Staying emotionally connected to your teen is essential both for you and for your adolescent. It may feel impossible at times but it is a crucial relationship task. A deep dark secret of adolescence is that being a teenager is often a lonely time, more than anyone cares to admit. The necessary loss of a| The Phoenix Spirit
By Harry Haroutunian, MDDrug misuse and addiction is one of the fastest growing and unrecognized health problems in the United States in older adults, which is defined as age fifty and older. AARP coordinated efforts with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation to provide important information about substance misuse and addiction. Knowing the difference between normal| The Phoenix Spirit
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." —Egyptian proverb, 2400BC Life is a blur. There's never enough time. Myra and I work ten hour days at least five days a week. Sometimes weekends. She teaches middle school with larger and larger class sizes. I'm a software engineer who's expected to do the| The Phoenix Spirit
Editor’s note: In the last issue of The Phoenix Spirit, John Driggs lent his more than 40 years of experience working with individuals, couples and families, to the topic of how to help foster moral character in children. Driggs aptly acknowledged that parents and other caregivers are not wholly responsible on how kids turn out,| The Phoenix Spirit
Parents need support. An epidemic of drug addiction with our kids today is scarier then ever. Every day on national and local news, more and more stories keep pointing to the opiate epidemic, overdoses, and addiction of our young people. These kids have parents whose hearts are breaking and need ongoing support and strategies to| The Phoenix Spirit
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul? — Mark 8:36 If you're a parent, you've heard it all before. First it's the Mozart tapes you have to buy for your developing baby in the womb so your little Johnnie or Mary will be months| The Phoenix Spirit
Shame definitely has a place in our lives when we’ve done something wrong or hurt someone else. But it has no place in our lives when all we are doing is simply being a human being or being different in some way we cannot help.| The Phoenix Spirit
"Be careful of how you use your tools as you can become the tools of your tools." Henry David Thoreau *** My boss told me I need to do a presentation next week at our company sales rep meeting, on my personal philosophy on closing sales. Geeze, just because I was the leading salesperson for| The Phoenix Spirit
Most of us parents know how we would like our kids to turn out. They would care about others, generally have a warm heart, be socially accepted by peers, contribute to the greater good of others, treat siblings and family with compassion, be able to forgive, have a backbone and generally be a pleasure to| The Phoenix Spirit
Part of human existence, and having the ability to reason, is seeking answers to the question, Why? As a child, when we become aware of our surroundings and start to learn the way of things, we begin to ask why questions. We are curious, we want to know how things work, why they are the| The Phoenix Spirit