-scientific definition: Resilience is the ability to recover or “bounce back” from loss, stress, or disappointment – setbacks that can cause someone to doubt his or her self-confidence and...
Mindfulness – the Doorway to Empathy
Mindful - an often-used word. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it means "aware of something that may be important." Aware - feel or experience something Something that may be important. One of the most important things you can be mindful of: your child....
3 Realities Over-Protective Parents Haven’t Grasped
Out of love, many parents hover over their kids to protect them from distress or harm, to make sure they feel good about themselves and to assure they are launched on a path to success when they leave home. The all-too-frequent result: young adults who lack...
How to Identify & Prevent OTC Cough Medicine Abuse
The idea that your child could be abusing alcohol or illegal drugs is scary enough. In fact, you also need to be aware that he or she could be abusing the over-the-counter medications in your home - a very real concern for parents of adolescents. This guest post by...
How to Raise an Adult
How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success (Holt, 2015), by Julie Lythcott-Haims, is the best book ever written about the kind of overparenting that has produced the struggling young adults of the Millennial...
Constructing a Child’s Intellectual Foundation – What Parents Can Do
I've posted before about the importance of critical thinking and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a young person to lay down a foundation of critical thinking skills in the developing prefrontal cortex - what I often refer to as "the smart part" of the brain....
When You Gaze at Your Child with Love, Do You See an Adult?
On the occasion of my 50th class reunion, I remembered some of my West Point classmates. One in particular, I'll call him Joey Sheed, graduated near the top of our class. As a freshman, I was in awe of him. We attended several classes together, and he never...
Instinctive Reactions – Consequences and Alternatives
When you were in high school, did you take that Parent-Child Relationship Skills course? I'm sorry - trick question. No such course has ever been included in a high school curriculum. Well, how about college? No? Any other course in your church or community or even...
For Teens – 10 Success Tips That Will Never Fail You
Do you have a teenager who sometimes looks to the future and wonders how he or she is going to make it in the world? If you do, count your blessings. Most kids don't start thinking about this until after they leave home. When I was teaching at the College of William...
Dr. G Says: Chores Help Kids Learn Life Skills
A friend of mine grew up in a family of 12 children. Her mom spent most of her day managing the office of her father, a successful lawyer and politician. To manage both the office and her large family, her mother assigned tasks to each of the kids, according to their...
What’s the Ultimate Purpose of Your Parenting?
I was fortunate to have two parents while growing up: a father and a mother who loved me. They were good people. They did everything they knew how to take care of a household of eight kids. But to be honest, they didn’t raise me with a clearly envisioned outcome in...
Get Real and Get on the Same Page with Your Teen
Dad lets his son borrow the car. "Be sure to have it back by six. I've got an important place to be tonight." "No problem, Dad." Six o'clock comes and goes. With no sign of his son, he makes the call. "Where are you? I said I needed the car by six." "Oh yeah. Sorry,...
Get Back That Loving Feeling – 3 Simple Steps to Empathy
What every parent knows: unconditional love is the foundation. But child misbehavior can temporarily make it hard to access this love, much less express it. In its place, your instinctive negative reaction: frustration, fatigue, disappointment, discouragement, hurt,...
Book by Elisabeth Stitt – Parenting As a Second Language
Reading Parenting...As a Second Language is like chatting with a wise, compassionate woman who's experienced every aspect of being a parent. It's more like a conversation than listening to simple advice. The author, Elisabeth Stitt, happens to be one of the most...
Adults Who Mentor Teens – How Effective Are Their Communication Skills?
In his classic parenting book, The Wonder of Boys, psychologist Michael Gurian claims that “three families – not one” are needed to raise a healthy child to be a happy, successful adult. The first family is the “nuclear family”—the parents and grandparents who raise...
What Can Parents Do to Help Their Child Become One of the Smart Ones?
During the first few months of life, parents show lots of colorful, noise-making objects to their infant. Slowly, the baby learns to pay attention. The child is doing the work to program the neural pathways for sight. During the first year of life, parents guide and...
The Value of a Work Ethic – Anderson Cooper’s Unique Upbringing
One of the cries of the heart from many of the parents of grown children is that their kids are still living at home, that they don't have the focus and will to make their way in life. Parents know that making a life for yourself involves hard work. But the kids don't...
5 Ways to Help Your Self-Conscious Teen Build Healthy Self-Esteem
This guest post is authored by Kristine Tye, M.A. MFT, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California who specializes in anxiety treatment and teen mental health. She engages teens in a therapeutic process that builds self-awareness and develops tools for...
Strong for Acceptance – Straight Talk for Parents
Being an effective parent, guiding your child toward becoming a capable, happy, independent adult...this is now a part of your life. And life isn't easy, not for anyone. For all of us - the challenges, disappointments, pain, and loss are inevitable. We need to work...
Powerful Insight for Adults Who Mentor Teens
Adults care a great deal about the youth in their communities. They want fewer kids to be at risk. They want more kids growing up to be strong, happy, successful adults. They're willing to be mentors to young people. And it’s important that they do because it takes a...
A Source of Wisdom is Gone – But Not Forgotten…
Wayne Dyer, a prolific personal development author, died from a heart attack last year at the age of 75. I'd been a huge fan for over 20 years, beginning with his classic best-seller, Your Erroneous Zones (1993) and including many other books. I always had the sense...
Chores – A Powerful Way to Build a Teen’s Self-Esteem
This guest post comes from parent coach Fern Weis. After teaching middle school for 13 years, she trained as a life coach and founded her business, Your Family Matters, in 2008. Since then she's been teaching and supporting parents on the parent-teen relationship. I...
Here Comes “The Crunch Point”!
Conscious, caring parents often realize they can get better results by trying more effective approaches. But it's not that simple. Inevitably, most people get discouraged when they try to improve a skill or change a behavior pattern. Once they find out that what...
From Dr. G – 63 Strategies for Raising Great Kids
Deborah Gilboa, MD, is a family physician practicing in Pittsburgh, PA, author of four parenting books, featured parenting expert on television and Huffington Post, speaker, and mother of four boys. She advises parents on every conceivable issue, and her...
Love Is Essential, But It’s Not Enough
I recently streamed the movie, About Sunny, starring Lauren Ambrose, an accomplished but relatively unknown young actress. Whenever a movie is excellent in every way and I want Netflix to give me more suggestions like it, I always rate it 5 stars. Released in 2013,...
Developing Your Child’s Character Strength – Some Words to the Wise
I often mention that teenagers have a "full plate." The demands on their time can be stress-producing, even overwhelming. Part of the reason for this is that to arrive at adulthood, prepared for the challenges they'll face, they have a lot to learn. In addition to...
The Secret to Resolving a Conflict with Your Teen
When was the last time you were at odds with your teen? Your child wanted to do something that you considered unacceptable. You both felt justified, producing an argument or struggle that had the potential to damage your relationship. Most conflicts can be resolved in...
3 Ways to Stop Nagging
This guest post comes from Deborah Gilboa, MD (popularly known as Dr. G), an internationally renowned parenting and youth development expert. She is also a family physician and mom of four boys. Dr G., founder of AskDoctorG.com, is the go-to expert on raising and...
As Teens Learn to Be Adults, Remember They Aren’t There Yet
The father lets his son borrow the car. "Be sure to have it back by six. I'll need it later tonight." "No problem, Dad." Six o'clock comes and goes. With no sign of his son, he makes the call. "Where are you? I said I needed the car by six." "Oh yeah. Sorry, Dad. We...
Teen Brain 2.0 – 5 Realities for Parents
Most of the 50 million parents of school-aged children in the U.S. are all too aware of the gauntlet of dangers that threaten when a child becomes an adolescent: under-age smoking and drinking; drug abuse and addiction; low self-esteem and peer pressure; self-harm and...
Rebellious Teens – Do You React or Communicate?
When they're little you read to them, hoping they'll learn to love books and reading and learning. Before you know it they're in school, beginning a learning journey that will teach them about the world. And in half a dozen years, puberty begins the physical and...
The Game-Changer – How You Talk to Your Teen
Teenagers know they're growing up, and they don't like being treated like little kids. They need the wisdom and guidance of parents and other adults. But they hate lectures, sarcasm, put-downs, screaming, commands, threats, ultimatums, shaming, judging, and blaming....
Beyond High School – Preparing for the Launch
What will the next step be? College? A job? Technical training? A gap year? Missionary work? Military service? Marriage and a family? Every parent who has raised a teenager to this threshold is concerned that the child will be able to handle the challenges and...
We All Need a Little Luck
I was thinking about my mother recently. A few months before she died, Mom and I were talking on the phone about my seven brothers and sisters. I joked that she had so many kids because she loved taking care of babies. After one child left the infant stage, she would...
3 Metaphors: Advice for Parenting Teens
This guest post comes from Elisabeth Stitt of Joyful Parenting Coaching. A veteran teacher turned parenting coach and blogger, she knows that kids and families come in all different shapes and sizes and that there is a long and varied list of parenting practices that...
Ask Questions That Help Young People Learn to Think for Themselves
For the past several years my wife, Kathleen Scott, has contributed dozens of articles to the San Antonio Express-News travel and lifestyle sections. She has also been working on the third draft of a mystery novel. I think it's remarkable that she made a successful...
Young People Need Wisdom
Forty years ago, I was in graduate school at Duke University, in over my head, studying hard and learning as much as I could to catch up with my better-prepared classmates. It paid off - I earned my Ph.D. four years later. It was the most intense period of learning in...
Empathy – A Personal Story
To be the best listener you can be, I believe you need two, closely related skills: active listening and empathy. I learned active listening in 1976, and I've been practicing it and writing about it ever since. The core skill in active listening is to check what you...
A Huge Tip – Forgive the Small Things
As we prepared to go the gym for our morning workout, my wife discovered that she had misplaced her car keys. We searched for ten minutes and finally found them in the car, still in the ignition. Unfortunately, the battery was dead because she was listening to the...
Pound the Rock – Hope for Parents
It's been said many, many times that parenting a teenager may be the hardest thing you ever do. It can sometimes seem like a thankless, hopeless endeavor. You have your dream - to help your child grow up to be a strong, independent, happy, successful adult. But most...
Listening Well to a Teenager Can Be Hard – Some New Encouragement
You may have heard it said that "Few people are good listeners." While this may ring true, I know you'd like to be a better listener for your teen. The benefits to your relationship are enormous. What you find out! The amazing way it strengthens the bond between you....
Help Your Teen Become a Critical Thinker
These days, parents hear a lot about the "teen brain" in the popular media. The message is that the "prefrontal cortex" (PFC), the area of the brain in charge of controlling impulses, is still under construction - that this a big reason why the behavior of teens is...
Movies, Popcorn, and Wisdom
In another article, I made the point that to prepare for the significant challenges of adult life, a child has to learn a lot more than what is taught in school. Among other things, wisdom. When I grew up, I was fairly smart in school, making straight A's every...
Forget Halloween – Here’s Something REALLY Scary
In this piece, I reference an interesting video. Even though you may find it shocking, watch it all the way through. Don't click off just because you think it's disgusting. The clips were recorded by the teens themselves. There are thousands of videos like this posted...
For Your Child – The Best Feedback in the World
Compliments. Praise. Recognition. Affirmation. Gratitude. Appreciation. Positive feedback. Positive strokes. Pats on the back. Constructive feedback. Good stuff! Unfortunately, most of the feedback we give our kids is negative. You know - CRITICISM. When we're...
Are Young People Preparing for the Realities of Adult Life?
Studying well in school is important. Those 12 years - and university - are important. But along the way, a young person needs to learn many non-academic skills and strengths that are vital for relationships and a career. While some of this can be acquired from school...
Screen Time, by Lisa Guernsey
Did you read my review of Reset Your Child's Brain (2015), by Victoria Dunckley? Dunckley is a psychiatrist who has treated hundreds of young people who suffered from behavior disorders caused by excessive screen time (video games, cell phones, tablets, TV, etc.). Her...
Creative Mom Takes ‘Village’ Concept Seriously
If you've never gone to war or if you've never had to stay behind when your spouse is deployed, you can never fully appreciate the worry, loneliness and hardship of trying to raise a family not knowing if or when the family will be together again. Or how the returning...
7 Ways to Promote the Parent-Child Bond
Thanks to Maureen Denard at FindaNanny.net for this guest post. The adolescent years can stress a parent-child relationship. This article has several practical ideas for helping the bond to grow stronger. In a world where there never seems to be enough time to get...
What’s the True Purpose of the Prefrontal Cortex?
One of the most important aspects of adolescent development is what experts refer to as the "teen brain." And the big issue with the teen brain is the development of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The question is, how exactly does this much-talked-about PFC contribute...
The Secret to Connecting with Your Teen: Effective Communication Skills
A teenager made a dumb mistake and damaged a tool. His father, angry, shouted at him about carelessness and irresponsibility. No love, understanding or respect was communicated in the heated interchange. The boy felt like a failure and resented his father for putting...
Making the Future Real for Teenagers
It's a "race against time" because your child has only one chance to exercise critical thinking repeatedly or the basic foundation wiring for intellect won't happen. Time will run out at the end of adolescence and your child will have to live with a minimal intellect,...
Mark Cuban – Model Parent?
During the past 30 years, I've had the chance to meet and talk with quite a few sons and daughters of wealthy people. It isn't easy to start a business and make it profitable. The parents of these kids worked hard to earn what they have. In my experience, wealthy...
3 Tips for Giving Your Kids the Right Amount of Independence
Special guest post by Winter Amity, freelance writer on technology and parenting topics. These days, children are exposed to a huge variety of media, and parents can get understandably upset about the kind of information they’re taking in. With mobile phones, tablets,...
The Right Way to Praise a Child
Self-esteem is how people see themselves - their perception of self-worth, who they believe they are. Low self-esteem can build from making mistakes, from not forgiving oneself, and from too much criticism from authority figures such as parents, elders, teachers, or...
Top 10 Must-Read Books for Parents of Adolescents
IF (1) you have an adolescent child or one who is soon to reach puberty, and (2) you're a conscious parent who is looking for wisdom and guidance to avoid the potential crises of adolescence while preparing your child to be a happy, successful adult, then you'll want...
Is Your Child Preparing for Adult Life?
I'm recalling a moderately adverse experience that started with a phone call. My wife was about to return home from a shopping excursion at a mall about 30 miles away when her car wouldn't start. She asked me to drive to the mall to give her a jump-start because it...
10 Common Mistakes Parents Today Make
Guest post by Kari Kampakis, author of 10 Ultimate Truths Girls Should Know. When I became a mom, I got lots of advice on how to love my child. But not until a few years ago did someone actually point out that loving a child means wanting what’s best for them...
4 Magic Questions That Will Help Your Child Learn from Experience
Kids can learn a lot from experience. But that doesn't mean they will, just because something happened to them. Most of the time young people go from one life event to another without learning a thing. The same thing is true of adults! What makes the difference?...
New Book Reveals the Damaging Effects of Excessive Screen Time – Reset Your Child’s Brain, by Victoria Dunckley, MD
One crucial step in helping your adolescent child build a superior mind is to protect the prefrontal cortex (PFC) from damage during adolescence - the developmental period for wiring the foundation for critical thinking. To this end, I've written a number of posts...
In the U.S., 14 Teens Die from Suicide Every Day
In 2014 a huge tornado devastated a small town in Oklahoma, killing 24 people. Stories and images of the destruction were all over the Internet, the newspapers and television news. The coverage reminded me of when in early June, 1966, I walked among the ruins in...
The Listening Moment & The Listening Mindset
Listening is the most powerful skill a parent can have. It has the potential to "change the game" with regard to your relationship with your child. In my writing about this skill, I refer to it as "listening to understand," a phrase I borrowed from Stephen Covey's...
Michael Gurian – The Wonder of Boys
The thing I appreciate most about Michael Gurian’s parenting books is their focus on brain science. I’ve studied the human brain for 25 years, and I can tell you that no parenting author writes with more clarity, authority, and accessibility than Michael Gurian. His...
Michael Gurian – The Wonder of Girls
Two decades ago, Michael Gurian's best-selling book, The Wonder of Boys, created a stir. The push for women's rights assumed the developmental needs of both genders were the same. Going against this assumption, he made a convincing case that while boys and girls...
Do You Know What FASD is? Implications for Adolescent Children
FASD stands for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder: a variety of permanent birth defects caused by the mother's consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. The mother consumes alcohol, the substance travels to the womb, where it can disrupt normal development of the unborn...
For Moms and Dads – An Introductory Tour of the Human Brain
Often when I write about adolescence, I make reference to a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. To help you appreciate where that part of the brain is and what it does, I'll give you a quick guided tour of your brain. I'll do my best here, even though the...
The Best Christmas Gift Ever
I accidentally help wire my boys' teen brains for critical thinking. It was Christmas 1982, and like all parents at the time, I knew nothing about the teen brain. But I didn't think twice about what to give them for Christmas. It just seemed like a great idea at the...
Between Parent & Teenager – Still Great after All These Years
Between Parent & Teenager (1967), by Dr. Haim G. Ginott, was published before many of today's parents of teenagers were born. Ginott, who has been dead for forty years, was a well-known child psychologist and parent educator. His insight was to encourage parents...
Why Helicopter Parenting? Some Answers…
Helicopter parenting has been the focus of quite a few articles in the media. Parents over-praising their kids because they feel it promotes self-esteem, even though in the long run it creates adults who are afraid to fail and so play it safe. Parents intervening to...
A Tragic True Story about Low Self-Esteem
Whenever I think about positive self-esteem and its importance to the achievement, mental health, and happiness of young people, I think of how perilous a life journey can be. And I always think of Jason. Jason was the second child in a large Catholic family. His...
How to Help Your Teen Grow a Smarter Brain
Every time a teenager tries to figure out why something happened, tries to understand the relationship between thing A and thing B, tries to see the connection between cause and effect, foresees possible consequences, evaluates options, solves problems and consciously...
Stephen Covey – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families
Published seven years after his classic business book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People (1990), this book is a classic in its own right. Its underlying premise is that the behavior patterns that make people successful in business are fundamental; they make...
Conscious Parents – The Focus of My Work
Have you seen the movie, "Lonesome Jim" (2005)? Starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler, it's the story of a man in his late twenties who, after failing to create a life for himself in New York City, returns home to live with his parents while he considers his options....
How a Young Person Gets a Strong Work Ethic
I once coached a 43-year-old man who lived at home and had never worked a day in his life. At the time, interest rates had fallen to all-time lows, so the annual interest on his trust fund principal had diminished considerably. To continue living in the style to which...
Your Teen Needs Lots of “Talks”
I've written two books, Conversations with the Wise Uncle (for boys) and Conversations with the Wise Aunt (for girls) that are fictional accounts about an older relative mentoring a young person during the teen years to give the child a "heads up" about important...
Joanie B. Connell – Flying without a Helicopter
Recently I had an interesting conversation with an IT executive about his technical staff, and we ended up talking about "millennials," the generation of adults currently in their twenties and early thirties. He said their narcissism, lack of resilience, an attitude...
Should You Protect Your Child from Adversity?
When Leo was growing up, his father rented a farm and worked it to raise crops. His dad needed his son’s help, so he taught the boy how to use tools and farm equipment. When he was fifteen his father died, and to care for his mother Leo had to take over working the...
Adolescent Binge-Drinking – 10 Actions a Parent Can Take
Drinking alcohol with the expressed purpose of getting "messed up"? Believe it or not, this is an activity practiced mostly by kids. Watch this brief video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbJhMumorNY What can a parent do? 1. Get the book, How Your Teen Can Grow a...
P.E.T. – My Introduction to Parent-Teen Communication Skills
A few years ago my wife and I were doing some recreational house-hunting. While viewing a beautiful home, she commented, "I like this house but we'd need to replace all the tile floors." I thought the tile was nice. After mentally estimating the cost of replacement, I...
Wisdom for Leaders Borrowed for Parents – 9 Inspiring Quotes
In another post, I wrote about a terrific parenting book called CDO Chief Daddy Officer: The Business of Fatherhood, by Chris Efessiou. A highly successful business leader and father, he made a strong case that many of the fundamentals of effective leadership also...
Composure: How to Keep Your Cool
My dad was a really nice guy. But I remember that when I was a teenager, he lost his temper with me three times. Yes, exactly three times. And the sad thing is that half a century later I still remember each incident in detail. In my mind, his reactions were overblown...
Susan Stiffelman – Parenting with Presence
My preference is to think of spirituality as being grounded in this world and this life, not in a concept of a world and life beyond the here and now. And it has three dimensions: the spirituality of self, the spirituality of relationships, and the spirituality of my...
Parents: You Can Change Your Teen’s Behavior
Father: “Hey, son. I thought I asked you to clean and put away the tools after you use them.” Son: “Oh. Right.” Father: “Well, the tools you used last night are still on the bench. Why didn’t you put them away?” Son: “I don’t know. I guess I forgot.” Father: “I told...
Adolescence Defined
Most parents think of their child as "officially" an adolescent when they technically become a teenager on their 13th birthday. And they think their project of raising the child to adulthood is pretty much over after high school, when most of these young adults leave...
West Point Ingrained My Critical Thinking Skills
When I was in high school, I got an A in every subject I ever took. I didn’t find out until later that I hadn’t learned as much as I thought. But man, I knew how to make A’s! My dad was in the military, so I knew all about West Point. For years I wanted to go to...
Chief Daddy Officer – Loving Father ‘Leads’ His Daughter
This is a unique book on parenting. Chris Efessiou, a highly successful entrepreneur and executive, believes that the personal strengths and interpersonal skills essential to effective leadership also apply to being an effective parent. I've always believed this, and...
Teen Marijuana Use – The Stupidity Could Persist Throughout Adult Life
A new study has concluded that teenagers who smoke pot suffer a significant drop in IQ that persists even if they stop smoking it later in life. The article doesn't explain why, except for this statement by lead researcher Madeline Meier of Duke University: "Parents...
Teen Sex – A Crisis with Solutions
For the past few years, I've been interviewing adults about their adolescent experiences. I always ask, "What did your parents tell you about sex?" Ninety-five percent of the time the answer is, "Nothing." I remember the one and only time the topic of sex came up in...
Chess – A Fun Game That Can Make Your Child Smarter
If you've followed my blog, you know I often write about a child's prefrontal cortex (PFC) can be wired for basic critical thinking skills. The window of opportunity for advanced development of the PFC opens at puberty and closes sometime in the early twenties. When a...
Jar of Marbles – The “Life Perspective” Talk
The sound of the front door shutting announced that Ricardo was home from practice. His dad met him in the hallway. "How was it today?" "It was okay. We did a lot of conditioning drills and I'm beat." "Good stuff. I'll bet you're thirsty. Come on into the kitchen and...
Low Self-Esteem – One of the Perils of Adolescence
For many young people, low self-esteem comes with the territory. They don't want to be thought of as children anymore, but they know they're not adults. They lack the knowledge, skills, judgment, experience, resources, authority, confidence and maturity that may come...
Larry Winget – Your Kids Are Your Own Fault
Over the decades, a lot of bad advice for parents has been published. Strategies such as false praise, helicopter parenting and permissiveness may have played to parents' fears of losing the love of their child, but the consequences have been horrendous. After...
Top 3 Ways to Give a Kid an Edge in Life
It's amazing what you see when you step outside the box. I've been focusing on the special challenge of raising teenagers for several years now, and I've been outside the box the whole time. Inside the box, you understand that you need to sacrifice and save money for...
Teen Decisions – Habit, Emotion or Reason?
I consider myself a serious thinker. But to be honest, I'm not an intellectual. I'm biased towards action. I have a Ph.D., but 95% of what I know today I learned on my own after earning that degree. So seemingly my head is full of knowledge. Some people have used the...
Teen Suicide – Parents Can Help to Prevent It
Not long ago I was sitting at a table drinking coffee and talking with Johann Eyfells, the world-famous Icelandic sculptor. At some point, I used the word "luck." He quickly seized on the word. "Luck. What is luck?" From a man who has been on the planet 20 years...
Rich Kids Disabled by Wealth
Jennifer was a clerk at an auto parts store in Vista Hills. She got the job because Jackson, her husband, was a mechanic at the Chevrolet dealership and was friends with the owner. But she, like her husband, was a hard worker and added a lot more value than was...
The Story Behind the “Wise Uncle” and “Wise Aunt” Books
For quite a while now, I've been involved in an anecdotal research project in which I interview adults about their experiences as teenagers. This effort has taught me a lot about what I call "the teen journey." One day while visiting one of my best friends, I asked...
Who I Write For – Parents Who Are Willing to Do the Work
Most mornings it's still dark when I leave my driveway to head to the gym. Often during the school year as I pass a certain intersection, I see a car with its headlights on parked by the side of the road. It's a parent - a caring, protective parent who waits with his...
Young People Who Read Develop Superior Minds
I have a friend whose dad had a personal library of several thousand books. When my friend was about ten years old, his dad enrolled him in a speed-reading course. Soon afterward, he began reading the classics of world literature. One great book at a time, he became a...
Why You Need to Forgive Your Child – And Yourself
Many parents think that when you forgive a young person, you're doing something for the child. Yes, your child may regret doing something that hurt your feelings and may have asked for forgiveness. And indeed, telling the child that you forgive may give some...
Sean Covey’s Book for Teens – The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make
Teens are famous for doing wild and crazy things without thinking about the consequences. I shudder when I remember some of my own antics as a teenager. Of course one of the reasons for this behavior is that they're experimenting and exploring their independence at a...
Helping Young People Grow Strong for Life and Success
A successful, happy life. I guess everybody knows it takes more than than money and beauty. Just ask Bernie Madoff. And guess what...It also takes a lot more than a good education and business know-how. I try to stress this point with parents. Yes, kids need a good...
Teen Sex – A Nice Way to Say No
The book Conversations with the Wise Aunt has a chapter entitled "A Nice Way to Say No," in which Aunt Maria explains to her niece, Trisha, how boys are different from girls when it comes to attitudes about sex. This brief excerpt is about how a teenage girl can set...
I Recall My Early Teen Years – Some Surprises
A few years ago, I had a reunion with some old high school buddies that I hadn't seen in nearly 50 years. It was an amazing experience and a lot of fun. But I remember one comment my old friend Brian made about me: “Coates, you were always up to something. I never...
The Brain Talk – A Young Girl Learns What’s Happening in Her Teen Brain
I'm just guessing, but it may be true that no teenager in the long history of planet Earth has ever been given "the brain talk," even though it's probably some of the most important information a teen can have. Nevertheless, imagine a young teenage girl having lunch...
Teenagers, Alcohol and Brain Damage
Adolescence is a perilous time. This is the period from about age 10 until the early 20s when the prefrontal cortex is going through the critical "use it or lose it" blossoming and pruning process on the way to establishing an individual's foundation for critical...
Why Do They Act That Way, by David Walsh, Ph.D.
Do you have a teenager in your life? I ask this question a lot these days, because a young person's developmental experience during the dozen or so years called adolescence has become my passionate interest. I feel fortunate that my life has brought me to my current...
Patience – You’ll Need It to Do the Hard Things
Raising a child is hard. We'd like to believe that all you need to do is appreciate the miracle of the child and reach out with love at every moment. But of course, there's so much more to it than that. Parenting skills. Being strong when things go south. In the...
The Developing Adolescent Brain – What’s at Stake
The human brain has a unique way of developing itself. A child's brain develops in phases. During each phase, the basic foundation for a particular brain function - such as visual perception, walking, or talking - is "wired." The human brain's way of wiring itself is...