Blog
Be Careful What You Look For
More than ten years ago, I embarked on an odyssey that, like
all good odysseys, completely changed my life. Here’s what happened.It was August 2012, and I was moping around the house,
convinced that everyone — yes, Every. Single. One. out there — had a better
life than I did. Comparison truly is the thief of joy, and when I measured my
life against the picture-perfect lives I saw in my social media feed, I knew I
came up short.Oh, look! There’s a photo of someone’s breakfast, complete
with
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Aug 8th 2023
Safety Rules for Kids Staying Home Alone
As summer progresses
and schedules get busier, it might be more tempting to allow children to stay
home alone. Waking the whole family for an early baseball or softball game of
one family member may seem like more trouble than it’s worth. If you are wondering whether or not your children are old enough to be left alone, first call your Child Protection Services to find out the minimum legal age at which they can be on their own. Then consider their ages and abilities. Determine that they
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Jul 5th 2023
How to Raise a Confident Child
As a mom, I wanted to instill confidence in my three
children, but I always feared that if they became overly confident, they would
struggle.
Confidence is an attribute that will serve a child for life.
However, overconfidence can keep kids from growing, learning, and reaching their
ultimate potential. At the same time, if children care
too much about the opinions of others, they may start to question or doubt
their own intrinsic self-worth.
As parents, embracing our children for wh
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Jun 8th 2023
Fear: To Face or To Flee
Most people don’t have positive associations with the word
fear. This is completely understandable. Feeling scared to your core isn’t exactly
a pleasant experience.While not necessarily enjoyable, there’s a case to be made
in defense of fear. Fear is the body’s way of trying to stay safe – both
physically and emotionally. Certain fears (snakes, spiders, or heights, for
example) are fairly common because they potentially put our bodies in danger.
Other fears, such as public speaking, are co
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May 18th 2023
4 Tips for Supporting a Child with Depression
This article was originally shared on momaha.com.Depression affects kids in a variety of ways and can be situational or a constant in their life.There are a few things parents can do to help keep depression at bay and help their kids through this challenging time. Here are a few tips:1. Implement routine and schedules for your kids throughout the day.For example, try to eat meals and snacks at similar times during the day. If your kids are school-age, implement a study hour at the same time each
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May 1st 2023
Supporting Elementary Students with Separation Anxiety at School
Today, more and more students seem to be experiencing separation
anxiety. That’s not terribly surprising, however, given everything they’ve
lived through in recent years.
According to the Child Mind Institute, several contributing factors are behind the rise in separation
anxiety:
Many kids have grown
accustomed to spending more time at home with their families.
They have experienced
disrupted school schedules and routines.
They are more wary of
others after m
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Mar 29th 2023
Flip Your Thoughts to the Happy, Golden Side
How many thoughts do you
think you typically have in a single day? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Maybe
millions?Some days, it seems like I
have a billion thoughts racing through my head. But I also have days when it feels
like a single thought is stuck on repeat in my mind. Well, research from Queen’s University in Canada suggests
that I – and you – have nowhere near a billion thoughts a day. But we most
certainly have more than just a handful, too.The typical individual
averages abou
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Mar 7th 2023
Helped People Help People
“Hurt people hurt people” is an adage that you’ve likely
heard before. The notion behind this statement is something along the lines of,
“Those who have experienced emotional pain and suffering may lash out and
inflict emotional pain on others.” I’m not here to argue the veracity of this
oft-quoted saying. Instead, my hope is to see it one day replaced by an
altogether different assertion: helped people help people.
Every February, we celebrate National School Counseling Week, a
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Feb 6th 2023
Your Child Disagrees with You… Now What?
If your children are anything like mine, you know that from
time to time (and some days it definitely feels like ALL THE TIME), they are
going to disagree with you. When that happens, how tolerant are you? Do you try
to hear them out, or do you immediately shut them down? Can you engage in a give-and-take
dialogue, or do you fall into the trap of a lose-lose shout fest?
Moms and dads who adhere to a more authoritarian,
my-way-or-the-highway parenting philosophy may have little patienc
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Jan 20th 2023
10 Ways to Find Motivation Throughout the School Year
About 10 years ago, I signed up to run the Disney Marathon. I
had run shorter races - 5ks, 10ks, even half marathons, but I had never
fathomed the full 26.2 mile race until I experienced how amazing running my
first race at Disney World was. I immediately signed up to run the full.
I knew it would take a lot of motivation to train (and then run) 26.2 miles. Disney races are high-energy, with fun character stops, entertainment, and dazzling medals. I knew the journey, the race itself,
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Jan 9th 2023