Parenting Our Children

I wonder why bullying exists in our community and in society at large? I was very surprised at a 30-year-old client’s explanation.

Nechama is one of countless singles whose shidduch prospects are being limited by a lack of social skills. Such skills run the gamut from communication skills and grooming to anger management and stress control. And while social skills issues plague people of all ages, they are particularly damaging to singles on the shidduch scene.

Multi-generational families are making a comeback these days. For some the choice is made out of necessity because of the unstable economy, for others it is due to the physical needs of either the younger generation or aging parents. And then sometimes the decision to live this way is out of a mutual desire to be full and present participants in extended family life. For us it was a combination of factors that brought us to this point.

The pictures had been removed from the wall a while back. Carefully and methodically, they had been placed in the back of her desk drawer, a spot that could be reached only if one were looking for something intentionally. Other pictures were inconspicuously hanging in the corner, situated on a wall blocked by a large, mismatched piece of furniture. There were also loose photographs, neatly stacked in their original envelope, discreetly placed in an unmarked folder located in the back of her filing cabinet.

In Part I of this four-part series, I introduced you to Aaron and his extreme anger. I ended that article with, "I must say that as I was describing this theory, Aaron's mouth dropped open, his eyes grew wide and tears formed in his eyes as he moved closer in his chair. The only thing he could say was, "How did you know?" With that comment, Aaron and I started a remarkable relationship. With all the counselors he had been to over the years, Aaron said that no one really understood him. Here was the angry young man who didn't want to be there, fully engaged and ready to work, ready to share his pain, ready to begin a trusting relationship."

Thinking back to my childhood years, I recall a "dare" expression one child would bark to another: "Make me; bet'ya can't make me!" I didn't think much about the term back then, other than my associating it with bullying. Today, though, I view it on a more profound level, especially in regard to the parent populace.

Suppression and avoidance might seem to be the easiest answers. “Let’s go back to checking our emotions at the door.” But this attitude is counterproductive.

I present you with this research data not because it’s interesting or cute, but so that you will fully appreciate the significance of the power of peer pressure.

For most children, basic social skills (e.g. initiating conversation, working cooperatively, respecting boundaries, observing conventional rules of courtesy) are acquired naturally.

What easier method to ensure that they are really studying their brochos than by sponsoring a schoolwide brochos contest with much fanfare?

This is an important one in raising a mentsch (and maybe even in marrying off a mentsch! listening skills are on the top of the list when I do shidduch coaching).

We all have physical needs, we all have relational needs, and we all have aspirational or spiritual needs. When we understand that about each other, we can easily understand each other.

Susan David begins her book Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life with the following story: A well-regarded captain stood...

The truth is that you never know what’s going on in a house until you live in it.

The first way that sensory processing disorders affects academics is simply in the child’s ability (or inability) to sit still when there is a plethora of sensory information in a classroom.

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Your child is always watching you, even if you don’t notice. If you model gratitude, by saying “thank you” to the clerk in the grocery store and the car service driver, you are teaching him the proper way to act.

We avoid difficult conversations, we react with anger, and we eat our feelings without knowing why.

The reality of the situation is that if your child is asking you for help that means that he has not figured out a way to master the situation on his own.

Do you remember the good old days when kids were kids and there was never anything to worry about? Those days never really existed, but today there are issues kids worry about that weren’t issues for some adults. They include fear of bullying, natural disasters, divorce, and violence.

They explain that we have the tendency to drift or to veer from what our own intentions.

Although my ex-husband was unable to attend we still wanted to include his family members who lived here is Israel and were very happy that we choose to do so for our son’s sake.

Children who experienced an extremely disturbing event might subsequently develop generalized anxiety.

Because our schools follow a dual curriculum, it is often hard for teachers to fit in enough time for recess during the day.

Every summer, all across America, parents put their children on buses bound for sleepaway camp. They wave good-bye, hoping their kids will have a wonderful time, make friends, learn new skills and come home happy and healthy. Hoping, sometimes, that the tears they see as the bus pulls away are just a fleeting show of regret at leaving home.

The reason behind this is that when we ask our brains and bodies to make drastic changes, our fight or flight response kicks in and we become paralyzed.

Please don’t feel that this situation is hopeless. You appear to have the appropriate attitude to life.

It’s true that your daughter might have trouble relating to children her own age, but as she gets older, she will be comfortable in all sorts of situations. Once she enters high school, her peers will have caught up with her and she will do equally well at interacting with her classmates as well as adults.

Since I did not know much about divorce in those years, I just assumed that this was the "norm." I learned later on how exceptional this family really was.

In the 1950’s, bestselling author Rudolf Flesch offered to give a friend’s son, who was a struggling reader, some help with reading. He soon discovered that the problem did not lie in the boy’s intelligence, but rather in the way that reading was taught to him in school. To set out his reading principles, Flesch wrote a now famous book entitled, Why Johnny Can’t Read – and What You Can Do About It. In it, Flesch outlined the basic approach of phonics, an effective and important manner of teaching reading.