As the parent it doesn’t always feel so great when all of your positions get shaved away by your budding courtroom lawyer. It is exhausting. Setting limits firmly and still honoring the dignity of your child isn’t really hard, but it takes practice.
A lot is written this time of year about what we “resolve” to do for the future. Goals are great but it can be really discouraging when, despite good intentions, they are not met.
Contributed by Jody McVittie, MD Part of my memory of early family vacations include very annoying choruses of, “Are we there yet?” from the back seat. In my more sarcastic moments my internal voice was saying, “Are we stopped yet?” “Does it look like it?” and other variations of maternal snarkiness. I’m not proud of it, but I know that I didn’t always keep my thoughts to myself. Gradually though, I learned to hear those choruses differently. They were voices of a trio that had not been involved in planning; three children who felt like baggage just being “transported” to [...]
Contributed by Jody McVittie, MD Do you ever finish putting your children to bed and feel exhausted? You’ve longed for some kind of connection with them at the end of the day – and way too often it feels like you’ve been through some kind of battle? When you think about it from the child’s point of view it can make sense. When he goes to bed it feels like you will be continuing on without him. He might miss something! To make matters worse, sometimes he gets the sense that you are “done” with him and want to “get [...]
