by Rhett Smith | Sep 10, 2013 | Parenting
I am a talker. I talk and talk and talk. Just ask my wife. Maybe it’s because I sit and listen all day to others talk. But really, I have always been a talker. I remember as a little kid talking to my mom and dad endlessly. In fact, I have one memory of driving...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 29, 2013 | Parenting
Have you ever noticed how much your children love telling stories? My daughter and son love telling me stories about their adventures each day, whether it be an activity my daughter did during P.E., or my son talking to me about a crash he had on his scooter. It seems...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 28, 2013 | Parenting
“Daddy, I want to run!” That was the phrase that came out of my son’s mouth before we played the above game of chase on the beach…and this has been his repeated phrase of the last couple of months. It began on our 15.5 hour road trip to...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 27, 2013 | Parenting
This last week we talked about the importance of integrating the upstairs brain with the downstairs brain, and strategy #4 continues with along this same theme. I love the idea in The Whole-Brain Child that “The upstairs brain is like a muscle; when it gets...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 23, 2013 | Parenting
I’ve been talking a lot about the brain in my blog series on The Whole-Brain Child, so I thought it would be helpful to see a simple presentation by Dr. Dan Siegel where he presents a hand model of the brain. I think this will be especially helpful in light of...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 21, 2013 | Parenting
Have you ever found yourself in the unenviable position of trying to rationalize and negotiate with your toddler who is having an emotional meltdown? All hands should go up. I mean how many of us haven’t found ourselves desperately trying to stave off a meltdown...
by Rhett Smith | Aug 12, 2013 | Parenting
Last week I posted on Strategy #2 of The Whole-Brain Child, which is Name it to Tame It: Telling Stories to Calm Big Emotions. But since I posted that blog I’ve had a few people ask me if I could expound on this strategy in more detail by giving an example. As I...
by Rhett Smith | Jul 29, 2013 | Parenting
My wife Heather and I often look at things from a very different perspective. It’s not surprising that opposites attract, but sometimes those opposites can begin to push people in two different directions. It didn’t take us very long into our dating life...
by Rhett Smith | Jul 26, 2013 | Parenting
Integrated: to make into a whole by bringing all parts together; unify. When things become integrated, is simply known as integration. In the Whole-Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, this process refers to a child’s ability to integrate the...
by Rhett Smith | Jul 24, 2013 | Parenting
I used to believe that our brain was permanently hardwired and that was that. And however it was hardwired, then you were stuck with that brain. It wasn’t until I started working as a therapist at The Hideaway Experience marriage intensives and was exposed to...
by Rhett Smith | Jul 18, 2013 | Parenting
Last week I began a blog series exploring my experimentation with the parenting philosophy found in the book, The Whole Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind. And by experimentation, I mean using the ideas in the book...
by Rhett Smith | Jul 12, 2013 | Parenting
“As children develop, their brains “mirror” their parent’s brains. In other words, the parent’s own growth and development, or lack of those, impact the child’s brain. As parents become more aware and emotionally healthy, their...
by Rhett Smith | Jul 10, 2013 | Parenting
Over the years there have been a lot of books that have been influential in my life and work on the topic of parenting. Whether I am navigating my own parenting with my three year old boy and my soon to be six year old daughter, teaching a parenting seminar, or...
by Rhett Smith | Jun 10, 2013 | Men
Fathers…how much time to you spend with your kids? I was intrigued by the article in the New York Times this last week, The Triumph of the Working Mother. Though there are parts of the article I would want to know more about and may dispute, what I found most...
by Rhett Smith | May 14, 2013 | Parenting
This week I’ve been working on an article for Fuller Youth Institute on the topic of failure. What do we do when our kid’s fail? Or more importantly, do we allow our kids to fail, or are we constantly rescuing them from it? It’s been a tough article...
by Rhett Smith | Apr 9, 2013 | Anxiety
Intentional = done on purpose; deliberate. On the first morning of The Hideaway Experience four-day marriage intensive we start off with a devotional from John 5:1-9. The passage of scripture reads like this: Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the...
by Rhett Smith | Mar 7, 2013 | Technology
This is an interesting question that Jon Acuff raises for us who are parenting in the “digital age.” It’s a discussion that I have had with many parents in the parenting classes that I teach on technology, social media, and parenting. What thoughts...
by Rhett Smith | Feb 20, 2013 | Parenting
If you have been following me online, you have now realized that I really love the book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni. I first came across the book when my good friend and colleague Todd Sandel recommended it to me. He and his wife had...
by Rhett Smith | Feb 19, 2013 | Parenting
If you are like me…then a lot of times parenting is less intentional and more fly by the seat of your pants. Even though I have all the desire to be intentional about various aspects of my parenting, I often let it get crowded out by other things. One area of...
by Rhett Smith | Mar 10, 2010 | Technology
You ever read a really great book? So great that you just want to underline all of it? That’s how I felt about this article that I came across some time last week, Obsessed with smartphones, oblivious to the here and now — and to be honest…it freaked...
