Parenting: What To Do When You Don’t Know What to Do
We’ve All Been There At some point, it seems like every mom of a teen girl witnesses the heartache, trauma, or failures in her daughter’s life and says, “I miss when she was little, and band-aids fixed the problems.” Sound familiar? During my daughter’s high school years, there have been many seasons when her life […]
Parenting in Times of Uncertainty
Model a flexible mindset & lead with empathy Life isn’t always perfect, and in this season it feels like unexpected changes are happening all the time. Teach your teen about how they can manage their expectations during this season. We all experience uncomfortable emotions This one goes out to all my pre-teens who are figuring […]
Build a Strong Relationship With Your Teen: Respond, Don’t React
“Responding” versus “reacting.” They sound like the same thing, right? These words sit side by side in the thesaurus, so surely they are interchangeable. That might be true at face value, but it is far from true when applied to the relational value these words hold. When it comes to our teens, responding to them […]
Parenting Through Adolescent Emotions
Parenting through the emotions of adolescents can be tough work. I like to think of it as attending a bad musical performance. The nervous singer belts out flat melodies. Guitars are in the wrong key. The piano hits those shrill notes that scrape your eardrums. That’s called musical dissonance or disharmony, and it’s no fun […]
Supporting an Anxious Teen: A Parent’s Perspective
I have parented two children who both had their own experiences with different levels of anxiety but managed to adjust their lives in a way that addresses their specific challenges. Looking back on the journey, here is my advice to other parents: First, it feels like a parenting failure when you realize your child can’t […]
Parenting Through Adversity with a Growth Mindset
By Lindsey Ervin, MS and Tess Cox, MA “Relationships also help build resilience across childhood and into adulthood. The single most common factor for children and teens who develop the capacity to overcome serious hardship is having at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or another adult.” – Center […]
Class of 2020 Parents, It’s Okay to Be Sad.
Thousands of schools are closed nationwide due to the Coronavirus, which also means that the class of 2020 is experiencing the devastating loss of their senior year being cut short. I imagine many students are celebrating the fact that they get to sleep in late and escape the obstacles that come with being a high […]
4 Important Things a Mom Should Do For Her Teen Daughter
Sometimes it is hard to know how you can best support your teenage daughter. There are so many challenges during the teen years, which create unique parenting challenges in and of themselves. Here are 4 ways that a mom can love her teenage daughter well. 1. Give your daughter permission to be imperfect With perfection […]