Parenting

• Overprotective Parenting

  Often, parents live vicariously through their children, usually without being aware that they are doing it. They over-function, or are overprotective, and view their children as an extension of themselves. Parents, who have the financial means, may take the extra step of hiring personalized athletic trainers, send their kids to endless sports camps, and hire sports psychologists hoping to give their child the needed edge to gain sports notoriety.

• The Real Gift of Parenting

  Parenting is an ongoing process of healthy sacrifice: the sacrifice of attention, time, energy, money, personal agendas, and all the activities we would prefer to do if we were not parenting.

• When Children Lie

  One of the perpetual problems that many parents face is lying by their children. Parents will often personalize this problem and view it as a sign that their children lack respect for them. Parents may also believe that their parental authority is being undermined when their children distort the truth.

• Important Conversations With Your Kids

  I lay down on my six-year-old son’s bed the other night before he went to sleep. It’s a time when we have some of our most interesting and precious talks. This evening, I was preoccupied with other thoughts. While lying next to him, my mind was a million miles away.

• Spare The Child, Ditch The Rod

  Kids who are spanked occasionally aren’t ruined for life. But spanking isn’t necessary to discipline a child. Not when a little self-control and a little creativity is considered.

• When Your Children Grant You Your Dismissal Papers

  As parents, we try to hang on during this transitional period, and a tug for power and control ensues. Even though a parent may be aware of the reasons for this process of conflict, it still may be difficult for a parent to accept.

• Parenting Through Logical Consequences

  Good parenting involves teaching children that there are consequences for a lack of follow-through. When children are doing poorly in a class at school and parents attempt to change the instructional environment, they are ignoring the use of logical consequences. When a child calls his mother from school because he forgot his lunch or project, the mother teaches the child dependency by bailing him out. When a parent wakes a child from sleep without teaching him how to use an alarm clock, he teaches his child to be manipulative. Poor parenting also occurs when a father or mother provides a child with an allowance without any expectations regarding household responsibilities.

• Helping Your Kids Avoid Comparing

  Parents need to teach their children self-confidence. Those who are self-confident resist the urge to compare themselves to other people, and do not elevate others’ experience while diminishing their own. But some people may have a mantra signified by the slogan, if only.