My conversations with my sister have a pattern. They always begin with me answering her list of questions (she’s a journalist). Once the “interview” is done, then I can ask her what's new and gradually bring it down into what’s important to her these days. It’s a well-worn pattern. The truth is that we’re all creatures of habit. Our amygdalae love it when everything is familiar and predictable. And that applies to our communications as well. Think about the patterns of commun

When you get into the car and realize you’ve forgotten your phone, you head back into the house trying to remember where you set it down. You retrace your steps backwards from the hallway to the kitchen, to the bathroom and… you find it. When you’re parenting your teen, peace sometimes is to be found by retracing your steps back to your own adolescence and finding a healthy way to finally express the emotions that you had to suppress back then. How our Adolescent Wounds get s

When you make a fresh salad, some of the best parts fall to the bottom of the bowl. All you see are the greens, but you know that there are avocado chunks, cherry tomatoes, almonds and pieces of feta or tofu farther down.   There’ no doubt about what to do if you’re at home – dig down and get all the goodness onto your plate.  Now imagine you’re at a potluck with friends or a wedding banquet. Are you still willing to dig down when you don’t know how others will react? When yo

I rarely meet a parent who denies having felt some guilt about how they’ve raised their kids. I hear things like, “I wasn’t there enough. I wasn’t affectionate enough. I said hurtful things, yelled, hit, spanked and blamed. I was a bad role model. I didn’t take the time to understand my children. I pushed too hard / didn’t push enough.” The way I see it, a certain level of guilt is natural when our hearts are so fully engaged and we’re committed to doing our best in a job we’

“When my daughter gets anxious, I can feel her stress and fear as if it were my own. My chest gets tight and my breath gets shallower. I get caught up in the whole atmosphere of tension and I’m unable to support her in the way she needs.” “I hate it when he gets upset and mopes around. I try to stay in my own lane but, before I know it, I’m as miserable as he is. Even when he's not at home, I feel it. But I don’t want his moods to dictate mine. It makes it worse for both of

Raising a teenager requires an elasticity of the soul. They stretch us in ways we didn't know we were capable of stretching and we never come back to our original shape. And for this we thank them… eventually. When did the stretching begin for you? Perhaps it was the moment of conception when you felt yourself change. Or the miraculous day you found out you were pregnant and your world expanded. You saw a fresh horizon and so many things became possible. And then there was

Your young adult child is gradually moving out into the world on their own. Of course , you have fears. How could you watch the news and not worry about what's in store for them? How could you see rental rates rising daily and not worry if good housing will be attainable? How could you witness the growing social inequalities and unrest and not feel afraid about the dangers they’re surrounded by? As a parenting coach, I know you're scared. Of course, you are. And yet, it som

When I was growing up, there was, in our house, a clear delineation between acceptable and shameful behaviour. Between being a good person or bad. If I didn’t follow the rules and meet expectations, I was given extra chores, humiliated, scolded, criticized, spanked and/or shunned. It was supposed to make me stay on the right path. But punishment didn’t make me more obedient; it just made me sneakier. I devised plans and did things behind my mom’s back, all the while feeling

“It’s excruciating to watch when my daughter encounters an obstacle,” said Terri. “She finds out she’s forgotten about an English assignment and it’s due the next day. And then she thinks and thinks. Not about the assignment but about how she ended up forgetting, how terrible it feels to be in a last-minute situation, how lousy the report is going to be, etc. It takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I don’t understand why she lets herself get sucked into the problem and makes it way worse tha

Have you ever asked your teen or young adult child to change their behaviour – stop leaving a mess in the kitchen, badgering their sibling, expecting you to remember their appointments - and been met with, "Why can't you just love me for who I am?" Oof. Those words hit you in the center of your heart and send your mind racing to the hundreds of moments when you might not have shown your love as clearly as you would have liked. Then you're questioning yourself as a parent or

When I was in my 20s, at a time when I was trying to connect more deeply with a boyfriend, I had a powerful dream. I saw myself on a broad spiral staircase in a circular tower, like a lighthouse. I stood on a step and looked at a particular section of the wall that was new to me and yet, somehow, familiar. I leaned over the railing and below I could see the markings of different times when I’d had trouble trusting men but longed for their attention. Farther down, I knew, was

You are going to mess your kids up - you probably already have. So, let's take the pressure off. You don't have to be a perfect, always gentle, completely mindful, constantly composed parent. You’re not expected to be all that all the time. It’s impossible. Some mothers are terrified of messing up their kids. As a parenting coach, I've seen them wrestle with the wounds of their own childhood and carefully watch what’s going on in other families (and society in general). They

Respect your elders. When I was growing up, ‘respect your elders’ was one of the mostly unspoken but not-to-be-messed-with tenets of our family. It was up there with honesty and taking care of your neighbours. I witnessed it in how my dad was with his father: never contradicting him and always letting him have the final word. Even when my dad obviously disagreed, he didn’t cross him, at least not to his face. I’m not sure I would call that respect - more like submission for t

Every parent, at one time or another, wonders if someone else doesn’t know better what to do in a particular parenting situation. I mean, parents are surrounded by parenting advice. A barrage of podcasts and bestsellers on conscious parenting, peaceful parenting, mindful parenting, awakened parenting… And the voices of grandparents, teachers, professors, religious leaders, psychologists and neighbours. Everyone seems to have an opinion about how you should be raising your kid

When our kids grow up and they’re in their late teens and early 20s, we can really feel the increasing distance between them and us. It’s painful. Even though we knew the time would come, we never expected that they would feel far away from us. Never, when we were helping them put on their socks or reading them the same story book for the fifth time or driving them back-and-forth and back-and-forth and back-and-forth and back-and-forth to volleyball practice… never did we thi