Advice to Parents Whose Children May Be Using Drugs

Summary: Communication with youngsters needs to remain open and friendly even when drug use is suspected.

Who Are the Children Most at Risk for Drug Use and What Are the Signs?

Summary: Adolescents is a problematic time at best for almost all teens.

The Use and Abuse of Narcotics

Summary: Medically speaking, narcotics are the drugs derived from opium such as codeine and morphine and heroine. There are synthetics which are abused as well.

Drugs That Suppress the Central Nervous System-Sedatives

Summary: Some sedatives are used legitimately for sleep and for anxiety reduction. However, many people use “downers” when they take “uppers” in order to come down from the highs generated by the stimulant drugs.

The Hallucinogens

Angel dust, (PCP) acid, and other mind altering drugs affect perception, thinking and emotion. They can cause delusions and distortions and are very dangerous. Tis article provides a detailed description of their effects and dangers.

The Amphetamines

Summary: Amphetamines are the stimulants that excite the central nervous system. In high doses, euphoria is present and, as the dose wears off, depression can follow. Amphetamines have been found in diet pills and taken as such for many adults who experienced many negative consequences.

Cocaine Use

Summary: Cocaine is a stimulant drug used medically as a local anesthetic. It can cause irritation of the tissues with which it comes in contact, and has serious emotional and physical side effects.

The Relationship of Drugs and Traffic Safety

Summary: It is commonly accepted that alcohol, drugs, and driving don’t mix. However, that thought often gets lost when people use and drive.

Risks of Early Marijuana Use

Summary: The younger the person who tries marijuana experimentally, the more susceptible to addiction they are.

Is Marijuana Really Harmful?

Summary: Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the United States. Marijuana causes many harmful effects to users both medically, cognitively, psychiatrically, and socially.

The Relationship Between Violence and Addiction

Summary: It would seem to be self-evident that the consuming of substances lowers boundaries between people and therefore increases violence. With the consumption of alcohol, people are more likely to lose reason and then control and to act out negative emotion.

Recovery Predictors in the Treatment of Substance Abuse

Summary: It is possible for people with alcohol and drug problems to maintain a clean and sober life style without experiencing a relapse-or, to stay clean and sober following a relapse.

Licensed Professional Counselor

Summary: Often people fail to realize if they have a problem with chemical abuse or addiction.

Teach My Children How to Drink?!

Summary: Young people who do not abstain from alcohol can be taught to drink responsibly. This relates to their attitudes about alcohol and the way they use it. This article describes how to teach safe drinking.

A Step Toward Preventing Problem Teens/Rearing Children Realistically

Summary: It is impossible to raise children without external pressures. However, we can mitigate these pressures with appropriate expectations, praise, and guidelines.

A Step Toward Preventing Problem Teens/Rearing Children Realistically

Summary: It is impossible to raise children without external pressures. However, we can mitigate these pressures with appropriate expectations, praise, and guidelines.

Telling the Children When a Pet Dies

Summary: People tend to do more harm than good in their attempts to protect children from many things, including the death of beloved pets.

Effects of Working Moms

Summary: I am asked all the time by people with new babies or young children about how having both parents work will affect the child. These are my views.

Dealing With Teens Around Money/Problem Prevention Tactics

Summary: Money is one of the three big battlegrounds of marriage and is also a prime source of friction between parents and children.

Listening Skills/ Avoiding Troubled Teens

Summary: Listening is the foundation stone of genuine communication. We must become good listeners and confidants of our children if we are to see them safely through adolescence.

Communication Guide for Teens

Summary: If you consider yourself on the way to growing up then you need to keep an open mind.

Being a Role Model for Teens

Summary: research yields that family group activities are prevalent in families experiencing good parent-teen communication. The opposite is true when there is poor communication.

Effects of Group Care/Preventing Trouble in the Teens

Summary: I am asked all the time in my practice about the idea of group care versus home care with very young children.

Harmful Affects of Too Much Pressure on Children

Summary: Children placed under too much pressure are apt to feel like failures. Placing the bar too high robs children of their need–as with all of us–to feel successful.

Identifying Pressures on Early Adolescents

Summary: Adolescence begins earlier and earlier. Puberty and rapid social change make life rocky for our early adolescents.

Laying the Groundwork To Avoid Troubled Teens

Summary: The road to adolescence is paved early. It is important to instill the idea early with children that parents are coaches and guides and can act as help agents rather than punishers as children travel the road to adulthood.

Identifying and Treating Teenage Substance Abuse

Summary: Teenagers in the United States today experience the realities of adulthood at earlier and earlier ages, often with painful results.

Conversations with Preteens About Sex

Summary: Many confusions exist for preteens about sex and it is important to straighten them out. In addition, issues of social and emotional adjustment are present.

Learning Disabilities/Teacher and Parental Attitudes

Summary: Attitudes of teachers and parents can make a huge difference in the success or failure of children with learning disabilities. The nature of these problems has the potential to destroy families. This article presents a discussion of these issues.

Treatment of Learning Disabilities

Summary: The key to any problem is early detection. That having been said, this article describes the process whereby children with learning disabilities receive help.

If children are to work well in school their perceptual abilities must function properly.

Understanding Sexuality From an Adolescent View/Preventing Problem Teens

Summary: Understandably, sex is a difficult subject for anyone to discuss and many parents just don’t know how to do it. This article provides some ideas.

Too Young for Academic Learning?

Summary: Many parents believe that they can develop gifted children by exposing them to academic learning at an early age. Much to the contrary, this can actually turn children off of learning and create learning problems.

Pressures on Young Adolescents-Junior High

Summary: When the child moves from elementary school to a junior-high school, new pressures may be felt.

When Fathers Desert/Preventing Troubled Teens

Summary: When a father disengages from the family following a divorce the children can feel abandoned.

Desertion by a Mother/ Avoiding Troubled Teens

Summary: The desertion by a mother may be harder for children to understand because mother’s are more often seen as caretakers.

Dealing With Learning Disabled Children

Summary: Children with learning disabilities may be very bright. The idea is to locate the the place of the disability or disabilities and work around these.

When Children Lose a Mother

Summary: The loss of either parent is traumatic for children. However, since mothers are more often the primary caretakers of children, such a loss can be particularly devastating. Children are more apt to lose their primary source of nurturing.

Stresses in Early Boy-Girl Relationships

Summary: During early adolescence, boys and girls are assailed by many inner pressures.

Stresses for Children in the World in Which They Live

Summary: Children are affected by their society and by the smaller world of their family and school groups.

The Effects of Teen Suicide in Families

Summary: Suicide puts an entirely different face onto the grieving process. Often the survivors become the victims. They may remain both guilt-ridden, embarrassed, and angry with no release.

Suicidal Patterns of Troubled Teens

Summary: Many adolescents die who really did not mean to complete the act. Seasons play a role some of the time. Family situations of loss and feelings of hopelessness are major factors.

Troubled Adolescents: General Profile of Suicidal Teens

Summary: Adolescents experience great turbulence on their way to adulthood. One of the hallmarks of their adolescents is the outlook that whatever they are experiencing will last forever.

When Children Are Molested

Summary: Many more children than it is commonly thought are molested each year in the United States, and elsewhere.

How Harmful is Chemical Use in Young People–Really?

Summary: There is evidence that among school children experimentation with drugs and alcohol is beginning at earlier and earlier ages.

How Your Feelings May Affect Your Children

It is very important to understand that there is a large relationship between how parents are managing their feelings and how well or poorly children do.

One place where this shows up particularly is in single parent families.

Building Self-Esteem in Children

You want your children to feel good about themselves and it is certainly possible to raise children who do.

However, to do so means a new way of approaching children than the way that was used when most of us grew up.

Most of us grew up with punishment and a good dose of criticism. Our parents meant well.

Grandparents in Stepfamilies

As the stepparent, there are some things that you can do that will calm things down.

1. Arrange times that grandparents and grandchildren can do things together as they did before the remarriage.

Tips for Communicating With an Ex-Spouse

1. Keep the topic of conversation on the business items or the children.
2. Don’t respond to unreasonable demands
3. Use ‘I” statements.
4. If you want to talk to your ex-spouse, find a neutral party to exchange information.
5. If using verbal communication is impossible, try a written form.
6. Do not send messages through the children.

What About Remarriage?

Remarriage may seem unlikely shortly after you divorce. Actually, 75% of women and 80% of men do remarry–usually within 5 years.

Of these, 80 % divorce again. Why?

I certainly don’t want to discourage remarriage. In fact, remarriage and the stepfamily, is the gift that the stepfamily gives the kids.

Sexuality in Stepfamilies

Sexuality in stepfamilies is different than in biological families because people of different sexes who are not related are living together. It is also different because the family begins with children when the sexual climate is higher. By the time children are born into biological families, the sexual climate has cooled down, generally, because partners have been living together longer.

It’s Hard to Be Liked As a Step Parent

Don’t take it personally if your stepchildren don’t like you. This is, in fact, usually the case. In the beginning kids tend to be pleased or tolerate their parent’s interest in a new adult.

Discipline in Stepfamilies

Blending adults and children from different backgrounds often brings up problems with discipline due to the idea that people have different lifestyles and different philosophies of childrearing.

Children often resent direction from a stepparent, particularly if they have enjoyed greater freedom when their biological parent was single.

Tips for Stepmothers

1. Remember, this marriage is between you and your partner. Don’t try to change things after the wedding where the children are concerned.
2. Go by the rules (or non-rules) that the children’s father has established and continue the rules that you have established for your children if you have them.
3. The watchword here is “slowly”.

Tips for Stepfathers

1. Develop relationships before attempting discipline.
2. Help your partner establish rules but don’t YOU be the enforcer too soon.
3. Let your partner tell you when you can begin to enforce.
4. Take the side of the stepchildren where you can.
5. Negotiate chore issues.
6. Discuss with your partner if you feel undermined.

Does Instant Love Occur in Stepfamilies?

I often hear people in my office say that, “I have tried to love my stepchildren for my partner’s sake but they drive me crazy!

If this is true for you, it is perfectly normal. After all, your stepchildren are from a different family with different habits and rituals. They have a different history and some different values.

Anger Management Post Divorce

Summary: Usually the anger from the marriage continues into the divorce. In fact, when there are children, there is really no divorce and the issues continue into infinity.

The Question of Dating Post Divorce

Summary: Parents ask me frequently how to decide about dating issues when children are part of the situation. This article speaks to those issues.

Tensions for Children of Divorce/Dealing with resulting Depression

Summary: Divorce causes much tension for children and fears of abandonment that parents, caught in the heat and misery of their own divorce, often miss.

Depression as a Factor in Post Divorce Adjustment for Adults

Summary: A major issue in post divorce adjustment relates to the support system.

Developing New Relationships

Whatever the case, you can be successful at building new relationships if you remember that people don’t fall “in love” or “in like” with other people.

How To Tell Children About A Divorce

The news should be broken with BOTH parents present. The news should occur a few weeks before the separation if possible so there is some advance warning.

Some Possible Reactions to Divorce in Children

The best children learn from divorce tends to be that no one loves anyone enough to stay.

Feelings Related To Divorce

It is the death of your hopes and dreams for the marriage.

Children of Divorce

So, how do you handle the children? Children’s reactions to divorce vary largely by how the parents handle the situation. By far, children fare best when they continue to be parented by both parents in spite of the break between the spouses.

Special Concerns for Dating Couples Approaching Marriage

Summary: What are the subjects on which communication is especially difficult for couples approaching marriage? There are several that can present major problems.

Counseling Thoughts for Premarital Couples/Danger Signs in Dating

Summary: Premarital counseling is a good emotional checkup and a wise investment as it increases the odds for a successful marriage.

Why Some People Fail to Make Emotional Contact in Dating

Summary: Real communication is important but can be difficult to master. This is why, without it, some people circle the dating world forever without ever getting connected to anyone.

Skills of Understanding and Being Understood in Relationships

Summary: The first issue in building communication that works in your relationship is understanding its importance to having intimacy.

Achieving Good Sexual Communication

Summary: A mutually satisfying sexual relationship can be a lifetime of joy for a couple. However, it doesn’t happen magically–any more than verbal communication does. This article presents a discussion of how to develop good sexual communication, beginning in the courtship.

Building Trust for dating Couples Planning Marriage 
(or those who are married)

Summary: We all carry different levels of trust based on our prior experiences.

Communication in Marriage

Summary: In any relationship of any importance, let alone a partnership like marriage, the negotiation of the realtionship is critical. In order to have successful negotiations, partners need to be able to explain their experience of being who they are and understand the experience of their partner.

The Role of Expectations in Marriage

Summary: Expectations of marriage have changed radically in the last fifty years. Today it is considered a partnership, though many times people are not conditioned for this. Many partners have misinformation about what marriage is and is not.

The Effect of Money on Marriage

Summary: Money is seen as power by many people–he (or she) who has it has the power and the partner without is is out of power. Too much money or too little produces a negative effect on many relationships.

Toward Achieving Sexual Harmony in Marriage

Summary: Sometimes sexual problems between couples are just that, they are sexual problems related to some kind of performance issue as in premature ejaculation and painful intercourse.

Achieving Relationship Closeness

Summary: Intimacy has been proven to be important in achieving and maintaining emotional and physical health. There are some barriers and patterns that prevent intimacy.

An After Effect of Sexual or Physical Abuse

Many people who have experienced some form of child sexual or physical abuse have learned that it is dangerous to speak up for what they want.

Dealing With Infidelity

Summary: Infidelity occurs in many but not all marriages. The marriage can be saved in many cases. This article identifies the kinds of infidelity which may occur and makes suggestions about how to handle the situation to best preserve the marriage.

Practical Marital Quiz

1. There is the Right person out there for everyone.
   

   
   (no-marriage is based on a skill set between two people. Arranged marriages work well when the partners practice the skills of good marriages.) 

2. He or She should know what I want without being told.
   

   
   (No one that I know can read minds.

The Art of Feeling Married

Summary: Back several generations the most important value in marriage was staying together.

Feelings When a Pet is Lost

Summary: Intense grief over the loss of a pet is completely normal.

Aging Without Estrogen/ Not for Women Only

Summary: Estrogen has been said to be the “glue” that holds women together. As we age, our estrogen levels drop.

The Use Of Moderate Exercise

Summary: The best way to look and feel better and to improve your health is with exercise. It takes just thirty minutes each day to improve yourself physically and mentally.

Life as a Chemical Experience

Summary: Exercise has long been recommended for keeping the body fit. Many people have not yet realized that exercise also benefits mental health.

Postpartum Depression

Summary: The most common time for postpartum Depression to set in is after the l last regular clinical office visit with the obstetrician which is the six-week exam.

Understanding Depression

Summary: Depression is a brain disorder that affects thought, mood, feelings, behavior and physical health. It is best treated with exercise, medication if needed, and psychotherapy. This article provides a description of the nature of depression and its treatment.

The true underlying cause of depression is technically unknown.

Depression, Chronic Pain, and the Family

Summary: Pain leads to depression and depression to pain when a chronic pain condition exists. The effects on the family are detrimental to the relationships involved.

Lowering Cancer Risk With Proper Eating

Summary: Many foods may help lower the risk of certain cancers. Cancers spring from a variety of sources. Some cancers are more amenable to certain foods that contain phytochemicals, most specifically, anti-oxidants.

Why Is ALCOHOLISM So Difficult To Treat?

Alcoholism can be very difficult to treat because the pleasurable effects of alcohol precede the negative effects.

Frequently Asked Questions About Depression

1.How would I know if I am depressed? – 

People who are depressed frequently complain of constant fatigue, lack of energy, loss of appetite and weight gain and lost. They may have trouble with concentration and memory. They experience an overall lack of optimism, the belief that things can get better.

Dealing With Criticism

Criticism is, unfortunately, a part of our society and a part of many relationships. Are you criticism deaf? That means that you have heard so much criticism that everything sounds like that to you.

Use of Anger–Does It Work?

If you are accustomed to using anger in your personal relationships, you may want to stop and think about this.

Using Meditation To Help Body Healing

Meditation has been useful, according to some recent studies, in improving health by reducing stress. There are various forms of meditation including “mindfulness”, “relaxation response” and prayer meditation.

Guided Imagery and Stress Management

Summary: Guided Imagery is a technique used to help people create vivid images in their mind.

Gender Struggles – “Why the Gender Struggles?”

Men and women are having a hard time getting together today for a variety of reasons.

As more women join the work force, more men lose their uniqueness as wage earners. Raised to be competitive and earn a living, men are now faced with women who do this as well or better than they.

How To Deal With Loneliness

Did you know that when asked what they fear most, most people will tell you that it is loneliness. It is not unusual to feel this way because society stresses that we seek outside of ourselves for entertainment and pleasure and thee is little training for how to nourish and nurture ourselves.

Asking for Help & Setting Boundaries

You may be one of those people who has a hard time asking others to do anything. You may also have a hard time saying “no” if asked by someone else to do something.

1. The world is unfair but predictable.  Success means being aware of how things appear to others.
2. Even if you feel so unimportant you think you are invisible, others notice you.
3. People who don’t know when they do wrong, can’t learn to do anything right.
4. People who know when they do something wrong develop mastery.

The Art of Making Other People Feel Good

Did you know that there are only two ways to build your own self-esteem? One is by being listened to with respect. The other is by doing things about which you feel good.

One of the best ways that I know to feel good about ourselves is by doing things to make others feel good.