by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Behavior Change, Education, Encouragement, Parent-child Communication
What is it like to be a child? Do you have any memory of this? A refresher: Compared to any adult, a child is lacking in almost every way. Physically smaller than an adult, without financial resources, and woefully lacking in understanding about how the world and...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Behavior Change, Critical Thinking, Strong for Parenting, Teen Culture, Teen Sex
Eventually, your teen may want to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Most parents become concerned at this point because these relationships are new, and their child may be feeling natural sexual urges and want to explore. Of course, the consequences of teen sex could...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Behavior Change, Critical Thinking, Education, Encouragement, Parenting, Parenting Books, Self-Esteem, Strong for Parenting
Life is challenging, for kids as well as adults. It takes character strength to deal with these challenges, to do the right things, the hard things. Character strength comes from dozens of behavior patterns that people form throughout life. And these behavior patterns...
by Dennis Coates | Behavior Change, Inspiring Quotes, Parenting, Parenting Books, Self-Esteem, Uncategorized
Impatience can ruin a parent-child moment. But how can you strive to be more patient if you aren’t aware that you need to? Empathy is one of the keys to growing the bond with your child. But how can you exercise empathy more consistently if you don’t...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Behavior Change, Encouragement, Parent-child Communication, Parenting, Parenting Books, Personal Strength, Teen Success, Uncategorized
Being a parent means doing hard things on a regular basis. In other words, raising a child to be a happy, successful, independent adult will require you to engage many aspects of character strength. Likewise, to succeed in life as an adult, a child will also have to...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Behavior Change, Personal Strength, Self-Esteem, Teen Success
I remember an incident in which my two sons were playing together outside. One got mad at the other and it came to blows. In retrospect, I understand that a contributing factor was their underdeveloped ability to exercise empathy. That was then, over 40 years ago....
