How Parents Can Balance Own Perspective And Professional Advice When Raising Their Children
When it comes to raising your children, how do you balance your own perspective with those professionals who have specialized knowledge and training?
A mom once asked me if it was wrong for her 11-year-old daughter to sleep in the same bed with her and her husband. I immediately began thinking about a variety of reasons about why that arrangement was undesirable. This mom was rather convincing that my concerns did not apply to her family. What may be true for most, she carefully explained, just didn’t apply to her situation.
A few days after his 2-year-old son was viciously beaten and killed, NFL star Adrian Peterson said he was “ready to roll” and played football for the Minnesota Vikings. His behavior defied the conventional wisdom that it was critical to suspend normal activities to work through the grieving process. Was Peterson the role model of resiliency, or an example of a selfish athlete who put his professional aspirations ahead of his family responsibilities and personal mental health?
The mom of a high … Read More... “Parents: Balance Advice With What Works For You”
A memo released by the Obama administration outlines how and when the administration can legally permit relatives of U.S. service military members who are here illegally to stay in the country on a “parole in place” status. This will essentially give illegal immigrants “legal status” as long as they don’t have a criminal record and are family members of a U.S. military service member. This applies to both current and former U.S. military service member family members.
On March 24th, 2014, I traveled from Dayton, Ohio to Mason, Ohio to interview Brenda Patton, Therapist, Parenting Coordinator, and Mediator for The Counseling and Cooperative Parenting Center of Ohio, LLC, also known as “CCPC – Ohio”. Initially, I was interested in interviewing a spokesperson of this Parenting Center as they were a “private” entity providing supervised visitation or supervised parenting time for families in Montgomery, Warren, and Hamilton Counties. When I learned that the service of supervised visitation had been discontinued in July 2013, I explored other topics of interest. When Ms. Patton advised me that the Center was interested in working with “high conflict” divorce matters, my interest was piqued.
There have been many laws and treaties put in place in recent years to assist in the prevention of international abduction. However, I have been seeing a new complacency in the family court system that has begun to ignore the need for strong prevention, thus further thwarting a parent’s ability to be involved with their child. Judges in many jurisdictions have been ordering that the objecting parent cooperate in obtaining passports for their children so the foreign national parent can remove the child from the country, often to non-Hague signatory countries. Even though these issues have been addressed, the laws strengthened, and … 
Supervised child visitation can be indicated in cases involving custody; shared parenting; grandparent custody or visitation; divorce; legal separation; post-decree matters; emergency custody situations; abuse/neglect/dependency cases; concerns about parental abduction; and, reintroduction of a parent after a long absence.
If you are looking to modify your divorce decree, one of the first major obstacles you will face is determining whether or not you have met the standard for a “change of circumstances” which is required before any modification can occur. There are a few resources we can look to that provide insight as to what this amounts to, including case law and statutes.
Research shows that most people have given up on their New Year’s Resolutions by the third week of January. Here are a couple of tips that might help you beat the odds and reach your goal.