Family by God&#039;s Design

Help Your Teen Stop Ruminating

Teens have repetitive thoughts; actually, we all do. Those thoughts can become ruminations when teens (or adults) start to think obsessively about them. Ruminating on negative thoughts will increase a person’s level of stress and discomfort. It can also lead to anxiety and depression. It hinders and even prevents us from experiencing a happier, more...

Family Shepherds

June 3, 2023

What If We Treated Life Like We Treat Sleep?

I was reading Why Sleep Matters for Kids’ Bodies and Brains. The author noted that “kids don’t sleep enough.” She quoted Rafael Pelayo, a sleep expert, as saying, “Whenever I tell people that my work is on sleep, people say things, like, ‘I love to sleep.’ That’s an odd thing to say, because it’s like...

Family Shepherds Honor

cognitive health emotional health healthy development sleep

May 29, 2023

Feeling Stressed? Try Gratitude

Many people minimize the power of gratitude. “Just be thankful.” Sounds too simplistic, right? Besides, encouraging an “attitude of gratitude” has become a platitude, just another cliché to say when things are tough. Still, gratitude is powerful. It’s not a cure-all, but it can help. In fact, gratitude may be what you need to reduce...

Celebration Honor

cognitive health emotional health gratitude

December 10, 2022

Your Child’s Executive Functioning Needs to Go On a Diet

If you want your infant to develop healthy executive functioning (things like healthy working memory, planning abilities, organizing abilities, and behavioral inhibition) as they mature, you may want to put their executive functioning on a diet, a healthy diet. A study utilizing the data of 294 families involved in the STRONG Kids2 birth cohort study...

Family Shepherds

cognitive health diet healthy development

November 26, 2022

Children’s Chores Do What?

Every parent knows that children benefit from doing chores to learn basic household skills as well as responsibility. Research also suggests children benefit from chores. For instance, research suggests that children who do chores have a greater sense of autonomy, improved prosocial skills, and greater life satisfaction. A study published in the Australian Occupational Therapy...

Family Shepherds

chores cognitive health development

March 14, 2022

Go Ahead…Take a Nap

Last weekend we changed our clocks, “springing forward” into daylight savings time. In the process, we lost an hour sleep. That, on top of the fact that most of us do not sleep the recommended 7-9 hours a day, makes today the perfect day for a nap…and National Napping Day. Actually, every day is a...

Celebration Family Shepherds

cognitive health emotional health nap rest restoration sleep

November 29, 2021

Improve Your Family’s Brain Health

I must be getting older because I’m drawn to a study when it says it there’s “growing evidence” that people can do things to “slow down cognitive aging.” That’s why I looked at this study. The authors looked at the data of 2,171 participants with an average age of 63 years and made an interesting...