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Accepting Development Diversity in our Children
In families with more than one child, one of the children might have much more difficulty with academics compared to his or her siblings. For families with one child, it may be that he or she is not doing nearly as well academically as his or her same age relatives or peers.
[ Download Article | 64k]
Achievement or Attachment?
Our culture worships and promotes achievement, money, beauty, material possessions and all forms of competition. While these things can be interesting and fun, they do not bring sustained fulfillment.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Birth Order — Eldest? Middle? Youngest? Only?
Research shows that the position you perceived you lived in as a child has influenced your life choices — career, parenting, style, friendships, coping strategies and even choosing your partner.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Bring Comfort and Joy into Your New Year
Our fundamental needs are to be connected to others with loving energy and to know that our lives have meaning and purpose and that we are making a difference. As we work towards these goals we find an increased sense of well-being.
[ Download Article | 52k]
Building Community with Our Children
Community is necessary for us as human beings. In early times, we could not live our lives without support from others. Today, each of us is able to access those services by paying for them, but the emotional need to have others in our lives has never been greater.
[ Download Article | 336k]
Building Leadership for Tomorrow
What are the characteristics of effective leaders and how can we coach qualities for our young people, which lead to effective leadership? Does the world require different leadership in an Information Age than an Industrial Age?
[ Download Article | 56k]
Building Positive Memories with Your Families
According to Alfred Adler, our memories are "windows of our soul". By keeping happy, joyful memories alive and real, we can actually feel better about ourselves.
[ Download Article | 336k]
Building Strong Couple Relationships
The month of February seems to have two claims to fame - Valentine's Day and the "blues " month. Are they intertwined? Do people become depressed due to feelings that their lives do not match up to their wishes/expectations?
Change — Challenges and Choices
Change is a constant reality in our lives and requires adaptation and flexibility on a daily basis. Our bodies, thoughts, feelings and energy can change from moment to moment and we can either cope with ease or difficulty.
Coaching Your Child as School Begins
Parents are central in the preparation for this transition at all grade levels. Find out how you, as a parent, can help your child negotiate the new school year in a way that fosters independence, confidence and self-discipline.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Coaching your Child for Life Balance
As adults we strive for balance — we realize that achieving balance in our daily lives is a key life skill. How can we coach our children to learn that living a balanced, fulfilled and fun life is crucial to their health and well-being?
[ Download Article | 56k]
Creating Intimacy In Our Couple Relationships
Our culture tells us that we must find our soul mate and fall madly in love and live happily ever after. In truth, we do not see this happening around us so we have been led to believe that the only way to create the happily-ever-after is to continue searching for that right person.
Creating Positive Self Talk
How can we help our child build positive internal tapes? The first step is to know we all have these internal tapes. Our limiting beliefs are changeable once we recognize them. When you or your child hesitates to take a step forward, talk about the limiting thoughts that are getting in the way. Look at the available choices. Then, choose one and try it out. Moving forward builds Self Trust – important life skills.
[ Download Article | 42k]
Creating the Practice of Being a Contribution
As parents we raise our children to be successful, contributing members of society. We support ourselves and our children by making plans and strategies to achieve that success. Focusing on what we want to achieve can be put aside as we deal with the obstacles and opportunities added to our daily plan. Consider viewing life as a place to contribute and constantly practice being “contributors—and see how this might change your life for the better.
[ Download Article | 53k]
The Cycle of Change
Our work life has geared up after summer vacations, and our lives are full with many activities. How can we look at all the change that we and our families are experiencing, and appreciate that change is a process rather than a myriad of individual events?
[ Download Article | 40k]
Defining Purpose—Rules of Engagement
The first step toward a life of full engagement is by accessing our spiritual energy. This requires us to understand our deepest held values and the vision we have for our lives—our purpose. By managing our energy, which is a renewable resource, we escape the limiting paradigm of managing time, a non-renewable resource.
[ Download Article | 44k]
Development — Understanding Your Child’s Life Journey
Do you compare your child with other children of the same age in order to discover what is “normal?” A developmental stage is a describable segment of growing up. During each segment of time the child is busy with age appropriate tasks that help answer your questions.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Does My Child Need Special Help With Learning?
Could it be that my child has a “learning problem?” What is a learning disability and how would I find out if my child needs specific help? These are normal questions that many parents ask, but for the most part their anxiety is unwarranted.
[ Download Article | 60k]
The Drama of Conflict in Our Families
How successful we are in relationships with partners, children, family and friends depends on our ability to know and understand ourselves? Each one of us has core beliefs we developed as children. Some of these beliefs are positive and some are self-limiting. Often it is our self-limiting beliefs that create problems and conflict.
[ Download Article | 68k]
Educating Our Teenagers: Is there Something Missing in the 3 Rs?
It is becoming more and more apparent that teenagers are stressed and anxious about their academic successes and their futures. What are some of the factors contributing to their stress?
[ Download Article | 64k]
Emotional Intelligence — Can We Live Without It?
Do you want to be happy in your interpersonal relationships? Do you want to possibly change patterns, that have been handed down from one generation to the next? Do you want your children to enjoy learning and have academic success? Read on.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Encouragement for the Emotionally Present Father
There are many varied approaches to fathering. Some dads are sensitive and available to their children, while others have more difficulty in feeling comfortable and competent in their role as fathers. So, just how does the emotionally present father influence a child’s development?
[ Download Article | 52k]
Facing Today's Challenges with Optimism
We are told that the economy is in tatters, many countries in the world are full of unrest and, here at home, governmental collaboration is strained at all levels. How can we as individuals, parents, business people move forward in such fear-laden times?
Feedback — Direct and Indirect
Indirect feedback is very common because people are not only concerned with the ideas they are expressing but also the effect they will have on others. There is often concern about being wrong, being criticized, appearing stupid or silly, and/or imposing on or hurting others.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Five Stages of a Couple's Journey
Relationships create a place for us to learn how to love. Truly loving another human is a challenging and maturing experience. Learning to love is a process that includes several stages. This article describes the stages and ways of meeting the challenges encountered in each.
"Getting it" Ourselves to Avoid "Losing it" With Our Children
It happens to us all, regardless of all our good intentions – we “lose it” with our children. Maybe it’s the end of the day and your boss was being even more demanding than usual, and when you walk through the door, your children are immediately demanding things just like your boss! The first step in managing these life situations differently is to become aware of our internal triggers, and be self-reflective about our reactions.
[ Download Article | 46k]
Giving You and Your Child an 'A'
How can you be the best parent for your child? How can you build the foundation on which the adult individual will stand? They have your genetic makeup. Now, what environment can you provide that supports them to become capable and well balanced adults? Click here for an approach that honours you and your child as the best you both can be.
[ Download Article | 48k]
Growing Up is So Hard to Do
A growing number of young adults don't want to grow up. This has been a trend over the last decade as young adults emerge with high expectations of what they want in life, without the confidence in themselves to create it. If you are faced with this in your family, click here for the full story.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Helping Children Manage Challenging Situations with Teachers
How many times in your child’s school career have you heard "I hate my teacher" or "my teacher is so mean." How do we teach our children to deal with challenging situations they may face in their school years?
[ Download Article | 78k]
Helping Children Through the Process of Separation and Divorce
When divorce happens in a family, children can experience a tremendous sense of loss, which may feel just as painful as the death of a loved one. When parents divorce, children are faced with the unknown: suddenly, the kind of family they lived within may change dramatically, and they can feel a tremendous amount of fear, sadness and confusion.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Keeping Love Alive
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is the challenge. As a culture we focus on the joys of falling in love but we do not learn the skills of staying in love. Many of us believe that once the "in love" feeling is gone, the relationship is in trouble.
Improving our Emotional Environment
Many of us are moving about our lives in this toxic way and consequently we are tired, stressed and anxious. We know the pace is getting faster and faster and yet we are more and more driven to complete all the tasks on our lists before we can truly relax.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Leadership or Management: A Questionable Distinction
People yearn for good leadership, and individuals in senior roles want to lead well. Yet, relatively few organizations will claim they have the leadership they need.
[ Download Article | 96k]
Let Me Show You My Strengths: Children with Learning Difficulties Need to be Heard
Day after day children with learning difficulties and disabilities are faced with perception problems. What can parents and teachers do to support these children?
[ Download Article | 74k]
Letting Go
Parenthood requires us to hold on, to protect and to guide. Letting go requires us to encourage, empower and believe in the capacity of our children to make their own decisions. How do we become an effective parent and at the same time allow our children to discover life in their own way?
[ Download Article | 40k]
Loving Energy in Couple Relationships
Love is an energetic force that moves between two people in a dance that can be fun, life-giving, challenging, confusing and sometimes frightening. The problem with us humans is that we enter into a love relationship with our humanness and history.
[ Download Article | 40k]
Make An Investment In Your Couple Relationship
The latest brain research has discovered that secure human connections are necessary for healthy growth and development of the brain. Men and women in satisfying relationships have healthier immune systems and heal better following illness or injury.
Making Time for Taking Time
This was supposed to be an era of leisure time — then along came the information age with its new computer technology and "timesaving" devices and the race against time accelerated. As a result, our personal and communal anxiety levels are on the rise. Read more about the strategies you need to manage your anxiety levels.
[ Download Article | 70k]
Manage Energy — Not Time
Paying attention to our energy will allow us to achieve what we wish to accomplish in a day and enjoy doing it. Their premise is that in managing our energy, which is a renewable resource, we escape the limiting paradigm of managing time, a non-renewable resource. Learn the principles of full engagement by clicking here.
[ Download Article | 40k]
Managing Money
Paying attention to our energy will allow us to achieve what we wish to accomplish in a day and enjoy doing it. Their premise is that in managing our energy, which is a renewable resource, we escape the limiting paradigm of managing time, a non-renewable resource. Learn the principles of full engagement by clicking here.
[ Download Article | 57k]
Maximizing Parental Influence
It seems that some children are easier to parent while others are much more challenging. So how do we effectively raise children who are not as 'easy' to parent?
[ Download Article | 60k]
Parent as Teacher
When parents see themselves as teachers, parenting takes on a manageable mandate. When children feel they have someone on their side to help them to learn to function at their full potential, they calm down and feel ready to learn and cooperate.
[ Download Article | 64k]
Parent Burnout
Our children are always plugged into our emotional world, as they anticipate our responses to them. Our own concerns can distract us, resulting in a disconnection. When we are not plugged into our children’s emotional world, the system of communication and cooperation becomes faulty, resulting often in misbehaviour — theirs and ours.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Parenting — Challenges and Choices
Planning and anticipating being a parent is so different than real life experience. We work hard at doing it “right” but often feel we are not doing enough. Building a solid foundation of security, lovability and teaching life skills is the first step as a parent.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Parenting — Exploring Your Suitcase
Where do we learn our approaches to parenting? Why are some areas of parenting easier to manage than others? Are we consciously choosing our reactions and responses to our children’s behaviour? Find out how to examine your suitcase of experiences to build the best family life.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Perspective Taking — An Essential Tool
One way that we humans differ, is that we have different perspectives, we see things in different ways and from different viewpoints. We all have different maps of reality. We learn these maps of reality from experiences and from our environments. Download this article for some unique insights on the Five Stages of Perspective-Taking.
[ Download Article | 68k]
PlayTime
Play is a very important part of our children’s development and over the years seems to have been replaced by busyness and time constraints. Higher and tougher school standards for students have also contributed to less time for play. Unfortunately, the hustle and bustle of society has also reduced adults' time for play. All work and no play for adults can contribute to burnout and unhappiness.
[ HTML version]
[ Download Article | 74k]
Positive Imagery = Positive Action
Positive images come from self-examination of our thoughts, feelings, past successes and the confidence of others in our goals and ability to succeed. When our images are based on messages of capability, past successes, positive feelings and beliefs, we frequently reach the desired results.
[ Download Article | 56k]
The Power of Choice
Our choices are the result of many layers of processing, including our thinking and feeling, our mindsets and attitudes, and our state of being: mind, body and spirit. Let's take a look at two mindsets or attitudes, which can significantly impact the quality of our relationships with others.
[ Download Article | 64k]
Preparing for a Successful School Year
Returning to school often brings mixed feelings for both children and parents. These feelings may range from elation and excitement to sadness and apathy. As parents, we need to listen to feelings, especially fears.
[ Download Article | 60k]
Preparing to Parent Your Teen
Your child is moving to independence and autonomy, creating separation from childhood, searching to establish an identity and preparing for the world of adulthood. This can lead to many misunderstandings unless you are informed of how your child will change and your own feelings.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Reducing Our Reactions of Anger with Our Children
All parents become angry especially given our stressful lifestyles with many competing responsibilities. It takes our "best selves" to approach our children with respect and patience, to listen to their stories and worries, to laugh and play with them as well as meet the daily demands of dinner, homework and bedtime with a firm and loving approach.
[ Download Article | 52k]
The Ripple Effect
Trust is the cornerstone of relationships, both personally and professionally. Trust is a motivator. Individuals thrive on trust. However, experts maintain that the foundational principle of self trust is credibility. We need to be believable both to ourselves and to others.
[ Download Article | 64k]
Risk Taking Is A Necessary Life Skill
In their risky pursuit of experimenting, learning and exploration through trial and error our older children face a multitude of failures but instead of being discouraged by the supposed failures, they try and try again. If we encourage them, they feel proud of their efforts as much as their accomplishments.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Self Esteem - Our Path to Balance
There is a strong connection between self esteem, a feeling of personal power and personal growth. Our life journey is to gain a new perspective of ourselves through changing the way that we view ourselves, speak to ourselves and by choosing a new behaviour, which increase positive messages and constructive self talk.
Setting Goals
Our job as parents is to prepare our children to stand on their own in the world. One very valuable skill to teach them is setting goals. Whether the goal is financial, academic, career or personal, learning the secrets of goal setting is an important life skill.
[ Download Article | 151k]
Soar with Your Talents
Schools and workplaces around the world encourage individuals to identify and correct their weaknesses in order to be more successful. Research has demonstrated that this method causes discouragement rather than motivation.
[ Download Article | 68k]
Social Intelligence: The Vibrations of A Family
How does a family create the relationships they have? How does the atmosphere of a home come together? Some theories suggest that we reflect attitudes and behaviours of those around us at an unconscious level. This ability on our part may come from ancient cave dwelling defense mechanisms we honed when we had to watch those around us to make sure we were prepared for the next move of a new acquaintance, to entrench ourselves in a group, to be part of the clan.
[ Download Article | 48k]
Spring Has Sprung
How can we guide/motivate our children through the next two months of school and still maintain sanity in our families?
[ Download Article | 72k]
Summer Fun, Summer Friction
Summer brings different kinds of issues to families. As parents we set up expectations for more rest, fun and relaxation. We may also attempt to recreate our positive summer childhood experiences or offer every opportunity to our children which we missed in our childhood. The greater our expectations of how summer living and/or vacation time will happen, the more frustration and disappointment we may experience.
[ Download Article | 40k]
Supporting Your Teen in High School
For adolescents who are beginning or returning to high school, there may be a more complicated response to classes, teachers and the social scene. High school can be problematic for our teens.
[ Download Article | 44k]
Take a Mental Vacation: Brainwave Therapy for Parents
Where is the time to relax and rejuvenate your mind and body? Often there is no time and we become irritable, impatient, stressed and exhausted. Understanding what is really going on behind the scenes, in our brains, minds and bodies can lead to a plan to change our daily experiences. Find out what brain research tells us about this.
[ Download Article | 72k]
Tele-Talk - The Essence of Positive Parenting
The moment our children take their first breath in this world, all of our dreams and aspirations for their lives blossom. In addition, many parents feel fear as everything is new and they feel uncertain about their parenting capabilities. No matter how much we prepare, the actual experience of raising healthy happy children can bring an array of emotions. These are some of the key concepts for raising resilient and healthy children.
[ Download Article | 205k]
Thriving in An Uncertain World
We live with the perception that we should be able to take control of our all aspects of our lives, including careers, relationships, children, finances, health and even weather. We become anxious when we realize that this may be a myth. We expend so much energy managing our fears and anxieties, that we lose sight of all the opportunities and gifts available to us.
[ Download Article | 44k]
To Be More Effective, Focus on People Rather Than Numbers
The evidence seems clear: strong performance, however that is defined in your organization, depends to no small degree on your leaders and the relationships they build.
[ Download Article | 140k]
Understanding and Managing Inter-generational Beliefs
In order to assist our children in becoming unique individuals, we need to focus on parenting from the “inside-out.” As parents, we model behaviours and we give verbal and non-verbal messages that are sometimes not conducive to creating healthy and happy children, teens and adults.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Understanding and Responding to Childrens' Misbehavior
The feeling that we are significant and that we matter is very important to one's mental health. This striving on the part of children to create a sense of belonging in connection with others is essential to their growth and development.
[ Download Article | 64k]
Understanding Intelligence In Our Children
In today’s society, we often focus on getting ahead, succeeding in life and wanting the same for our children. Parents need to recognize that there are different types of intelligence and each one can lead to success and self-fulfillment.
[ Download Article | 56k]
Understanding Our Children's School Experience
How much do you know about your child's daily school experiences? How often do you ask the question: "What happened at school today?" and hear the response “Nothing”. This is a common occurrence in many households especially if students are beyond Grade 4. Our children seem to change their attitudes and behaviours about school as they move through the grades. Read what Canadian children are saying about school and our role as parents.
[ Download Article | 49k]
Understanding Our Information Age Learners
Adults seem to have difficulty keeping pace with the new technology but the children know the latest games, toys and books designed to stimulate their imaginations and provide high quality entertainment and learning. The kids are all right. Download this article for more insights about the "new learner."
[ Download Article | 44k]
The Way Things Are
No matter where you are in your life, there are challenges that you face each day – and they change constantly. Here’s how you can look at your day in a way that fills you with enthusiasm.
[ Download Article | 40k]
What Does Love Require of Us?
We have a pervasive cultural belief that true love is easy, magical and inspiring when in fact to make love true we have to invest in a process of learning how to love. True love requires us to grow up.
When is it Time for Counselling?
Have you ever heard the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results! Many of us try and try to resolve life's events get frustrated when we cannot find new options.
[ Download Article | 64k]
When Life Gets Tough
The rules and expectations that have become the norm in our society are creating a problem for our well-being and sense of leisure. Who says we have to do it all? Who says that responsibility has to be drudgery? Who says we have to look good, smell good, have great sex, six-figure incomes?
[ Download Article | 49k]
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