Your body is always sending you information about how you can take care of yourself. The trouble is, we often don’t learn how to interpret this information. This is akin to getting a letter written in a language you don’t speak.

For instance, when your teenage son fails to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher–again–you might feel irritated. When he later leaves peanut butter spread on the counter–again–you might feel frustrated. And when he doesn’t put away the gallon of milk later on, you might feel downright resentful.

All of these little irritations have built up until your body feels wound up and ready to explode.

But if you knew how to read the feelings of irritation when they first showed up in your body, you would know that these are all your body’s way of telling you to enforce a boundary. It’s your body’s way of saying, “Your son is violating your boundaries and de-prioritizing your need for a clean...

When your teens don’t clean up after themselves, do you close your eyes and take a deep breath because you just can’t take it?

When they talk to you in that tone of voice, do you have a hard time keeping your cool?

And do you sometimes explode because you can’t be everything to everyone all at once?

You are not alone.

The truth is, teens and tweens push boundaries. It’s normal and even healthy. They are trying to figure out how the world works, what their place is, and what is and is not expected of them.

And if we parents don’t know how to assert our own boundaries, then of course we feel small little pebbles of resentment—and sometimes even big boulders of resentment.

We feel worn out and unappreciated … and we can’t figure out what in the world we are doing wrong to be raising such entitled kids.

The next time you find yourself feeling those little pangs of resentment, try using this formula.

(And ... if you like our...

We are all put in situations in which we lack confidence. Perhaps we are taking up a new hobby, meeting a new group of people, or embarking on a new career.

In today’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we take a look at how we can show up as empowered, positive versions of ourselves, even when we feel uncomfortable. After all, how we show up in these situations can determine whether we ultimately enjoy the experience or walk away feeling awkward and even embarrassed.

Showing up as our best possible selves is a skill, one that we teach in our Resilience-Based Parenting™ course, and one that all adults and children can benefit from learning.

Consider, for instance, what people look like when they do not have this skill. They can come across as combative or defensive, when really they are just feeling insecure. Oftentimes, they laugh at themselves, but not in a good way. Rather, their self-deprecation makes people around them feel uncomfortable.

The good news is, we can learn and...

Resilient people know that asking for help is a strength and not a weakness, so in this week’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to reach out and ask for support when faced with a challenging situation.

But don’t just ask for any ol’ help. Ask for specific help from specific people.

Many people have a belief that asking for help—or even disclosing their troubles—is a sign of weakness. They think they should be able to handle their problems on their own. They don’t want to seem needy or broken, so they suffer in silence, pretending they are fine when, in reality, they are not okay and need help.

Everyone needs help sometimes, and often, we need specific help from specific people. We might need advice from someone we admire. We might need our sister to pick up our children from school. Or we might need financial support from a family member.

Disappointments, setbacks, failures, and obstacles that feel overwhelming are part of the human...

Resilient people know that their minds can get cluttered with negative thoughts and limiting beliefs, so in this week’s Self-Care Sunday tip, we encourage you to check in with your gut feelings when making decisions.

If no one tells you how important your gut feelings are, you might forget to listen to them. In fact, when we are kids, we are taught to abdicate our own feelings and instead listen to our teachers, our parents, our babysitters, and our coaches. And while sometimes this is appropriate, the danger is that we lose touch with this powerful tool.

We can feel in our bodies when something is the right decision for us, and we can feel in our bodies when it is not. We learn to think our way through decisions instead of feeling our way through decisions, which means we can overlook or intentionally ignore the welcoming and warning signs our gut feelings are trying to give us about the choices and decisions we need to make in life.

But whether we listen to them or not, our...

Resilient people know that events that seem bad in the moment can pave the way for good things in the future, so this week’s tip is to avoid judging the moment, and stay hopeful instead.

If you look back over the course of your life, you will be able to identify things you consider “good” that could not have happened without something you consider “bad” happening first.

Realizing this can help you choose to stay hopeful, even when things in the moment do not feel great.

This is perhaps best described using The Parable of the Chinese Farmer …

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, his neighbors came to commiserate.

“We are so sorry to hear that your horse ran away,” They said. “This is most unfortunate.”

The farmer replied, “Maybe, yes. Maybe, no.”

The next day the horse came back bringing seven horses with it.

In the evening, everyone came back and said, “Oh,...

If your kids aren't failing from time to time, they probably aren't pushing themselves. They are playing it safe.

No one who has reached a high level of success made it without falling flat on their face once or twice. 

Great athletes were cut from teams. Great comedians were booed off stage. Great business people went bankrupt.

And great scholars had more theories rejected than accepted. 

But, there are good ways to fail and bad ways to fail. 

When we extract the lessons from our failures, we grow. We become stronger, better, more resilient versions of ourselves. 

And we are more likely to have success in the future.

When we point fingers, make excuses, and blame ... well, that's the bad way to fail.

In Resilience-Based Parenting™, our toolkit for raising tweens and teens (and loving it!), we spend a lot of time helping families learn the skills for normalizing failure, overcoming failure, and recovering from failure. 

Join the waitlist today.

Conversations are our most powerful tool for teaching resilience, modeling the behavior we want our children to emulate, and connecting with our kids. 

In fact, the strength of our relationships with our tweens and teens can be measured by the strength of our conversations.

Conversations that are candid and non-judgmental create relationships that are trusting and resilient, whereas conversations that are one-sided and agenda-driven create relationships that are fragile and disconnected.

In fact, the conversation is the relationship.

The first pillar in Resilience-Based Parenting™, our 52-skill toolkit for raising teens and tweens (and loving it), is about empowering the conversation and changing the relationship you have with your teens and tweens. 

In this pillar, you will learn to: 

• Level with your teens and tweens
• Seek their opinions
• Master the fine art of validation
• Nurture "social competence" 

When you change the conversation, you change the...

In today’s Self-Care Sunday, we encourage you to consider the ways that you take care of yourself when you feel stress.

Most of us have, at one point or another, used coping techniques that are dysfunctional. We deny. We avoid. We blame.

And perhaps, during a global pandemic, we lie around eating pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

We use these dysfunctional methods of self-soothing (or self-destruction, depending on your perspective) for three reasons:

1. We all have stressors.

Rich, poor, single, married, old, young, happy, or sad: No one is exempt from stressors. Daily, weekly, or monthly, most of us have moments in our lives when the stress of trying to hold it all together becomes overwhelming.

This is particularly true now, when we are worried about health, finances, and the state of the world.

2. We are not taught resilience skills.

Though all of us will suffer, few of us are taught the skills that help us not only cope with our stressors, but also use them to...