By Sylvia Beligotti, MA

Do you feel like your in-laws play too big a role in your marriage? Does it feel like they are putting their nose in where it does not belong? Marriage should be between two people without feeling like your in-laws are interfering in your communication, connection, or plans for the future.

As a parent, you want to find ways to connect with your children. A natural connection grows as you accompany your child through the stages of childhood and toward adolescence. However, you may eventually reach a point where many parents struggle to connect with their child: the teenage years!

As a parent, you want to be there to guide your child through every obstacle. However, it isn’t always easy to know how to be there for your child. If you are a parent of an LGBTQIA+ child, you may be particularly unsure about how to guide them.

As parents, we want to do our best to raise healthy, emotionally balanced, and resilient people. We imagine that we’ll support them well and, in time, create a solid, loving relationship that will serve as a foundation for their future successes. That’s the goal.

As the parent of a child with intellectual disabilities, you’ve experienced ups and downs.

Your child has likely taken the forefront of the concern in the family.

The holidays are here and we may need some strategies to help us through at times.

Why? Because right on the heels of the warm, cozy seasonal feelings come performance anxiety, overblown expectations, and… people.

The next six weeks will likely be packed full of interacting, engaging, giving, partying, visiting, and hosting friends and family.

When you have children, going through a divorce can feel ten times more difficult. A divorce can have serious, lasting effects on kids if it isn’t handled the right way.

Thankfully, you can prepare your kids for the process and assure them that everything is going to be okay.

Some of us enjoyed highly functional family lives. Others of us have to face hard facts about our family’s dysfunction. Stepping firmly away from key members or an entire group of family members is sometimes the best way to protect yourself from hurtful or damaging connections. In fact, for some of us, family estrangement is the best way to limit the interactions that cause pain and promote chaos in our lives.

By Sylvia Beligotti, MA

A family is a complicated thing. Gathered around a holiday meal or celebrating a mutual milestone, your family may experience a host of highs and lows as you navigate a myriad of emotions and perspectives about each other’s respective lives.

Family members are usually the people who love us, support us, and encourage us. However, they can also be the people with whom we fight the most.

Communication is key.

We’ve all heard this phrase more than a few times regarding relationships with our significant others, but it’s important to remember that communication can help strengthen our families as well.