Family Systems, Parenting, Controlling Spouses
What are some warning signs you can and should learn to pick up on early in the relationship, signs that the person you are with is a controlling partner? As a general indicator, a huge warning sign that you’re involved… Continue Reading
Molly* is a difficult [in my more honest moments I think of her as nearly tyrannical] early adolescent, who makes her mother’s life a horror. She picks on Mom’s clothes, her hairstyle–the way she chews her toast in the morning.… Continue Reading
Let’s address what happens when the ones campaigning for attention of a certain parent are a child–and the new spouse. Look, let’s face it. Your child has very little cause to be invested in your new marriage. Either he’d like… Continue Reading
Charlotte* was a energetic, exciting, dominant woman. She chose Charlie,* her opposite. Charlie ate the same menu almost every day: 2 eggs, chicken salad for lunch, chicken or pasta for dinner. This drove Charlotte wild, and she let Charlie know… Continue Reading
The L family has been experiencing a troubled triangle between Larry* and his second wife Lucille*, who were fighting over his young daughter Lola from a previous marriage. Lucille was expecting her first biological child and was also the full-time… Continue Reading
Well, you made it through last year’s Thanksgivukkah. But don’t relax yet; the big season of joy is coming up again fast. Being with your extended family can make you squirm, either due to their direct questions or simply as… Continue Reading
I’m a bit of a softie for sibling roles in family dynamics, and although there are definite limits to the validity of utilizing birth order to explain behavioral and personality traits, some value yet remains. Older research asserted a variety… Continue Reading
13. It always gets that bad ‘unlucky’ rap, even in these progressive days and times. There’s just no escaping it. So it will be no surprise to parents, who thought they saw the backsides of their children when they sent… Continue Reading
In his book, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls, Robert Burney writes that “there are four basic roles that children adopt in order to survive growing up in emotionally dishonest, shame-based, dysfunctional family systems.” The children take these roles because… Continue Reading
Remember the wondrously insane and macabre Addams family? (“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky/They’re all together ooky. . . .”) They were the anti-Partridge family, the inverse Brady Bunch, fabulously perverse, with two ghastly children, Wednesday (as in… Continue Reading
To start your proactive work on preventing rivalry for a parent’s attention between siblings or between children and a new spouse, I recommend that you as the parent and step-parent consciously partition your home time into four parts: time with… Continue Reading
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” You only had to make it through the first chapter [first line, to be honest] of Anna Karenina to find this out–and there will be no… Continue Reading
