When someone you care about is grieving after a loss, it can be difficult to know what to say or do. The bereaved struggle with a variety of intense, painful emotions, which include depression, anger, guilt, and profound sadness. Often, they also feel isolated and alone in their grief, since the intense pain and difficult [...]
Am I enabling my adult child’s addiction? As parents, we seek to protect our children, even when they are adults. But in some cases, “helping” may actually be harming. By protecting your adult child from the consequences of their addiction, you may also be enabling them to continue using drugs and alcohol, as they never [...]
Prominent child psychologist, Dr. Lee Salk, once remarked, “The trauma of divorce is second only to death. Children sense a deep loss and feel they are suddenly vulnerable to forces beyond their control.” Those who would have us believe that children are resilient and able to readily adapt to the changes that divorce forces upon [...]
The term “dysfunctional family” has become an overused, pop psychology, cliché that makes it difficult to understand what a functional family actually looks like. The truth is that all families go through cycles and changes, sometimes demonstrating amazing resiliency and health and other times showing signs of chaos, problems and conflict. No family is completely [...]
“Discipline your children while there is hope, otherwise you will ruin their lives.” Prov. 19:18 Put your child’s happiness first as the guiding value in your home Parenting Insights: Happiness is a transitory, conditional, feeling based on circumstances, it is not a value, therefore, we should not strive to build a parental relationship based on [...]
Godly character is consistently doing the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reason Introduction: Respect, kindness, honesty, courage, perseverance, self-discipline, compassion, generosity, dependability. Most parents want to instill these kinds of character traits in their children. Of course, this is often easier said than done. Shaping character takes [...]
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” I Cor. 13:11 Emotions are God-given. In and of themselves, they are not sinful, but beneficial. The word ‘emotion’ in Latin is motere, which means [...]
“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Luke 2:52 “Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the LORD and also with man.” I Sam.2:26 It is now understood that a person’s EQ is far more important than one’s intelligence (IQ) in [...]
“To discipline a child produces wisdom, but a mother is disgraced by an undisciplined child.” Prov. 29:15 Dealing with a defiant child can be a maddening experience. If this behavior isn’t managed early on, it can turn into a parent’s worst nightmare, namely, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (i.e., a pattern of an angry/irritable mood, argumentative and [...]
Childhood isn’t stress-free. Kids take tests, learn new information, change schools, change neighborhoods, get sick, get braces, encounter bullies, make new friends and occasionally get hurt by those friends. What helps kids emotionally navigate these kinds of challenges is resilience. The word resilience comes from the Latin verb – resilire – “to jump back.” In [...]
