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Parent-Child Relationships

Parent-Child Relationships
Building the Parent-Child Relationship
January 24, 2025

All too often, I hear parents share that they are unable to connect with their children. They don’t understand their interests, are confused by their behavior, or frustrated by their attitudes. Sometimes parents respond by setting stronger punishments, leaving...

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Parents & Parenting
Fostering Independence for Anxious Children
January 24, 2025

Parenting a child with anxiety and social challenges can feel like a delicate balancing act. On one hand, you want to provide them with the comfort and support they need. On the other, you know it’s important to encourage...

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Parents & Parenting
How to Talk to Your Teen – Part 1
January 24, 2025

Recently, I became a parent to a teenager. Now, I have been his parent his whole life. However, I understand that our communication needs to evolve from how I spoke to him when he was 3 and how I...

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Parents & Parenting
Supporting Teenagers Through Difficult Times
January 14, 2025

Adolescence is a time of growth, change, and challenges. For many teens, it can be difficult to navigate academic pressures, social dynamics, and personal struggles. As a parent, it can be challenging to know when to step in and...

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Diana Campos Pena
Why Speaking Softly Can Change Everything At Home
January 2, 2025

The Power of a Soft Voice: Calming Your Child (and Yourself) Sometimes parenting can feel loud, especially when emotions are high and your child isn’t listening. When stress builds up, it’s easy to raise your voice without even noticing....

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Children
Size of the Problem: Helping Children Match Their Feelings and Reactions to a Problem
October 1, 2024

Size of the Problem (SotP) is a tool used to help individuals think critically about how their feelings and responses to a perceived problem impact themselves and the people around them. Simply put, it helps people understand how big...

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Parents & Parenting
How to Talk to Your Child About School Shootings
September 26, 2024

It grieves me to be writing this blog regarding a topic that so deeply affects our students, parents, school staff, and community today. The anxiety and confusion surrounding school shootings is prevalent for us all. This is made more...

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Parents & Parenting
Helping Your Student with Back to School Feelings
August 13, 2024

With summer quickly coming to an end, children and teens in your home may be experiencing familiar and competing feelings like excitement, dread, anticipation, and anxiety. Often, these feelings may not be expressly spoken, but there are clues your...

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Parents & Parenting
What You Need to Know About ASD
July 9, 2024

What Exactly is ASD? According to the DSM-5-TR, the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is comprised of Asperger syndrome and the other autism-related diagnoses which make up the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder...

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Parents & Parenting
Benefits of Authoritative Parenting
July 9, 2024

You may have heard of the term parenting style. There are four main parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and distant. Authoritative parenting is known as a balanced approach and is widely regarded as the most effective parenting style, because...

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Parent-Child Relationships
How to Support Emotional Regulation in Your Teens
July 9, 2024

What is emotional regulation you might ask? Emotional regulation is the “ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state.” It is quite common for teens to struggle with emotional dysregulation due to the flood of hormones rushing through...

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Parent-Child Relationships
Parent Child Interaction Therapy and Childhood Cancer
June 12, 2024

Facing cancer is an immense challenge for anyone, but for children, it means grappling with their mortality at an age meant for dreams of being a princess or a superhero. For their parents it is a terrifying ordeal to...

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Parent-Child Relationships
How to Build your Child’s Self-Esteem
May 21, 2024

A child’s self-esteem begins with a positive self-identity, which is critical for building a foundation for confidence, happiness, and emotional well-being. When children have a positive self-identity, they can navigate through life with a sense of purpose and feel...

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Parent-Child Relationships
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...

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Mental Health
The Fewest Words
January 16, 2024

As a therapist, but also a human being who was not blessed with the most loving of families growing up, I find myself often giving to others more than I give back to myself. Like so many others, I...

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Parents & Parenting
The Power of Play Time
January 3, 2024

Many children are involved in increasingly rigorous academic programs. Parents who want their children to have a better life often focus intensely on academics and neglect play. Neglecting to prioritize play can have the opposite effect that parents want...

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Parents & Parenting
“Will My Child Grow Out of It?” The Crucial Role of Early Intervention for Young Children with Behavior Issues
January 3, 2024

As parents, we often find ourselves wondering whether our child’s challenging behavior is just a passing phase or something more significant. The common belief is that children will grow out of biting, defiance, tantrums, destructive, aggressive, hyperactive, or anxious...

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Parents & Parenting
Helping Your Child Deal with Anger
January 3, 2024

Anger and temper tantrums/meltdowns in young children, especially under the ages of 7-9, are to be expected and even healthy for a child. It is important for children to be able to experience all emotions. Having these hard emotions...

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Grief, Trauma, & Loss
Monkey Bars and the Normal Grief of Living Well
December 1, 2023

In playgrounds, there used to be a structure called the Monkey Bars. I believe they’re too dangerous to be included in most public spaces anymore, but they were the test of endurance and strength (and bravery) for an entire...

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Parents & Parenting
My Child Won’t Remember That…. Will They?
October 30, 2023

As many children do not hold memories before 2-3 years old and even then, memory is often pretty vague, parents tend to be more lenient about what they say in front of their child before that time period or...

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