Family Matters

Part I: Two or more years after a divorce, a significant number of parents are still locked in conflicts that are very distressing for their children. How can we help these parents protect themselves from hostile interactions with their exes? How can we help them protect their kids from the fallout? Bill Eddy will describe a program that is available in private sessions with trained counselors and online and has been proven effective. Part II: Most children of divorced parents who are not locked in conflict do best if they have plenty of time with each of their parents. Nevertheless laws and habits in family courts often leave these children with little access to one of their parents. Dan Deuel does a good job explaining how an ordinary citizen can get effectively involved in changing laws that do not serve families well.

Is your ex trying to turn your child against you? Is he or she trying to convince your child that you are unsafe, unloving, and unavailable when that is not at all true? Sadly, some parents do this to their children, with or without realizing that they are harming the children immensely. Children in these circumstances need the targeted parent to keep loving them and trying to build a positive relationship. What can you do when you feel angry, humiliated, and demoralized in the face-off your ex’s hostility and your child’s rejection of you? Dr. Amy Baker, co-author of Co-Parenting with a Toxic Ex, has some answers. She describes signs and symptoms of parental alienation, how to avoid taking the bait when your ex and child provoke you, and how to maintain a relationship with your child even when your ex is actively and intentionally interfering and undermining that relationship.

During the first half of the show, relationship counselor Margie Ulbrick talks with Dr. Colin about applying the skills of mindfulness in intimate relationships, in parenting, and in family life. Building mindful and caring relationships at home, at work, and in the community starts with being mindful in relation to yourself. Positive changes ripple out from that beginning. During the second half of the show, Dr. Deborah Zucker, a naturopathic physician and transformational health coach, describes how people can revolutionize their health by learning to love, nourish, and heal themselves on every level. We can learn to live as if our life matters and to turn toward the inner self with compassion and with a fierce protective love that gives courage.

Financial expert Stan Corey and family mediator Virginia Colin will confer about how a people can divorce respectfully. In addition to discussing what they have learned from numerous experiences with a wide variety of couples, They will discuss Stan’s novel, “The Divorce Dance.” This book takes readers on a journey with a couple going through divorce and making decisions that will influence the rest of their lives. At first the husband leads in the dance, but by the end the wife has taken the lead. Along the way, she needs to learn from a team of professionals with varying kinds of expertise.

Few of us can devote full time to caregiving an elderly parent or relative. Most of us have a full-time job, a spouse, and sometimes children to care for as well. If you are in the role of primary caregiver and feel the squeeze of time constraints closing around you with no solution in sight, listening to this program will help you develop strategies to meet the needs of everyone involved.

When an individual or a couple wants to divorce, there are a variety of ways to decide about the terms of the divorce. The host of Family Matters believes that working with a professional family mediator is the best approach for most couples. Her guests, both of whom are lawyers and mediators, describe other alternatives, such as collaborative law, team mediation, litigation, and evaluative settlement conferences with retired judges. One guest describes some of what works and what does not work with high-conflict couples who are divorcing. This program can help people make well-informed choices about what approach to divorce will make most sense for them.

Some parents, with the best of intentions, focus so much on their children’s happiness and feel so uncomfortable when one of their children is distressed that they behave in ways that produce the opposite of the results they would like to see. Instead of being secure, happy, and kind, their children become “spoiled” or “entitled” — difficult, unhappy, dissatisfied, and unable to regulate their own emotions well. Listen as two clinical psychologists, Dr. Lisa Ferrari and Dr. Carla Fry, talk with host Virginia Colin about the importance of parents paying attention to the values they want to encourage in their families and planning how to act accordingly. Authentically practicing gratitude and teaching your children to do the same can be a big part of raising children who are kind and grateful and are likely to grow up to be happy, self-reliant adults. Dr. Fry and Dr. Ferrari provide lots of practical step-by-step advice for raising children well.

What do you do when your spouse says they want out? Sadly this is a very common occurrence. More often than not it leads to separation and divorce. It is also one of the most difficult problems a couple will ever have to deal with and is the cause of great stress and heartbreak. Marriage and relationships coach Liam Naden will discuss how to know if your marriage is headed for trouble, what to do if your spouse gives you the dreaded news that they are thinking about leaving, and what some of the most important things are that you can do to keep your marriage strong and healthy. Liam gets people thinking about their marriage issues in new and empowering ways.

To have a relationship be great, you need more than love. Both people need to feel loved. Bill Ferguson, author of “How to Heal a Painful Relationship,” believes that whenever you have a relationship that isn’t working, there is an underlying condition of resisting a truth, and that is what creates the problem. Resisting what is true leads to fear and tunnel vision that destroy your ability to see clearly and keep you from finding solutions. Often resisting a truth makes you act in a way that actually makes your situation worse. In relationships, it creates conflict and distance. Fortunately, this is a condition that can be removed. You can restore your ability to see clearly, decide what needs to be done, and do it.

Today’s men have received so many confusing messages about what a man should be, they are often bewildered. Women are frustrated with today`s men who won`t make decisions and are oblivious to problems that need their attention. Many men feel that women have lost respect for them. What can men do to regain love and respect? What can women do to change the situation? Elliott Katz, author of “Being the Strong Man a Woman Wants: Timeless Wisdom on Being a Man,” shares insights on being a man that have withstood the test of time. Interestingly, the traits he learned about from fathers and other older male role models match the traits that he heard many women complain were lacking in men today – showing leadership, making decisions, and taking responsibility.

Many parents do too much for their kids and so unintentionally handicap them. Parents who are overly protective, overly directive, or overly and inappropriately supportive prevent their kids from learning to handle challenges, solve problems, and become self-confident, independent, competent adults. In the first half of the show, Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of “How to Raise an Adult, describes what she saw in college freshmen and in her own children that helped her understand how to raise children to become adults. In the second half of the program, Veda Stamps, author of “Flexible Wings,” describes what she learned about middle school children and their families as her daughter joined a team and participated in swim meets. Many parents and grandparents are doing a great job helping kids achieve their own goals and move toward successful adult lives.

Can you learn to have the power to create the relationships you deserve, the ones you have always dreamed of? Lori Ann Davis believes that you can. She teaches how to make relationships the passionate, loving, safe partnerships that people crave. We will discuss her ideas about how to create an unstoppable relationship, how to understand the differences between men and women, how to end power struggles, and how to have unstoppable love and passion.

Are you tired of arguing with your ex-spouse, your mother-in-law, your cousin, or another family member? Would you like to stop walking on eggshells around them, waiting for them to blindside you with yet another unexpected or urgent matter to deal with? What if you could have civil, productive conversations with them? What if you felt calm and assured of their heart-felt intentions? If that is your true desire, then this is a show you won't want to miss. Judy Graybill is going to get to the raw truth of common mistakes and describe little-known tactics that can bring jaw-dropping breakthroughs in almost any strained or contentious relationship, even if the other person seems unwilling to work on the problem with you. All by yourself you can start a healing process.

What is the history of family mediation in the U.S.? When, how, and why did it start? Many people thought that family mediation would become the first choice approach to divorce in the 1980’s. Why did that not happen? Why are there still so many people who have never heard of family mediation? Why does that matter? What makes a family mediator a professional? Why did the founders of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM) decide to form the organization? What are APFM’s current goals? How will the public benefit from APFM’s work? How common is it for people to get divorced without hiring lawyers to represent them? Five founding members of APFM, one guest at a time, discuss these questions and more.

Bullying is at least as old as recorded history and, with the rise of the Internet, has acquired an additional form. In addition to physical, verbal, social, and emotional, bullying we now have cyberbullying. Why do people become bullies? What can their victims do to protect themselves and build successful lives? How can a bully learn better ways of coping with his or her feelings and needs? How can bystanders intervene to disrupt a pattern of bullying? Jill Vanderwood shares answers to such questions.

Society gets caught between whether a parent who fails to pay child support is a Deadbeat or is truly Dead Broke. Too often kids get lost and forgotten in the middle. Some parents neglect paying child support because they are indifferent and irresponsible. Others are truly unable to provide financial support due to personal circumstances. Simone Spence brings the conversation back to where it needs to be — discussing a system that has been abused by some and under-utilized by others. The system, she explains, is either broken or designed to fail. This is a heated issue. Single parents who are raising children need help. Child support payments are not a privilege or a hand-out. Children have a right to financial support from their parents. Simone helps parents learn how to collect child support.

How widespread is child sexual abuse? What are the short-term and long-term effects? How does healing happen? Guest expert Ivonne Meeuwsen discusses how healing is a layered process with mental, physical, emotional, sexual, and spiritual dimensions. To move from victim to survivor to thriver, a person may need different types of therapy at different times along the way. Often the first challenge in therapy is gaining control over the therapy; many therapists think they have the ultimate answer or at least know better than their clients. Ms. Meeuwsen maintains that the client has all the answers and just needs help finding access to them. Healing from child sexual abuse is not easy, but it is possible. To heal and lead a rich, fulfilling life after child sexual abuse takes hard work, courage and, usually, help from a therapist or coach who understands child sexual abuse and its impact on a person.

Coming out as a gay person is a journey, not a one time event. While it may seem that coming out is an individual experience, the reality is that it affects people near and far. Too often the focus is on the individual and how they are navigating the dance out of the closet. In truth, the dance has many partners and complications arise. Coming Out Coach Rick Clemons takes a holistic approach to guiding clients, and those closest to them, through the closet doors with a heart-centered approach that invites as much peace and mutual understanding as possible for all concerned. During this episode of Family Matters, Clemons shares tips and advice for coming out without coming unglued, regardless of the role you play in the coming out experience.

Most people have no idea what happens to the rest of the family when one of its members goes to prison. Having been “in the trenches” doing research with women in that situation, Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson describes the way they often feel grief as if someone died but cannot get closure. The whole family may be symbolically imprisoned, feeling as though they, too, are serving a prison sentence while their loved one serves time. Challenges may include a sense of shame, social stigma, financial strains, lack of social support, and altered family dynamics. The affected individuals often remain in a loop of helplessness, hopelessness, and sadness. Dr. Hart-Johnson discusses these adverse effects on the family. After the loved one’s prison sentence has been served, family reunification is not always easy. There may be new crisis points to overcome. What could improve the situation along the continuum of mass incarceration? That is also a topic of discussion.

Dating after divorce can be a complicated and confusing challenge. How do you start over and attract a healthy relationship partner? How do you prepare yourself emotionally and physically for dating again? What mistakes do divorced people make as they resume dating? Which mistakes are crucial to avoid? How can you avoid them? Where does it make sense to look for worthwhile partners? How can you protect your children from surprises, unrealistic expectations, and the ups and downs of your dating and testing new relationships? What is a healthy way to introduce your children to your new boyfriend or girlfriend? How can you tell when you have found a “keeper”? Post-Divorce Relationship Expert Rosalind Sedacca answers such questions in this episode of Family Matters.