Growing Bolder Community

BABY GIRL "Remember, you have precious cargo on this trip. I’m trusting you to take care of my daughter". I said those words to a young man who was taking my daughter to Texas for 7 days last Saturday. Would I have said something like that if she were going with a group of girlfriends or other family members? I don't think so. In fact, I know I wouldn't have. Why? The bond between...

The other night I watched a show on ABC called "What Would You Do?" There were many scenes of people getting harrassed by other people in front of observers. One was an event in a restaurant, that was staged over and over again by actors during a weekend, where over 100 people witnessed a same sex couple being verbally abused, in front of their children, by a waiter. I was so...

Oh, how things can change. Maybe it’s all in my head but I am noticing a dramatic shift in parent/child conflict lately. It used to be that I would work with teenage guys and their big issue would be with a demanding and overbearing father. The common problem was that their dad was always wanting to control them and was in their business all the time and that these boys never could live up to...

The biggest question I face as I write this article is, “how do I tactfully address such a sensitive, yet pertinent, topic?” There is no easy answer to this question and yet the ramifications of a controlling and overprotective style of parenting on the emotional growth of young men absolutely must be addressed. There are many reasons that mothers emotionally smother their sons: Fear...

Mother’s Day sneaked up on me this year. It caught me completely ‘off guard’. To be honest, I thought that it was next weekend. ‘Course, I guess it is kind of appropriate, because in my ‘growing up’ years, my Mother used to sneak up on me with some degree of regularity. Sometimes it was to steal a kiss on the cheek. Sometimes it was to play a joke (my mother was the prankster in our...