Do you ever give your kids a High Five as a way to celebrate an achievement or encourage them to keep going?  The power of High Fives has been well documented in a number of studies, and since April 18th is National High Five Day, I wanted to highlight the power of this great tool you can use with your kids and yourself.

In a study titled “High Fives Motivate”, published in Frontiers in...

Do you yell at home more often than you would like?  Life can be stressful, and when you're stressed and juggling lots of responsibilities it’s hard to remain patient and calm when your kids aren’t cooperating.

If you can relate, please know that you are not alone.  In full transparency, I used to yell quite often as my kids were growing up.  At the time, I was running and growing a...

When your child is upset and experiencing big feelings, is your first instinct to logically talk them through the issue, or help them problem-solve?  If you’re like most parents (me included!), your go-to response is typically to try to talk them through their feelings and help them understand why there is no need to be so upset.  We think that if they understand they will calm down.

This happened to a...

Do you have a child who struggles with BIG feelings?   Let’s be real — BIG feelings can cause both headaches and heartaches for parents and caregivers.  If you have a child who struggles with managing BIG feelings and it causes issues and conflicts with friends it can be heartbreaking.  If you have a child whose BIG feelings continually derail plans and affect the whole family it can be...

Let’s face it…  parenting can be really hard and lead to lots of headaches and heartaches.  We love our kids and want the absolute best for them, and it breaks our hearts to see them struggle. They can also drive us crazy and seem to know exactly how to push our buttons and drive us right to the edge of our sanity, and sometimes over.

Before I go any further, I truly want you to know that if...

When your kids are struggling, if you’re like me your first instinct is likely to step in to help them and either do it for them or tell them what they should do.  This is how we’re wired as parents which is a good thing in that it helps us protect our kids from danger and look out for their survival.  Unfortunately, this instinct can also hinder our child’s ability to develop their own...

If I told you there was one thing that you could teach your kids that would help them learn to solve problems every single time they were stuck not knowing what to do, can you imagine what it is? I’m guessing that many of you are going to answer “I don’t know”, and ironically, that is actually the answer!  

This is one concept that I teach and share with anyone who will listen...

Do you cringe watching your kids struggle and fail?  It can be heartbreaking to witness our kids' disappointment or embarrassment when they try something and it doesn't turn out as they had hoped. 

Theoretically, we know that our kids have to struggle and fail at times.  We know that’s how they develop resilience and inner strength — but it doesn’t make it any easier to witness and our...

Have you ever stopped to think about what you’re reflecting back to your kids?  In my past few articles I’ve been talking about self-esteem and how developing a healthy self-esteem helps kids become more confident and better equipped to handle the ups and downs in life.  I shared where to start when helping kids build self-esteem and three things to start and stop doing to help kids build...

As parents, we want our kids to have healthy self-esteem, but what can we do to help foster and build self-esteem in our kids?  

Self-esteem is a tricky subject for many parents.  Our first instincts are typically to praise their achievements, help them through challenging situations by sharing different ideas on how they can best handle them, and tell them how we want them to think and feel about...

Do you know where to start if you want to help your child build their self-esteem?

Most parents know that helping kids develop healthy self-esteem is important, but if you’re like I was — you are so busy just keeping up with life and raising kids that you never really put much thought into the impact of self-esteem and how you can help your child build healthy self-esteem.

I bring this up because...

Do you worry about what other people think of you as a parent?  Do you need other people to think of you as a good parent, for you to feel like you’re doing a good job?  I ask this because that was me.  I was not a confident parent, but I had a child who was born naturally confident — and I learned a lot from her.

 My daughter was born strong-willed, and she figured out a way to express...