What were things like before? What has changed? These questions are often helpful when working with someone trying to maintain behavior change. Looking back in time can help a person reflect on the positives of what they have achieved and the benefits of change. What defines life before...
I was on hold with an artificial Christmas tree company, listening to festive hold music while not feeling festive at all. Their glossy catalog had arrived in the mail in early November and I decided to splurge on a giant Christmas tree for our living...
I had been wondering about the effect of screen time on childhood development. Because of distance learning, my girls have shifted from using screens rarely to hours every day.I had emailed one of my psychologist friends the question, “Isn’t all this screen time bad for...
Every day now, the girls excitedly check our mailbox for holiday cards. They count the envelopes, exclaim the number of cards that arrived, then tear them open. They get out a tape dispenser and carefully line the cards along the side of our kitchen counter....
The girls were playing school with their stuffed animals. As the teachers, the girls stood next to their chalkboard easel and led a math lesson. Their students were arranged in a semicircle, and each stuffed animal had a piece of paper and a crayon for...
"That's enough!” Ella exclaimed. Emma was adding drops of vanilla extract to a bowl of cookie batter. Gently, Ella covered Emma's hand with her own and tipped the bottle of vanilla upward.It’s the secret to our family’s sugar cookie recipe – an extra bit of vanilla....
Sometimes I am called upon to consult on very important and time-sensitive matters. I received one such request very early one morning this week, before I even had my first cup of coffee. There was urgency in the tone. I knew it was important. It sounded...
The idea to leave things a little better than you found them is known as the campsite rule. It reminds us to pick up a stray piece of trash or clean up messes – even if they weren’t ours. In these small acts, we do...
What a time we are living in. My news feed is updating frenetically with story after story projecting what will happen with the election results, when a vaccine will be developed for COVID-19, speculating about what comes next. It all feels very big and overwhelming.Today,...
I looked down at my to-do list, which right now is in the form of about 25 neon-colored sticky notes all over my desk, each one full of my handwritten notes in black ink. I've arranged them in neat rows, but glancing at them as...