Chatting to your kids is not supposed to be habitual. Communication is an art. So if you want more than a habituated response you’re going to have to be a little more creative in your questions. “How was your day?” is never going to get more than an answer of “Fine”. I’d like to address…
Author: Mia Von Scha
Mia Von Scha is a transformational coach, motivational speaker, children's author, and student to two Zen Masters (aka kids).
There are many children incorrectly diagnosed as being either ADHD or as having oppositional defiance disorder who are really just highly sensitive children that are overwhelmed by the rush of sensory input that they’re unable to filter out. I know, I’m one of them. When I’m in a noisy restaurant I can’t block out the…
A wise man once said to me that nothing is ever lost, and if you feel that something is lost you must simply search for it in its new form. So when I heard a number of people complaining about the lost innocence of our children in this crime-ridden country, I wondered where this innocence…
“Reaching the desired area, The blade hesitates, quivering, Then slicing slowly, meticulously Into the soft, awaiting flesh. The wound gapes, Smiling at how it has relaxed the skin.” This was the poem I wrote when I was your age, going through something like what you are going through now. I know it feels like nobody…
Most of us grew up in an era of repression. Negative feelings were to be controlled, ignored or removed. It’s no wonder that we are the generation of Prozac. There is only so long that you can repress an emotion before it fights its way to the surface again. Drugs help us to repress without…
It seldom crosses our minds when planning an exciting holiday with our children that they might find it more than a little stressful. As adults we have a lifetime of experience with good holidays and different places to look back on that we forget that for little children a holiday means venturing into the great…
The drugging of our children has reached ridiculous proportions over the past century. We label our kids as having ADHD because they can’t sit still and dose them with Ritalin. We label our kids as depressed because they experience normal human emotions like sadness and grief, and pop them on anti-depressants. And now we’ve even…
The older our children get, the more they interact with the world at large. And the more they interact with other people out there, the more likely they are to run into other people’s rules and values. So is it okay for someone else to discipline your child? And what should you do if you…
Did you know that nature supports mothers taking time out for themselves? And that if you mess with nature you end up actually being a less-caring mother — on a PHYSICAL level? We have a little hormone running through us called oxytocin. You might remember it from your pregnancy and birth — it’s the one…
We can only give in relation to how much we have. If we are drained, our needs are not being met, and we are emotionally taxed, we have less to give to our children. Everyone needs a break and if we continue to push ourselves and not nurture ourselves and our needs, the chances of…
I’m horrified by the number of children on mind-altering drugs. Did you know the fastest growing market for Ritalin and Prozac is preschool-aged children? Why are our children depressed? Why is nobody looking into the underlying causes before medicating? How can we possibly be diagnosing preschoolers with ADHD? Here are the actual criteria for diagnosing…
As mothers we are prone to taking stuff on. We take on our kids’ emotional stuff and our partner’s bad day. We take on more than our fair share of tasks and duties around the house (regardless of whether we have a career ourselves or not). We take on our children’s fights. We take on…
Nelson Mandela once said: “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” So…
It’s a typical complaint that the majority of parents have — that their kids don’t tell them about what is going on in their lives; that very early on they stop communicating. You pick them up from school and ask how their day was, and all you get is “fine”. Have you ever wondered why…
I think that any parent who has been summoned to the principal’s office relives that same dread as when this happened as a child. There is usually nothing nice to be said when the upper echelons of the school are getting involved, and to be told that your darling, who seems so normal at home,…