The Problem We all have powerful ideas about how men and women should be, how boys should be and how girls should be. Unfortunately, these ideas cause us to raise our kids in limited ways that affect their whole lives. While girls are often told...

Raising a teenager is inherently crazy-making. If you look at a teenager on some psychological tests, they will actually score as psychotic! A healthy teenager's emotional intensity and fluctuations actually mirror a crazy person's. The complete r...

Today I want to cut to the chase and give you the five most important things that you should do as a parent. #5 Our Attention (at least for a few minutes!) Number five is to give your kids some regular, undivided attention. I know this can be di...

Having a well behaved child obviously makes parenthood a lot easier. Today I want to give you the top five things that you can do and not do to have a well behaved child. Let me start by exploring what I mean by “well behaved.” A healthy child needs to rebel against us, protest our boundaries, insult our character, and even say things that make us question ourselves as a parent. This is what learning to be an individual should look like. Ideally we can hold a large enough space for them to travel through this crucial stage of development as they become a capable, self-confident, conscious and happy adult. This is the really hard part of parenting. At times, we might be able to use domination and fear to manipulate a child into doing what we want more consistently, but it rarely works for very long and it significantly prevents a child from becoming an actualized individual. We can try to raise the equivalent of well behaved dogs, but it is more important that we raise self-aware, empowered citizens. These five areas will help you on that path. #5 Connect to Redirect The quality of the relationship with your kid directly affects how well they behave. If you have a good relationship, the child will generally behave. If you have a bad relationship and there is bad attachment between you and your child, then they are likely to misbehave. It sounds simple, but most of us fail to hold this in mind and instead blame our kids as the problem. One of the simple ways in which you can take advantage of this in the moment is to connect before you redirect. You connect, you get a good relationship with your kid and then you redirect them into what you want. If your kid is doing something you do not want, sit down next to them, join them in that experience and then direct them to what you want. If on the other hand you do not have that good connection and you just come in and try to get them to do something different, they are very likely to resist. If you focus on the attachment between you and your child, then they will want to do good. Not for you, but because they feel a part of a team where they feel good. Try to notice when your child is out of attachment with you, maybe when they come home from school or some other disconnected situation, and do something simple to connect with them. Just a couple of minutes of playing around with them or hearing what is going on for them, will allow them to feel you and they'll be more inclined to behave in a well mannered way. Along these same lines, when you are talking to them, try not to use a harsh voice. Of course, this is really hard for all of us, but if you come with a harsh voice, they're going to rebel. Nobody likes being spoken to in a harsh way. Nobody likes feeling disrespected. None of us like it as adults so why would a child like it? Why would a child like being told what to do any more than we do? The unfortunate reality is anytime we try to control our kids, they are going to rebel in subtle or dramatic ways. See if you can stay in loving connection where you focus on the attachment between you, then it is fairly easy to work together as a team. We experience the same thing as adults. If we feel like our boss cares about us and we feel connected to them, then we are inclined to work harder and ‘behave’ in the minds of our employers. If we feel disconnected, then we are likely to act out in all sorts of big and little ways. #4 Don’t Just Blame the Kid The number four best thing that you can do to have a well behaved child is to figure out why they are misbehaving. Look at what is happening for them that might be causing them to act out. Are they having trouble at school? Perhaps there is something happening in the family. Perhaps there is some way in which you and your partner are stressed or not dealing with your own issues. It is quite normal for children to be brought into therapy because they are ‘misbehaving’,

Obviously, it is really tempting to want to give our phones and tablets to our kids because it gives them the perfect babysitter. They are completely taken care of and we can go on and have our adult conversations and do what we need to do. Parenting is so hard that we need breaks and so sometimes we have to do it, but in my cost benefit analysis, devices actually lead to more work on the parent’s part in the long term. One of the best things that my wife and I decided to do when our child was quite young was to not allow her to use to any of our devices. We saw how many parents were struggling with their kids around access to their phones or tablets, and we didn’t want a child who sat at the restaurant on our phone, separate from us and the world around her. It wasn’t an easy path, but the results have been well worth it and in the end I think a lot less work for us. A number of very famous people have chosen the same decision. Steve Jobs restricted his children's access to devices, as did Chris Anderson, the founder of Wired magazine. They read the research about how detrimental it is for children, but I’ve also heard them say they have a hard time hiring people who can think creatively. There are plenty of people who can use computers, but that engaging them at too early an age stops a child from learning how to think creatively for themselves. (Read more here.) Another such professional was the founder of Broderbund Educational Software. Even though he’d spent his life developing products to help educate kids on computers, he saw that it was better for his kids not to use those computers and, instead, they supported their kids to find other ways to inhabit themselves and self-soothe. So here are four things that you can do to support your child to have a device free life. Advice varies greatly depending upon your children’s age. Although these guidelines are designed for kids under about ten, they can easily be adapted and loosened if yours are older. Step 1: Just Say No The first one is obvious, but can seem impossible. Just say no. If you start young enough, it can be really easy. If on the other hand you are already several years in and they are used to having access to your device, it is difficult, but simply set the boundary. Tell them, "We have one more week and then we are going to stop using devices when we are together." They will protest and be upset, but once it is initiated, it will only be a few days of protest before they accept the limit and start to find a new way to be in the family. This adjustment period is full of discomfort, but I can't tell you how enjoyable the result is. Step 2: Say Yes to Connection The downside and really the upside is that we do have to be more available for our children if we are not going to pawn them off to devices. But that does not actually mean that we have to spend a lot more energy. Like I said, in my experience it actually leads to a child that needs less and struggles less with us. They don’t need a lot of attention, but they do need focussed attention. This can be so hard in our current busy world. My favorite way to do this is to simply set a timer and completely give my attention to my child during those 10 minutes. I play with her however she wants to be played with. Following her lead and not bringing in my own agenda. Since it’s for only 10 minutes, I am able to keep the to-do lists at bay and just do the silly game over and over. When you feed your child with good attention, then they learn to self-soothed and take care of themselves for longer periods of time. Yes, when they ask for attention it requires you to have to turn away from what you are doing. It is hard for me in that moment to turn away, but I am constantly reminding myself that my daughter will not be wanting my attention for very long.

Today I want to cut to the chase and give you the top 5 worst things that we as parents do all the time. #5: Saying “Good Job” We say “good job” to our kids all the time and research has actually shown that this is quite detrimental. What we should be doing is telling them that we see what they are doing. If they make a beautiful picture just say, "Wow, you really worked on that. You put a lot of green in there." You show them that you see them and their efforts. They feel you with them and the validation will cause them to go on in life and make more effort in their life’s endeavours. If you praise their result, if you praise when they get an A, then they will do things to try to get more A’s and that unfortunately includes not taking risks. One really interesting study showed that when kids were given a challenging test and then graded, they would subsequently avoid taking hard tests on which they might get a lower grade and would try to take easier tests. They ended up avoiding things that actually challenged them and required effort. In the same study, another group of kids were acknowledged for their efforts in the first test and subsequently were more likely to go on to take other challenging tests. When we say “good job” we're not praising their efforts, we are praising the result, which teaches them to focus on getting good results in order to get other’s praise. Their motivation in life ends up being about getting others approval rather than being driven by their interest in the world around them and their enjoyment of challenge. We subtly teach them to be like lab rats performing the rewarded task rather than empowered humans driven by their inner passion and enjoyment of life. #4: Stick Them in Boxes We all do this. It’s so hard not to. We stick our kids with labels. We label them as being a bad sleeper or a good eater or bad at math or good at reading. All these labels really cement their identities in a way that does not enable them to move on in life and experience different sides of themselves. I myself had the label as a bad writer when I was a kid and it wasn't until I finally had a teacher that said something different that I realized I love writing and I am actually at least decent at it. If you see your kid doing something, just acknowledge what they are doing in that moment without acknowledging who they are as a person. “You finished all your food.” Or "you had a hard time sleeping last night." Not, “you are a such a good eater.” Or "you really have a hard time sleeping." It has long-term effects on our kids as they come to think of themselves in these ways. They will think they are bad at math and avoid it. Or think they are great at math and cling to that as a safe area for them to focus on. Kids change so fast and we have to constantly remember that they are a new being, capable of new feats, everyday. #3: Telling Them What to Do The third worst thing that we do is that we pressure our kids over and over to do all types of things: to eat more, to do their homework, to clean their room, to brush their teeth. Unfortunately, every time we push on our children or any human being, there is a defensive reaction to back away and not do that thing. If, on the other hand, we just ask, "have you done your homework?", then they are inclined to think about it for themselves and take responsibility for the act. They do still need our help remembering the various tasks, but if we can leave it at that, we are far more likely to raise a self-motivated and personally responsible child. Quite young with my daughter, we stopped pushing her to brush her teeth and simply said, "hey, do you want to brush your teeth? Now is the time." She actually did not like it at first. She liked it when we were taking responsibility for it so she didn’t have to think about it. But that was disempowering and prevented her from learning to take care of herself.

The days or week prior to our women having their menstrual cycles can be extremely hard on them and us. Unfortunately, if we do not know how to navigate that time, we can make it much worse. If we have a few simple tools, however, we can make it a lot better. Women's hormones shift radically during this time of the month and as a result, they have a lot of intense feelings in their bodies that lead to strong emotions. The intensity of these bodily reactions can be difficult to contain and may lead to them having strong reactions to the things around them, most notably us as their partners. The reality is that they are tolerating a lot of bad sensations and impulses in their body and it's very hard to maintain a rational, logical perspective on life. This can actually be quite beautiful because it forces them to deal with the darker aspects of life. So many of us deny these darker aspects, our insecurities, our doubts, and our fears about the world. It is valuable for us to have a time in our lives when we really address this side of being human. For many men and women it is at 3:00 in the morning, when you're lying in bed and unable to sleep, that we come face to face with these thoughts. We find ourselves overwhelmed by anxiety about some aspect of life. Usually it is because the sensations in our bodies at this point are quite uncomfortable. If we can inhabit these moments with consciousness and allow ourselves to feel these feelings, they can be quite transformative in helping us to be more empowered in our lives. Most of us spend far too much time working to avoid bad feelings, whether it be with coffee, work, our phones or some other intoxicant. If we learn to embrace them, we don’t have to spend so much time trying not to feel them and instead feel the relief that comes in inhabiting our pains. If we can support our women to embrace the experiences of having their cycle, then they too can feel more empowered in their life. If on the other hand, we are just making them wrong for feeling ‘irrational’ and telling them they should be more logical, it will make them feel worse. Here are four things that you can do to make it a lot better for both of you. Step 1: Be Prepared! Set it on your calendar. Know when it is going to happen. If you are prepared, then you are not blindsided by her suddenly having upset feelings. If you can be prepared for those kinds of reactions, you will not have such a hard time being in relationship to it. Step 2: Love Goes a Long Way Now that you have it in your calendar and you know when it is happening, do things that will be supportive of her feeling good in herself before it even hits. Give her a little note expressing your love, maybe a flower, an extra kiss. Little things that show your affection and your support. If she feels your love in this time, she is less likely to fall into a bad place and see you as a bad person who is causing her suffering. Learn what she likes. Perhaps foot massages. Perhaps little kisses on the cheek, chocolate or maybe sex. Anything that can support her to feel good in herself so the bad feelings don’t dominate. Step 3: Just Listening This step is really important throughout your life with your partner, but especially during this time. It is hard to listen to our partner’s suffering and not want to help them feel better. We want to tell them how they can fix the situation and how they are thinking about it in a distorted way. Unfortunately this makes it worse. It gives them the message that they should be different. If we can just listen and look them in the eye, then they get to share their experience in a deeply helpful way. Just listen to what is going on for her. Do not try to change her feelings. If she has the ability to vent whatever is happening for her, no matter how irrational it is, it will get out and it will move on. If on the other hand, you are countering her negativity with some kind of optimism,

When our little girls grow into women and start to bleed, it is an amazing moment in their lives. Unfortunately, few of us fathers know what to do in this precious moment. A lot of us back away thinking we should leave it to the women. This can lead to long term detrimental effects upon our daughters. If we know how to be the father they need, we can make it a profound transition that leads to them becoming a more empowered woman throughout their life. We are taught that the menstrual cycle is something to leave for the women to take care of. Unfortunately, if we are close to our daughters throughout their younger years and then they start to bleed and we back away leaving the mom to take care of this moment, we give our daughters a really bad message. We are unconsciously telling them that they should hide their cycle from men and that is something of which to be ashamed. We are saying we preferred them when they were little girls, not sexually blooming powerful women This has a long term effect on women, as it takes women many decades to come to the place where they feel good in themselves as a sexual being. If we know how to be with them in this moment of transition into womanhood, we can give them the message that all of who they are is good. They can more quickly get to a place of feeling fully empowered in who they are. Here are four keys that you can do to have this moment be a wonderful moment and not a bad lesson. Key #1 Don’t Assume It’s a Woman’s Thing! The most important and quite simple step is to not assume it is a woman's thing, to get in there and incorporate yourself. Learn about the experience, talk to your partner about it, get educated, and engage in the moment. Do not assume that you should remove yourself in that moment. Key #2 Know Thy Self & Deal with It! If we want to fully incorporate ourselves into our daughter's lives, then we have to notice what's going on for us internally. If we have any mixed feelings about our daughter's transitioning into becoming women and becoming sexual, then those unconscious mixed feelings can cause us to back away. Many us have shame about your own sexuality or unaddressed fears about our daughter being sexual. Our culture doesn’t help us much with being consciously empowered in our sexualities and thus our children need all our help to not go down the normal disempowered path. Transitioning into womanhood and puberty is a really intense experience for girls. If we as fathers back away in that moment rather than being close, they really lose the support that they need. If we can step forward and maintain our proximity, they will be able to transition through this period of life with much greater ease and move into a life where they feel good about themselves. Take the time to get in touch with your own inner feelings about this transition. Talk to your partner, journal, perhaps a friend, or just sitting there with a cup of coffee and thinking about it. Notice what is happening inside of you, so that your inner feelings do not end up dictating your relationship with your daughter and you can continue to have a close relationship with her. Key #3 Stay Close I keep saying this because it is extremely important. We need to stay in physical contact with our daughters. As they transition in their bodies, it's really helpful for them to stay in physical contact with us. Whether it is rough housing, wrestling or however you did it with them when they were younger. Do not stop doing that just because they have breasts that are budding, and their hips are spreading out. They still need that contact and if we suddenly withdraw this connection and affection, then they get the subtle message that I discussed previously. If we are there for them to cuddle up against and be close with, they get to experience their developing eroticism in a very healthy way. If we back away, it gets very confusing for them.

Talking to our kids about sex is more important than most of us realize. As parents, we are the best chance them developing a healthy sexuality. If we do it poorly, it can literally lead to a life of bad sex. If we do it well, we can support them to be empowered in their sexuality and decrease the chance of them having horrible and even abusive sexual experiences. The problem is that our society teaches us to be private about our sexuality. We all hide the fact that we are sexual beings, except when we are in magazine aisles at the grocery store. Why are we so private about something most people enjoy so much? If you look closely, it is shame. There is a sense of shame that we have in our society about being sexual beings. Unfortunately that shame gets in the way of being able to have healthy conversations with our kids. Shame causes us to to feel and act awkwardly when it comes time to talk with our children. We end up saying things in truly weird ways and giving our kids very strange conceptions about sex. We unconsciously give them the message that sex is shameful and not something that can be easily talked about with integrity. If we can work through our own shame then we can come to interact with our kids in a very easeful way and support them to have an empowered sexual relationship with themselves. Here are five things that you can do to have a really solid conversation with your kids and support their sexual development. Step 1: Face Yourself The most important step is to get in touch with your own shame. Perhaps you even notice it listening to me. Do you find yourself cringing in certain moments and backing away at the idea of being direct? Notice what happens for you when you think about talking to your kids about sex. Write down what those issues are so you can more fully think about them. It is quite likely that they got passed to you from your parents and their shame about sexuality, their difficulty talking to you, combined with all the mixed messages we get from our society about our sexuality. Step 2: Collaborate with Your Partner Once you have had a chance to feel your shame and feelings about your sexuality, go to your partner and share everything with them. Find out what is going on for them. This teamwork will allow both of you to work through your shame and to come to feel better about your sexuality and your ability to talk about it. If you have never really talked to anybody about the feelings you have about sex, then talking to your kids about sex is probably going to be really difficult. Start by sharing all things that come up with you with your partner and talk about how you would like to talk to your kids about it. Make it a collaborative effort that will allow both of you to feel more capable in that intense moment with your children. Step 3: When to Have the Sex Talk Talking to your kids at the right age is really important, but it is best if you talk to them throughout their lives and as early as possible. You can start with the birds and the bees and how animals do it. Then where babies come from and specifically the story of their conception and birth. The story slowly develops as they develop. This also gives you a chance to develop your ability to talk about it in a non-shameful way. If you have never really talked to your kids about making love and you have to do that at the age of 11 or 12, then it is going to be really awkward for you and you are likely to pass on that awkwardness to them. If you slowly feed it to them, you will get a chance also to warm to the subject and find your way that will feel empowering and good for both of you. Step 4: Stay Attuned As you are having these conversations it is very important to track your child's reactions. Of course they are going to be uncomfortable. That is inherent in the process. You are often feeding them information that is a little bit ahead of them. You do not want to be behind them.

As us men can barely imagine, birthing a baby is a profoundly intense experience. If a woman is disconnected from her body, then she is more likely to have a difficult birth. If on the other hand, a woman is in the zone, in her body and feeling good in herself, then she is likely to inhabit that moment with grace and relaxation. Feeling emotionally and energetically open and in one’s body allows a woman to more easily ride the intensity of the birth and thus for the baby to more easily come from her body. For most women, having a baby grow insider her brings up a lot of anxiety and fear. In attempt to manage these feelings, it is natural to worry and go into their heads. It does not make them feel good about themselves and it does not put them in the zone. Fortunately, there are a number of things that women can do to get themselves in that zone and feel good in their body. Doing yoga, getting massaged, taking baths, naps and dancing all help. But the most powerful thing a woman can do is have sex. Sex supports a woman to feel really good in her body and really good in her genitals. Genitals that are profoundly changing and that she may have very mixed feelings about. Unfortunately, for far too many couples, sex falls to the floor during pregnancy. This has a very detrimental impact on the birth process and their relationship. Both of which can lead to a lot of problems down the line. There is another really important reason why having lots of sex during pregnancy is so valuable. You are not likely to have a lot of sex for a long time. It is often many months before you can easily have sex with your partner. It is often many years before women really feel their own sexual desire again. This is your chance. There are no kids around to distract you. This is your chance to really solidify that bond with your partner and feel your eroticism with them. Having this bond will help you face the inherent struggle of having a baby pop up into the mix. You are going to face all kinds of intense challenges and if you feel erotically close and really good with your partner, you are far more likely to handle those challenges without pushing the relationship to its edge. So here are six steps to supporting your intimacy to thrive during this crucial time period. Step 1: Don’t Give Up! Sex can be complicated when pregnant. Certain positions that you relied on in the past may be awkward or may not work at all. You may have to figure out a different way to be sexual. There may be positions that in the past you have had aversion towards. Look at what those aversions might be and see if you can play around and try something a little different. It is important to stick in there, even in the face of that awkwardness. Talk to your partner about what is working and what is not working as you are engaging in a sexual act and find a way that can work for both of you. Step 2: It’s not all about Fucking Making love does not have to include intercourse. We all know this and yet most of us are habituated to over-relying upon penetration and neglecting the myriad other acts that can be even more intimate. There are certain times during pregnancy where intercourse may be too awkward. It is delightful and very connecting to explore other options for with your partner. Take some time to talk with your partner about what they would like. So many of us never talk once we get sexual. However good our communication is throughout the rest of our relationship, we somehow revert to silence once the clothes come off. Try talking during sex and sharing what you’d like to try. This fosters the connection and opens doors to new options. This will allow you to have this erotic relationship that can flower in the face of the pregnancy. Step 3: Don’t Worry about the Kid Many people are scared that sex and especially rough sex will hurt the baby. The reality is that penetration is not going to affect the baby at all.