When I hired our children’s piano teacher, he stated clearly that he expected us (the parents) to participate in their lessons so that we could help our kids practice in between. The biggest struggle with practicing at first for both of them was being told they’d made mistakes. There were several power struggles in the […]
The other day when I wrote the post about name calling, I’d been sitting on a half-written version of it for a week or two. I have many posts like this, ones I’ve started and then gotten stuck on, so there is a massive pile of drafts waiting for me to write. A conversation on […]
The other day when I was running, I made a huge mistake in the middle of a busy intersection. It was completely my fault. I was ending an exhausting run that was having a negative impact on my cognitive functioning: in short; I was totally out of it. I got to an intersection, all I […]
As the parent of a two-year old, I give a lot of mini-ultimatums throughout the day. These ultimatums work because I have more responsibility and power than my two-year old does. It is my responsibility to keep my child from hurting himself and others, and I hold the power to enforce many boundaries because he […]
Almost six years ago, I wrote my first post about the Silent Treatment. I wrote it from the perspective of someone who is on the receiving end of the silence, and it struck a nerve with many people who have been given the silent treatment. I had no idea that it would touch such a […]
Conflict is messy. Not many of us are skilled at it. Sometimes, it is tempting to try bypass it altogether to “keep the peace.” I’m not talking about choosing a battle because a particular issue is not a big deal. I’m talking about when someone crosses a line and you feel violated but decide to […]
I have the Internet on my mind lately, and today I am thinking about how much of our lives we share with the public via social media and blogging. I often struggle with how much to share about my life and my children, and how much to keep private. Today I read a blog post […]
This morning on my Facebook feed, I saw a link judging a woman’s parenting out of context. It was a link to a blog post about a mom on her iPhone written as if it were a letter to her, explaining all that she was missing out on while ignoring her three kids at the […]
When I was in my twenties and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I spent some time volunteering with and shadowing people who were doing what I thought I might want to do. One person in particular made a huge impact on me with one very short part of […]
As I’ve mentioned before, I like to look at the key phrases people use to find this website. A surprising amount of searches follow some form of “Should I break up using the Silent Treatment?” It is as if the searcher is hoping that if they ignore their partner, the relationship will magically go away. […]