If you weren’t raised around them, guns can be a bit scary, and for good reason. The same justified fear goes for motorcycles, swimming pools, ledges, the forest at night, and pretty much all objects (and animals) that pinch. Thankfully, we as parents get multiple opportunities throughout life to educate our children about the rational…
Author: Jake Wiskerchen
Surviving Family During the Holidays
Welp. The holidays are in full swing! However you interpreted that opening line depends on whether your personal interpretation of “the holidays” traditionally involves happiness or drama. Often the two are not mutually exclusive. In my line of work, I frequently find people asking how to handle relatives during the holidays. This stems from a…
My Tips for Traveling with Kids
Almost a year ago, I discussed a few brief tips on traveling with children during a Noggin Notes podcast episode. Since then, my oldest child has aged (he’s now four) and the youngest is now toddling on his own far too much for my liking, so I figured an update was due. About a month…
The Illusionists Experience
So, you’d like to know what The Illusionists Experience at the Eldorado is like? Well, writers across time have attempted to put words to events – sometimes imaginary (fiction, entertainment), sometimes real (non-fiction, news) – in an endeavor to communicate amazing experiences to their readers. Being that I cannot write a worthy novel about this…
Distress Tolerance (part V)
Losing control and being okay; vulnerability and intimacy If you are reading these in order, you will know that last column I wrote about watching others suffer and being okay with it. This column is about losing control and being okay with it. Similar? Yes. Same? No. Watching someone else go through a tough time…
Distress Tolerance (part IV)
Watching Others in Distress Last column I promised that I would write (in this column) about the importance of watching other people tolerate their own distress. If you read this series in order, it makes a lot of sense because the last installment spent considerable time discussing invalidation or, put another way, bailing people out…
Distress Tolerance (part III)
In the last installment, I explained that emotions needed to be labeled accurately and validated in order for children to learn how to identify and tolerate what they experience. As children move through their emotional experiences, they begin to understand that they can tolerate other, larger emotional experiences. In other words, they can endure life…
Distress Tolerance (part II)
Previously… I grew up in the 80s and I fondly recall the phrase “previously on __” because it refreshed my memory of what happened in the episode before the episode I was about to watch. These days syndication kills that because Nick at Nite and TBS don’t seem to coordinate their re-runs. But I digress….
Distress Tolerance (part I)
I have said before (in my company podcast – Noggin Notes) that emotions can be described metaphorically as a wave. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. As such, they are temporary and typically they last no longer than a few seconds. Learning to ride this metaphorical wave is critical for dealing with…
Ask Mr. Emotions: Shame and Guilt
We live in a society that has made shame and guilt undesirable. From the perspective of not wanting to experience discomfort, that makes sense. We all want to live in as much comfort and ease as possible. However, from a neurological, psychological, physiological, and sociological perspective, avoiding shame and guilt is a very dangerous premise….
Basin and Range Cellars
Some of you who follow our coverage may have noticed from social media posts that a few of us recently visited Basin and Range Cellars, a local winery producing estate wine. “Estate” is a term used by vintners (winemakers) and brewers (beer makers) to denote that the ingredients they use are grown entirely on site….
Do Bad Kids Equal Bad Parenting?
John Rosemond: A Primer I want to make one thing plain from the start: I hold author John Rosemond in very high esteem. He and I have never met, and given my relative youth in the profession, for me to invoke the name of someone who has written 15 books and presently possesses national newspaper syndication…