This is a topic I’ve written about for years.  A chapter in my first book Instant Persuasion is called “Ask and You’ll Receive.”  In it, I share stories of disappointed expectations, such as:

“I wanted a special Valentine’s gift and I assumed he knew that.  But he only got me a store-bought card and I was hurt.”   Um, honey, if you didn’t tell him that you wanted a wrapped gift, he wasn’t going to read your mind.  You set yourself up to be disappointed.

Communication Blunder: It’s a blunder to expect someone to offer you something that you want.

With all my insights and tips for others, I try to apply them to myself too.  Turns out I have a big mouth in the public world, but when it comes to home life, sometimes I have to push myself to speak up.  Anyone else like that? (more…)

We lived in a Manhattan apartment until 6 weeks ago.  Now we live a house in the ‘burbs of Westchester outside New York City.  Was the move the right decision?  Yes, for us.

The Big Pros:

1) Backyard. A major reason we decided to move is that our son loves being outside.  Whenever he’s in a bad mood (since he was four months old), if we take him outside, he calms down and becomes happy again.  This wonderful feature of Blake meant that in the city, at 7:30am after he, and therefore I, had been up for nearly 2 hours, I’d have to pack up the diaper bag, put our coats, bring a snack, my wallet, cell phone and take the elevator down to head to the park or just stroll and visit a Starbucks or the supermarket.  I’m not kidding; I did that way too many times.  Then there would be the mornings when he had no plans and it was too cold for an hour at the playground so his nanny would take him in and out of stores or set him free on the kid’s floor at Bloomingdale’s to run around.   Now, in a house, I can just open the back door and Blake can run free in the yard, play on the swing set, and ride his tricycle. Since it’s summer, he also plays with water toys in the baby pool and he LOVES watering the plants with the hose.  The ability to be outside in one second is a huge pro for our family.  It also makes the weekend afternoons flow by because my husband and I are also happier being able to play outside and run into the bathroom or take turns watching him.

2) We have “family friends.” Yes, we had such friends before, but now (more…)

I’m 13 weeks now and relieved to put the first trimester behind me. Thankfully, my morning sickness dissolved just in time for me to attend the Smart Marriages conference, which I wrote about last week.

So what’s the next big thing in the pregnancy journey? The  “Nuchal Translucency“, also referred to as the “First Trimester Screen” or “Early Risk Assessment”.  It’s a non-invasive ultrasound and blood test designed to “help your healthcare practitioner assess your baby’s risk of having Down syndrome (DS) and some other chromosomal abnormalities as well as major congenital heart problems,” says Babycenter.com.  I’m excited for it because of the hi-resolution ultrasound (and the chance that I could find out the baby’s sex).  Then again, it could give way to more worries.

Disclosure Note: NTD Labs is a provider of first trimester screening.
Both NTD Labs and ViaCord (our blog sponsor) are part of the PerkinElmer family. Although I have to admit, I didn’t know this before I started writing this post.

My friend’s nuchal results indicated that her child’s DS risk was (more…)

I’ve noticed in my mediation practice that it’s quite common for a spouse to tell me that the relationship was fine until they had kids, and then….”my husband’s flaws blew up in my face!”    I usually tell people that those flaws existed before you had children, but you didn’t notice them because forgetting to buy a tape measure doesn’t compare to the impending disaster of forgetting to buy diapers, and being tired and uninterested in cooking dinner is much less harmful than being too tired to bother giving your kid a bath or being too lazy to buy babyproof covers for the outlets.  The flaws always existed, but the consequences are much worse when children are affected.

Where does this insight lead us?  Since I’m in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to having discovered these new, but old flaws in my mate and myself, I’ll tell you how I handle the dilemma.  First,  I am (more…)

Yesterday, I returned from an amazing three day Smart Marriages conference in Orlando.  (Check out their perspective on the Number 1 Predictor of Divorce and their Relationship IQ Quiz).  While I was there to speak on a panel, I also had the unique opportunity to listen to the leading researchers in the field of relationship education.  I was stunned by the strength of the empirical data showing the harm of divorce and the benefit of lasting marriages.

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition collected some of the new research and organized it into pamphlets (with sourced footnotes) here.  Some of the highlights are:

1. Girls with divorced parents are at particularly high risk for developing depressive symptoms during adolescence.
2. Almost 50% of households with children undergoing divorce move into poverty following the divorce.
3. In surveying 3,828 adolescents ages 14-16, (more…)