Carl Pickhardt
Biography
Articles
Another Look at ADD/ADHD
ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) describes a child who shows an inability to pay prolonged attention and is easily distracted. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) describes a child who... [more]
Why Parents Get Angry
"My child gets me so mad!""My child makes me so angry!""My child made me lose my temper!"Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. How the child acts is up to the child. How the parent chooses to feel in r [more]
Why Courtesy Counts
"Don't sweat the small stuff" is common advice for people who become easily stressed or get significantly upset when minor obstacles arise or minor aggravations occur. In families, however, in... [more]
Why Worry?
Because parenting is such a serious responsibility, worry just comes with the territory of raising a child. "What if I make a wrong decision?" wonders the new parent? The answer is: parents make a... [more]
"Changing" A Habit
It's not just that people are 'creatures of habit,' they are 'captives of habit' as well. The more often they have acted a certain way before, the more likely they are to act that way again. Thus... [more]
Keeping Pressure Off Your Only Child
To keep pressure off their only child, parents must understand the special pressures that are already built into this relationship - from the parents on themselves, from the parents on the child, and... [more]
"Controlling" Your Child
Unless you belong to a culture where filial obedience is automatic and adult authority is absolute, you will have children who sometime willfully oppose your wishes. It is to these parents to whom... [more]
The Predictive Responsibility of Parents
Parenting is partly a process of preparation. A child is an adult in training, and parents must decide what that training is to be. To provide this preparation, parents must be able to think ahead.... [more]
Keeping Parental Influence in Perspective
Some parents subscribe to the input/output theory of parental influence: put in "good" parenting and a healthy, successful child will result. Effort equals outcome, they believe, because quality of... [more]
Teaching Children to Think Twice
An important self-disciplinary skill for parents to teach children is the habit of "thinking twice"- routinely taking enough time for second step thinking when making decisions in life. At issue is... [more]
The Messy Room
In many ways, the "messy room" is emblematic of the adolescent age. Usually beginning in early adolescence (years 9 - 13) as a function of personal disorganization brought on by more growth change... [more]
The Early Adolescent Achievement Drop
Early adolescence (around age 9 to 13) can be the enemy of school achievement. Rebelling against being defined and being treated any longer as a "child" can cause early adolescents to resist the... [more]
The Risks of Learning
It's an article of faith for many parents: through learning new knowledge and skills their child increases self-esteem. Yes and No. Yes, because increased competence from learning can increase sel [more]
Preventing the Contagion of Stress
Stress is usually experienced as a state of threat arising from two questions. "Can I cope with this situation?" "And if I can't cope with this situation, what will happen to me then?" Stress both... [more]
Teen Substance Use II
The more frequently an adolescent uses drugs or alcohol, the more likely school performance will be adversely affected by the non-caring state such substance use creates. Many failing attendance and... [more]
Teen Substance Use
Parents today must raise their child in a drug-filled world. From legal to illegal, mood and mind altering substances are everywhere to be found. On the one hand, psychoactive drugs are nothing new.... [more]
Divorce and the Season for Forgiveness
At this holiday time of year, should the spirit so move a single parent, she or he might want to consider the most powerful giving of all, FORGIVENESS - forgiving any grievances that linger from... [more]
Children of Divorce
How can parental divorce shape children's lives? Here are four tendencies, NOT CERTAINTIES, to consider. First, divorce can cause insecurity about the permanence of parental love. Second, divorce can... [more]
The High Costs of Lying I
When their child enters adolescence and begins pushing harder for freedom to grow, parents may begin to wonder: "Whatever happened to the truth?" Not that their little girl or boy was always honest,... [more]
The High Costs of Lying II:
Given so many costs of lying, why then do children lie? First, understand what lying is. Lying is the act of deliberately NOT telling the truth on order to gain illicit freedom or some other gain. It... [more]
Adolescence = "Climbing Fool's Hill"
I'll describe it to you the way my grandfather once explained it to me many years ago when, at the proud age of ten, I stopped by to tell him that I was fed up with my parents, didn't need them any... [more]
The Freedom Contract
Teenagers are naturally offensive. That's not an insult, that's a reality rooted in the nature of adolescent development. In service of pursuing growth, a healthy teenager pushes for all the freedom... [more]
Securing Your Child in a Time of War
There's been a major change in this country: the United States is now at war. Parents have no power to keep this knowledge from their children, nor should they try. From the media, from overhearing... [more]
Strengths of the Single Parent
Even today, the unjust stereotype is still sometimes invoked: a single parent presides over a broken home that produces troubled children. Unless single mothers and fathers disbelieve this popular... [more]
Role Conflict of the Single Parent
It's in the title, SINGLE PARENT, that a crucial role conflict often lays - between wanting to be a SINGLE person free to date and find a significant other, and wanting to be a responsible PARENT by... [more]
Sexism in the Family:
One factor that sometimes (not always) can make equitable decision-making difficult between parents is when you are the only woman in a household of men (when you have only sons) or when you are the... [more]
Addiction and the Problem of Psychological Dependence
In drug addiction, the substance is the least part of the problem because when sobriety is attained and recovery begins, underlying psychological damage must be repaired. Addiction is the compulsive,... [more]
Why Step Relationships Aren't Easy
When two people remarry with one or both having children, they must double up their adjustment. They do not have the simple luxury of simply marrying as partners. They must commit to the complexity... [more]
Overreactions
Overreactions occur in every family - between children, between children and and parents, between parents themselves. One person gets inexplicably upset or offended by some apparently "trivial"... [more]
