It was dark outside. My four-year-old granddaughter was about to cross the sidewalk, when she noticed a swarm of black ants covering the area on which she was about to step. Alarmed at the sight of them, she was filled with anxiety, frozen in helplessness. What is anxiety? In order to survive and stay safe…
My daughter was five years old and eager to play dolls with the “big girls” next door. She looked up to these older girls and longed to join in whenever she saw them playing outside. Seeing an opportunity, she hurried out the front door with excitement in her eyes and her favourite doll tucked under…
I co-facilitate a study group of professionals who meet regularly to discuss Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s theories of attachment and development. Together we are a group of teachers, psychiatrists, social workers, counsellors, parent educators, alternative school educators, early childhood educators, and most of us parents, with a strong focus on understanding and forwarding attachment thinking. Next on our…
Last night my children couldn’t sleep. Today was their first day of school and their bodies and minds were not quite ready for the transition. As my husband and I turned out our light to go to sleep, I heard my nine-year-old daughter’s little voice call out…”I’ll never get to sleep!” and then my 13-year-old…
“Daddy, I am bored,” my six-year-old son comes into my home office complaining. I have a feeling of déjà vu. I have heard this before. In fact all my children around this age have shown up with the very same expression: “Daddy, I am bored.” I used to think that they lacked for ideas of…
When my oldest child was eight-years-old, she began asking for a cell phone. It seemed like a ‘fun’ idea to her, and definitely in keeping with the times and trends of our young. They use technology in their day-to-day lives to keep in touch with each other in a multiple of ways, including social media…
“There’s nothing to do! I’m bored!” is the battle-cry of children everywhere who are on summer vacation. Yet after weeks of counting the days for school to end, children are at a loss for what to do with their newly found freedom. When I asked a number of children what they were looking forward to…
I have talked about guilt and shame. Now it is time for blame, the third sibling. Sometimes it is clear who is at fault. However, often it is not clear, especially with children and adolescents. One of the ways of relieving guilt (did something wrong) or shame (something is wrong with me) is to shift…
In the wake of the Vancouver riots following the Canucks loss in the Stanley Cup finals, many are struggling to make sense of this senselessness (see also Dr. Deborah McNamara’s editorial on this website). Ironically I was – and still am upon writing this – in Europe, preparing to give a keynote address at a…
In the aftermath of the Vancouver riot following the Stanley Cup finals there has been an unleashing of emotion from anger to despair – but at the heart of it there is profound confusion as to how to make sense of the senseless. As we gather ourselves and repair our broken city, we are left…