I've been taking lessons in shooting pool now each week for two years.  My teacher, Al Vafa, is a pro:  an interesting, funny, smart, thoughtful guy, and a magnificent pool player. If I am in the right mindset, the average "not that serious" pool player would have a hard time beating me.  Again, that is if I am in the right mindset .  It took the better part of the first year of lessons to stop saying "I suck," to stop crying, getting angry, and even once actually breaking my costly pool cue. This was not just about pool.  This was a metaphor for my life.  More >>

Back to school is in the air. Parents are currently being bombarded with back-to-school sales in magazines, newspapers, television ads, and store flyers... More >>

Complaints about back and shoulder pain are increasingly common. Parents have every right to be concerned about how heavy their child's backpack is. In fact, overweight backpacks have been getting so much attention that April was declared National Backpack Safety Month by the Congress of Chiropractic State Associations.  More >>

If Robert Frost is right and good fences make good neighbors, are they good for families as well? The boundaries in the mother/daughter relationship are complicated because our daughters expect to be taken care of and also need to individuate. More >>

When was the last time that you really thought about the true meaning of what you were saying? If you have ever taken a foreign language, you may have heard from your instructor that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn because of all of the rules and exceptions, in addition to the many situations when there are no rules. More >>

In terms of emotional oversimplification, children rarely learn to look below the surface of the most salient emotions to understand how emotions such as anger, sarcasm, or arrogance may be triggered by other emotions. More simply, they are not taught to do this. More >>

Know your role.  With political correctness, the line between adult and child has blurred: everyone is "equal," and no one should be offended. But political correctness doesn't work in the parent-child relationship. More >>

How often is that we see people in our extended families and our community that believe that their family gets along just fine and doesn't have any problems, only to find that screaming, yelling, name calling, and physical aggressiveness is almost the norm? More >>

You've made your bed, now go bounce on it. Peter Scott More >>

I wanted to let you in on a little trick I do when I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with family stuff and day to day chores. More >>