It’s easy as parents to try to communicate with all our children the same. And typically, we tend to communicate with our kids in the way we grew up. Some families look at communication as a way to make sure their kids are tough, resilient, and able to withstand whatever life sends their way. But […]
Let’s face it, as moms we know our kids. We know what they are capable of and what they might do and most likely what they won’t do. Hopefully we understand their hearts and what motivates them. And we definitely know which of our kids is most likely to cause trouble in the family. I can’t tell […]
Getting to the bottom of our emotional reactions to our kids can be difficult. The heat of the moment can cause us to do things we said we would never do. And it has taken me a long time to understand these reactions even in myself. Years, in fact. If I’m feeling something going on […]
The word validation has been cropping up everywhere I turn for the past two weeks. It’s something that I’ve struggled with for years. I always thought empathy and validation were essentially the same thing. I tended to be pretty good on the empathy front so I assumed that my empathy was in fact validating my […]
Emerging into the world our daughter arrived six minutes after I had waddled through the emergency entrance at the hospital doors. Our family joke was that she was the creator of drama and the day of her birth was the beginning. She had orderlies, nurses, and doctors frantically hustling for her grand entrance while my husband, Dave, was […]
Last week I felt like everything I did for one of my kids was met with sarcasm, frustration, or anger. The typical jokes we had between us, the acts of kindness I did, and every time I seemed to open my mouth it was met with a snarl of “you never…” or “you always…”. […]