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Tips of the Month for Families are regular tips for building strong relationships and healthy families. If you would like to sign up to receive these tips, scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up.

Help Your Kids Become Smart Social Media Users

For most of our sons and daughters, especially the tweens and teens, Facebook has become almost as essential as food, air and water. With adolescent identity development oriented so much around the peer group, Facebook and other social media are powerful vehicles mediating how our kids experience themselves within their social universe. Is the impact largely positive, negative, or neutral?

Delaying Gratification is Good for Your Kids

We increasingly hate to wait. If waiting is a kind of muscle, it's fair to say we're exercising it less now that packages arrive the same or next day, Visa and Mastercard let us bring stuff home right now, and our devices cushion the waiting-in-line distress while we surf the Internet or read and send texts. Waiting is unlikely to go extinct any time soon, despite its evolution through the decades.

It's Necessary for Your Kids to be Bored Sometimes

Do our kids' ever-present devices prevent them from experiencing in-between moments when they aren't engaged in something — bored moments when there's "nothing to do"? The idea of "nothing to do" seems quaintly old-fashioned in a world where kids busy themselves texting or online, filling every micro-moment. Once upon a time, they might instead have done a bit of daydreaming or reflecting on the past, musing about the future, observing the people and space around them, or…

Tell Your Kids: It's OK to Cry

Perhaps the toughest thing when our children cry are the emotions their tears trigger in us: empathic upset and sadness, plus a sense of helplessness that comes from thinking we need to do something while unsure what that would be. If we ourselves feel uncomfortable with those emotions -- upset, sad, helpless -- our kids' tears will be that much harder for us to be around.

Teach Forgiveness

“Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone while you’re the one getting burned.” — attributed to the Buddha Conflict with friends, siblings and parents — it’s part of our kids’ everyday lives. We teach the importance of making amends when they’ve hurt someone’s feelings. But what about when their feelings have been hurt? Even if they’ve received a proper apology, we tend to overlook the next step: forgiveness.

Teach Your Children How to Name Their Emotions

Your daughter comes home in tears. She can barely choke out words to describe the mean things some girls said to her on the school bus. You listen to her story and try to comfort her. If you’re really skilled, you’ll offer her attunement.

Why You Should be Emotionally Honest with Your Kids

Imagine that for twenty minutes, your 4-year-old has been fussing at the playground, crying and complaining and kicking sand at other children. Feeling growing irritation, you inch toward delivering a serious scolding. But you sense the watchful eyes of parents nearby, and so you suppress your feelings and handle the moment with faked aplomb.

How to Talk to Your Kids About College Drinking

Tell your college-age sons and daughters that more than 1,800 college students die from alcohol-related accidents each year, and nearly 600,000 are injured while drunk.1 Tell them that over half a million are assaulted by another student under the influence, and 97,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.2