Caregivers Articles

Listed by most recent articles first.

• Challenges for Caregivers of Bipolar Disorder
  Individuals with bipolar disorder have severe mood swings, which can last several weeks or months. These can include feelings of intense depression and despair, manic feelings of extreme happiness, and mixed moods such as depression ...
• Self-Care for Depression Caregivers
  Depression is a common disorder, affecting almost one in five people of all age groups and both genders at any time. This means that even if you are lucky enough never to suffer from it ...
• Knitting Sweaters and a Family
  One of my good teachers used to say that children need attention like a plant needs sun and water. They need the adults around them to notice them, to encourage them, and to interact with ...
• Involuntary Emotional Expression Disorder
  Involuntary Emotional Expression Disorder, or IEED, is a condition in which a person experiences uncontrollable episodes of emotional expression. That is, they have episodes of crying, laughter, or anger that are not in line ...
• My Adversity, My Son
  I watched "Hawthorne" on TNT tonight. One of the story lines was about a woman who came into the ER with a broken arm and during the examination she was discovered to have many bruises ...
• Hiding Behind the Pulpit with Bipolar Disorder
  I have an illness that affects nearly 1 out of every 17 Americans, and affects 1 out of every 5 families. This disease is chronic in nature, and can only be controlled, not cured. It ...
• Specialized Geriatric Hospital Units Aid Elderly
  Older people cared for in specialized geriatric hospital units tend to decline at a slower pace than those given conventional hospital care, recent research suggests. Aging brings a certain amount of natural deterioration in cognitive performance, ...
• Managing Worry: Action and Distraction
  Everyone worries about things from time to time: the economy, an ill parent, safety concerns. For parents, it seems to come along even more naturally. There are endless things that a mom or dad could ...
• That Went Well
  Terrell Harris Dougan had a perfectly normal life. And then her sister Irene was born. That Went Well details Dougan's true-life adventures and mishaps in living with a mentally disabled sibling. Her sharp wit and humorous ...
• Challenges and Benefits for Grandparent Caregivers
  When my grandfather's mother died in 1900 in rural Maine, it was his aunt who stepped in to raise him and his baby sister. When my friend Jill lost her mother in the 1950s, her ...
• Fathering in America: What’s a Dad Supposed to Do?
  Americans seem more confused than ever about the role of fathers in children's lives. On the one hand, more and more fathers are absent for all or significant periods of time. According to the ...
• Breast-Feeding vs. Bottle-Feeding
  Now here's a topic that's guaranteed to raise the ire of those who are committed to either position. I've enjoyed the impassioned debate, largely because I'm thrilled to see people on both sides who are ...
• Recovering from Childhood Neglect
  The longterm effects of childhood neglect are many and serious. Have you fallen in and out of love with people who can’t love you back? Do you believe that you are essentially unlovable? If you ...
• Neglect: The Quieter Child Abuse
  It's a silent problem. While newspapers and TV news shows regularly highlight stories of child physical and sexual abuse, the companion problem, child neglect, hardly gets a mention. Neglect, unless accompanied by pictures of squalor ...
• Humor As a Key to Child Development
  The things that children find funny tell us a great deal about their level of development and what is on their minds. There is a connection between the 2-year-old who bursts into a fit of ...
• Evaluating a Childcare or Daycare Program
  One of the challenges faced by parents who’ve decided to use a childcare program for their infant or toddler is separating the good programs from the bad or even unsafe ones. Sometimes it’s obvious. For ...
• Should Your Teen Move with You?
  By comparison, little kids are easy. They go where we go and generally do what we tell them to do. If we are excited about a new adventure and approach a move with a positive ...
• Discipline for Infants
  When I speak to groups of parents, I sometimes get questions about the best way to discipline infants. I begin my answer by saying that discipline is teaching. (In fact, the words "discipline" and "disciple" ...
• Fostering Relationships Between Disabled Children and Their Grandparents
  There’s a sense of magic that occurs when a grandmother snuggles next to her grandchild and reads a book or a grandfather tells his grandchildren the stories of his own youth. While the relationship ...
• Moving Mid-Year with Teens
  The conventional wisdom about moving mid-year, or moving at all, when kids are in high school is "don't." But it isn't that simple. Job opportunities don't always happen conveniently in the summer. Elderly parents who ...
• Moving with Kids
  It’s been decided. Yours will be among the 1 in 5 American families to move this year. It’s easy to get caught up in the ton of details. It’s inviting to skip right over whatever ...
• The Dos and Don’ts of Intervention
  In his best selling book, I’ll Quit Tomorrow, the late Dr. Vernon Johnson wrote that the hallmark of alcoholism and drug dependence is denial. Accordingly, most substance abusers believe that their problems are caused by ...
• Helping a Family Member Get Help
  Despite the prevalence and our increased understanding and acceptance of mental illness in society today, many family members still harbor fears and uncertainty surrounding how to help someone close to them who has a mental ...
• The Truth about Developmental Milestones
  Unfortunate or not, there is something inherently competitive about being a parent. One of the ways this comes to light is when parents compare how old their children were when they finished a whole bottle, ...
• Special Occasions and Special Needs Kids
  Here come the holidays. For many parents with special needs kids, here comes more stress. No matter how many times you have tried to explain the special needs of your special child, the extended family, ...