Posts by Marja Brandon
This is an article about suicide
[Editor’s note: Our archives contain several years of excellent articles, most of which remain relevant and important to today’s young people and the adults who work with them. This one is a “Director’s Choice” that we are reposting this week.] I suppose that is a trigger warning, yet I don’t like the term…
Read MoreReality(?) TV
I have a guilty pleasure. I watch reality television. I know, I know…and the only thing I can say in my defense is that until recently, I almost exclusively limited myself to cooking shows with a strong preference for ones where the contestants were kind to one another (think early seasons of The Great…
Read MoreFor What It’s Worth…
As parents, we spend a lot of our time worried about our children’s mental health. Is their self-esteem (how they think about themselves) strong enough to withstand the risks and challenges that are coming? But how do we help our kids find their self-worth and keep it? How do we help them never need…
Read MoreNo magic bullet for the bullets…
Dear Marja, I sit here across from the TV, and I hear screaming, crying, yelling, grief. Gun violence at another school, this time in Georgia–12 or so kids, babies really, shot by a 14-year-old. A 14-YEAR-OLD. Gun violence, again, but it isn’t just guns. I think it’s a mindset we have got to change,…
Read MoreKindness
[Editor’s note: Our archives contain several years of excellent articles, most of which remain relevant and important to today’s young people and the adults who work with them. This one is a “Director’s Choice” that we are reposting this week.] So work has been crazy, as the days before school opens always are.…
Read MoreADHD Kids May Not Be Doing Alright These Days…
[Editor’s note: Our archives contain several years of excellent articles, most of which remain relevant and important to today’s young people and the adults who work with them. This one is a “Director’s Choice” that we are reposting this week.] …particularly if they have a phone, access to screens, the news, or are…
Read MoreIt gets better…
There are those moments many of us experience as parents when parenting feels hard, even painful. Our children, our tweens or teens, may become surly, disrespectful, or sometimes even downright mean to us. Surely, this behavior is not what we had in mind when we held that delightful bouncing baby in our arms not that…
Read MorePower of Words…
Your words have power…even beyond what you might already realize. Sure, we know a lot about tone, inflection, and volume, and we think we are aware of our word choices, but are we really? Beyond enabling communication, words can be weaponized or used to empower. Used carelessly, words can cause damage we neither intended nor realized.…
Read MoreNew Year resolutions? Maybe….
So every year I hear, see and read about people’s New Year resolutions toward self-improvement or toward a goal, for about a week or two, and then I hear, see and read about how they have fallen by the wayside, a victim of great intentions without follow-through, or more accurately, poorly conceived follow-through. I see…
Read MoreWhat’s all this about independence?
Starting at about age 18 months, my son’s favorite phrase became, “NO! By myself!” It didn’t matter what my request of him was–could I help going up the stairs, could I pick him up, could I help with a meal, could I help getting dressed? The answer was always the same, “NO! By myself!” While…
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