#parenting

Jun 19, 2017
5 min

That's a No-No: 5 Bad Parenting Habits to Avoid

That's a No-No: 5 Bad Parenting Habits to Avoid Are you a parent who only wants the best for your child? Would you do anything for them? Here are 5 bad parenting habits to avoid when raising your kid. Learning the Good from the Bad If you're a first-time parent, you probably learned all you know about parenting from your parents or guardians. Which is probably not much. Although a lot of people look forward to having a child, most of us have never had to face a challenge quit

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How to Increase Your Child's Self-Esteem and Self-Worth

Laura McLaughlin, M. Ed., LPC, RPT

Jun 9, 2017
4 min

How to Increase Your Child's Self-Esteem and Self-Worth

Raising resilient and positive children by fostering their development of self-esteem and self-worth. Self-esteem is essential for healthy development in children. Without positive self-esteem, children do not grow in the most optimal manner or develop a healthy and accurate sense of self. A child’s positive sense of self-worth acts as armor protecting the child from inevitable challenges in life. Having positive self-esteem leads to positive views about the self, others, and

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How to Respond to Your Child's Disruptive Behaviors

HeadFirst Counseling, Dallas TX

Apr 4, 2017
12 min

How to Respond to Your Child's Disruptive Behaviors

How to Respond to Your Child’s Disruptive Behaviors HeadFirst Counseling’s Laura McLaughlin partnered with The Tot (thetot.com) to answer all of your toughest questions about how to manage your child’s disruptive behaviors. See below for the Q&A, also featured on The Tot website! The following questions were asked by readers and followers of The Tot on Instagram. Q: I have a 2.5 year old boy. He becomes very territorial over his toys whenever another child comes over to play.

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Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Feb 20, 2017
5 min

How to Survive a Temper Tantrum

How to Survive a Temper Tantrum: Learning to Connect to Your Child Before You Redirect Kids cry. A lot. Sometimes they cry for no apparent reason. Other times they cry because you have asked them to do something they do not want to do. No matter what the cause, hearing your child cry can feel helpless and overwhelming to parents. Knowing how to respond in the most appropriate and relationship-enhancing way can help lower the stress involved with crying and tantrums. At HeadFi

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Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Jan 30, 2017
4 min

Play Helps Your Child Learn and Grow

Unstructured Play Time and Healthy Brain Development Using play to help your child reach optimal development. Children are born with an innate desire to expand and explore their environment. Play is a child’s natural language and is medium for which the child assimilates new information from the environment to his or her knowledge of how the world works. Children use play to explore, learn, develop skills, gain insight, and make sense of their experiences. Unstructured play t

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Becoming an Informed Parent- How to Navigate Child Development

Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Jan 8, 2017
3 min

Becoming an Informed Parent- How to Navigate Child Development

Informed Parenting Understanding the Importance of Development Throughout Childhood Child development is complicated and messy. Children go through positive and negative stages of development, and these stages are usually not smooth or linear. It is common for children to master certain tasks and abilities, only to temporarily lose those skills as they continue down the path to maturity. Once more growth and maturity has been obtained, the skills return and are usually strong

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Setting an Intention to Connect with Your Child

Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Jan 1, 2017
3 min

Setting an Intention to Connect with Your Child

Setting an Intention to Connect with Your Child Make 2017 the year that you bring playfulness back to parenting and reconnect with your child. Parenting is stressful and full of ups and downs. It’s easy to get caught up in expectations- for your child and for yourself as a parent and the role you wish to play in your child’s development. Sometimes these expectations, obligations, and pressures of parenting get in the way of simply being with your child. Being with your child

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Why This Christmas Gift Hack Made My Heart Break

Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Dec 22, 2016
2 min

Why This Christmas Gift Hack Made My Heart Break

Why This Christmas Gift Hack Made My Heart Break When it comes to getting children to behave, threatening them or using external rewards doesn’t work. I was heartbroken when I first heard about the latest Christmas meme going viral that involves burning fake presents in the fireplace when children misbehave. Not only is this method of parenting ineffective in the long run (and usually ineffective in the short run too), but he agony these children must be feeling watching thei

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Acceptance and Empathy in Parenting- How to Form Secure Attachments with Your Child

Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Dec 19, 2016
2 min

Acceptance and Empathy in Parenting- How to Form Secure Attachments with Your Child

Love and Acceptance- Our Guiding Forces in Parenting At HeadFirst Counseling, we help parents adapt an approach to parenting their children that focuses on developing secure attachments, so that the child is able to form secure attachments with others and explore his or her world freely. We believe that children must first feel secure with a primary caregiver before they can feel secure and regulated within themselves. The best and most efficient way to develop a secure attac

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Creative Arts Expression for Increased Regulation and Creativity in Children

Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Dec 13, 2016
2 min

Creative Arts Expression for Increased Regulation and Creativity in Children

Increase your child's sense of imagination and creativity with expressive arts activities. Children are born to explore their world. They learn through moving and experimentation. They develop new ways of interacting with their environment based on trying things out and judging the reaction or response. One way to promote healthy exploration and creativity in children is through offering unstructured play time and incorporating expressive arts activities. Finger painting, mod

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How to Deal with a New Baby and Toddler at Once

Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Oct 13, 2016
2 min

How to Deal with a New Baby and Toddler at Once

New Baby and Toddlers- How to Keep Your Sanity We’ve heard the story before. Parents give birth to an amazing boy or girl that is their entire world for the first two years of the child’s life. Then suddenly a new baby comes and the delightful 2-2 ½ year old begins acting out in ways never expected or seen before. While there are a couple of different things that could be causing the older child to act out, our guess is that is has to do with the family changes. The birth of

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Laura McLaughlin, M.Ed., LPC, RPT

Sep 21, 2016
3 min

What Your Teen Needs Most

Help Your Teen Reach His or Her Potential By the time the end of summer rolls around, most parents are ready for back to school. Back to school often means back to routine, back to structure, but most importantly- back to your teens being busy and out of the house more (am I right?)! As frustrating and unruly as teens can be at times, we know that deep down they are great kids. It’s just sometimes hard to see the great part when they are rolling their eyes at you, talking bac

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Parenting and Adoption Resources in Dallas, TX- HeadFirst Counseling

Laura McLaughlin, M. Ed., LPC, RPT

Aug 15, 2016
2 min

Parenting and Adoption Resources in Dallas, TX- HeadFirst Counseling

Parenting and Adoption Resources in Dallas, TX- HeadFirst Counseling There has been a lot of talk during the Rio Olympics regarding Simone Biles and her parents. It was hurtful and heartbreaking to see the tweet from an NBC broadcaster discrediting Simone's parents and creating a divide between biological and adoptive parents. Article and picture by WashingtonPost https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2016/08/09/as-seen-at-the-olympics-there-is-still-a-lot-of-ignor

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