Dr. Neill Neill
If you are in an unhappy marriage, is it better to stay married just for the sake of the children–or to divorce? Are the affects of divorce on children always negative? What really is best for the children?
Dr. Neill Neill, Registered Psychologist
Parents with young children are totally involved in caring for and protecting their kids. They are enmeshed with their young children. That deep level of codependency of parent and child ensures the survival of the children.
But change comes quickly. Your kids learn to do things for themselves, and then demand to do them. They develop their own personalities.
You celebrate each time your young children learn to do something independently, like tie their shoelaces, hammer a nail or write a story. Then they enter the teenage years, those few years of rapid physical and emotional transition from childhood to adulthood. They feel sexual urges. They feel very “adult.” They begin to flex the independence you so strongly encouraged up to now.
I want to thank www.More4kids.info for the insightful article, Does your Child Have an Imaginary Friend? Both the article and a movie (below) could be really helpful to parents who are wondering about whether or not they should push reality or participate with their child in interacting with their imaginary friend. Dealing with your child’s imaginary friends is an interesting part of parenting.
We just watched the excellent movie entitled, Opal Dreams, in which a child with two imaginary friends, Pobby and Dingan, interacts with her parents and community. Opal Dreams is available on DVD and is set in Lightning Ridge, the opal capital of Australia. It’s a family film worth watching. Enjoy.
One time I heard a man I knew say to his wife "I don’t trust you. But don’t take it personally; I don’t trust anyone."
What made his statement particularly bizarre was that this same man expected trust from everyone else—his employees, his business associates, his creditors, and yes, his wife.
The fact is you need people to trust you to order a meal in a restaurant, to have a credit card or a driver’s license or even to be out in public. You can’t get on in life without others trusting you.
But neither can you get on in life without trusting others too. You trust your employer will pay you. You trust the driver of the car arriving at the stop sign will stop and not run into you.
How does trust develop? The fact is you started off in life in a state of trust.
Dr Neill Neill
Today I write about happiness, entitlement, achievement and meaning. How do they all connect?
A guest came to visit a Saskatchewan farmer for the first time at his farm. As the visitor took in the expanse of billowing wheat fields that stretched out from the well-maintained family home and farm buildings, he commented to the farmer, "God has been good to you." The farmer replied with a smile, "He certainly has…but you should have seen the place when he was managing it by himself."
Dr. Neill Neill
Parenting is not easy. In the fast paced competitive society we live in, many parents are concerned with their child’s self esteem. Building self confidence in children is important, but can there be a wrong way of going about it?
Dr. Neill Neill
It was with sadness that I heard the news of the death in our small community of a five-year-old boy, accidentally run over by a backing truck. And now I see from the local newspaper that his grieving parents are struggling with an insurance company.
What distinguishes an accidental death from other deaths is the suddenness. Most of what I write below applies to other deaths, although the timing may be a bit different.
Last year I suffered the death of a son. But the death of a child? My son was 41 and we saw it coming; this little boy was vibrant and healthy and only five. When a child of that age dies, it is as if a part of the parents dies. What horrific trauma for the parents!
A new website is about to launch. It could be big and it is already multinational. It’s called "School Made Much Easier" and it’s designed for students, parents, educators and EFT practitioners. The website is www.SchoolMadeMuchEasier.com. Check it out and get your name on the advance notice list. The expected launch is in a couple of weeks.
School Made Much Easier is the brainchild and passion of Paul Widdershoven, an experienced EFT practitioner.
Emotional Freedom Technique, commonly known as EFT, is an energy-healing technique developed by Gary Craig (my teacher) in the 1990s. It has been so effective in reducing emotional distress that it is now used by psychologists, counsellors, medical doctors and educators around the world. What’s even more exciting is that tens of thousands of non-professionals use EFT as a valuable self-help tool.
Dr. Neill Neill
Mental illness is not neatly categorized and explained, and that can be a bit scary. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV) gives descriptions of the many mental disorders affecting about 20 percent of the population.
The three mental disorders we most often hear about are schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (clinical depression.)
I have been up close and personal with all three: family members, close friends, colleagues, pupils and clients. I even did internships in big mental hospitals, back in the days before they closed their doors.
Dr. Neill Neill
