Before I saw the latest Pixar film Inside Out I was working on a post, “Wild With Denial,” about how couples get into trouble by denying their problems, denying their emotions – and how it only takes one in denial to throw off The Coupledom. “No we are not having a problem; nope it’s just […]
Children
I Don’t Want To Lose My Children
Father’s Day: A Sunday devoted to dad is coming up shortly and my clinical mind scans through father files looking for relevant information. Strangely, one oft-repeated phrase leaps out at me; “I don’t want to lose my children” – something that many fathers have said in my office when facing the possibility of a divorce. […]
Oldies but Goodies: Sibling Order Flavors The Coupledom: Oldest, Youngest, Middles and Onlies
Jill is taking a break from the blog this week. Here is one of her most popular posts from the past year or so. Excerpt: If your place in the family lineup involved dodging the bullets that flew at your older sibling, learning from his or her sufferings how to best avoid parental disapproval or […]
Oldies but Goodies: The Divorce Survival ToolKit for Children of All Ages
Jill is taking a break from the blog this weekend and keeping her fingers crossed that the October nor’easter doesn’t leave southern Connecticut without power…again. Here is one of her most popular posts from the past year or so. Excerpt: Weddings, baptisms, bat and bar mitzvahs, graduations, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Xmas, often summon up painful emotions […]
The Divorced Coupledom: Milestones Celebrated In Court
Back To Court: Several times a year, whether I am in session with a patient, or bumping into friends, acquaintances or former patients in the aisles of the local supermarkets, the phrase “He/She is taking me back to court,” is whispered to me in tones of distress, anger, irony or weariness. Weariness often more than anything laces […]
What Do Your Children Know About Your Coupledom?
Little Pitchers, Big Ears? Children are sponges. They are meant to be so. Absorbent. It facilitates learning the art of being human. Parents swell with pride when describing the latest juvenile achievement, seemingly spun from some invisible loom. Yet this sponge-like quality of growing children is recognized by proud parents when it suits us, and denied […]
Great Father/Great Mother: Failed Coupledom?
The New Yorker Captures The Coupledom: If ever you need a visual for what is happening to your Coupledom, pick up several copies of the New Yorker Magazine, and flip through the pages. Inevitably you will find the very image that corresponds to your moment. I did. While preparing my thoughts for this post, this […]
The Coupledom: Is It Too Late?
Inspiration: This post was inspired by a friend. He calls it “Nurture the Coupledom.” He and his wife arranged for their child to be left with grandparents for her first overnight to enable them to “go out”, as in a “date night.” I could hear his pride both in his daughter’s readiness for this big […]
A Parenting Quandary: Respect or Protect?
Well Meaning Parenting: In the trenches of parenting, whatever the child’s age, a primary motivation is to “protect” the child from everything from dental decay to death. The parenting manual, implicit as it is, but part of any species, is to promote the survival of the species, i.e. our offspring. Love as Motivation: In the […]
The Divorce Survival ToolKit for Children of All Ages
Children of All Ages: For any age group, the ramifications of separation and divorce are felt most acutely at holiday time. Adult children of divorce as well as their younger counterparts struggle with the new regime, the confusing order of things and benefit from a language and vocabulary that empowers them. Locating their boundaries and […]
Is Our Child Gay? The Coupledom Grapples With “Difference”
A Child Is Lost: I had already begun to draft this post with the focus on parents faced with questions regarding their developing child’s gender preferences when the news of a suicide at Rutgers University made the headlines. This post is dedicated to the memory of Tyler Clementi and all the youngsters who fall beneath […]
Sibling Order Flavors The Coupledom: Oldest, Youngest, Middles and Onlies
Sibling Placement: Another Factor To Consider in The Coupledom: Most of us have siblings. Some of us do not but we marry someone who does. Then there are the ever increasing few who are onlies (NYTimes Style section on only children) and marry onlies. All permutations and combinations of sibling order and mating are fascinating, […]
Couples Communication: What Are We Teaching Our Children?
Modeling Communication: Without a doubt, the ticket to Coupledom disaster is best acquired by non-communication. Couples who choose therapy are talking just enough to reach a consensus to get help. Couples who can’t talk communicate with attorneys. What boggles this therapeutic mind is where did these folks learn to “not communicate”? As a culture, we […]
A Couples’ Challenge: Special Needs Children, Young and Adult
SPECIAL NEEDS: The term is used here to include children of any age with medical, emotional and/or cognitive challenges. This will be the first of several posts on this subject A PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVE: As a parent of a special needs young adult, and a couples therapist, I see firsthand the impact that raising, […]