In November of 2010 the Pew Research Center released data on the state of marriage in the United States and described marriage as being in decline. They highlighted how over the past four decades percentages of traditional married couples have steadily decreased (from 72% to 52%) with a parallel increase in the numbers of adults who have never married (from 15% to 27%). The practice of cohabitation has also steadily increased and become more widely accepted (80% said an unmarried couple with children is a family). The responses I have observed to this information vary wildly. Some will use the data to argue that the traditional family is collapsing and it is just the beginning symptoms of a larger societal collapse. Others will suggest that the rise of new and diverse family structures is a sign of increased sophistication in our culture and we are leaving behind the oppressive patriarchal family system. I would suggest that both of these views are extremes that really only polarize an...

I think most of us have a view of children that makes us think once they have learned something it should always be with them. This is one of the reasons we become frustrated and fights ensue when our child makes a mistake doing something that we saw them be successful with in the recent past. This view suggests that we see learning as linear (step by step) and hierarchical (a skill is necessary to aid in the acquisition of a new skill). Some recent research suggests that maybe learning skills is not linear or hierarchical. Karen Adolph at New York University did some work with infants and their perceptions of keeping themselves safe from walking off the edge of a constructed "cliff." Below is some of the article from the November 2010 issue of Scientific American Mind. "Mountain goats are born understanding where they should and shouldn’t climb, but baby humans need practice puttering around before they can make sound judgments. Now New York University developmental psy...

From 1994 to 2001 the prescription of drugs for adolescent mental illness rose an amazing sixty percent. This is a trend I have watched over my years as a therapist. There has been an increasing reliance on medications to treat numerous behavioral symptoms presented by children. In an article recently published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the authors suggest that the majority of psychotropic drugs prescribed to children have not been tested for specific use with children. These are adult drugs being used to treat childhood issues. The authors also suggested that many of these drugs have only shown limited short-term benefits in use with adults, but as a practitioner I am seeing these medicines prescribed for two and three years at a time. There has been little to no research examining the impact of such long-term use on the growth and development of the children using the medicines. I should be clear that I believe there are times for the use of psychotropic medicines...

Loss is unavoidable. I remember one expert talking about grief and loss who said, "You never resolve or reach a closure with loss, you just learn to cope. Because truthfully life is about loss." Helping our children learn about loss in life and how to cope are essential skills for healthy emotional development. During the summer of 2009, our two dogs died within one week. Tragedy and illness. Unfortunate but unavoidable circumstances. For both of my children this was one of their first and closest experiences with death and as would be expected it was not easy. Our little dog Winnie, escaped from the backyard at our new home and was found a week later after being struck and killed by a car. A week later our large Labrador Retriever, Pooh Bear, became too ill to function and had to be put to sleep. As a family we reacted with shock, tears, and sadness, but also resilience, sharing memories, and maybe even a little laughter with our stories. It is not uncommon with a loss to go...

The image to the left is a picture of two trees in the Mariposa Grove of Yosemite National Park. They are called the 'Faithful Couple.' They stand over two hundred feet tall and are several centuries old. You can see that the base looks like one tree but at the top the two distinct trees are visible. Under the surface of the trees the root systems are intertwined and offer mutual support to both trees. The sequoia forest was the favorite part of the trip for my daughters last summer. They were impressed with the majesty of the trees. We kept telling them that they were going to get to see some really big trees, but nothing could describe their awe as we explored the forest of these giants. The sequoia trees we saw on that trip were so old, that many were likely seedlings when Jesus walked on this earth and because they grow so slowly, many looked the same today as they looked when some of the first Western settlers in California discovered the forest. We were also impressed wit...