I’m starting a new series Tuesday, Jan 17th for alienated and estranged parents. The first one is FREE. Once you register, you’ll get info about how to access the seminar, ask questions, and make payment.

Here’s the schedule:

WEEK ONE: Jan. 17th
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT
FIVE MOST COMMON MISTAKES OF ESTRANGED PARENTS

WEEK TWO: JAN 24
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT

DEALING WITH YOUR DIFFICULT
SON- OR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW
The Do’s and Don’ts of Handling Difficult DILs and SILs

WEEK THREE: JAN 31ST
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT

SHOULD I KEEP TRYING OR JUST GIVE UP?
Learning the signs

WEEK FOUR: FEB 7TH
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT
HOW TO STOP BLAMING YOURSELF
AND GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE
Dealing with Guilt, Anger, Sorrow, and Regret

WEEK FIVE: FEB 14TH
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT

THE RIGHT AND WRONG WAY TO MAKE AMENDS
A Step-by-Step Program

WEEK SIX: FEB 21ST
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT

HANDLING DISRESPECT AND ABUSE
Parenting through Role Modeling

WEEK SEVEN: FEB 28TH
10AM PST, 11AM Mountain, 12PM Central, 1PM EDT
WHAT COULD THEY POSSIBLY BE THINKING?
Understanding Estrangement from
The Adult Child’s Perspective

To register or learn more about the series, go here

In a fascinating new book, Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex, University of Massachusetts sociologist Amy Schalet examines this question by asking both American and Dutch parents the question: “Would you ever let your teenager’s boyfriend or girlfriend sleep over?” She finds that while the vast majority of parents here say no way, the vast majority of parents there give a qualified yes.

Oh, those Dutch, you say. With their hashish cafes, their acceptance of prostitution, their non-punitive approach to drug addiction. Of course they’re going to be loose about that. What aren’t they loose about? And yet, as Schalet demonstrates, the Dutch attitude toward the sleepover (like their more tolerant approach to adolescent alcohol use) reveals a very careful and measured approach to parenting.

And that approach reveals fundamental differences in how our two cultures view the construction of the individual and the role of society at large. These differences are especially interesting because there are many ways that the two cultures are quite similar:  Like us, the Dutch developed a governmental system based on a liberation from an outside power (Spain, in their case), have powerful middle classes, experienced a sexual revolution in the 1960s, and are proud individualists.

However, as Schalet shows, not all individualists are formed in the same way. According to her, the Dutch practice an individualism that takes into account the needs and feelings of others in the family and also in the society at large (she terms this “interdependent individualism” in contrast to what she calls “adversarial individualism” in the U.S.)

This interdependent individualism is actively practiced in the Dutch family system where it’s assumed that teenagers, at least those 16 and older, will talk about their romantic interests with their parents and that they’ll make the case for readiness to spend the night with a boyfriend or girlfriend. From the Dutch perspective, coming into one’s sexuality is a natural part of psychological and emotional development and one that can and should be integrated into family discussions.

Dutch parents are aided by the wider society where it’s also assumed that older teenagers will want to have sex, and that they’ll need to take precautions in order to avoid a pregnancy or STDs. Thus sex education is widely taught in the schools, contraception is easily accessible, and abortions (rarely utilized) are available and don’t require parental consent after the age of 16.

Similarly, drinking with the family is considered an intimate way to be together, and at the same time, provides an opportunity for parents to witness and shepherd their teens into reasonable use if such a need arises.

This, as Schalet shows, is a radically different construction of the family system and of the adolescent self. American parents view teenagers as naturally rebellious and governed by “raging hormones.” They view the sexes as inherently antagonistic in their aims (boys are out for sex, girls for romance), and that teens are unable to experience true romantic love. While sexually active girls in the US are at risk for being called sluts, Dutch parents and teens are more likely to view adolescent female sexual participation within a steady relationship as normal and thus the risk of being labeled a slut is far lower. Ironically, sexually active Dutch girls are also likely to have fewer sexual partners by the time they leave their teenage years behind.

This is quite different from the American view of family life which views adolescence as inherently about power struggles, invites parenting that emphasizes setting limits, choosing battles, and forbidding or greatly restricting participation in sex and substance use.

In other words, if you believe that your teen is constitutionally unable to use good judgment because their brains are not yet developed and they are being ruled by unruly hormones, it follows that your job is to hold them back from the precipice for as long as you possibly can (presumably until they’re out of the house and financially independent).  However, as Schalet observes, since many teens will have sex and drink and use drugs, it requires a fissure between parents and teens that is largely non-existent in the Dutch household.

But what are the effects of the Dutch parenting approach which Schalet labels “vigilant leniency?”According to her the Dutch system produces lower rates of pregnancy, abortion, and HIV among their teens.

Hmmm.

I think we have a lot to learn from the Dutch, not only about the family, but also about the limits and liabilities of our particular brand of individualism which views social ties as voluntary rather than necessary and views adolescents as wild beasts to be tamed rather than children being phased into adulthood with the parent’s collaboration, participation, and guidance.

Not Under My Roof is one of the most helpful and insightful books that I’ve read on adolescents in America. I highly recommend it to any parent educator or parent of teens who is debating how to engage teenagers around the topics of sex, drug and alcohol use, and curfews. A very important and timely book.

1) Is My Marriage or Relationship Hurting My Children?

2) Five Steps to Fighting Fair: Learning How to Manage Marital or Couple Conflict

3) Why Children Can Change Marriage for the Worse: And What You Can Do to Protect Yours

4) The Worried Child: Helping Your Child Overcome Irrational Fears and Preoccupations

5) The Angry and Explosive Child: Balancing Love and Limits

6) Parenting Your Difficult Teenager: Drugs, Internet, Rebelliousness and Moodiness

7) The Worried Adult: Five Steps to Managing Worry, Preoccupation, and Fear

To learn more, to order individual seminars or to order the full series, go here

IS MY MARRIAGE HURTING MY CHILDREN?

What You Need to Know

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Many parents worry that the conflict in their marriages or relationship negatively impacts their children’s developing sense of identity, security, and self-esteem. Other parents worry that the lack of romance or affection in their marriages is bad for their children. Both kinds of parents worry that their role modeling as a couple will negatively affect their children’s ability to make a healthy choice about their own romantic or marital partners when they grow up.

In this  teleseminar, we’ll examine the effect of conflict on children and answer some of the following questions?

• What is normal or healthy conflict?
• Is there an upside to arguing in front of the kids?
• What should I look for in my children to see if my marriage is hurting them?
• Is there a time when it’s better for the children to leave rather than stay?
• When is it better to stay even in the face of ongoing conflict or disappointment?
• What are the lasting effects of marital conflict on children?

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FIVE STEPS TO FIGHTING FAIR:

Learning How to Manage Conflict

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Thousands of marriages end each year, not because of a big problem or betrayal, but from the small, day-to-day hurts, resentments, and frustrations that accumulate over time. As a couple’s therapist for over 30 years, I have seen first-hand that people can get to a place in their marriages where there is a point of no return; where there is a hole too big in the middle of the marriage to make them want to change, even though their partner has suddenly become willing. Whether they divorce or not, most couples lead lives that are far less fulfilled and meaningful because their marriages are chronically burdened by resentment, fear, or by the inability to negotiate for more of what they want.

In this one-hour teleseminar, we’ll look at some of the most common fights that couples get into. We will also discuss research-based ways to manage conflict by addressing some of the following questions:

• What’s a healthy and productive way to complain?
• What is the difference between a good fight  and a bad fight?
• When should you not care as much about hurting your partner’s feelings?
• Why is a good sex life often the first thing to go away in marriage and the last thing to come back?
• How can learning conflict management improve your sex life?
• Where’s the line between assertiveness and aggressiveness?
• How to talk so your partner will listen and listen so your partner will talk

• Order here
• Order full series here

WHY CHILDREN CHANGE MARRIAGE

FOR THE WORSE

What You Need to Do to Protect Yours!

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A large body of research now shows that having children lowers marital happiness and satisfaction for the majority of couples. This isn’t very surprising since having children typically leads to a decrease in time, money, sleep, and an increase in stress and worry.

However, there is a lot that couples can do to keep their marriages on track and to make the arrival of children an ongoing source of pleasure and connection rather than burden and distance. In addition, taking these steps are not only good for your marriage, they’re also good for the happiness of your children.

In this one-hour teleseminar we’ll look at some of the most common sources of tension for families with young children and address the following questions:

• What’s “fair” in terms of dividing housework and parenting?
• What are some common differences between men and women when it comes to parenting and housework?
• How should parents manage different ideas about what is good for children?
• How much time is “enough” time to spend with the kids vs. away from them?
• How much should individuals in a couple prioritize time with other friends or interests?
• How much time do couples need together to make a family healthy?

• Order here
• Order full series here

THE WORRIED CHILD

Helping Your Child Overcome

Irrational Fears and Preoccupations

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Having worries or fears is a normal part of childhood. But when does it start to cross the line between normal worry and something that a parent should start addressing? Out-of-control worry and anxiety can cause children to avoid taking risks with friends or in the classroom. Over time, this avoidance can cause a negative feedback loop where avoidance leads to decreased self-esteem, confidence, and engagement in children’s lives and activities.

In this one-hour teleseminar we’ll address the following questions:

• Where is the line between normal worry and problematic worry?
• Nightmares, boogeymen, or avoiding sleep: what to do?
• Fears of death and dying
• Worry about dirt, cleanliness, germs, harming others
  • Social anxiety: fears of going to school, sleeping at friends, reading aloud in class, ordering in a restaurant, attending birthday parties, separating from the parent
    • When should I get a professional involved?

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THE ANGRY AND EXPLOSIVE CHILD:

Balancing Love and Limits

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Many parents feel burdened, worried, and frustrated by how much of their lives get spent managing the behavior of their aggressive children. Aggressive and out-of-control behavior in children can cast a dark spell over a household, robbing the other children or family members of time and attention that they deserve. In addition, couples commonly fight about the best way to deal with an aggressive child and this conflict can cause guilt or anxiety, not only in the aggressive child but in the other children in the household.

In this one-hour teleseminar we’ll address the following questions:

• What’s normal aggression in children?
• How do I anticipate and strategize around difficult situations with my child?
• How do I handle my child’s aggression with me or with his/her siblings?
• Is my child a bully and what can I do about that?
• The importance of positive opportunity
• How do I get my spouse/partner and I on the same page regarding strategies?
• Why your relationship with your child is so important (and how to keep him or her from ruining it!)

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PARENTING YOUR DIFFICULT TEENAGER

Limits, Drugs, Internet,

Rebellion, and Moodiness

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Learning how to parent your teen is critical to the family’s well-being and to help him or her make the important transition to adulthood. Parenting teenagers was never easy; yet, today’s technology and changing attitudes around parenting provide many ways for teenagers to fly under the parental radar and create more distractions and worries for parents.

Join us for this one-hour teleseminar where we’ll address:

• How to set positive and effective limits
• Developing a healthy policy be around drugs and alcohol
• Determining how much time is too much time on the internet
• Handling moodiness: what are the best ways to respond to anger, aggression, withdrawal or depression?
• What to do about the unmotivated teen?

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THE WORRIED ADULT

5 Steps to Managing Anxiety,

Preoccupation, and Fear

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Ongoing worry can make life hard to live. Fears of getting together with friends, asserting yourself at work or at home, worries about money, health, or the future can ruin your ability to focus on the positive aspects of your life and interfere with your ability to make good choices for yourself.

Join us in this one-hour teleseminar where we’ll address the following topics:

• Where does all of this worry come from?
• How can I calm myself?
• How do I get better control over my thoughts and feelings?
• How can I learn how to start taking more risks?
• Why do I need so much reassurance

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Dr. Coleman was asked by CNN.com to write a piece about the parents of Jared Loughner and other parents who have had similar kinds of struggles. Here it is:

What if he were your kid? You wouldn’t raise that kind of kid. You’d know the signs and get help. You’d have spotted it early on and gotten help for him right away. You would’ve seen the warnings and acted before it became the national tragedy that it did. Good parents don’t raise those kinds of kids.
But, what if you’re a good parent and you didn’t see the signs and you did raise that kind of kid, or at least some kid like that?
You knew something was wrong, but you didn’t know what to do. So you told yourself, it’s a phase. Lots of kids these days talk about death, have pictures of skulls, watch violent video games, take drugs and write things that they call poetry; it’s not like any poetry you’d ever read, but what do you know? You’re not a shrink. Maybe it will get better.

You’re not the Loughners, your kid hasn’t been accused of killing anyone, but something’s wrong with your kid and you don’t know what it is and you’re scared. You don’t have a lot of money or you just lost your insurance, so you took your son to the county hospital because lately, he’s been so angry all the time that you don’t know what’s wrong with him.

And the psychiatrist at the county ER tells you that he’s schizophrenic and should be on anti-psychotic medication and they’d like to keep him for two weeks on an involuntary hold.
So they keep him for two weeks on an involuntary hold, but because of the cutbacks in county mental health services, there’s no place to refer him when the hold expires, except back to you. And now that he’s on medication, he’s much calmer and no longer seems to be a threat to others. Crisis averted. Thank God for modern psychiatry.

Except that he doesn’t like the way the anti-psychotic drugs make him feel, so he goes off of them. And soon he’s back to posting angry, disturbing diatribes that don’t make a lot of sense, and this time, he refuses to go back to the hospital because he doesn’t want to be locked up.

So now you’re worried all over again. You know that you could call the police and they would come pick him up and take him back, but he’s still mad at you for hospitalizing him the first time; you can only imagine how angry he’ll be if he’s hauled back there in handcuffs.

But he ends up in handcuffs anyway, not because he’s accused of murdering someone, but because of drugs, or theft, or some other crime. And you’re almost relieved because the terrible end that you thought was coming has finally come.

But maybe your kid doesn’t end up in jail, but ends up living on the streets because he refuses to take your help — anyone’s help — and now you don’t even know where he lives. He stopped calling a long time ago when he figured you weren’t going to keep giving him money, and he refuses to talk to anyone else in the family, even his brother, whom he was once close to.

And you’d like to get support for how heartbroken and guilt-ridden you feel, but you don’t know where to get it because everyone assumes that you must have done something terribly wrong to have produced a kid who has such serious problems, or who wants nothing to do with you.And no one believes that more than you, his mother or father, even though a meek voice of protest rises up inside you to try to unsuccessfully challenge the far more powerful accusing voice.

And watching the evening news, you recognize that while you’re not the parent of a murderer, you feel an affinity for those parents far stronger than the parents of your friends with grandchildren, and children in college, or weddings to plan. You know, like they know, that for all the lousy parents in the world, good people can still create children who do terrible things, or whose lives turn out in ways they never imagined, not in their worst nightmares.

And the image of that father the morning of the shootings, asking him what was in that black bag, knowing his son well enough to know that something was wrong, reminds you of all the signs you ignored or acted on, but apparently not well enough because now, look how things have turned out for you and your kid, your baby.

And no matter how many times you tell yourself it wasn’t your fault, and however secure you are in that knowledge, it never buys you more than the briefest moment of comfort before you’re back to blaming yourself and wondering, “How could I let this happen to my own child? What kind of a parent am I?”

Dr. Coleman was on the Today Show July 6th, talking about parental estrangement. Click here to view the segment.

Dr. Coleman was invited to give a talk to the faculty and students on Dual-Career Couples at Harvard. He discussed his clinical experience working with dual-career couples and also  what research tells us about how couples and their children can benefit from sharing financial and household responsibilities.

Dr. Coleman will be speaking to host Irene Bakchanyan on attitudes toward infidelity in the U.S. on Monday May 17.

Today’s NYT’s featured an article on parental estrangement by one of my favorite journalists, Tara Parker-Pope. The article is one of the first I’ve seen that discusses the pain of estrangement from the parent’s perspective. She interviewed several people who post here on the When Parents Hurt forum. To read the full article, click here: Be sure to add your comments at the end of the article!





I have long been an admirer of Ellen Galinsky’s work. As president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute, Ellen and her colleagues have  produced some of the most interesting and important findings on the relationship between work and family functioning that we have. I often cite her research in my interviews and she has become one of the most important go-to people in the field. So I was not surprised by how much I liked her new book, Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Skills Every Child Needs.  Mind in the Making summarizes the best of what we know about how children develop the capacity for thinking, learning, developing good judgement, and succeeding in life. Unlike most parenting books, Mind in the Making backs up each one of its assertions with research on child development, neurology, and parenting. It is written in a warm, engaging style that reads more like a conversation with the reader than a
dry treatise on child development. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Mind in the Making provides the reader with multiple ways to help a child develop the seven essential life skills that she describes. Highly recommended!

Not as common as you might think. Researchers at Duke University spelled it out for a random sample of almost 1,500 students at the Durham, N.C., campus and found that only about one-third had had a hookup in college. Researchers surveyed 732 freshmen and 723 seniors and found that of the one-third in each grade that had had a hookup, less than half involved oral sex or intercourse. The study also found that nearly 60% of the freshmen reported that they had never had sexual intercourse. Click here to read the full article by journalist, Sharon Jayson.