“Please Put the Oxygen Mask on Yourself before Your Child” — The Importance of Self-Care for Parents

Self-sacrifice is a familiar term when speaking about parenthood. Not only is it considered to be good parenting, but to sacrifice your own well-being for your child’s is deemed noble. As far as it may be from the daily truth, putting an oxygen mask on yourself before your child should be the standard. Most people ignore this advice, however, and attempt to put the oxygen mask on their child first.

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Recovering from Divorce? Step One: Develop a Self-Care Routine

Living through a divorce is never easy. And in some cases, in can be an absolute nightmare. For a while, your divorce becomes an all-encompassing experience, and all you want is to get to the other side. You just want the pain and the confusion to be over. But when you are there, when you are, in fact, newly divorced, you realize that the first thing you need to do is to recover from your divorce. And the first step for recovery is a good self-care routine. Here are a few suggestions, based on the experience of ‘those who’ve gone before’.

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Screens and Clicking But No One is Talking: 7 Tips to Improve Family Communication

We’ve all seen families in public where every person has their attention focused on their phones. Maybe we’ve even been that family ourselves. Turning to electronic media is an easy solution to boredom, waiting in line, or taking long car trips. In the past, families would talk and communicate during these occasions. If that seems impossible now, it doesn’t mean that you’ve lost the ability to communicate as a family. You just need to rediscover and develop those skills.

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FamilyPathways To Wellness
Is Social Anxiety Just a Fancy Name for Shyness? Is There a Difference?

People have always been shy. People have always talked about being shy.  But now there is a new word on the block. Maybe, more recently, you have heard a term that some people use to describe the experience of being uncomfortable in a group of people and/or in an intense one-on-one encounter: Social Anxiety. What’s the difference? Is social anxiety just a fancy name for shyness? The short answer:  No. It’s not.

Social anxiety is a psychiatric disorder.  Shyness is a personality trait.

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AnxietyPathways To Wellness
Communicating with Teens is Difficult – 5 Ways to Make it Easier

Small children talk to their parents all the time. Every little event needs to be communicated and mom and dad’s response is essential, both in the moment and for the child’s ability to understand the world and themselves. But when kids reach their teenage years, communication can become a lot more difficult. Communicating with teens often consists of trying to get them to talk – or even to listen — to their parents.

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The Holidays and Your In-Laws are Coming: 7 Ways to Manage Difficult People

Holidays are a celebration of our lives and our relationships. Family plays a big part. We connect with those who are close. We re-connect with those we don’t see quite so often. Family members, including our in-laws, of course, are people like everyone else. And some of them can be difficult people.

And so the holidays can become an exercise in how to manage difficult people.

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FamilyPathways To Wellness