“Daddy, I want to run!” That was the phrase that came out of my son’s mouth before we played the above game of chase on the beach…and this has been his repeated phrase of the last couple of months. It began on our 15.5 hour road trip to Florida. A road trip that I thought […]

This last week we talked about the importance of integrating the upstairs brain with the downstairs brain, and strategy #4 continues with along this same theme. I love the idea in The Whole-Brain Child that “The upstairs brain is like a muscle; when it gets used, it develops, gets stronger, and performs better. And when […]

I’ve been talking a lot about the brain in my blog series on The Whole-Brain Child, so I thought it would be helpful to see a simple presentation by Dr. Dan Siegel where he presents a hand model of the brain. I think this will be especially helpful in light of my post on the […]

Have you ever found yourself in the unenviable position of trying to rationalize and negotiate with your toddler who is having an emotional meltdown? All hands should go up. I mean how many of us haven’t found ourselves desperately trying to stave off a meltdown in the grocery store before we can make it to […]

I often get asked about the marriage books I would recommend for couples to read. In this series I will discuss the ten books that I recommend on marriage.

Last week I posted on Strategy #2 of The Whole-Brain Child, which is Name it to Tame It: Telling Stories to Calm Big Emotions. But since I posted that blog I’ve had a few people ask me if I could expound on this strategy in more detail by giving an example. As I looked back […]

This is the 7th post in my ongoing series on the book, The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. Today we look at strategy #2.

My wife Heather and I often look at things from a very different perspective. It’s not surprising that opposites attract, but sometimes those opposites can begin to push people in two different directions. It didn’t take us very long into our dating life to realize that my wife seems to naturally operate out of the […]

  Integrated: to make into a whole by bringing all parts together; unify. When things become integrated, is simply known as integration. In the Whole-Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, this process refers to a child’s ability to integrate the varying parts of the brain that we discussed in an earlier post. […]

Last week I began a blog series exploring my experimentation with the parenting philosophy found in the book, The Whole Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind. And by experimentation, I mean using the ideas in the book in both my own parenting of my two children who are ages 6 […]

“As children develop, their brains “mirror” their parent’s brains. In other words, the parent’s own growth and development, or lack of those, impact the child’s brain. As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their children reap the rewards and move toward health as well. That means that integrating and cultivating your own brain is […]

Over the years there have been a lot of books that have been influential in my life and work on the topic of parenting. Whether I am navigating my own parenting with my three year old boy and my soon to be six year old daughter, teaching a parenting seminar, or working with parents in […]

When a couple is first married it is often not long before they find themselves wrestling with the tension of desiring to be both dependent and independent in the relationship.

Though forgiveness is a journey that rarely boils down to steps, there are some specific guidelines that can help couples navigate the forgiveness process.

If couple’s aren’t careful about the amount of kid activities they allow into their family life, they can begin to experience marital drift.

In this clip, marriage researcher and therapist John Gottman talks about the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” — which are predictors of divorce. In this video he deals specifically with the issue of contempt. Gottman states that not only is contempt corrosive of love, but it is also corrosive of one’s immune system.