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…
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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…
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…
In many ways, I’m thrilled to put 2020 in my rear-view mirror. The awful Covid-19 pandemic, managed awfully by our nation’s leaders. The result: tens of millions of Americans sickened,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 “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…
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…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
, 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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….
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….
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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In my book, How Your Teen Can Grow a Smarter Brain, I describe as simply as possible something of utmost importance: the part of the brain that makes a human…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…