Communication Skills

Unlocking Discipline: The 5 Critical Components
May 21, 2024

Discipline is often misconstrued as a form of punishment and what comes to mind most is spanking. However, the essence of discipline is teaching and guiding. At its core discipline means providing structure, consistency, and setting limits. Schedules and...

Fostering Independence
April 22, 2024

“It’s a tough world out there, and my children need to be provided with every advantage so they can be competitive in the college or job market.” The above is a parent trap. As parents it is normal to...

Finding a Place of Honesty, Authenticity, and Love
April 19, 2024

Can you tell your partner everything? When intimate relationships are built on a foundation of honesty, they can reach a level of profound authenticity and mutual understanding. But since the beginning of time, it seems, people have been prone...

5 Effective Ways to Encourage Your Child to Open Up and Communicate
August 7, 2023

Communication is a vital skill that empowers children to express their thoughts, feelings, and needs effectively. As parents, we play a crucial role in nurturing this skill and creating a safe environment for our children to open up and...

How to Talk to Get Your Teen to Listen
February 6, 2023

Ever had a difficult time getting your teen to open up to you? Are they moody, and if you dare to ask what is wrong, all they say is “I don’t know”? The teen years are a time of...

20 Creative Date Night Ideas
January 28, 2022

While I was growing up, I discovered that the parents of a close friend of mine went on a weekly date-night. At the time I simply thought that this was a wonderful practice and felt confused by the fact...

4 Tips for Nurturing a Friendship With Your Spouse
January 28, 2022

How good of friends are you with your spouse? Good friends? Best friends? For some of you this question may even seem a bit unusual, because you think of your spouse simply as, well, your spouse. For others, your...

D.E.A.R.M.A.N.
January 24, 2022

Hello all, As I mentioned previously, my next few blogs will cover a little bit from each DBT module that Summit offers. I shared an exercise from the Mindfulness module last time and will be sharing a skill from...

Effective Communication Style: Listening Skills
January 6, 2022

In the previous blog, points were shared about ways we can practice responding in conversation versus reacting to others based on heightened emotions. A precursor to responding in healthy ways to de-escalate emotional settings is cultivating effective listening skills....

Helping Your Child Regulate Their Emotions
December 13, 2021

Children and adolescents learn so much about how to navigate obstacles simply by watching their parents. They are like little sponges that soak up a lot of what they observe from their own homes and people in their lives...