Do you have a love-hate relationship with summer when it comes to your kids? Especially your teens?

If you answered yes, you are not alone! I get this a lot from the parents I work with.

Summer used to be the ice cream truck, spending hours in the pool, and riding our bikes around the neighborhood.

Now it’s feeling torn between work and being there for our kids, logistical nightmares of getting kids to a different camp every week and spending the whole summer feeling guilty that our kids are spending too much time on their screens.

Do Your Kids Listen to You?

Too often we have kids that don't listen because we have trained them not to listen! We do that by making a request of them without following through. In that way, by the time our children are tweens or teens, they have a honed sense of how seriously they have to listen. They know you don't really mean it until you get loud or mad.

Instead, learn The S-U-S-T-A-I-N-E-D Connect to teach your kids to follow through without you ever having to raise your voice or sharpen your tone.

Savoring the Silver Linings of Covid

A lot of people—parents, kids and teens—are anxious about returning to “normal” whatever that is going to look like post-covid. It is my sincere hope that families work to incorporate the silver linings of #parentinginplace into the new school year. That might include family dinners, kids doing chores, family meetings or even new hobbies that keep us grounded and relaxed.

How Do You Talk to Your Kids About Porn?

The idea of talking to your kids about porn may make you want to hide your head, but who better than you to do it? Recently I had the pleasure of hearing sex educator Amy Lang give a webinar on how to talk to your boys about porn. I felt like what she has to say is so critically important that I wanted to pass on to you the key ideas I got from her talk. (And while it was directed towards parents of boys, everything Amy said sounded like I could have easily used it with my daughter, too.)

Your Parenting Questions Answered

As a parenting coach I love giving talks around the San Francisco/Bay Area. And now that we are all sheltering in place, I have been doing coaching online by giving webinars. Every once in a while, I leave 10 minutes for Q + A at the end of a talk and I realize upon reflection that I should have talked for 10 minutes and left 50 minutes for Q + A. Since a lot of the questions that come up have similar themes and might be showing up in your house, I thought you might like to read some of those questions and answers.

Your Child Has Been Diagnosed with ADHD. Now What?

The fact that your child has been diagnosed with ADHD may bring up a lot of emotions—fear, sadness, guilt, anger, confusion. But to my mind the diagnosis is good. Let me tell you why. You have been living with a child with ADHD for quite some time now. Whether or not you knew it, you knew your child is different. To my mind, having a diagnosis is a good thing: It means you can get the professional help your child might really need. In the meanwhile, all the parenting techniques that support harmony and cooperation in any household are even more important with your kids with an ADHD diagnosis.

3 Keys to a Harmonious Home

The tagline to my business Joyful Parenting Coaching is Be the Architect of Your Family. With that, I really mean to parent deliberately. Here are three reasons I see structure as supporting a happy, harmonious family life: It makes kids feel secure; it gives opportunities for independence; and it can improve connection among family members.

Gather Round the Table

Three months into COVID-19, we are more antsy and our nerves are more frayed. It is no surprise that our kids’ behavior might be amping up. You should expect to see more moodiness and more negative interactions as they lose the structure remote learning (such as it was) provided. The best way to counteract that is CONNECTION. In a world that is feeling slightly crazy, it is even more important that kids feel anchored to the family. The forced physical proximity of being home together helps, but kids too often withdraw into their rooms and onto their screens. Get them off their phones and to the table for family dinner!

Special Time--The Silver Bullet of Parenting

Putting the fear of god into your children doesn’t work; neither does giving in to their every whim. True cooperation from kids is based on relationship and connection. The question is how do you build the closeness and mutual trust in the midst of running through the day and getting everyone else’s needs met? The closest thing to a silver bullet is Special Time (and, yes, that’s capital S and capital T!).

The Power of Dreaming

It is important to be present, to appreciate the moment as we are #parentinginplace with our families. At the same time, dreaming is a powerful way to shift our reality, to inspire us and to reassure us, that we will not always be sheltering in place. Children of all ages from preschoolers to teens will benefit from some active, no-holds-barred dreaming.

Clarity, Connection and Consistency: Three Parenting Pillars

Effective Parenting pillars: Clarity, Connection and Consistency. Master these three parenting pillars and all the other parenting challenges will be easier as you will have the strong bond that you need to get your kids’ cooperation.

Stepping Stones to Laying the Ground Work for Healthy Relationships with Your Kids

As parents approach the teen years, they get fearful about all the pitfalls their sweet baby can fall into. Yes, it is scary. Between social media and new addictions like vaping, there is a lot that can pull a kid off track. There is no silver bullet for protecting our kids. Even companies like Apple that are trying to provide parental controls on their devices are failing to truly protect our kids. So what does buffer our kids? Well in studies of measures that support kids in thriving, a strong connection to family remains one of the best tools.

Get 4 Tips for Building a Healthy Relationship with Your Kids

3 Tips for Deciding What Extracurricular Activities to Enroll Your Kids In

One of the reasons that we are seeing anxiety and depression increase at such alarming rates is because children are so over programmed that they do not get the downtime they need. Additionally, getting kids to their additional activities adds stress to the whole family system. Parents feel a lot of pressure to provide their kids enriching opportunities, but that learning is coming at a very high cost.

When is a Demand for a Popsicle Not Really a Demand for a Popsicle?

We get thrown as parents when our kids ask (demand!) something that they know we are going to say no to. Have we ever said yes to a popsicle for breakfast? No! So why would they even think to ask? Read to find out .

3 Metaphors for Parenting Teens

Parenting a teen is a new game! The main goal of parenting a teen is to raise an adult. That means your main parenting task between roughly 12 and 18 is to make the shift from being the captain of the ship to being the wise guide. After all, it is simply not possible to drive down the street for you child and to claim that your child is learning to drive. Before he or she can get a license, your child has to get behind the wheel and drive down the street without you in the car. Keep these three metaphors in mind in helping you be the parent of a teen.

How to Bring Out the Best in Your Kids

Parents often worry that their kids aren’t motivated to do anything beyond play video games or post on social media. The truth of the matter is is that there is a lot in kids’ daily lives that works to squash personal motivation. Here are some tips parents can use to rekindle their child’s natural eagerness to interact with the world and to take pride in what they do.

Addressing Children’s Fears and Anxieties Without Shrugging Them Off

Slow and Steady Wins the Race when it comes to overcoming anxieties and phobias. Too often it is hard for us to slow down and be empathetic with our children and their fears. And sometimes we are so afraid of upsetting them that we do everything we can to avoid the situation that triggers the fear. As with so many things, that answer lies in the middle. Help your child take baby steps towards mastering his fears. That way he will feel supported and seen and heard ; and at the same time you help him develop the skills and persistence he will need so much in life.

How One Dad Rebuilt Trust with His Daughter Even After She Broke the Rules

Every once in a while I publish a guest post—either because the person’s expertise in a given area is much more sophisticated than mine or because they offer a perspective I cannot. In this blog, dad Tyler Jacobson shares how he handled it when his 13 year old daughter broke some big family rules. I especially love the understanding he shows his daughter as well as the problem solving, all while keeping her accountable for her poor choices.

Should You Make Your Kid Apologize? (Part II)

In Part I of Should You Make Your Kid Apologize, I looked at what it means as adults when we apologize. I took the time for that discussion to help parents realize the implications of when and why we apologize. Yes, I do think it is important that we teach children to apologize, but we have to go beyond a hollow apology by supporting our kids’ emotional growth.

Should You Make Your Kid Apologize? (Part I)

Should You Make Your Kid Apologize?

That’s a tricky question! There is no doubt that our children need to understand the idea of an apology but given that there are different kinds of apologies for different situations, teaching our children to offer an apology is not a straight forward task. It certainly won’t be taught with a simple rule. Or with a single iteration. Let’s consider the nature of apologies and where our own practice lines up with our expectations of our children.

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© 2021 Elisabeth Stitt

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