Allison Edwards's Blog, page 2
June 1, 2020
How to Deal With 5 Common Kid Behavior Issues During (and After) Coronavirus Lockdown
I was a contributor for this article for Fabric magazine. I think it has a lot of good points for those who have little ones during this time. Enjoy! My 4-year-old sulks after her preschool video chat, frustrated that her friends are so close but still out of reach. My 1-year-old’s sleep patterns were shaky even before quarantine, and six weeks in—well, let’s not even go there.
May 25, 2020
Announcing my New Book: 15-Minute Counseling Techniques that Work: What You Didn’t Learn in Grad School
The counselor is not the strategy. The counselor teaches strategies. In the fall of 2000, I began my career as a school counselor. I had gone to a very nice graduate school where I had learned very nice theories and developed fanciful ideas about what my job would be like and what kind of counselor I would become. I was excited and motivated but when I walked into my first job as the only...
May 13, 2020
The Losses Keep Coming: A Pandemic Through the Eyes of a Teen
It’s 10:00 AM on a Tuesday and I sit down in front of my computer to have a virtual counseling session with a high school senior. The WiFi drops, comes back on again, then drops again. This is my new reality: trying to be present and capture the emotional intensity of the many kids who are struggling during this pandemic. The session before, I made feelings slime with an eight-year-old and we...
March 5, 2020
Announcing my New Children’s Book: “Marcy’s Having All the Feels”
The first line of my new children’s book, Marcy’s Having All the Feels is, “Marcy wanted to be happy. Happy is all she wanted to be.” I would guess that most of us feel very similar Marcy. We want to feel happy, confident and excited and when we don’t, we rush to change our situation or simply ignore the negative feelings we are experiencing. Why is this? Because feeling discomfort is hard.
October 14, 2019
The Raising Resilient Kids Summit – A Free Program for Parents!
Hi everyone! I wanted to pass this opportunity along to any parents or families that might benefit. It’s a free program to cover many of the issues that kids face today. I am honored to be a part of the program, alongside a number of child experts around the country! The video below is an overview of the program and the website to sign up is here. Start date is Oct 25th. Please pass along!
September 29, 2019
How the Feel Good Culture is Causing a Mental Health Crisis in Kids
The numbers are astounding. Kids and adolescents all over the country are struggling with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and a slew of other emotion-based issues at a staggering frequency. But why? We have blamed video games. We’ve thrown social media under the bus and overscheduling has also held the spotlight for a number of years. But one thing we haven’t considered (because...
September 6, 2019
Why Emotional Discomfort is Good for Kids
No one wants to feel discomfort. We want our days to run smoothly, make it to work on time, our kids to have successful days at school, to get to bed on time after we’ve eaten a healthy dinner and had a nice workout earlier in the day. But this doesn’t always happen. We get stuck in traffic, our kids get a fever and have to come home early and we didn’t have time for our workout.
August 16, 2019
The No-Talk Notebook: How to Get Kids to Open Up
One of the scariest experiences as a parent is not knowing what’s going on with your child. When you get a “my day was fine,” over and over again followed by an “I don’t know,” or “I don’t want to talk about it,” parents get frustrated and start asking more questions. These questions only lead to more resistance and at some point...
July 21, 2019
The Corpus Callosum and Why it Matters for Teens
Another senior sits in my office stressed about college. “It’s $50,000 a year,” she says. “I don’t want my parents to have to pay for it. I don’t know if my parents can pay for it and even if they can, what if I’ve chosen the wrong college?” We can chalk college stress up to the arduous process of college admissions. We can say it’s due to the...
July 13, 2019
The Flood Zone: How the Brain Responds to Stress
Most (if not all) of our problems have to do with the way we react to things. When we are triggered, we say things we don’t mean, give our kids punishments they don’t deserve and feel overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks. Afterwards, we feel regret and beat ourselves up for not handling things differently. To get out of this cycle, we need to understand how the brain works and why we...
