Why Owning Your Own Crap Empowers You, Instead of Takes You Down

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Most of us are reluctant to turn the flashlight back on ourselves and look at the ways we might have screwed up. After all, who likes feeling like they’ve messed up? Like the balance of power has shifted in the story and all of a sudden, instead of the other person being so predictably wrong… [Continue Reading]

One woman’s frog is another woman’s prince

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Note: I’m apologizing ahead of time for anyone that I might piss off with this post. It is not my intention . Okay, here goes! There are 2 complaints I hear often from moms regarding their ex-husbands. The first complaint is that if he’s remarried and the stepmom plays an active parenting role, then he… [Continue Reading]

Free parenting book (one-day only!) and new video project: The Stepfamily Diaries

courageous_parents_courageous_kids

(New here? Subscribe to our RSS Feed or via email. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Check out excerpts from our book or audio book, and join us on the forum.) I’m behind on writing the third part to the Taming the Cobra series. It will be up later today or first thing tomorrow Sunday…. [Continue Reading]

A Rant: Painting the New American Family Landscape

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Here’s a crazy image for you: picture a hay wagon, careening along a bumpy road, strewing bits and pieces of straw in its wake. On one side of the truck, you have a stepfamily — the father and stepmother tersely yelling at each other to hang on tight and make sure Little Timmy doesn’t go… [Continue Reading]

On not even peeking behind the curtains, because there are no curtains…

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Sometimes I struggle with tone on this blog. I want so much to inspire people – to show them a different vision of what’s possible between families (originally I typed “bision” instead of “vision” which reminded me of “bison,” but I’m not up much on buffalo, so clearly, that wouldn’t have worked) after a divorce…. [Continue Reading]

Book Review: Keeping Kids Out of the Middle

Imagine if children young and old could speak in keen, poignant words about how parental conflict affects them – in terms that adults would not only understand, but get their attention as well. Then imagine that those words have been channeled into a book by a child psychologist who’s surely put in his years consoling… [Continue Reading]

Book review tomorrow: Keeping Kids Out of the Middle, by Benjamin Garber, PhD

Come back tomorrow, when we'll be reviewing "Keeping Kids Out of the Middle: Child-Centered Parenting in the Midst of Conflict, Separation and Divorce" by Benjamin Garber, PhD, sponsored by TLC Book Tours. Garber's got some great ideas for how parents can work together, during times when they'd be normally be pulling apart (and making the… [Continue Reading]

Staying Connected with Your KIds When They Live at the Other House

bonding with your children after divorce

My youngest daughter is living with her dad and stepmom now and I often miss her. While it makes me happy to know that she’s thriving there (and at almost 13, that’s quite a feat!), I still can’t quite get used to her room being empty most of the time and not having her snooping… [Continue Reading]