Writings
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I blog weekly on parenting issues through a Jungian lens. Please check back regularly to see the latest posts.
Asking Kids to Do Scary Things
A recent parenting piece in the Washington Post detailed how schoolchildren are challenged in Japan, and how learning to handle difficulties pays off later when these kids reach adulthood. One paragraph in particular caught my eye and made my mother’s heart skip a...
Do You Believe Your Child is Special?
When my children were small, we were friendly with a family who had a daughter who was quite bright. The parents spent a lot of time talking about Sophie’s intelligence and talents, and the special challenges that came along with parenting such a gifted child. Because...
The Lessons of Anger
Last week, I explored whether avoiding all anger at one’s children might be too much of a good thing. In essence, I argued that when children see us deal with our aggression, they learn to deal with theirs. Anger is most essentially a response to having one’s...
A Big Emotion is Not an Emergency: Helping Teenagers Manage Their Emotions
I learned early in my daughter’s toddler days that savvy moms don’t gasp or shriek when the baby falls and bumps herself. At playgroups, the correct response was modeled for me: toddler falls down; toddler looks toward mom with a face beginning to scrunch with...
Parenting in the Age of Polarization
My two kids have always had a competitive and contentious relationship. Now that they are teens, this friction often expresses itself as fierce disagreement on social and political issues. As the wider culture has grown increasingly polarized, so had our dinnertime...
Do Kids Have Too Much Power?
These days, there is a widespread tendency for children of all ages to have too much power relative to their parents. I realize it sounds a bit old-fashioned to say this, and in fact I believe this trend has developed in part as a reaction against overly authoritarian...
Collision with Reality: What Depth Psychology Can Tell Us about Victimhood Culture
When Carl Jung was a 12-year-old schoolboy, he was shoved to the ground by another child, hitting his head on the pavement, and nearly losing consciousness. Instantly, he grasped the opportunities created by this attack. At the moment I felt the blow, the thought...
Humble Gifts: On Knowing We’re Enough
I had a conversation with a mother in my practice this week that brought up something important. As usual, I tried to find a fairy tale that captured the essence of what this mother was struggling with. The right tale did come to mind – it’s a 12th century French...
What Happens When We Don’t Like Our Kids?
I am always a little surprised when a mother tells me with great shame and in great secrecy that she finds she doesn’t particularly like her child. Of course we don’t always like our children! It seems there is too much secrecy around this fact, and greater acceptance...
Gifts From Our Mothers
When my client Rose was around nine or ten years old, she and her family were camping. With her parents’ permission, Rose set off on a walk through to woods to join up with friends at the lake. Rose remembers being suddenly startled by a large black bear rearing up in...
Helping Our Kids Become Whole
“The right way to wholeness,” Jung wrote, “is full of fateful detours and wrong turnings.” And yet many mothers worry that there is a right way and a wrong way to parent. We spend time reading books and blogs. We listen to podcasts, and pay for expert advice, which is...
Listening to Our Instincts
I suspect that parenting is more difficult than ever because of the proliferation of expert advice everywhere one turns. Advice can certainly be helpful. There are those who have done this before, who figured out things that can be helpful. There are scientists who...