new parents

New Parent Difficulties: A Case Study

New Parent Difficulties: A Case Study

When it comes to celebrity couples, Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are one pair of Hollywood A-listers who have managed to keep the details of their relationship relatively private. Maintaining this level of confidentiality is no small feat given the celebrity status of the two.  After all, it's hard enough for us common folk to keep our private lives private. 

Nonetheless, when you're as famous as Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are, there will always be prying eyes and lenses whenever you go out and public. As a result, there are some things that you just can't keep secret for long, and recent photos of the couple together clearly show that Mendes is expecting the couple's second child...

Building Resilience Through Life Transitions

Building Resilience Through Life Transitions

Transitions in life can be so hard.  Brad and I are already talking about when we will have a second child.  I am already thinking about how my little Luke will feel about no longer being the baby.

Of course he will always be my baby…but the thought of him growing older and not being my little guy is a bit sad.  We also think about his emotional health a lot.  

We know how important it is for little guys and girls to be emotionally healthy because they take their emotional health or disfunction with them into their adult years.  Whether they are emotionally healthy or not it impacts every aspect of their lives....

How to Reduce Stress & Anger to Lengthen Your Life & the Life of Your Marriage

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” - Thomas Jefferson While anger is a habitual choice that we make it is one of the hardest habits to kick. How we react to stress is something that we learn from our environment at a very early age. Sometimes we get upset and we don’t even understand why. Things that don’t even phase other people cause us to obsess and/or explode. Last time we talk about how anger is a secondary emotion. We said that underneath the anger there is usually another pain or hurt of some kind. Anger is often a cover up and can be an easier emotion to express than anything deeper. We must deal with the underlying hurts and when we do sometimes the anger still lingers because we have learned to react to issues that way. In this blog I will talk about how anger and stress go hand in hand and how you can take control of it...

Overcoming Angry Habits that Wreak Our Health and Our Marriages

Anger Gives Power Away Sometimes it helps to realize that problem anger does not gain us the power, control, respect, or the love we want. It only makes us more powerless by placing our peace in the hands of someone or something else. It drives people away. In short, we put ourselves in the powerless victim role. We give the power away when we get angry...

Crazy Anger, Where Does It Come From?

Crazy Anger, Where Does It Come From?
“Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy.” Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics What is Anger? Anger is the easiest secondary emotion we can feel. It is tons easier than accepting responsibility, crying, showing fear, hurt, or letting people see any other vulnerability that actually precedes anger. In fact, when you look up anger in the dictionary you will find it described as “an unpleasant and uncomfortable feeling resulting from injury, mistreatment, or opposition and usually showing itself in a desire to fight back at the supposed cause of the feeling.”

What Researchers Say about New Parents

What Researchers Say about New Parents

Parenting that is compromised by fighting, irritability, and hostility lead to poor parent-child interaction. This creates a dangerous emotional climate for babies. This atmosphere will interfere with an infant’s ability to self-regulate and to stay calm. Both parents are working harder, but they both feel unappreciated. During the first year after babies arrive, the frequency and intensity of relationship conflicts increase 9 times what it was before the baby. It is normal for a mom’s sexual desire to drop precipitously after birth and even stay low for the first year, especially if she is nursing. Consequently, sex declines dramatically...