In my work, I’ve been encouraging parents lately to communicate to their children via text. I’ve encountered abundant resistance to doing so, from “We Johnsons don’t communicate that way. We talk to each other,” to “I get headaches trying to focus on those damn little buttons.” But there is an increasing recognition that texting is [...]
There is hope. Those of us who were normal workaday adults on Sept. 10, 2001, making lunches, sitting in traffic, watching the clock, checking inventory, we remember. That was the last ordinary day. The fear, anxiety and despair that marked the next morning will be forever etched vividly into our collective memories. The trauma has [...]
A few months ago, the "NBC Nightly News" ran a very informative piece on the effects of electronics on the brain of today's teenager. We all know that teenagers have abundant access to technology that was considered far-off and space-aged just a few short years ago. Further, many teens alarm their parents, concerned that they [...]
I write this from the road, literally. I am in the midst of a good old-fashioned family road trip. Now, the nature of my work dictates that I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which families work, those things that create a cohesive unit. And I'm suddenly thinking that we may, [...]
Thinking back, my father and I exchanged precious few words in a given day. Some days, Walt and I hardly even saw one another. I feared him as a kid. "Wait till your father gets home" worked on me. It took me many years to learn who he really was and figure out that he [...]
To this day, I'm not sure whether it was a good idea to go in to work that day. The second tower had just fallen, and there were rumors that another runaway jet might be headed for the White House. And we weren't sure how many planes were still out there. We were paralyzed with [...]
Being a mom is one bad-ass job. I worked with the mom of two teenagers last night. She came in alone, with nothing in particular on her mind, no pressing issue, no crisis to resolve. She wanted to talk about the way in which she parents her kids, a gut check to ensure she was [...]
It's hard to say how it started. I know for a fact that we parent teens today with more fear, ego and judgment than calm, confidence and openness. There are countless theories as to why. Maybe it's a lack of familiarity with their lightning-paced world of Facebook, texting and YouTube. Maybe we're worried about what [...]
A highly astute, very funny client of mine suggested the other day that, if you're the parent of a teenager, and you don't know what '420' is, you must be high. Some thirty or so years ago, legend has it, a group of Bay Area high schoolers decided they would meet after school, at 4:20, [...]
In my clinical practice, I see frequent referrals in which parents are deeply concerned with their teen's overuse of electronics. They cite myriad fears and concerns, including stress, lack of attention to schoolwork, too little face-to-face contact with others, a decrease in social skills, and brain damage. Their concerns are not unfounded. In fact, I [...]