Blog
The Healing Power of Art
One only needs to step inside a museum or pause at an art gallery to recognize the love for and connection to art human beings have always had. Art stirs our souls and imagination and brings beauty to our everyday lives. But it turns out, art also brings a slew of...
Teletherapy Or In-Office for my Teen?
Covid 19 has created a rapidly and ever changing environment for mental health providers and clients. Many adolescents and young adults face some difficulty in accessing therapy under normal circumstances, and our current situation of sheltering in place has added...
Parenting Emotions and Supporting School Success with Quaranteenagers
Depending on where you live, it's been just over or just under 44 days, 17 hours, and 9 minutes since Americans were ordered to shelter in place and schools shuttered their doors to students. Parents, you have A LOT of thoughts and feelings about this. Not that we're...
The Unnamed Losses of Coronavirus. We are Grieving.
Last week, people were sharing with me that they felt angry. Angry at forced isolation, no canned beans or tomatoes at the grocery stores, sharing the living room with our whole family at once. Angry with feeling misinformed, and angry because of the constant,...
When Coronavirus Closes Your Teens’ School, Cures for Parent Stress
I'd been feeling pretty calm in the face of coronavirus until Sunday, when wave after wave of new information came crashing towards me; my kid's school closing, all non-essential businesses closing, my parents being told to shelter in place....actually, that was the...
When You’re at the End of Your Rope Parenting Your Teen’s Failing Grades, Do This
You know what I'm talking about. It's about 10pm on a Tuesday night. You walk by your kid's room on your way to (finally already) going to sleep, after sending that last email, brushing the dog's teeth, calling your mom, figuring out how to get more than one family...
Building Independence With Your Teen: The 4 -Step Approach
"It shouldn't be this hard." Anne (not her real name) was on my couch in the office with a perplexed look on her face. "She walked at ten months. She drives an hour to soccer practice four days a week, and she has four AP courses and straight A's. So how can it be...
Teaching Teenagers about Emotional Resilience is Easy
https://youtu.be/ZQDDTFvhaaM
Do’s and Dont’s: The Parent Guide to Teen Relationship Breakups
Breakups Suck. This is the kind of thing that knocks the wind out of all of us. Your teen finally found someone that they connect with, that really GETS them. Who they can be their whole complete self with. You see the shine in their eyes, the unending, seemingly...
Helping Teens Increase Thought Control for Calming Down
https://youtu.be/Dc94YndV8bw
Anxiety and Teens: What’s Normal and What’s Not?
"I'm feeling calm when I talk about it, but when it happened, I couldn't go back to class. I had to call my mom and beg her to pick me up". Many, many times have I heard this, the teen with me in session looking at me baffled and ashamed. Wishing they could explain...
No, it’s Not Impossible to Find a Therapist for Teenagers
Last month I wrote a blog titled 5 Tips for Picking a Therapist for Your Teen. It published 7 days ago, and three days after that, I got a text from a dear friend that went something like this: "...Why is it so ^%$##!!!! hard to find a therapist for my teens??!! Help,...
Caring for Suicidal Teens-5 Success Stories
It was reported recently that every day, 16 young people die from suicide. I'm turning, again, to writing about suicide, and wishing desperately that I had better news. I want to write about suicide rates going down, or that a new abundant source of money has been...
5 Tips for Picking a Therapist for Your Teen
So, how DO you pick a therapist for your teen? Parents, you are not alone if you face this question and draw a blank. The truth is, finding a mental health provider for adolescents can be confusing. There is a big resource gap for parents who are looking for a...
How Teen Group Therapy Improves Tolerance for Others
"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind." -C.S. Lewis I've been noticing something that alarms me. In conversations with clients, and with other therapists, I'm beginning to learn how often we expect ourselves to operate autonomously, without...
Why Would my Teen Need Therapy?
And now we welcome a New Year - a year that is full of things that have never been. Rainer Maria Rilke The students were listening intently, like me, hanging on every word: "....and then I decided that I wanted to tell other people- I've changed, and I needed therapy...
Resources and Support for Parenting a Mental Health Crisis
Crisis, noun: A time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger. Support, verb: To give assistance to; enable to function or act. Here's a common thread I notice running through our conversations lately: the holidays are are a particularly challenging time of year for...
Why Holidays are so Hard for Adolescents with Blended Families
So much of life is about transitions. Really, most of life can be described as a transition. How about when someone asks "How are you?" and you reply "Good! Well, I'm incredibly busy." Think of the transitions and change you might have had in the week before you were...
Parenting Adolescent Depression During the Holidays
Connection. Closeness. Joy. Laughter. Rest. Abundance. At Restoring Relationships, we're starting to talk about how we yearn for these things, and how the holidays can be so painful because yearning is NOT the same as experiencing. We're talking about how, even when...
Family as a Means of Practicing Forgiveness and Gratitude
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and it brings to mind a story of gratitude. I remember taking my then sixteen-year-old on an international journey two years ago. Out of my husband and I, I had drawn what was considered by most to be the "long straw" -the chosen parent to...
My Teen is Vaping-Help!
A text came in as I was leaving work: "I'm worried about Caleb*. He was caught vaping by a teacher and was suspended. If that wasn't bad enough, his grades have been slipping and now he can't play in the next basketball game because he's below a 2.0. I need...
I Hate my Life and I’m Not OK- Can I go Out Tonight? How Teenagers deal with Feelings of Depression
Your teenager is REALLY resilient. It may be hard to believe, but it's true! Have you ever wondered why your son or daughter may be inconsolable one minute and ready to bolt out the door the next? I've been thinking a lot about this lately in my conversations with...
Social media vs. face-to-face relationships: Does social media cause depression in teens?
We are a media saturated world. Many researchers agree that in 2012 smartphone use went from optional to mandatory (reported by National Public Radio and others) meaning this was the year that really shifted us from using smartphones largely for convenience, novelty...
5 Reasons Your Teenager is in their room- And when that’s OK.
"I'm really worried about her. I don't know why she can't put her phone down, it's the only thing in the whole house she pays attention to. She won't even eat dinner with us! She says she's not hungry but then I see her eating chips late in the evening. And she spends...
Compassion for the Parenting Journey
When Self Injury in Teens is, and isn’t, Suicidal
Self injury or self harm takes on many forms, and is a common form of emotional expression among adolescents. The following are considered to be self harming acts, which is any intentional harming of body tissue: Cutting Picking Burning Scraping of the skin Pulling of...
What every Parent needs to Know about Depression and the risk of Suicide in Teens
"I'm broken." "I didn't tell you because I thought you would be mad at me." "I am so sick of feeling this bad. I want it to stop." "I thought I could handle this on my own, and now I'm scared." Parents know when their teen is feeling down. We feel the depression as if...
Parents, Families, Teens: We Can Be Stigma Free about Suicide
September was National Suicide Prevention Month. It was also the month that my small, tight-knit school community lost a beautiful and loved young man to suicide. We've been talking and crying and comforting each other like this: that although there are many rational...
Connecting with your Teenager is just an authentic, curious, open-ended question away
Teens and Aggression- Continuing the Conversation
Responding to Teen Aggression with Connectedness
Household aggression. It's a really, really difficult topic to discuss, and profoundly difficult to experience. It often brings up confusion, shame, helplessness and hopelessness in families who are already struggling under the weight of daily life. Our communities...
Adolescents and Anxiety: How to help your teen prepare for going back to school
Going back to school is hard. Whether it's middle or high school, new school or returning on campus, most students agree they approach the Fall semester with a big mix of emotions, expectations, and uncertainty. Now is a good time for parents to increase their...
Making a parenting choice about curfews? Read on.
It's 1am and you've been startled awake by an inexplicable urge to check the driveway for your teen's car. Or steal down the hall, wiping sweat from your forehead, to check their bed. Why are you doing this? Because you thought you had an agreement with your son or...
Four Steps to Winning Cooperation in Teens
Sitting with him, in my therapy office, I was scratching my head. Every question I asked, and I mean EVERY question, ended with a shrug, a minuscule, dipped-head eye roll, or an emphatic "I don't know". It took me far too long to realize this getting-to-know-you talk...
Really Understanding your Teen’s needs
Adolescents naturally put tremendous effort into creating belonging and significance with their peers, but when, and how, parents nurture it at home is what really contributes to teen's healthy decision making, avoiding risks, and being capable in all areas of their...
Who Replaced My Child with an Alien? Working our way – A Love Letter
I just finished Dr. Lisa Damour's book Untangled, Guiding Teenage Girls through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood (Ballantine, 2017), and when I closed the cover, I felt relieved. Relieved that I am not the only parent who looks baffled, at the person standing in...