May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I can think of no better place to focus our attention than on our children and families. 1 in 6 children aged 2-8 years has a mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder, according to recent statistics at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and behavioral and mental… Continue reading Your Child’s Mental Health is More Important Than You Think
Author: Vivian Morgan
Want to combat stress? Want to feel happier? Get some sleep!
Sleep may be the secret sauce to address today's biggest heavy hitters in the emotional issues department - depression, anxiety, and stress. In fact, it is something that many mental health professionals ask in the first intake session. How much are you sleeping? What is the quality of your sleep? Yet, we struggle as a… Continue reading Want to combat stress? Want to feel happier? Get some sleep!
Digital Down-time
It is natural during the winter to spend more time indoors and to gravitate to our computers or the television, to read online and catch up on television series we’ve been wanting to watch - binge watching is a relatively new term to describe this. It is easy to splurge on an hour or so… Continue reading Digital Down-time
Creating Calm: For Ourselves and For Our Children
It is no secret that we live in a time of high anxiety. As adults we navigate the news, weather issues, workplace stress, and family events or emergencies on a daily basis. Being able to manage our strong feelings around all of these things that are beyond our control is difficult. It is only natural… Continue reading Creating Calm: For Ourselves and For Our Children
Better Sleep, A Better You!
Happy New Year! Winter weather makes it hard to get out of bed, doesn't it? The warm comfort that holds us willingly inside the soft folds of our blankets makes it hard to move on to our ever growing to-do lists and responsibilities we are beholden to. It can also be hard to move out… Continue reading Better Sleep, A Better You!
10 Ways to Create Family Harmony
Fall is just the season where we begin to pull energies back into the home and family gatherings. When time is spent indoors more that out, and holidays keep us tethered to family. It can also be a time of unavoidable stress because of new fall schedules and the demands of school and work. I… Continue reading 10 Ways to Create Family Harmony
Five Communication Tips in Relating to Teens
Simple Suggestions for a Healthy Relationship Adolescence is the time in your child’s life where they are moving towards independence, creating themselves as an individual, their own identity, separate from you, different from you. It is called “individuation” or “identity formation” in the mental health field and is usually a time of development that is… Continue reading Five Communication Tips in Relating to Teens
How is the Teenage Brain Different?
It appears that brain development takes a lot longer that once believed. At one time the consensus was that our brains were developed at around the age of 6 and didn’t do much growing after that. Now, after the NIH project that studied over a hundred teens in the late ‘90s we know that teenage… Continue reading How is the Teenage Brain Different?
The Pressure of Parenting Teens
They want us to be their biggest cheerleaders, yet they act like they could care less what we think. We can't make a comment about their appearance yet they let us know how embarrassing we are to their friends. They know everything, yet somehow we have managed to complete our education, raise children, take care… Continue reading The Pressure of Parenting Teens
The Family Meeting
In our busy culture where we are rushing just about everywhere and feeling like we don't have time for anything else to do, the idea of finding time for a family meeting seems like just another demand on our time. But quality time, were we all have a voice, where we can be heard and… Continue reading The Family Meeting
Vivian Morgan, MS, LCPC 