- By Amy Paine
Two siblings are playing on the living room floor. The girl, aged six, looks at her brother, and smiling, sings: “A, B, C, D, E, F – R!” Her older brother, aged seven, grins and joins in with: “H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, PEE! Get it? Pee! Pee-pee!” Both fall about laughing.
Adults who prepare quality meals for children are offering something more important than a nutrition lesson.
- By D B Krupp
There is a certain rhythm to the swing of sibling relations. We resent our brothers and sisters in childhood. We support them in adulthood. We sue them after the reading of the will. The choreographer of this dance, as in so many others, is competition.
Neurobiologically the single most important fact about, say, a 20 year old brain is the fact that almost all of it is already matured, fully wired up—myelinated, a jargon-y term for it. The reward dopamine system has been going full blast, and somewhere around like early puberty all of the brain is totally up to speed—except for the frontal cortex.
The family unit is a complex mixture of personalities who come together to learn, heal, and love. It is the first place we begin our Earthly journey. Family is instrumental in helping us fulfill our soul's purpose by helping us learn karmic lessons and providing an environment in which we can develop our gifts and talents.
Japan has long been known for its widespread respect for its seniors and a powerful sense of obligation to care for them. Yet as the demographic structure of society has changed, and the population has progressively aged, the provision of care is increasingly seen as a social (and not exclusively a family) concern.
Statistics show that the average yearly cost of an assisted living facility ($49,635) or a nursing home ($131,853) makes these options financially prohibitive for many. The viable alternative is to safely age in place. The psychosocial benefits of remaining in their own home, continuing to be socially active in their community, and maintaining established relationships are priceless.
- By Alan Cohen
February is the month of Valentines, when our thoughts turn to love. Usually we give Valentines gifts and affection to romantic partners. This month I would like to shift our focus to expressions of love to our family, in particular our parents.
Our relationships with parents, children, siblings, and spouses can be very complex puzzles of love and frustration — we can’t live with them and can’t live without them. We often have long-held patterns and painful feelings related to our sense of worth...
Being happy is an attitude to life that is less determined by outside circumstances and more by inner qualities. A person’s character and mind is stable when their inner family is in harmony. As a metaphysician would put it: ‘It’s the same on the inside as the outside.’
When I was seven years old, my father’s father died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death rippled through the family, particularly affecting my grandmother and his sons. As a child I was shielded from much of this impact, and before this moment I had never...
Successive generations’ healthy disregard of the previous generation’s tastes, habits and customs is a necessary ingredient of human progress.
If we don’t see ourselves as worthwhile contributors to society and we don’t approach our aging with dignity and respect for ourselves, how can we expect them to see us that way? As we age, our families become helpful and supportive, or neglectful and critical...
In a 2002 study involving nearly 2,500 children, researchers found that daughters’ relationships with their fathers were more damaged than sons’.
Parent issues are some of the worst and most longstanding issues we can have. When children do not have what they need, they spend the rest of their lives trying to change that. After they become adults, their attempts to find those missing pieces can create...
- By Eric Maisel
It is human to despair, and it is human to worry. But when either of these realities, or both at once, becomes the predominant coloration of family life, then you must contend both with your sad and anxious family members and with your own “sympathetic” sadness and anxiety.
Birth Order Personalities develop as coping strategies each one of us used as children to make ourselves feel okay in our particular positions in the family.
My mother never worked outside the home, and at that time many women were not encouraged to do so. She had the same limited expectations for her daughter, but she never took into consideration that we were different people and that my spirit screamed for more...
Whether your mother lives in her own home, with you, in a facility, or a long distance from you, there are many things you can do to make Mothers' Day a special day for her. * Plan to spend loving, compassionate, quality time with her. * Engage her in discussions about her past and where she is now in this stage of her life...
We frequently feel cut off from our clan of origin at some given moment during our work on the self. In discovering our true nature, we will also discover at what point the family ignored and neglected us. When undergoing the abuse, we feel like an orphan, yet the fruit and the tree are still joined by bonds of obvious or underlying love.
People who have reached age 65 and still have living parents are more likely to suffer depressive symptoms than their peers whose parents have died, a new study suggests.
Twins tend to live longer than people who aren’t twins, and identical twins live even longer, according to a new study.
The longer your parents live, the more likely you are to live longer and have a healthy heart. These are the results of our latest study of nearly 200,000 volunteers.