Category Archives: Conscious Parenting

When Your Teen Hates You

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    As parents frustration is not an unusual emotion.  However when our teens are angry enough to start expressing how much they “hate” us, a variety of different emotions can be evoked:  sadness, doubt, confusion, a sense of inadequacy, anger, maybe even some hatred.  No matter what you feel, Luisa Colón, wanted to let you know you are not alone.  She recently sat down with our Director, Melissa Kester, LMFT, to discuss different ways we can manage these moments.

If you would like to read more, please go to Mamiverse:  http://www.mamiverse.com/dealing-with-teen-years-35598/

5 Steps for Disciplining Your Stepchild

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Have you been curious how to discipline your stepchild?   Luisa Colón talks with our Founder and Director, Melissa Kester, LMFT on 5 different steps you can take to communicate house rules with your stepchildren.

If getting them to like you is your priority when it comes to your stepchildren, then good for you for wanting to foster strong bonds with your extended family. But that doesn’t mean you put aside solid rules and thoughtful discipline. Here are five steps for lovingly maintaining law and order in yourblended household.

1. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A SAP WITH YOUR STEP…
I am firm with my own stepkids (there are three of them), and the result is mutual love and mutual respect, too. “Structure is important for everyone’s well being,” advisesMelissa Kester, MA, LMFT, Founder and Director of Madison Marriage and Family Therapy, PCin New York City and the editor of Towards Healing. “Neglecting this leaves everyone depleted and uncontained.”

Head over to Mamiverse, if you want to read more:  http://www.mamiverse.com/five-steps-disciplining-stepchild-25350/

Journey Towards Happiness

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Real happiness cannot exist when we are not free.  Burdened by so may ambitions, we are not able to be free.  We are always grasping at something; there are so many things we want to do at the same time, and that is why we do not have the time to live.  We thing that the burdens we carry are necessary for our happiness, that if they are taken from us we will suffer.

However, if we look more closely, we shall see that the things at which we grasp, the things that keep us constantly busy, are in fact obstacles to our being happy.  In letting go of them, we learn that true happiness can only come by way of freedom, an awakened life, and the practice of love and compassion.  ~Thich Nhat Hanh