In my prior post on bullies, I mentioned my own sixth grade experience of being bullied. So, I feel a lot of sympathy for bullied children. I'm going to whisk through a framework for parents of bullied children, then develop a few points further in future blogs. Here is a four-part strategy if your kid is bullied: Detection and Support Strategies Escalation Find Friends In part 1, build open lines of communication in advance so your child knows they can bring their problems t

Yep, bullying still exists. Despite anti-bullying programs, the age-old torment of fellow classmates or teammates goes on. I’ll spend this post and my next on bullying. Here, I ask, what if your kid is one of the bullies? According to StopBullying.gov , there are four factors in bullying. First, it could be the school's culture. The school's leadership may be weak in addressing bullying, look the other way, or deny anything is happening on their watch. I was the new kid in to

I heard one of my favorite football coaches say this week that you get what you emphasize to your team. The same is true for parenting. A good example is the kind of questions you ask your child when they get home from school. One father took a more direct approach than "How was school?" He started asking his 12-year-old son, "Who did you help today?" As a result, the son now starts his daily description with "I held the door,", or "I helped a friend with math," or "I asked s

Parents must strike the right balance between overemphasizing and underemphasizing a child's emotional needs. In my last blog , I showed how parents can veer toward Permissive Parenting when they only focus on love, kindness, and feelings without discipline. On the other extreme are parents who neglect or do not properly address a child's emotional needs. Typically, we see this behavior with the other two negative parenting styles, Dominant Parenting and Neglectful Parenting.

When I had coached my last Little League game, after six years with this team, I expected parents to comment on what their child had...

As much as I love youth sports, I've never been able to shake the memory of what led me to leave baseball behind as a middle schooler. I...

Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, endorses a new proposal from the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. The advocated technique...

I feel sorry for my kids and their palates. When they were growing up, I didn't fix them the best meals. First, I didn't really know how...

Parents can say so much that kids tune out. I get it because I've done it. You're so happy when your child asks a deep question. You feel...

When my children would ask me for permission to go on some outing or to some social engagement, I would ask questions. A lot of...

Does it feel like saying "no" to your child leads to a tantrum? And not just at home, but in public? This is one of the seven signs of a...

Addiction to screens is a real thing for parents to worry about. A new study published by a division of the Journal of the American...

In my last blog, I said there was something worse for children than divorce. How about loveless marriages? Parents in troubled marriages...

It's no surprise that divorce is hard on children. But how parents handle the divorce can significantly change children's lives. And one...

Matthew 5:14-16  “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it...

The single mom was desperate. Her three teenaged sons, an 18-year-old and 13-year-old twins, would not clean up after themselves. The...

What bigger trust is there than to be responsible for a child? We must not only show our faithfulness toward God in this charge but also...

Even as we manage our children, we need to openly and clearly love them as well, with tenderness.

When we disagree with how our parenting partner is interacting with our child, we tend to lean the other way to balance. This only sets off a tug of war between parents. To solve the problem, lean toward each other, not away.

The foundation of Unison Parenting is a process called Proactive Parenting.