Growing Up Well

  • Motivate. Don’t Manipulate Your Kids.

    Once again, his room isn’t clean, not by any standard. Her backpack, jacket, and shoes are scattered about the floor of the hall, again. His grades are sub-par in math, again. She is making the family late to school, again. He seems to be nonchalant about his music audition this weekend. She isn’t running enough…

  • Weak Language

      We often chastise young people for using “strong language,” but there is an equal or greater problem with kids, especially girls, who use weak language. Consider the use of the following “words” among kids, and consider how you can guide them to use stronger language: like just kinda sorta maybe y’know know-what-I-mean know-what-I’m-sayin’ well…

  • The Power of No (Part 2)

    Sometimes a bad example is as motivating as a good one. I had just such an experience last Saturday: Guitar Center is now my son’s “candy store.”  There are so many flavors to sample: Stratocaster, Telecaster, Les Paul, and Gretsch to name a very few.  Saturdays are the worst day to shop there because there…

  • The Power of No (Part 1)

    Anthony Bourdain, is an American chef, author, and television personality. He is well-known as the host of the Travel Channel‘s culinary and cultural adventure program Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. Tony is a rebel; it’s in his blood, and he has used that iconoclastic attitude in a largely positive way – as an aspiring international chef…

  • Life in the Shallows vs. Life at Sea

    In the area of technology and society, nobody is an expert because we just don’t know what the long-term effects are.  In fact, nobody even knows what a digital life will look like five years from now.  Most of us don’t even understand what is going on right now. This video displays many of the…

  • Questions Kids Have But Don’t Ask

    Here are some of the big questions kids (10-14) have, although they will rarely, if ever, vocalize them.  Understanding the questions is half the battle; having all the answers is not necessary, even if it were possible. Who are my real friends?  Who really likes me?  In which group do I belong? Who am I? …

  • The Value of Pain

    As I walk through the halls after school, there is a barrage of faces along my path.  Some I know well; some I don’t know at all.  Some are happy; some look very frustrated.  But all of these kids have stories inside.  Some of their stories are silly — full of joy from a life…

  • Social Skills Needed: Apply Here

    There is a social epidemic that has swept the nation.  While it used to be contained to young teenage girls, it is striking adults at an alarming rate in recent years.  It sounds like this: “Um, it’s kinda like, well, you know when you just can’t really, like, seem to just um say like what…

  • Avoiding Alcohol in Adolescence

    The following is an excerpt from “A sobering time for parents” by SHEILA WAYMAN (printed in the Irish Times 9-01-09) “Our approach to drinking in Ireland is not normal; we drink to get drunk,” says consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Bobby Smyth, who specialises in addiction. Every day, through his work at the Drug…

  • Don’t Baby Them

    BENEFITS OF STRUGGLING “A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as…

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