If you already have children and you want to have that white picket fence dream, and have a dog involved, you really want to look at what life you have. Is somebody a triathlon athlete? Is everybody behind a desk when they get home from work? We really want to look at our lifestyle. Do we want the dog just to enhance our child's life? We want to see exactly what we want, so that we can look at the specific dog. And I'm not talking breed. It doesn't matter what breed you have.

There comes that moment as a parent when you have to explain to your children why bad things happen in the world. And it's painful because we all know that the world is not fair, and it's not ordered. So it's very important to not expose children to the constant barrage from the news and from other TV. Turn off the TV. Turn off the radio and try to shield your child as much as possible from what's going on around. If your child has questions, answer their questions directly and simply.

So what we teach our kids to do in response to peer pressure is to begin by saying no. Something like no, no thank you. Something like that. If the person continues to pressure them, you want to give some kind of an excuse for why you're not doing what they want you to do. So let's say they're offering you a beer and you're not comfortable with that. You could say something like, you could make an excuse or give a reason like it gives me a headache. Or you could offer some kind of a personal consequence. You know, I've gotta get up early in the morning.

Physical bullying is actually fairly common in middle school and high school, and particularly among boys. And it comes in different forms. It could be hitting or kicking or pushing. It could also be tripping someone in the hallway or even throwing a piece of paper at them in class. When you know the bully is nearby, you don't want to draw a lot of attention to yourself, 'cause that's just gonna put you on their radar. You also want to avoid the bully. If you know the bully hangs out in a certain area of the lunch room, you don't want to go to that area of the lunch room.

Nobody wants to raise a child who's sassy or disrespectful. Children are gonna be disrespectful and talk back, and use sass mouth, at different stages of their lives for different reasons. The cure for back talk is actually pretty simple. It is, your child talks back to you, don't acknowledge, don't receive, don't respond, give your child what I call the stink eye. 

You know what. I'm gonna take all your toys and I'm gonna give 'em to the poor. You're never going to school again. Why don't you listen to me? Why doesn't anybody ever listen to me? Any of us can flips our lids as parents. So taking a break as a parent, taking a deep breath, keeping in the front of your mind that actually the changes in the adolescent brain require that they push away from us, can help you to calm down, to bring your brain back into balance, to think about how you're gonna approach a repair.

Bullying is a form of mental abuse. Personally, I have experienced severe bullying myself. Everything that I trusted them with was now public for everyone to see, for everyone to know. People were saying, "Oh my god, she's so fat, she's so ugly". That bitch, that slut. And she said, "At least I'm not black." She held a pair of scissors against my neck and threatened to murder me. Stupid, faggot, gay. And it kept happening over and over again. And I would get so depressed I began to hurt myself to try to minimize the pain. 

When two kids are fighting, when they're arguing, it's really important that they learn from a really smart parent, smart-hearted parent, how to resolve conflict. We need to help them learn how to get along so not only will they get along with each other, but they'll get along with everybody else in the larger world. The sibling relationship is really like a laboratory for how to get along with other people, and teaching conflict resolution is vital. Conflict resolution is really about, you have needs, I have needs, our needs are competing, what do we do?

So I'm gonna pick Sasha up. I'm really gonna hold her feet really well. I'm gonna slide my hand all the way to her forearm so I feel really secure as I lift her. So I'm just gonna start the water running over her. So the first thing I'm gonna do is clean her eyes. So I have a brand clean washcloth. I'm gonna use one corner for one eye, and she's not gonna love this, but she'll close her eyes when I come at her, and I'm gonna do the other eye with another corner. Here it comes. So now I can put a little bit of soap on my cloth and just do her ears.