Does this sound familiar?

As they grow, you want your kids to feel great about their body, take pride in their appearance, and enjoy healthy self-esteem.

But you feel overwhelmed.

You feel overwhelmed because you don’t know how to help your child develop a positive body image when you’ve never quite mastered it yourself. You don’t know how to help them grow self-esteem when society is doing its damnedest to ensure otherwise.

So, you feel powerless. And you don’t know where to begin.

And it gets worse.

Because deep down, you believe your own fears about your body are true.

You believe you are in fact too large, too tall, too saggy, or any other number of meaningless ‘too’s’. You believe, as you have for a very long time, that your body should be better.

So, you put the issue of your child’s body image to one side.

You sit back, continue to think badly about your own body, and hope like hell it doesn’t rub off on your child. Sure, you make every effort to tell them they’re beautiful, but you can’t quite believe the same thing of yourself.

The trouble is, while you sit back, others are eager to take up the slack.

Televisions shout, billboards scream, and peers rudely whisper, until your precious child finally internalizes the message – “You are not good enough.”

If this sounds familiar, take a deep breath.

The truth is you have far more power to boost your child’s body image than you may think.
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You’re a positive parent or working on becoming one.

You’re proud of the choice you’ve made. It feels instinctive. Natural.

And your child is thriving. He trusts you. You’re building a strong connection. You expect your child to grow into a happy, confident and independent adult.

But just when you are getting comfortable in your role as a positive parent, your mother-in-law says you’re too soft.  She hints (or maybe even tells you openly) you need to “discipline” your child more.

Perhaps you’ve also heard friends make comments about parenting styles and you wonder if they’re really criticizing you.

— He’ll never learn to self-soothe if you don’t let him cry.

— He’s overly attached to you.

— She’s upset, quick, distract her!

— You need to show him who’s in charge!

Western society expects a parenting approach centered on adult’s wants rather than children’s needs. Punishments, time-outs, threats and rewards have become normal tools in the parenting toolbox.

So, when you’re swimming against the tide of conventional parenting how do you defend your choices?

How do you silence the critics?

How do you stay the course when everyone seems bent on dragging you into the world where parenting is synonymous with discipline based on control and obedience?

I wondered the same.

So, I delved into the science and psychology of positive parenting. Want to know what I found out?

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Does it make you nervous that your children will ask many different questions about sex, and those questions will only get more specific as they get older?

Many parents think giving vague answers, or perhaps changing the subject and offering the questioning child a cookie, is a valid solution.

But really, we moms and dads have to up our game.

We must be prepared with thoughtful and honest answers so our kids continue coming to us… rather than looking for answers online, on bathroom walls or whispered conversations with equally clueless peers.

I’ve been through these different phases of questioning and can tell you there’s a way to get your kids from elementary school through high school without diseases or pregnancies.

If Your Child Is In Elementary School…

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Ever wonder when your little ones will finally follow directions?

Do you want to encourage your children to respond positively to what you say?

And how can you make them better listeners?

Even more so, how can you positively affect their communication skills?

As parents, we spend much time speaking and instructing our kids. Yet, how many of us have thought about the nonverbal ways we communicate with our children?

Eye rolls, smiles, arms crossed, shoulders hunched.

Nonverbal communication can have long-lasting effects on how they listen, behave, process information, and speak to others.  It also impacts their attitudes towards us parents and it affects how others see them.

Dr. Albert Mehrabian, author of Silent Messages, performed several studies on nonverbal language. He found that body language is a major aspect of communication. Who knew our physical mannerisms could speak such loud volumes?

Nonverbal communication may have serious effects on how well-liked a child becomes, and the types of opportunities offered to them in the future.

Bottom line: it can make them or break them.

As a mother of two and a speech-language pathologist, I’ve had to address this issue in a variety of ways.  My little boy, a toddler, responds much better to my ‘messages’ when I take a moment to alter my gestures in a way that he will be receptive and willing to hear me out.

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Do you live with a child obsessed with video games?

A kid who’d rather play Minecraft than ball?

Who would sooner build worlds in Terraria than accompany you to the neighborhood barbecue?

I took it hard, the day I finally admitted to myself that what most inspires my nine-year-old son is a video game.

Certain we were on the road to laziness, brain atrophy, and obesity, I went through a long spell of helicopter parenting: policing, nagging, and threatening.

My lowest move was to hide the iPad.

This was not a sustainable approach. It didn’t make the desire for video games go away. If anything, the deprivation increased the appetite. It made everybody feel bad.

I had to face facts: the world was against me in this fight. Laptops, iPad, iPod, smart phones, Xbox–this stuff isn’t going anywhere.

I needed a positive approach to video games, to screen time in general, a term meaning any time spent in front of a screen: games, movies, or movies of other kids playing games. The following strategies worked.

I now look at screen time as a fact of life. It doesn’t depress me that my kids like this stuff. I no longer believe that loving Minecraft means you are a lazy and dull person, irrevocably obsessed with video games and destined to suffer from nervous breakdowns or clogged arteries.

And most importantly, I don’t feel guilty about my changed beliefs.

Limits are the key. Start with your attitude: approach video games as one of many options in the vast tool bag containing cool things your kids get to do, rather than the evil monster that will take over your life.

The beast can be tamed. Here’s how.

#1 Accept that gaming is fun for your child, even if it’s not fun for you

Those of us who did not grow up with the iPad, PlayStation, PC games and multitudes of devices wonder why anyone would want to spend down time in a two-dimensional world with no real plot.

Well, not a lot of us want to play tag for more than ten minutes, either.

Minecraft offers yet another opportunity to separate your experience from that of your child.

It isn’t your fault. The love of games did not come from your failure to expose them to sports or to read to them. They like what they like.

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