Marriage—Ups, Downs, and All-Arounds

This last blog post is on divorce.   This is a rough topic for many families and can be a very sensitive subject.   There are so many reasons why someone would divorce.   For example, reasons could include things such as abuse (physical or emotional), adultery, addiction (of any kind), and abandonment (either physical or emotional).   Whatever the reason, this can be a shattering experience for everyone in the family.   There are three kinds of divorce: 1.        Legal divorce 2.        Economic divorce 3.        Parental divorce Legal divorce is settled by the courts and the marriage is dissolved officially by law.   The second kind, economic divorce is when you separate your things.   This could include finances (you separate bank accounts), property, etc.   The last one is parental divorce where the parents split. Often times if a family that is involved in divorce has children, it leads to joint custody.   This is where they share both resources and physic

This week’s topic is parenting!  There are so many different approaches and theories of parenting and many of them contradict each other.  It is hard to find information that really helps instead of just manipulates children’s behavior. An example of manipulation of behavior is both punishments and rewards.   When we use these against our children, or anyone for that matter, we are teaching them that all that matters is their conformity and obedience to our requests.   In fact, when we do this, we are shooting ourselves in the foot.   When our only goal is to have compliant children, we forget that we want children who are competent, confident, wise decision makers, strong, independent, and capable of handling life’s stressors.   When we only focus on getting them to conform to our behavior wishes, these long-term goals cannot be met.   We will create children who only do things when told, won’t make decisions for themselves, and won’t feel confident in their own abilities to g

Hey everyone!   I am doing an extra blog post this week about how to foster motivation in children (or anyone really)!   There is so much research out there and a lot of it is very scientific and hard to understand.   However, I found this link with the first three chapters from, Understanding How Young Children Learn by Wendy L. Ostroff.   If you have any interest in this subject at all, it is a bit of a lengthy read but I promise that it will benefit you: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/112003/chapters/Understanding-Children's-Motivation.aspx Ostroff (2012) states, “mo·ti·va·tion is the driving desire behind all action and is the precursor and cornerstone to learning. It is no exaggeration to say that children have boundless energy for living and learning. From an evolutionary perspective, behaviors that are important for survival (like eating or reproducing) must be pleasurable to do in and of themselves. Young children survive by exploring their world via m

Hey everyone!   This week we are talking about the important roles that father’s play in the home.   There are so many statistics that back up the importance of an actively participating father in the home.   Father’s do much more than provide financial support to the family.   Below is an image I borrowed from fatherhood.org explaining the statistics of fatherless homes: If these statistics don’t impress on you enough the importance of father’s in your home, then I don’t know what will. According to The Huffington Post, they say that, “Girls will look for men who hold the patterns of good old dad, for after all, they know how "to do that." Therefore, if father was kind, loving, and gentle, they will reach for those characteristics in men. Girls will look for, in others, what they have experienced and become familiar with in childhood.”   They also explain that, “Boys on the other hand, will model themselves after their fathers. They will look for