Here’s just one example of how new technology is bringing us closer: Seventy percent of couples who both own cell phones contact each other once a day or more, compared to 54 percent of couples who have only one or no cell phones. Similarly, 42 percent of parents contact their children daily via cell phone compared to 35 percent who do so using a land line. And that doesn’t cover those little instant texts that allow us to ask a quick question in less than a minute and represents a minimal intrusion on the recipients day because unlike a phone call it can be answered at any time day or night.

But it is the broad reach of the Internet that has truly revolutionized the way families and friends stay in touch. 

Fifteen years ago when the Internet was just picking up speed, literally with the advent of high speed broadband, futurists were spouting its many possible uses, but few of us grasped just how encompassing those possibilities would be particularly in how we reach out to family and friends. Take VOIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol, for example. That technology would clear the way for a new age of telephone use. From Skype to Voynage, calls from around the block to around the world were suddenly within the financial reach of just about everyone. From absolutely free to five or six cents per minute reaching out to such exotic locations as Shanghai and Auckland, contacting family who were visiting or living thousands of miles away, was suddenly commonplace.

Putting up the videos of family events: weddings, birthdays, baptisms, confirmations, bar mitzvahs on YouTube has become commonplace for those with the most basic of computer skills. And easy access to digital video recording on formats as diverse as I-Phones and Flip Cameras, has made most of us into producers and directors. Photo sites such as Snapfish made the sharing of family photos simple and accessible. And webcams have brought us closer together by bringing video and voice also within the reach of people with modest incomes.

We haven’t even touched on the exploding world of social networking. From Tweeting to Facebook families and friends share with each other the details of their days in ways that seemed unimaginable just ten years ago. And don’t think that such sites are strictly the domain of the young. The fastest growing age group on Facebook during the last six months of 2008 were people between the ages of 35 and 54. This segment of Facebook subscribers grew an astounding 280%.

There was general agreement that the Internet and digital technology would revolutionize how we communicate. We are unaware, however, of more than just a handful of futurists who envisioned this coming about with such rapidity or creating such sweeping change. While certainly not the face-to-face encounters that previous generations were accustomed to, the digital age has allowed us to stay in close contact with a far wider circle of family and friends. It leaves one to wonder, awestruck to a degree, over how we will come to define “staying in touch” in the year 2020.

Dear Running Out, Unfortunately, because you are parents you will always be in a relationship with this man. The title of the relationship may change but he will always be in your life. You ask if you should continue in this marriage and I must say, before you think about divorce, think about your children. I know you are not on the same page as him but your children will benefit so much more if you stay and find a way to have a positive relationship with him. There is no greater gift to a kid then when their mom and dad can live happily together. Just as every parent wants their kid to be happy, every kid wants their parents to be happy as well.

You are on the right path. The yellow brick road of self-discovery is lined with life-lessons. Your biggest challenge is how to be happy with this man without depending on him to change who he is. He is your test. You cannot change or control your partner but you can control how you respond to him. The goal is to have a greater sense of flexibility and acceptance rather than resistance and resentment. You will be amazed at how much more positive he’ll become when he feels appreciated for what he has to offer. At this time he is very defensive because he feels like he is failing and there is no way for him to succeed. It’s that ‘fight to the death’ survival instinct thing. He knows that he is losing you and so there is no space in him to hear what you are asking for. All he knows is that nothing he offers is good enough. So whenever you see him do something good, find the space in your heart to tell him that you appreciate him.

I know it is hard to look someone in the eye and say “thank you,” when all you really want to do is throw something at them! I understand that when he is negative and degrading with your children, Mother Bear comes out and you want to fight to defend them. But just take a moment and imagine how much better it is that you can support them in the aftermath of what he says to them. This would not be the case in joint custody where the children will spend time with the two of you in separate homes.

Growing up with two parents in one home was a blessing for me. When Mom yelled at me and told me something I didn’t want to hear, I could run to Dad for comfort and kind words. When Dad was so busy that I felt neglected or unloved, I could run to Mom for reassurance and a hug. Parents are there to balance each other. Unfortunately this system doesn’t work nearly as well when there is a divorce. The child no longer feels safe going to one parent and talking about the other because it feels like he/she is taking sides. Children love their parents and are very loyal, no matter how messed up the relationship seems. No child wants to betray one parent to another if there are two different sides instead of one united family.

I recommend you get a copy of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Children Are From Heaven. It discusses how all children experience negative messages, whether it be from parents or school or the media. It’s how you teach them to respond to negative messages that gives them confidence rather than low self-esteem. This is a way you can build your children up no matter who tries to tear them down. Good luck. This is never easy but I believe you are on the right path.

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I’m a  doctor of psychology once removed: I’m John Gray’s daughter, so lets just say relationship know-how runs in my genes. Since the day I hit puberty, friends and acquaintances have come to me for advice. Twelve years later I’m finally making my skills available to the public. Finally! Dad’s brilliant and all, but sometimes it takes someone a little younger to really grasp the issues that are relevant to young people today. I look forward to giving you whatever help I can. Email me here at lauren@marsvenusliving.com –Lauren Gray

As is well known now, the apparent publicity stunt began to unravel when Richard and Mayumi Henne’s six year-old son, Falcon, explained on Larry King Live, that he was hiding from his parents because he was told to do exactly that. As young Falcon explained with complete innocence,  ”We did this for the show.”

From that point on everything went from bad to worse for the Henne family, not the least of which was young Falcon’s vomiting several times during morning network television interviews with both Diane Sawyer and Meredith Vieira.

What drew a spellbound national audience to this story as it was unfolding last Thursday afternoon, was the plight of a little boy who was believed at the time to be inside a small capsule  that was traveling thousands of feet above Colorado. Even more gripping was the apparently tragic realization that the boy must have fallen out and likely plunged to his death because when the balloon landed, the in-tact capsule held no child inside.

Two hours later when the child emerged from his “hiding” space in the Henne’s home, there was naturally waves of relief that reached coast to coast and  leaving scarcely a parent or grandparent not feeling euphoric.

Of course with a criminal trial for the Henne’s pending in the coming months many details unknown today will come to light. If indeed the parents conspired to create a publicity stunt to promote a pitch for a new reality show, and put the youngest of their three boys in the middle for dramatic effect, it’s reasonable to expect that the judgement of the jury as well as the public will be harsh.

Adults can do a variety of irresponsible acts, but when they put their children in the middle of the scheme, any sense of public empathy or good will quickly vanishes. Obviously only time will tell how the concluding chapters of this story will unfold. But if young Falcon’s vomiting on network morning news programs is any indication, Americans of all ages and from all walks of lives may feel some of their own waves of nausea as the story of the great balloon caper is fully told.

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Other MVL Parenting Articles:

How an Empty Nest Can Improve Your Marriage

Better Parent-Teen Communication

Infant Language Development: The Gift of Words

Sexual Exploration in the Age of Innocence

Bullying: A New Look at an Old Problem

Teaching Children Accountability and Responsibility

Teen Sexting: A Cultural Wildfire Rampages On

Single Parents and Jealous Children

5 Very Important Things to Say to Your Teen about Sexting

Helicopter Parents: Grounding Your Natural Instincts

Sex Education, Part 1: What Both Parents and Teens Should Know

Sex Education, Part 2: Answering Tough Questions

Your Child’s 8 Different Forms of Intelligences

The Five Essential Messages of Positive Parenting

Parents, Beware of the Feelings Trap

Dating Violence: Is Your Teen Safe?

Is Your Teen Really Ready for College?

Saying “No” to Your Child

Practicing Patience with Children

Fathers: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

ADHD Drug Gives Parents New Cause for Concern

When Your Child Meets a Challenge

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To learn more about the power of positive parenting,

visit the John Gray library for your own copy of

Children Are From Heaven

Mother's Day is more than a tradition; it's a celebration of a loved one.

If you think that Mother’s Day is a “Hallmark holiday,” think again.

It’s true that in the age of retail Mother’s Day celebrations have taken on a far more commercial nature, of which you could say the same for nearly all of our special days of the year, but the idea of honoring mothers is as ancient as the early Egyptians.

They held an annual festival to honor the goddess Isis who was commonly regarded as the Mother of the pharaohs. Her stern, regal figure shows her head typically crowned by a pair of bull’s horns surrounding a fiery sun.

The Romans continued the festival of Isis. Rather than celebrating the ancient mother of the Pharaohs, however, the Roman event was used to commemorate a great battle and to mark the beginning of the winter season. Although Isis was an imported deity, she nevertheless held a place of high honor in the Roman temple. The festival honoring her lasted three days and was marked by performances of female dancers, singers, and musicians.

In early European history, Christians on the fourth Sunday of Lent would return to the church in which they were baptized to honor their “mother” church. Throughout that week the church was decorated with flowers, jewels, and a variety of offerings placed mostly before a statue or icon of Mary, the Virgin Mother.

In the mid-1600’s, England broadened this celebration, by clerical decree, to include all mothers with an event called Mothering Day. Also celebrated during the fourth Sunday of Lent, servants and trade workers of the time were permitted to travel back to their towns during this time to visit their mothers and families. On Mothering Day the devout were granted a one-day reprieve from the fasting and penance of Lent and enjoyed a full family feast in which all mothers were honored guests presented with gifts of cakes and cut spring flowers.

The American celebration of Mother’s Day began in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe, who years earlier wrote, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, distraught by the devastating loss of life during the Civil War, called on mothers to raise their voices in protest against the cruelty of war. Howe called for an international Mother’s Day celebrating peace and motherhood with these words:

Arise all women of this day,

Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears, Say firmly:

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,

For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of

charity, mercy and patience.

“We women of one country

Will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

Howe’s campaign to create an American Mother’s Day did not quite take hold, but instead lingered as a proposal that came up several times in the US Senate without success. Then in 1914, with 46 of the then 48 states holding separate Mother’s Day holidays, and after years of tireless campaigning by an activist named Anna Jarvis, President Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday in May a day of national observance. Today, most nations around the globe have a day designated to honor mothers, from Canada, to China, Argentina to India.

It may have been a long and winding path to bring us to this special day to honor our mothers, but it was a journey well worth the taking. Mothers are the cornerstone of civilization. Whatever we are, and whatever we become, it all began with MOM.

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Other MVL Articles of Interest

Why Committed Relationships Are Good for Your Health

Are Your Children Ruining Your Marriage?

Mother’s Day: What Moms Want Most from Dads

Feeling Letters: Express Your Feelings in Marriage

Why Women Argue Differently than Men

Love and Marriage: How Big Problems Grow Out of Small Stuff

25 Ways to Score with the Woman in Your Life

Unhappy Marriages Are Bad for Your Health

Martians Need to Learn the Art of the Apology

5 Key Traits for Long-Term Loving Couples

Marriage Works. Here’s When and How

Husbands and Housework

Surviving the Seven-Year Itch

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Buy WHY MARS AND VENUS COLLIDE

for the Very Special Price of $11.19

Being a mom is a job that changes with every phase of parenting. From the burden and the joy of carrying a child in the womb, to delivering a new life into the world, and the long and at times challenging years that follow, mothering a child is an ongoing challenge and blessing.

Mothers start out pacing the floor with a newborn that has awakened in the middle of the night to be fed, and then needs to be settled back down into the crib. In what seems like a very short time that same mom will be pacing the floor waiting to here that same child, now a teenager, pull the car into the garage as they arrive back home from a Saturday night date.

The life of a mother goes from the physical stress of keeping a five-year-old son, and a three-year-old daughter busy and out of trouble over a long summer’s day, to the mental stress of trying to get a seventeen-year-old boy, and a fifteen-year-old girl to listen to just a few words of wisdom, and caution, before they head off for their school day.

If you’re a dad, chances are you’re more involved in the upbringing of your children than your father ever was and far more involved than your granddad could have ever imagined. That’s a great thing because research continues to show that children in two-parent homes thrive best when they have both a male and female role model.

At all stages of parenting,  what moms most want from their partners is not only their involvement but also their loving support. When a teenage daughter is in rebellion mode a comment like, “You wanted to be a mother,” is not helpful. What is helpful is patiently listening to your wife when she is trying to share her frustration. No one is suggesting that this is easy, but it is greatly helpful to a mom who is burned out after a day of chasing children through a playground, or stressed out after an evening of attempting to talk some sense into two disinterested teens.

It’s easy for dads to forget that mothers have a distinct and unbreakable bond to a child that began life inside their bodies. And beyond that, the bonding instinct of a mother to her children whether they are biologically hers or they are adopted, is very strong, just as nature intended it to be.

A dad playing good cop, to a mom’s bad cop, or asking their children to negotiate between them, is not being a supportive parent. Naturally children will do whatever they can to manipulate a parent to bend them to their will. A teen that wants to go bungee jumping is instinctively going to seek the permission of dad before speaking to mom. Repeated studies have found that dads are more comfortable with their children taking risks than moms are. Rather than giving a quick approval, dads are well advised to respond with, “Well what does your mom think?”

This week reflect on the unique role of a mom. Rededicate yourself to being a loving and supportive partner and appreciate her perspective on all parenting issues.

That’s what moms want most for Mother’s Day!

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Other MVL Articles of Interest

Why Committed Relationships Are Good for Your Health

Are Your Children Ruining Your Marriage?

Feeling Letters: Express Your Feelings in Marriage

Why Women Argue Differently than Men

Love and Marriage: How Big Problems Grow Out of Small Stuff

25 Ways to Score with the Woman in Your Life

Unhappy Marriages Are Bad for Your Health

Martians Need to Learn the Art of the Apology

5 Key Traits for Long-Term Loving Couples

Marriage Works. Here’s When and How

Husbands and Housework

Surviving the Seven-Year Itch

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Buy WHY MARS AND VENUS COLLIDE

for the Very Special Price of $11.19

Sun, sand and endless horizons: In California, marriage is more than a state of mind.

It’s inevitable that California play an essential role in the direction of America–and be the bellweather of our country’s relationship trends.

One important reason for this is the fact that approximately one out of every eight Americans – or 37 million, as of 2008 – is a resident of California. And California was the state where the concept of divorce was revolutionized in the 1960s, as a study released in October of 2008 by the California Healthy Marriages Coalition acknowledges in its opening statement:

“Forty years ago, California led the nation in becoming the first state to ease dissolution laws so that just one spouse could end a marriage, thus creating “no-fault” divorce. Intended to ease the burden on family courts by helping unhappy couples quickly end a seemingly unfixable relationship, the number of marriage break-ups surged, and in
these forty years, millions of California’s children have found their families broken apart.  Currently, about 120,000 California couples get divorced every year.”

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition, the non-profit organization was able to conduct this study in 2006, thanks to an $11.9 Million grant received from the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (HHS/ACF). This is to date the largest grant ever awarded by HHS/ACF in support of Healthy Marriages.

And yet, contrary to the impression that Americans and the world may have gotten from the media that Californians have a casual attitude toward the institution of marriage the study found such notable results as these:

“*More than eight-out-of-ten Californians (84 percent) believe couples who marry should make a lifelong commitment to one another, to be broken only under extreme circumstances. A total of 82 percent of Californians believe divorce is a serious national problem in the United States today and only 10 percent of all respondents believe marriage is “an old fashioned, outmoded institution.”

*Three-fourths of unmarried Californians (76 percent) would like to be married someday.

*More than nine-out-of-ten Californians (97 percent) agree or strongly agree that most married couples have worked through good times and bad times together. When asked if they believed couples with strong marriages are “just luckier in love,” 58 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement.”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the survey is that in a place where the institution of marriage has stood on shaky grounds for decades the vast majority of respondents clearly embraced the concept of creating strong and lasting committed relationships.

“*The vast majority of Californians affirm traditional values related to marriage (such as marriage being a “lifelong commitment”) and family (belief that it is better for a child to be raised “with a married mother and father” and that “fathers are as important as mothers”).

*For currently married Californians, an astounding 87 percent rate their relationship as “extremely” or “very” satisfying.  More than nine-in-ten respondents rank their marital relationship as a top priority, expect to be married for life, and would marry the same person again.

*A surprisingly high 22 percent of married Californians have attended a Marriage Education program, and most (95 percent) found it helpful and most (79 percent) stated that the program strengthened their marriage to “some” or “great” extent.

*The State of California’s Unions reveals that Californians hold a high value for marriage and believe it’s an institution worth protecting with stricter dissolution laws, increased availability of relationship education, and greater social support.”

Tomorrow, in Part 2, we’ll see that the ideal and the reality are not always the same. We’ll reveal what steps the report thought essential to narrow that gap if we are to extend and strengthen the institution of marriage.

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This is the first of a two-part story on The State of Marriage in California. It will be part of an ongoing series that will track the health of marriages across America and around the world.

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Other MVL Articles of Interest

Why Committed Relationships Are Good for Your Health

Love and Marriage: How Big Problems Grow Out of Small Stuff

Marriage Works. Here’s When and How

Unhappy Marriages Are Bad for Your Health

Surviving the Seven-Year Itch

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