Soulful Parenting is positive parenting. Anyone who has been exposed to Soulful Parenting for very long has heard how strong the tendency is for parents and teachers to be critical with their kids as opposed to being positive and reinforcing.

For example, the data suggests that parents criticize ten times more than they positively reinforce. Besides being demoralizing to our kids and discouraging of healthy relationships, the core of Soulful Parenting, we also now know that by focusing on the criticizing the mistakes and failures we are inhibiting their ability to learn. (more…)

It’s really pretty simple. But as is the case with many of the simple things in life, they are easy to do and easy not to do. That’s the case with the number one thing you can do to have an inoculating effect on your teens likelihood toward substance use and abuse. (more…)

I had a young fella come in to my office the other day. I’ll call him Peter. He’s 26 years old and he’s made a bunch of poor choices in the last eight years. All of these choices have had negative consequences. He came to me because now he’s depressed and has uncomfortably high levels of anxiety.

First, when he went to college out of high school he choose to party instead of study. And he didn’t just have a good time but he literally didn’t study and often didn’t go to class. This inevitably led to expulsion by the end of his first year. Now, in and of it’s self this isn’t terribly unusual. Lots of kids miss the point of college the first time.

But then he exacerbated his problems by spending time with friends who had no plan for where they were going and he ended up engaged in a number of self-defeating and even self-destructive circumstances. All along he knew what he was doing didn’t really fit who he believed himself to be or what he stood for. Nonetheless he found the peer influences dragged him into things he certainly now regrets. (more…)

By now you have read or heard of the story of the 15 year-old Phoebe Prince who commits suicide after relentless bullying by a group of student in her high school. It happened in Massachusetts but it could happen anywhere. Teen bullying behavior has become increasingly visible if not more prevalent. If you haven’t read of this most recent tragedy and would like to learn more you can click here.

I was about to blog on another subject before I heard this story and decided to address it. But I am not going to address the obvious topic: bullying. Many will address that over the next week or two but I believe there is another more important aspect: hopelessness. (more…)

With baseball season upon us it’s important to think of being “safe at home” as not only a baseball term but also a parenting goal. When our teen(s) are safe at home everyone wins.

Our teen(s) have an animal brain and a human brain. The animal brain is primitive, survival focused and fear based. The animal brain is instinctual and reactive. It looks for threats then reacts through fight or flight.

We, their parents, have this animal brain too. When we or they live from fear we are living from this primitive part of our brain. Fearful people are desperate and dangerous people. When in the animal brain we react instead of reflecting and then responding. There is greater chance of errors in judgment and poor impulse control with reaction. (more…)

When I was growing up I had the good fortune to be a student of a school district that gave two grades in every subject. On every report card there would be a grade received for the subject and then a grade given for effort made in that class. So, for example, I might get a C in math but if the teacher thought I made a strong effort she might give me a B+ for effort. While unlikely, it was feasible that a student could get failing grades and yet have straight A’s for effort. Of course the opposite was possible for a very gifted student but I wasn’t one of those.

My second stroke of good fortune was that my parents were wise and paid more attention to my effort grades. I can remember my dad telling me that he was most interested and concerned that I do the best that I could. He said he could live with whatever grade I received as long as the teacher felt I had put my all in to it. And they lived it. My effort grades were what they and I were more concerned with. (more…)

Remember when you were a freshman in high school and your parents told you that you couldn’t go to that party you so badly wanted to attend? Or what about when they didn’t want you staying overnight at that friend’s house where there was minimal parental supervision? You argued with them. “But Mom, you’ve got to trust me!” Your Mom’s retort, “I do trust you. I don’t trust them and I don’t want you in that situation.”

She and your father were right. Now, I’m not saying that they always handled it the right way but they were right to be concerned about whom you were with and where you were going. As it turns out this age old wisdom is now substantiated by research. I’m always amazed at how the data so often supports what we’ve known to be true for generations. Of course sometimes the data disputes our common wisdom but that seems to be the exception not the rule. (more…)

Here’s the challenge. You’ve got one day to get to know me as well as you can. But you can not ask me any questions. In fact, you can not spend any time with me. And you can not observe me. And you can not ask any one else anything about me. You can not use any established information source, such as the internet, that might provide biographical data. The only information you are given is the names of the five people who have the greatest influence over me. How would you go about knowing me better? There is a sure fire way.

First, interview each of the five folks who most influence me. But remember you can not ask them about me so you would ask them about themselves. Spend an hour or more with each person asking them all sorts of questions about who they are, what they value, where they are going and such. You can not ask how they know me or how long we’ve been friends. You can only ask them about themselves. (more…)

We had another one of those stories in the news the other day. You know the one where a couple of high school girls admitted that they had become sexually involved with their adult male coach. I have heard these stories throughout my thirty-year career so it’s nothing new. It happens way too frequently. A local radio station called me and asked if I’d comment on what this was about. It got me thinking.

Over the years I’ve had innumerable high school girls complain to me that the high school boys “are so immature.” And it is a fact that girls this age grow and develop more rapidly than boys. It’s why the high school senior boys frequently date the sophomore girls but the senior girls rarely date the sophomore boys. It just doesn’t work that way. (more…)

How can we, as parents, have greater influence on our teenagers? We love our kids, we send them to great schools, we afford them tutors, travel teams and private lessons, we tell them specifically what we value and want for them, and we give them incentives for their appropriate behavior. In spite of all of these efforts, too often we stand by helplessly watching them struggle and still don’t get the desired result. As a psychologist and father I’m often asked this type of question and I know that the answer is complicated and not what parents always want to hear.

Times have changed. Gone are the days of influence through “carrot and stick” parenting and we all know throwing money at problems isn’t the best idea. So what is the best way to influence our teens to be moral, safe, thoughtful, successful and any other positive quality we want to see in them?  Here is the part that most parents won’t like– having your teens change their behavior is a lot of work on your part. Ghandi said it best, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  (more…)