Children’s Mental Health

How You Can Manage Stress in Your Daily Life

As we try to navigate the events of the past few years, it is no wonder we are all experiencing added stress to our lives. Whether you’ve been helping your child through distance learning, dealing with the loss of a job or changes brought about by the pandemic, or feeling increased angst around …

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Recognizing Depression and Anxiety in Kids

As a parent or caregiver, you anticipate and meet your child’s physical needs, such as hunger or tiredness, and are attuned to their mental and emotional needs. You can guess when your child feels sad, angry, anxious, or depressed. You can help identify why they are feeling this way. But how do you …

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The Nurturer vs. the Buddy

As someone who’s worked in youth residential settings for over seven years, I have learned many ways to therapeutically serve youth in a variety of settings, have developed a deep understanding of traumatized youth, and how to navigate the many situations that arise when working in this field. At …

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Take Them for a Drive

“I don’t understand why this happened to me. Why me, in particular? Everyone says I have a purpose or I’m chosen for something great, but I didn’t choose it. So, why me?” Those words poured out from my 15-year-old adopted son as I was driving. It was dark, and he was in the passenger seat. I …

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Hygiene and Mental Health

Personal hygiene is a subject that is often not discussed on a daily basis. Typically, hygiene is overlooked as we often assume everyone does things in similar ways or have similar levels of frequency. However, hygiene can often be the first sign of the start of mental health issues. Depression, …

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Creating a Crisis Safety Plan With Your Child

Are you a planner? As a human being, I would be willing to guess that you have probably planned for a few things in your life. It may be that you plan what you are going to wear to work each morning, where you will stop for gas that day, where you plan to travel on vacation, what your safety plan is …

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Last Minute To-Do’s Before Back-to-School

There’s no getting around it – summer vacation will soon be over. Parents everywhere are trying to squeeze in doctor visits, dental checkups, and last-minute road trips. Maybe you are wondering how to get your family off to a great start in the new school year. As usual, I recommend turning to …

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5 Tips to Tackle the Back-to-School Season

Back-to-school season is always a time of nerves, adjustment, and — let’s be honest — straight chaos. It is a time of getting back into routine and preparing for the year ahead. Now, we find ourselves also trying to navigate what a (somewhat) post-pandemic world looks like in our …

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How To Take Control of Your Social Media

Have you ever found yourself scrolling on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok and all of a sudden, you look up and four hours have gone by? Or maybe you get in too deep looking at your friend’s account, then going to their friend’s page, and so on until you wind up on a page all about cute corgi …

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Your Behaviors and Your Basic Needs: A Look at Choice Theory

Why Do People Make the Decisions They Do? Have you ever questioned why people make the decisions they do or why they act in a certain way? Choice Theory is one method that may help to better understand an individual’s decisions and actions. Choice Theory, developed by Dr. William Glasser, is …

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Navigating Power Struggles

I recently heard the term “power struggle” described as an emotional tug-of-war. I like to refer to it as a lose/lose situation. Power struggles are not enjoyable – when two people or parties are competing for control or influence, it makes for a very uncomfortable and frustrating experience. …

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Supporting Mental Health in Early Childhood

How You Can Promote Your Child’s Mental Health For children, ages birth-5 years old, mental health begins with how they form close relationships with caregivers, manage and express their emotions, and explore the environment and learn. A child’s development is cumulative, building on …

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Children's Mental Health