Marty Nemko's Blog, page 240

Your Child and Sex

Whether you want to be sexually liberal or conservative with your child, key is communicating your values while taking your child into consideration.
One way I might make this potentially difficult goal more doable is to offer sample dialogues.That's what I do in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Your Child's Friends: Doables that encourage good friendships

Psychologist Judith Rich’s research found that peers influence children more even than parents do. Certainly, friends can influence your child, and you can boost the chances of that influence being positive. I offer doables in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

You and Your Child's Homework

Homework was probably first assigned the first time a teacher was frustrated that students weren’t learning enough, and that's probably when civilization began. 

Since then, legions of kids have pleaded, yelled, lied, done everything possible to avoid the dreaded task.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers parents tips that work in the real world for getting your kid to do the dastardly deed without your pulling your hair out. As with all the articles in this series,  the focus is on what's realistic, what works in the real world, what I call doables.

Choosing Your Child's School: A parent's most important decision?

Parenting may be the most important subject they don’t teach in school or college. And among the most challenging, at least emotionally. 

Many writings on parenting can make you feel inadequate if you’re not perfectly consistent, ever striking the balance between setting limits and providing freedom, with no helicoptering Tiger Momming allowed!

Today's and the next few installments in my PsychologyToday.com series focuses on potent parenting practices that are realistic in the real world, what I call doables.

Because so much parenting literature focuses on birth-to-five, this series will focus on K-12. 

Today’s installment is on choosing your child’s school. That's probably the most potent single action a parent can take. Make the one-time effort to get your child into a well-suited school and you’ve gone a long way to ensuring your child gets an appropriate education and has a peer group you feel good about.

Learning Better: Doables toward a better college or graduate school experience

Of course, many people go back to college or grad school mainly for the piece of paper. 
But it’s an awful lot of money and time just for a piece of imitation sheepskin. You might as well extract as much useful learning as you can, right? My PsychologyToday.com article today should help you do that.
Many such articles are overoptimistic about how much students are willing to do. This article, like the others in this Doables series focuses on what most people are actually willing to do.

Getting Closer: Doables toward better relationships

I always feel a little sheepish writing about human behavior. It so varies depending on the people and circumstances, and behavior predispositions change. I’m doubly sheepish about relationships because all that doubles and the permutations of each factor mushroom.

That said, to ignore relationships in a a blog called How to Do Life would be remiss. Hence, I periodically wade into the muck: The Relationship Report Card,   Refreshing a Stale Relationship Relationships in 2019, Beyond  Later Relationships. and The World’s Shortest Parenting Course.
 
My PsychologyToday.com article today takes a shot at helping you decide your non-negotiables, nice-to-haves, and not-importants regarding your relationships, platonic or romantic. Then, I offer thoughts on addressing a relationship problem.

Getting Happier: 12 doable pallaitives

Who wouldn’t want to be happier? Alas, enduring happiness comes from hard-to-change things: genetic predisposition, early childhood, the quality of your current life—If you’re living with four roommates in a crappy apartment, have  a soul-sucking job, and your lifetime savings are in three digits, well, you’re unlikely to go through life skipping down the lane.

But there are palliatives, what I call, doables, that can help, at least for a while. I offer a dozen in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Fear of Firing: Doables to help you keep your job....and if you lose it.

Especially if you have a good job but sense you’re viewed as average at best, it’s only natural that you’re worried you might get the axe, if only in a round of layoffs.

And that’s scary. Even though the unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years, that statistic masks that good jobs, as opposed to grim gigs, are harder to come by.

What’s a mere mortal to do? My PsychologyToday.com article today offers doables, things you can realistically change, to help you keep your job and if you lose it, how to make that for the best.

Doable Baby Steps to Conquering Procrastination

I’ve probably written more on procrastination than on anything else, yet my experience with clients ever improves my thoughts on the subject. 

I just had a session with a client that crystallized my most recent thinking and I want to share that with you. It's my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Making of a Scientist: Winner of the Nemko Prize

You probably wouldn’t bet on Lauren Reynolds winning a prestigious young-scientist award.

Her father was a mechanic, her mother a stay-at-home-mom, and later, a school-cafeteria worker. Lauren focused on art in high school, then went to an art college, and dropped out.

Yet, indeed, yesterday it was announced that Lauren is this year’s winner of a prestigious international young-scientist award, the Society for Neuroscience’s Nemko Prize.

My PsychologyToday.com article today tells Lauren’s story.