I see plenty of adults who are punishing themselves because they aren’t someone else. Most of them started as children who felt punished because they weren’t someone else. This someone else they never were is not even a real person, it’s an ideal. This ideal was communicated to them by their parents and it is an anachronism, a relic, based on expectations, dreams, and hopes that the parent had for their child. Parental expectations and visions of the ideal child are formed before the baby is even born. Every parent develops these hopes and dreams to some extent. Mostly these
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Successful Summer Traveling – The Road Trip
A road trip with school-age children requires planning and flexibility. It requires realistic expectations. It also requires good self-care for the parents, or you’ll feel like you need your own vacation after the family vacation. To illustrate these points, let me tell you a story about my good friend Chadd. When Chadd was about fourteen, his family embarked on a trip to Florida from Indiana. His mother, stepfather, and three younger siblings were ready to make the trip in their nice roomy conversion van. The kids woke up early, waiting for the dad to return home from working the night
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Is Family Time Supposed to be Fun?
The topic for this month’s issue of Parent Magazine, family entertainment, got me thinking about the good times I’ve had with my family. I also remember some times that were, well, a little more challenging! Successfully creating entertaining activities for the whole family can be quite an undertaking. If you are reading this, and you have participated in family activities, you can probably recall some great times and a few really, really bad experiences. Have you ever tried to get the whole family to watch a movie together and end up watching it by yourself? How about those times you
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