EDITOR’S NOTE: Being a good parent at times takes superhero skills. To help you develop your own, “The Relational Book for Parenting” authors Saliha Bava and Mark Greene offer suggestions from their book. Go here to read more in this exclusive periodic series for City Dads Group. We previously wrote about the power of listening with curiosity. As we get into additional relationship super powers, we'll refer back to previous ones and show how all interconnect and interrelate. Growing these relationship super powers, what we sometimes call our “relational intelligence,” provides us with a web … [Read more...]
Balanced Worldview in Children Helps Them Cope, Understand
"Everybody’s crazy, drive safely.” That’s the mantra of my mother I remember best from my teenhood. Granted, her negative, imbalanced worldview was simply a way to contain her anxiety as I began to drive. Her words returned to me recently as my children increasingly navigate the internet, originally dubbed the “information superhighway.” Like most parents, my wife and I implemented age-appropriate internet restrictions as our children grew. But we learned that as children age, they need to develop the same critical thinking skills adults use when wading through the sea of clickbait … [Read more...]
Curiosity: Parents Need to Nurture It in Today’s Wired Children
“So is every day a sunny day?” That is the question that stumped my father several decades ago when I took my first airplane flight as a child. Once we ascended through the dark gray clouds, I was stunned that the sunny blue sky reappeared in all its glory. My concrete-over-abstract brain at the time thought a gray sky meant the absence of the sun, not just its obstruction. Hence my question. “Well,” my father replied, “I guess you could say that.” Little did I know that by welcoming my question and exploring its meaning through a series of follow-up questions, he fostered my … [Read more...]
Help Children Combat Selfie Culture Through Volunteer Work
Do you ever get tired of parenting in our “selfie” culture? While many recent self-esteem movements have nurtured children’s healthy development, it seems other cultural trends have fostered their self-absorption. (We could begin with the coinage of the word “selfie” and its widespread practice on social media.) So how can parents counteract our culture’s ongoing attack on empathy? There are many strategies, but two have been most powerful for our family: When the children are young, practice empathy in the home. As children age, find ways to practice empathy outside the home — … [Read more...]
Survive Terrible Twos, Threenagers with this Simple Plan
At times I would just stare at the clock and wonder why the day was going so slow. I had already dealt with five major meltdowns from my 2-year-old since my wife had left for work, and the baby wasn't following her usual schedule either. The "me" time I would spend in the morning at our local YMCA suddenly seemed impossible and I often knew that there would be days where I would never leave the house. Dealing with a child in the "terrible twos" is a daunting task. I would think to myself, "If only I can fast forward to the threes, then we will be out of the woods." Well, that wasn't true … [Read more...]
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