Sandwich Generation Takes Care of Aging Parents             Reader:   I dread visiting my mom in the nursing home, and yet if I don’t, I feel horrible guilt.  I’m damned by her criticism and complaints if I do visit her, and damned by my own if I don’t.               Dr. Schmidt:  You are indeed between a rock and a hard place […]

A BULLY-PROOF VEST FOR YOUR CHILDREN Since 9-11 happened, our cultural climate has been filled with fear and hate.  Our children are exposed to more and more bullying on television, in movies,  in social media, and even in political ads and debates.  When the police or FBI go into a dangerous situation, they wear a bullet-proof vest. […]

ARE YOU SELFISH AS A GRANDPARENT? by Dr. Paul Schmidt             A client recently shared with me a very helpful sermon he had heard from his pastor, Brian Tome at Crossroads Church in Lexington.  It helped me as a grandparent, and it made me think about the various styles of grandparenting I have heard described […]

Sometimes when we want to talk with someone, we assume they wouldn’t understand, or worse still, wouldn’t listen. Maybe they’d even fire back some criticism at the messenger so they didn’t have to deal with the message. So we send our message through a third party. This is called a ricochet message, or a bank […]

    ADULT CHILDREN: SHOULD THEY BE IN OR OUT OF THE NEST? PARENT: My son wants to move back home, with his tail between his legs. This is the second time he’s lost his job and his girlfriend under the same circumstance: saying he wants to get away from his friends who are pot-heads, […]

Last fall we mourned the passing of my mother, Betsy Hanna Schmidt (she’d insist, “Mrs. Craig Schmidt”).  On what would have been her 85th birthday this month, 20 family and friends gathered to celebrate her life.  I was amazed at how her life seemed to have impacted her grandchildren as much as us children.  I see now that spending time with […]

Until five years ago, I never thought I’d ever create a stepfamily, but now I have. Turns out, I’m just going with the national flow. Even the staunchest defender of the traditional nuclear family, Focus on the Family, states that within two years, there will be more blended families in the US than any other […]

A high percentage of animals raise up responsible offspring. Their young leave the nest and learn to successfully fend for themselves. What percentage of American parents do you think get those two jobs done? My definition of successful children is growing up to solve their own problems emotionally and financially. They live contentedly on what […]

If you’re like most American adults, you are concerned that some of the youth in your family are going to mess up their lives by bad habits and choices on some moral issue. The ones I hear about the most are sex, money, family, religion, and drug or alcohol abuse. All too often, efforts to […]

Sixteen-year-olds look completely different from the way they looked at twelve. Even more striking is the difference in their personalities. Parental influence has declined by roughly half, due to more influences from peers, media, hormones, boyfriend/girlfriend, and the huge internal need to feel grown-up by acting different from you. Yet parents do not adjust their […]