Do What Matters Most: Recent Episodes
Dr. A. Lynn Scoresby
Do What Matters Most features Dr. A. Lynn Scoresby—experienced psychologist, executive coach, business and education consultant, father, and grandfather—talking about how to recognize and then do what matters most so you can improve and have more fulfilling relationships. Topics range from marriage and parenting to ethics and character, stopping violence, and more.
There are many types of anxiety children face today, and often parents misinterpret anxious behavior as misbehavior or disobedience. Learn about the different types and how they might show up and what parents can do to calm the anxiety and find solutions. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Social anxiety is one of the most rapidly increasing emotional problems in childhood, and it has significant consequences for kids and families. Since it is relatively new to many parents, they might not know what to do about it, which often causes the anxiety to spread to other areas. Learn about some possible causes of the problem, consequences, and then solutions for families. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Another risk on the rise, entitlement can affect children personally and, if unchecked, will eventually affect how they view themselves, other people, and their relationships. One challenge is that many trends in our culture seem to encourage entitlement, so modern parents need to be especially watchful. Learn the causes of this behavior and what parents can do to teach something better. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
We continue our discussion about violence, specifically focusing on family violence and how it can influence children's ideas of safety, power, and healthy relationships for a long time. Families should be safe and loving environments, and when they're not, it dramatically increases the impact of anything negative. Learn more about the types of violence that can occur and some preventative measures and possible solutions for families. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Violence exists in the world in many ways—and seems to be increasing. Bullying and ruining people's reputations, for example, occurs more and more along with physical violence. Violent behavior tends to be easily learned and can become part of the family environment, where it becomes an acceptable norm. It is a great detriment to families when it exists in an environment that is supposed to be loving and kind. Learn about some causes and how to handle some solutions for it in your family. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Anger can be a dangerous habit that can grow in intensity and spread to many areas of your life if it goes unchecked. It is a huge risk for families if prevalent, and it especially affects how children develop in many ways. We'll talk about many risks that anger poses and some causes, consequences of, and solutions for it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
The lack of empathy in people is becoming a bigger problem today. There are many possible causes, like increased screen time and less in-person interaction. In this episode, we talk about how such a lack can occur, the symptoms of it, and some solutions parents can use to teach more empathy and eliminate some of the risk factors that threaten its development. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
There are serious emotional and social risks for children who are exposed to or addicted to pornography. Learn how to teach about it in your family to help prevent pornography use, learn how to talk about it when your children are exposed to it, and, if a child is addicted, learn what parents can do to help solve it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Over the last few decades, cultural changes have made early sexual experiences for teenagers more common and acceptable, and sexual information is much more accessible and prevalent. Learn what increases the risks for children to be exposed to sexual information and to engage in early sexual activity, what can happen if they do, and how parents can adapt to the changing times to adequately teach their children how to avoid many of these unnecessary risks. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learn more about self-worth for kids, how it differs from self-esteem, how it's produced, and how parents can help kids feel more of it. Then we talk about a possible link between how children feel about themselves and family conflict. Learn about handling family conflict in a healthy way and the types of conflict to avoid. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Parents need to take social media use more seriously. Average hours of daily use for teens is already too much and an amount that is most likely to lead to increased anxiety and depression and concerns about self-worth. Learn more about some of the many risks and what parents can do to teach about it, regulate use, and promote healthy human connection. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learn why substance abuse can be such a significant risk for children and teens, the conditions that make them more vulnerable to it, and some possible solutions to help kids and families avoid the dangers or recover from use. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
One of the most challenging issues today for children and parents is identity disorders, one of the most common being gender dysphoria. There has been a rapid increase in children facing these challenges today, and it is a significant risk because gender is a core element to one's identity. Without as much societal support for healthy gender development as there was in the past, parents can learn to support their children's healthy identity development by reducing family conflict, communicating that they see and understand their children as individuals, and expressing to them that they value them as boys and girls, men and women. Find more help with this issue in the online course "A Parent's Guide to Gender Identity, Character, and Confidence" on FirstAnswers.com. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
AI use is becoming more commonplace for adults and children. While it is sometimes useful, it can have a negative impact on overly reliant users' critical thinking skills, beliefs in false information, and abilities to be creative and think outside the box. Parents can learn how AI can be a risk and how to promote AI literacy, set clear boundaries with their children's use, and promote a general sense of online skepticism with their children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
What is happening to families and children in our modern world deserves more attention, so we started a new series focused on the current risks to families and children, like AI and technology, falling birth rates, and declining community support. Children today are facing ideas, social behavior, and challenges that parents have never faced, so parents need to learn more and do more in order to address these challenges and help their kids navigate them successfully. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
A troubling social trend involves marriage and families. Marriage rates are dropping, and fewer children are being born. Faith, and not just religious faith, can contribute to people's willingness to marry and have children. See how to teach your children to examine their own faith, build more faith, and learn to exercise it before these big life decisions. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learn how to tie patience and faith together in order to help your children develop greater maturity and abilities to live a chaste life and believe in themselves. When patience and faith are fused together, children are less reactive, more resistant to temptation, and more hopeful. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learn how to align your family with the good things of your church culture so that your children will learn and receive support from many good people and their spiritual education will be enriched. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Children are born with a predisposition to see regularity and predictability, which makes them feel more secure, but the environment can cause turbulence when there’s family conflict, scary events in the news, mistreatment, or mental or emotional challenges. This can make them feel like nothing lasts and there’s little hope. Learn how faith can give children something to focus on and feel that is different from the traumatic or turbulent things that are happening around them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Loneliness is a growing problem among children and teens. These feelings can be due to overly busy or inattentive parents or too much screen time. Loneliness can lead to increased feelings of depression and anxiety, poor academic performance, and difficulty maintaining relationships. Learn how faith can address these issues to help you or your children feel better. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Anxiety is one of the fastest growing mental and emotional issues for children in the US, so we may not be doing a good enough job teaching our children what faith is and how it can help. Learn how anxiety manifests itself, how the lack of faith is involved, and how you can use faith to help children cope. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
When someone fails to see another person as a fellow human with worth, it is due in part to a lack of faith. When someone doesn't believe in the value of all people or a higher power for a framework and purpose for these beliefs, this is where we get bullying, sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination. In this episode, we talk about how to help kids see the whole social context for a situation—to see how their actions affect others and to understand relationships and how others might feel—so they learn to think in terms of social circumstances and become good at recognizing and paying attention to people. You can teach them to be perceptive and respectful instead of objectifying and dehumanizing. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Faith—or the lack of it—can be found in the causes and solutions to pornography addiction. Almost always, pornography is connected to another problem: high anxiety, vulnerability to depression, influence of friends, etc. Faith can help solve these problems, like believing there is another way to manage your emotions and believing in yourself, which can then lead to a solution for pornography addiction. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
You can teach your children to have faith in fidelity by using the experiences in your family. Learn how using these principles can help your children be happy and successful. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Teaching children to have faith in fidelity can be accomplished in a series of small steps called "One More Thing," which helps them go a little further and stay with something a little longer than they expected. Soon, if this process is explained to them, they become committed to completing tasks and succeeding. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
This episode lays a foundation for why parents should be interested in teaching what it is that enables children to keep promises, face and overcome hardship, and retain their loyalty to friends, family, and God. Fidelity is an old word with a new blessing for those who have this kind of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
This episode lays a foundation for why parents should be interested in teaching what it is that enables children to keep promises, face and overcome hardship, and retain their loyalty to friends, family, and God. Fidelity is an old word with a new blessing for those who have this kind of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
This episode lays a foundation for why parents should be interested in teaching what it is that enables children to keep promises, face and overcome hardship, and retain their loyalty to friends, family, and God. Fidelity is an old word with a new blessing for those who have this kind of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
This episode lays a foundation for why parents should be interested in teaching what it is that enables children to keep promises, face and overcome hardship, and retain their loyalty to friends, family, and God. Fidelity is an old word with a new blessing for those who have this kind of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
We talk about three more characteristics of faith that make it easier to identify, teach about, and promote. Faith can be a focused form of loyalty toward others and God, which leads to honesty, regulating thoughts so they are positive and loyal, and training feelings so they are focused on keeping one’s commitments. Faith also increases people’s mental and spiritual abilities to comprehend important principles of truth, and it is quantifiable and can be measured by its emotional intensity in order to comprehend it. We then discuss how to talk to kids when things don’t turn out how they want and they wonder if they have enough faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
In this episode, we talk about two more aspects of faith that we can learn to recognize—and help our children learn to recognize. Faith is not totally separate from knowledge or reason but is usually strengthened when one’s intellect, evidence, and reason are employed. Also, faith reveals or excites what a person knows about himself by identifying and giving access to added abilities called spiritual gifts. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
We want to have faith, but what does that look like? What does faith feel like? How will your children know when they have it? In this episode, we talk about how to teach children about their inner experience so they know what mental and emotional activity to look for so they know when they are experiencing faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Scriptures teach about faith, sure, but faith can also be very practical. Learning about faith is something you and your children can use every day in your religious life and everywhere else. See how faith can be taught and applied as we discuss 10 practical elements of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Children's early experiences often lead them to be afraid, and then when parents see this, they try to instill confidence. But confidence is not the same as faith because confidence is related to a specific situation while faith is related to children's belief in themselves and their future. Consider making a new effort to promote your children's faith in themselves, and watch them begin to see their futures as something achievable. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
When parents are teaching their children about faith, they are asking their children to believe in things that are not certain. Since traditional religious training isn’t proving to be enough anymore, what can parents do so that children actually listen, apply, and then use this knowledge to take steps of faith themselves? First, you have to build trust by avoiding harmful behaviors, remove distractions like excessive screen time, and then use your teachings to help them learn how to do hard things, which every person needs to know. Becoming a faith-emergent family will promote so many positive behaviors in you and your family, some you probably couldn’t even foresee, that will make the extra focus worth it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learn nine new factors you can teach to promote children's faith in themselves. When you use these tools, children will know more about themselves and believe in themselves more. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
In order to successfully teach children to have faith in themselves, it will be necessary to recognize that we may have gotten it wrong sometimes and we need to adjust what we do. In this episode, learn what does not work and instead what can. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
We live in a time when the ideas about what children could become are blurred and less definite. This can be positive in a way because it provides more options, but there is a risk because it often leaves children more confused. Plus, we sometimes focus so much on what children become in their careers that we forget to give them what they need most for success—to have faith in themselves. In this episode, learn the foundation for teaching your children to believe in themselves. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
This episode describes ten specific things you can do that will lead to the quiet miracles that demonstrate the worth and power of teaching your children to believe in God and themselves. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Teaching children to feel faith brings inspiration, and with this inspiration comes several other remarkable but quiet miracles: peace of mind, organization, or more hope. In this episode, see how inspiration is connected to teaching faith to your children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
When parents decide to focus more on faith in their families, what does this look like? Learn simple ways to start the process of becoming a faith-emergent family, like telling stories of people who have exercised faith, as we discuss how manageable it can be, how you can adjust your approach according to the ages of your children, and how great the rewards are. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Humans are hardwired to have faith. It can be seen when children are young and begin to make choices, and it can grow into something really powerful if we know how to use it. Faith has many mental and emotional qualities to it, and the more we know about them, the better we can use faith to strengthen ourselves, our company, or our family. What does it feel like to have faith? What can you do to build more faith? What is its purpose in the first place? Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Faith really impacts whether the mission of an organization, a leadership team, or a family is achieved. If people believe in the mission and focus their mental exertion on it, people tend to be more committed and more focused on producing it. There are risks organizations face when employees don’t have faith in the mission, like low employee morale, and you can see these risks in a family setting as well. So how do you create faith in the mission and make it last, and what do you do when people don’t have faith? Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
While faith used in a business sense might sound unusual, faith in your company culture or team culture has a lot to do with how much you enjoy your job, how well your team bonds, and how well people work together to get things done. If you’re a team leader, do you know how to promote faith in the culture of your team? Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Many people think that engaging in traditional religious practices, like prayer or scripture study, is enough to produce faith in children, but many children who grow up with these traditional practices do not remain faithful for the rest of their lives. So what else matters? The family environment and how families are organized have a tremendous impact on how receptive children are to parents’ teaching. Learn why and what you can do in your family to help your children better receive what you teach. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
While faith is something people might often think about and even talk about, most people still don’t know the full meaning of it and the tremendous and dramatic benefits of using it. In this episode, we discuss an expansive definition of faith—faith in God, faith in yourself, and faith in your culture—and how faith is one of the first answers to the challenges people are facing today. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
There is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to knowing what is best for children. This is not much of a challenge when you’re only facing minor situations, but when there are big consequences, knowing what is best matters a lot. Teaching your children to have faith will help you identify what is best in these uncertain times because faith is involved in virtually every possible solution. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Every parent faces times when children bring unexpected experiences home. Teaching about faith successfully will help you prepare for those times so you don't overreact or focus on the wrong things. Besides, teaching children to have faith in themselves, in God, and in their culture prepares them and gives them strength to manage their own challenges. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
When parents are able to use the significant moments of their children's lives to teach faith, they bring together a child's experience, the interpretation of it, and knowledge of faith. Putting this together will be helped by the Lord who will send inspiration. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
When you decide to learn more about faith, it may amaze you to learn how much more there is to learn. And when you learn more, you will be able to see more different and interesting ways to teach it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Growing children's faith usually requires much more than talking. Children will need to be receptive to what they hear, and parents can adjust their methods of teaching as needed. In this episode, you can see the need for thinking both about what you already do and how to create an environment where your children are more likely to receive and believe what you teach. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learning more about faith can lead to the discovery of its amazing qualities we don't often think about. In this episode, learn some of what faith accomplishes in our lives and how it originates. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Those who think you might want to do more with teaching your children about faith might discover that it offers more than most of us know, and then we realize it has always been so and we have neglected to use its great blessings for our families. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Deciding to give more emphasis to teaching children to be faithful appears to lead to five very positive conditions. In this episode, learn what many parents discovered about the power of doing more to teach children to develop faith and keep it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Even in the busyness of life, parents can make changes in their families when their children are involved. If you decide to become a faith-emergent family, this means you give more emphasis to teaching faith and organizing your family to ensure that your children will trust you and learn how to exercise freedom—not as an option but as an essential part of the recipe. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Discover the types of parent-child communication that influence whether children are receptive to parents’ teachings, and see how ritualized forms of communication can either lead children to mistrust their parents or honor and learn from them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
For many years, we thought of faith as an individual quality that develops within each person. But research has revealed that families influence children's faith in several different ways. This means that parents can actively teach children to develop faith and ensure that their faith works for them while they are children and when they are adults too. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
When Dr. Scoresby began to ask what parents do or could do to teach their children about faith, he said he got a lot of strange looks and then was told by many parents that they read scriptures, pray, and attend church with their children. This is a great answer, but then he asked them if they had specific ideas about how parents could teach it. When met with uncertainty, he discovered that there are some things parents would like to know, so if you listen to this episode, you will begin to get an idea about what we as parents may not know and should know about teaching faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
What would you say if someone asked what you thought was the one single thing we could do to help our families and our society? Lighting the fire of your children's faith is the one thing that will help them the most and help you create the type of family you would like. This episode will introduce you to what this series will bring to you and will help you get ready to learn some amazing things about teaching and increasing faith in many areas of life. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
In this episode, learn how to resolve two risk conditions for healthy gender identity: emotional enmeshment and influence from the internet. Emotional enmeshment reduces freedom and creates anxiety. At the same time, ever-increasing access to the internet creates a perfect storm of confusion, but you can compensate for it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
Learn more about what you can do to avoid the errors that can lead to gender-related problems, and learn how to solve the extreme emotions that many consider to be a cause. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
We are often allowing children to learn negative words and hostile reactions to the other gender. As a result, both boys and girls often carry these ideas and feelings into their relationships later on. Now is the time for greater emphasis on respect rather than pursuing equity or equality. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.
It now appears that parents will need to prepare their 21st-century children to succeed with the other sex. In past generations, this seemed to be a foregone conclusion, that the forces of nature would motivate and make that possible, but divorce rates and declining rates of marriage suggest otherwise. In this episode, find out what is impacting our children negatively so you can adapt and help your children succeed in their relationships. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and answers for 21st-century parents.
In this episode, learn how children form their inner core of knowledge about themselves, and learn about the family's role as a small community where children are influenced and how the social world around them can affect them. These experience areas will give you ideas about what you can do to promote healthy gender identities in your children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and answers for 21st-century parents.
In this episode, you can learn the process children go through developmentally to acquire their gender identity. Understanding this process will help you to also see how you can play a vital role in influencing your children's gender identity as male or female. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and answers for 21st-century parents.
When children acquire self-knowledge, learn about free choice, develop awareness, and then participate fully in their families, five possibilities emerge. By understanding what is successful and not successful, you can be better equipped to do what is more effective with your children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families.
Researchers have identified four experience domains that make up an individual's identity and shape how it develops. In each of these four areas, there are things you can do as a parent that can ensure that your children are healthy and successful. When you learn these methods, you can feel more confident as a parent. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families.
Reviewing Erikson’s eight stages of identity can show us how identities develop over time. With this in mind, you can also learn what you can do to influence your children toward a healthy gender identity. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.
The remarkable increase lately in gender-related problems tells us that we should be searching for a better way to help our children. This episode introduces a rationale for parents to learn more in order to promote healthy development in their children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.
The people most likely to get a divorce think the problems between them stem from some personality defect or inadequacy. Affairs, for example, are considered a defect. Those less likely to divorce understand that the cause of their marital problems has to do with inadequate transmission or communication. In this episode, learn positive and negative forms of communication so you change the negative, improve the positive, and perhaps avoid a divorce. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.
Instead of being numbered among the rising tide of those who get divorced, learn proven methods in this series of avoiding or solving serious relationship problems. In this episode, learn some of the principal causes of divorce and a few preliminary things couples can do to avoid them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.
When your children become young adults, it can be one of the best times for your family if you have prepared them well. Learn what to do to successfully prepare your children by creating a family forum to accommodate children who leave, then return, then leave again. Remember freedom is more influential than control. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.
Today young adults are running into more contradictions, biases, and intolerance that may not have existed at any other time since the civil war. In addition, the relaxing and disappearance of clear moral structures presents confusion so that many resort to the idea that there is nothing better than their own opinions and preferences. Learn about the milestones successful young adults demonstrate, and learn how you can help them. You will have a better time if you do. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.
Adolescent children face significant challenges that can be harmful to them or prepare them for success. Their success may even depend on what you do. Learn about the milestones of growth for teens so you can see the progress your children are making, and learn how to help them. It takes more time and effort to solve problems than it does to prevent them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.
Most of us know someone with one or more children who have left religion and are unwilling to exercise faith in God and Jesus Christ. Even with great resources provided by our churches and actual experience with faith, increasing numbers of our children are losing their faith. One possible reason why children lose their faith might be what happens—or fails to happen—in their family. In this episode, you will learn the family dynamics that are the foundation for faith. If these are mishandled, it can lead to children’s failure to develop and then live faith-filled lives. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.
For 21st-century children to succeed, they need parents that understand the threats to their growth. Learn the 15 threats that impact your teens so you can adapt your parenting appropriately during this stage and make this time as great as it can be. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.
Adolescence is considered a critical period in our society because teenagers’ development can be impacted in so many ways. This is one reason why it is important to provide firm, flexible, conversant, and accountable parenting during these years. Learn how to successfully apply this form of parent leadership and feel more confident with your teens. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.
Since our podcast has always been sponsored by FirstAnswers.com, it will now be called First Answers. Same great host, same great content. Follow First Answers on Facebook to stay up to date. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.
As parents, we adapt to our children as they mature so we can provide the conditions that will help them avoid the pitfalls or threats to their growth. This works best when you communicate to your children that you understand each one of them in a unique manner and at the same time make your family the primary point of reference for your children. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
When parents adjust their leadership to match their children’s ages and stages, they will also need to have two types of knowledge: what healthy development looks like and the nature of the threats that can adversely affect children. In this episode, learn how to begin the process of adjusting to the circumstances your children ages 6-11 are in and turning them into success. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
There are several things you can do to create a great formula for success as a parent leader of children in this generation. In this episode, you will find descriptions of the five types of growth and development you’re working toward and how to apply ten impact practices that increase the possibility of your parenting success. Learning these will give you a set of tools that will help you feel confident that what you are doing is the right thing for your children. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
The exciting benefits of parent leadership can be seen when parents adapt to the maturing of their children, to individual children, and adapt their family to promote children's development. See how this works for children from birth to five years of age. Knowing how children will develop and then matching what you do to help them will provide a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment for you and success for your children. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
Good parents want to make sure the important lessons they teach their children inside the family will be applied when children are away from the family. This episode describes what you can do to organize your family to ensure that your children will internalize and apply the good things you teach them. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
When you become a parent, you have a choice. You can simply try to cope with all the new demands you face, which is necessary, or you can develop a strategic plan for your children and your family. In this episode, learn how to strategically use the resources in your family to promote growth in your children and more satisfaction for yourself. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
It can be very easy when your family is young to get so preoccupied with the demands on your time that you unwittingly become parents who are busy reacting and putting out fires more than you are leading. In this episode, learn how to be an intentional parent and organize your family's work, rules, and relationships to produce the outcomes you want. This can make parenting easier and more engaging for you and more clear and effective for your children. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
Some people still think that leadership is not important and all parents need to do is just manage a few details of family life. If you believe this, you are willing to rely only on biological aging to create change. And if that is the only tool you rely on, you are missing many opportunities to prepare your children for success. In this episode, learn the six steps of promoting change in yourself, your children as individuals, and your family. Using these tools will give you confidence that you can achieve more of what you hope for. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
One of the most vital questions in parenting and leadership is how leaders (or parents) can motivate children to participate and follow. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby outlines ten impact parenting practices you can use right away to help you motivate your children to join with you in promoting their growth and building a strong and healthy family. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
Turning your family into a learning lab will do great things for your family. First, it will be more fun and engaging for you as a parent, and second, you can learn how to promote character development and healthy gender identities, improve your children's abilities to learn, teach emotional self-reliance, and prepare your children for the world of work they will face. Making your family a learning lab is worth the effort. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.
Learn how to organize your family so you can adapt better to individual children and also better provide opportunities for them to learn and grow. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
Learning to more accurately observe and understand your children in five developmental areas can help you better understand what your children are growing toward and how you can help them. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby describes a developmental perspective in these five important areas of children’s growth. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
The parenting ideas we have traditionally believed in might not be as effective anymore because our children are facing some situations we have not experienced and are therefore vulnerable to influence we do not want. In this episode, listen to a review of several different types of parents and also learn what is needed for parenting today. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby shares how you can organize your family and use it to create happy and lasting relationships with your children. This makes rearing them more enjoyable, and it prepares them to have successful relationships with other people. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about destructive patterns couples can get into that may seem harmless because they seem natural, but they can catch one or both people in an unproductive cycle of behavior. He talks about how these behaviors can prevent happiness and then explains how to avoid these traps. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
While marriage is a partnership, it’s a different kind of partnership than any other relationship. This is because the tasks married people share are among the most significant of our lives. How we participate in this partnership matters a lot. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
Much of who we are is influenced by the kinds of attachments we have with others. You can find more lifelong happiness and fulfillment when you go beyond just social confidence and develop good friendship skills to form lasting relationships. These kinds of friendships will help you overcome disappointment, adapt to change, and help you make necessary changes to improve yourself. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
Sometimes problems in a marriage aren’t a sign that the relationship is failing. Sometimes problems mean that people care a lot but just need good ways to solve these problems. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about patterns of conflict and solutions for some of the most common problems in marriage. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about why communication is an essential part of human relationships, types of communication to avoid, and the kind of communication found in healthy relationships. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
Dr. Scoresby talks about how it is possible to learn about and get better at loving and feeling loved. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how two people build bridges when they create a new relationship, and often these are the same skills used when a relationship faces challenges. Find ways to build bridges through experiences or exchanges of behavior that solidify the relationship for both people and make your relationships healthier and happier. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
Many people don’t know what makes a quality relationship anymore—let alone how to create and maintain one. Dr. Scoresby presents 15 qualities that make a relationship last and make it rewarding along the way. He also discusses what research says are the five make-or-break factors in relationship success and satisfaction, and these can apply to marriage, family, and work relationships. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of relationship resources.
Excellent research has been done to find what helps build social confidence and self-esteem. In this episode, learn how promoting delay of gratification in your children will help them be confident in social situations and feel positive about themselves. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and other resources. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find a free mini course ebook on Emotional Resilience and Self-Reliance and many more resources.
Research showing how to build confidence and self-esteem includes the valuable role of emotions—and not just positive emotions. Learn how to become a good emotion coach for your children and for your friends, and improve your relationships and build social confidence for yourself and your children. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and other resources. On FirstAnswers.com, you can also find a free mini course ebook on Emotional Resilience and Self-Reliance and a full course that includes a section on emotion coaching.
Sometimes even when we know something is valuable, we still don't do it. This sometimes happens with marshaling the unity of peers in order to promote achievement in schools and in life. Learn what some schools did to magnify achievement for their students. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and other resources.
Sometimes even when we know something is valuable, we still don't do it. This sometimes happens with marshaling the unity of peers in order to promote achievement in schools and in life. Learn what some schools did to magnify achievement for their students. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and other resources.
The lack of unity among people and institutions often limits the experience and performance of those involved because valuable time is spent addressing the problems of divisiveness rather than focusing on their work or purpose. As it turns out, uniting well also produces many positive benefits, which can be seen when schools and parents unite themselves. In this episode, learn about these benefits and examples of how they were achieved by people who had the courage to unite. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and other resources.
In our day, we are faced with many divisions between people—some small and some large. Our children are growing up with that, and unless we teach them, they will know better how to create divisions than how to unify. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby describes heartfelt methods that begin the process of uniting. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast.
It doesn't often occur to us that if we want to feel loved deeper and longer than we do, we must increase our capacity for it. Learn how the thoughts you think about others are linked to what you believe about yourself, and then discover new ways to make love a more powerful part of your life. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast.
Learn how social confidence can be improved by organizing the right types of experiences, knowledge, and skills. Improving your confidence with others will make a positive difference in many parts of your life and in your children’s. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast.
Researchers in the behavior sciences have found unexpected discoveries about what promotes social confidence and self-esteem. In this episode, learn about what you can teach your children about God that builds their confidence, the importance of making and keeping promises, a pattern of family leadership, and six parental strategies that are effective. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast.
Researchers in the behavior sciences have found unexpected discoveries about what promotes social confidence and self-esteem. In this episode, learn about what you can teach your children about God that builds their confidence, the importance of making and keeping promises, a pattern of family leadership, and six parental strategies that are effective. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast.
See why researchers are revisiting the discovery that a positive moral code is an essential tool for parents to help their children be confident. In this episode, learn what you can do as part of your family life to make moral values a significant part of children's lives. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find out more about the podcast.
Dr. Scoresby talks with a mother of an older teen who wants more independence but is afraid to take steps into adulthood. He suggests several steps she can take to guide her daughter through this stage. The mother also has a younger teen who is extremely shy and has trouble connecting with kids her own age. Dr. Scoresby describes how a probably inherited condition can be changed when children learn more social confidence. He suggests practicing how to act in different social situations and learning more about other people so the focus is off herself. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to contact us if you’d like to have a conversation with Dr. Scoresby about your teens or find more about the podcast.
We know that what we think eventually emerges in our language, emotions, and actions. That is why what we think about ourselves can and often does influence our abilities to love and to receive love. Learn how to change what you think to create the greatest possibilities for love and happiness.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks with a mother and father of teens about how children adapt differently to the same family environment especially when it comes to responding to high expectations. Parents should be careful about how expectations are communicated and teach kids executive skills to manage time, how to have fun with homework, and positive ways to deal with pressure. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to contact us or find more about the podcast.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks with a mother and father of teens about how children adapt differently to the same family environment especially when it comes to responding to high expectations. Parents should be careful about how expectations are communicated and teach kids executive skills to manage time, how to have fun with homework, and positive ways to deal with pressure. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to contact us or find more about the podcast.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks with a mother who is concerned about her teenage daughter who never seems to feel like she’s good enough. They talk about how she deals with her friends and their influence on her and how that affects her relationship with her parents. Dr. Scoresby suggests a way to have confrontational conversations (when a rule is broken, for instance) that promotes positive changes and a safe environment for further conversation. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to contact us or find more about the podcast.
Parents have many family opportunities to help children develop autonomy, an adequate moral education, and good relationships. In part 2 of this series on building social confidence and self-esteem, learn several specific suggestions to help your children develop in these areas.
The mother in this episode has two teenagers: a 16-year-old autistic son and a 19-year-old daughter who deals with depression and anxiety. She and Dr. Scoresby talk about how to find good treatment and some things she can do as a mother to help her children through important developmental tasks at this age and feel more confident as they approach adulthood. He explains types of depression and some initial tasks in therapy to help her daughter feel more in control of her life and less acted upon, which is a great preventative start to managing depression and anxiety. mattersmostmedia.org
We have waited too long to find and apply effective ways of building our children's confidence and self-esteem. In this episode, learn the three sources of these positive qualities, and listen to how families either promote or fail to promote these successful outcomes that help children avoid depression and anxiety.
It might surprise you how much a sense of personal freedom is connected to one's ability to love and how expanding freedom is usually the first step you can take to achieve that goal. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about examples of personal freedom and then what you can do to increase your sense of freedom and create the foundation for more love and happiness.
Do you want to improve your capacity to love and be loved? Most people usually conclude they don’t have enough of it in their families or marriages. Expanding your capacity for love is based on neurological discoveries of how brains can learn and grow. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will explain some of this research, and you can see for yourself whether you would like more honest, true, and realistic love in your life.
Many institutions that influence our children are being pressured to provide content that satisfies modern-day ideologies rather than what solid research shows is beneficial to children. We are also being faced with the idea that our traditional forms of individualism often run wild without any connection to the needs we have for nurture and support. The resulting emotional problems for our children are evidence that this is increasing. In addition, the evolution of internet programs provides new and more insidious opportunities to exert harmful influence on children. Learn how to prevent these potential negative effects on your children.
There is a lot of evidence showing that the most effective parents tend to be those who understand positive methods of promoting children's growth and also know how to avoid negative conditions that might harm their progress. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby identifies what research suggests are the most common parental and family behaviors that harm children so you can avoid them.
In the modern world, there appears to be greater competition between the family and the environment as the places where children are best reared. 21st-century children need more help and more effective participation with their families. In this episode, learn how culture affects us and our children, and learn how to make your family have more influence.
It's important to help children be selective about who they trust. But children are actually more likely to make fewer mistakes in their judgements of others if they have a basic motivation to trust rather than mistrust. Teach your children to see the good things in the world, and then when you work with them, you can use the method that allows you as a parent to do the best thing for your children the first time—instead of adding to the problems when you don't use the correct tools.
While a certain amount of time is necessary for the task of rearing children, there are many things parents can do to make more effective use of their parent time. In this episode, learn about the warmth quotient, the solution orientation, and what it means to make contact with your children. Spend less time solving the problems that are created when you don't make the best use of your time.
Our children are often faced with confusing messages about what kind of person to be and become. Over time children can fail to establish a strong and complete sense of identity and remain diffused or living without a sense of wholeness. This makes them much more vulnerable to external persuasion. To compensate for that, the parents of 21st-century children need greater skill in helping children form a strong sense of their identity. This episode introduces definitions of identity, characteristics of complete and incomplete identities, and steps parents can take to help children grow into a positive and healthy identity for themselves.
To love and be loved requires tools, motivation, and the capacity to feel deeply. The motivation to love and the feelings themselves are often created by a communication event, which results in one or both people knowing and understanding one another in a highly personal manner. In this episode, you can learn several times and methods you can use to improve your capacity for self-disclosure and understanding. As a result, your life can be enriched, and more love can be yours.
When there is a threat to our families, there is wisdom in learning about what the threat is and then making adjustments where necessary to compensate. In this episode, you will learn about two trends that represent threats to the healthy growth of our children. The first threat is the increased tendency to make agreements and then ignore them. This allows people into the process of negotiating, and instead of honoring contracts or agreements, use them instead to gain an advantage. The second threat is the socialized and institutionalized acceptance of laziness and complacency regarding work, relationships, and religious commitments. This has always been an issue, but nowadays it is often supported by many peers and adults.
Sometimes what happens in the world outside our family has little effect and can be disregarded. There are other times when ideas and social conditions are so widespread and predatory on the lives and minds of our children that, unless we are aware, our families can be harmed by our failure to be vigilant. In this episode, learn about two conditions that pose serious threats to the wellbeing of families everywhere because they have been set free in our society and are currently inside our schools, our churches, and our neighborhoods. Dr. Scoresby then discusses three positive ways you can render these threats less powerful and therefore potentially less harmful.
Very little happens without leadership. Learn the nine qualities you can instill in your organization that create the conditions that reduce resistance to change and promote the group and individual process toward growth and progress.
When you look at your children, do you see them motivated to complete their inherited potential and to become competent and successful in their family and in the outside environment? If not, learn how to do this so you can see how to make adjustments to each child and better promote their happiness and success.
It is amazing when parents understand exactly what is happening when children develop and grow. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby gives you a developmental perspective, which can make your work with children more individualized, more effective, and a lot more fun.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will explain how to help students master a new method of symbolic learning that is fun and creative and improves memory. This method can help learners retain large quantities of information and process it effectively.
Instead of relying on intelligence as a single score, recent research has focused on the idea of multiple intelligences. These eight types of intelligence allow teachers and parents to use the strengths of those they teach as tools of learning and motivation. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will describe each type of intelligence and how to recognize them in your children.
We know that leadership is mostly about relating to people and using this knowledge to exert positive influence toward a desired outcome. Great leaders, however, make this happen by knowing how to find the right people and then activating the freedom to choose. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby offers the most up-to-date methods of selecting the right people and also suggests several ways to activate freedom so they are more creative and productive than they would be around leaders who offer mediocre leadership.
Great leaders are skillful with groups of people and with individuals. Both of these important abilities are useful when it comes to resolving conflict, chaotic conditions, and other forms of alienation people feel for one another. This type of discord often results in low performance and the loss of good people who leave organizations to find something better. Establishing peace is one of the least prominent qualities of great leaders, but it is emerging as one of the most important.
Sometimes people don’t know if they would be good leaders or not. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby describes a straightforward way to assess both your potential and actual performance as a leader. Listen to the items, score yourself from one to five, and you can see your potential as a leader and see how well you’re performing.
All great leaders appear to be guided by a set of doctrines or principles that underlie the way they treat people and organize them. The eight doctrines Dr. Scoresby describes in this episode can be implemented by anyone, and they have proven to make leadership more successful.
People of yesteryear were masters at coming up with bridge statements that motivated children to do things they might not want to do. These statements become so much a part of life that they are used for specific situations but remembered by all who hear them. Use this wisdom to help children eat what they might not want to eat.
Understand common work and home problems and how to solve them. Then see a comparison between the conditions at work and at home that will enable you to be successful in adjusting your language, emotions, and social behavior at work and at home. This adjustment will help your kids feel happier.
21st-century children deserve a new generation of parents with better tools. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will explain the importance of understanding the role of social context. There are five elements in each social situation, and knowing these will help you understand how to keep what is important at work at work and separate that from what is important at home. Making this adaptation successfully can ensure your children’s success.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will explain how to help your children be socially confident by teaching them the vocabulary for many situations so they can understand more, communicate better, and be able to make smooth adaptations or adjustments. When parents do this, they are more likely to have confident children who are respectful and successful with their friends.
One of the worst experiences for children is to be misjudged by their parents and falsely accused. This often leads to feelings of worthlessness, injustice, and anger. To avoid this, Dr. Scoresby will explain four different reasons why children act as they do, the cues that will tell you about each, and how to respond successfully to each. It will make you more just and fair and help you avoid hurting your children.
Even with all the openness in our world about sex, there is still evidence that many parents are not teaching their children about it. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby explains how to create a positive conversation relationship on the topic and how to adapt your teaching to your children’s ages and stages of development. They need more help from us.
Emotional self-reliance is, at its core, the name for ordinary development and growth into adulthood, but it’s becoming a hot topic these days because we’re seeing a rise in depression, anxiety, suicide, and other kinds of problems that indicate emotional self-reliance is not occurring for more and more people. In this interview, Dr. Scoresby begins a discussion about how parents can promote this normal course of development so kids learn to achieve, learn moral behavior, have successful relationships, learn how to deal with adversity, and more that leads them to a happy, healthy life.
In this episode, learn how to adapt your methods of teaching your children to the learning modalities they are the most expert at, and apply assertive learning as the means of helping your children acquire greater responsibility for themselves. It will help them be more successful at learning and will save you time. Get dozens of practical activities when you download the free pdf of the book "Awakening the Brain's Potential" on FirstAnswers.com.
Knowing the tools to build bridges will allow you to repair relationships that may need to be mended. The skills you will learn in this area will help you and your partner find hope and increase the possibility that a marriage once thought to be broken can instead be repaired and bring both people increased love and happiness.
Most of the time, marriages that last and marriages that end have the same type and number of problems. The difference is that people in marriages that last have a positive way to solve problems and move forward. Learn these practical solutions so that you too can feel confident that problems you face can be solved and will not prevent you from finding and feeling the love and happiness marriage can offer.
Understanding what can go wrong in your marriage can help you learn how to avoid these marriage traps and continue to move forward, creating a relationship that is full of love and happiness. Learn how the most common marital traps are created and what you can do to make sure you and your partner do not get caught in a trap that will prevent growth and happiness.
Creating an excellent method of communicating not only builds an excellent marriage but maintains it so you can find the greatest rewards marriage offers. In this episode, learn several positive forms of communicating and several forms of communicating that lead to confusion and misunderstanding. You will learn it is not possible to not communicate. This will help motivate you and your partner to develop a positive form of communication that creates emotional intimacy and affection. Communicating accurately can help you avoid saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or in the wrong way.
Dr. Scoresby has talked about what individuals can do to improve their participation in marriage. This episode describes how couples can organize an intimate partnership that will enable their relationship to operate smoothly. Marriages invite, even require, people to share at least eight high-stakes life conditions, like money and sex. You can learn how to work out your partnership by committing to love each other as the highest priority, which then enables you to successfully make decisions, solve problems successfully, and organize and plan—together.
Each married person may want their own rewards for being married, but the most important outcomes of being married are all emotions. Learn the emotional skills that will make you more intelligent about your feelings and your partner’s. And when you make loving your partner your highest priority, you can find the greatest feelings, which will substantially add to your happiness and satisfaction.
The amount and type of love available to you is influenced, even determined, by the way you think about your marriage. By changing and improving how you express and display love, you can also create the best perspective where the most and greatest forms of love are found. In this episode, learn three different perspectives of marriage and how you can make small improvements in the way you communicate love until you see marriage with the most excellent perspective.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about five things you can do to improve the way you participate in your marriage so you are better prepared to love and be loved. Improving how you participate will make it possible for you to make needed changes and find greater rewards in your marriage. With a basic step-by-step approach, you can make improving your marriage a very loving and compassionate experience. Plus you can create a sense of freedom and confidence that attempts to improve will come to fruition.
In this interview with Dr. Scoresby, he talks about how schools as social institutions connect with and influence families. Parents are concerned about the learning opportunities and experiences their children are getting from their schools, and schools are concerned with the lack of preparation in many of the children who are coming to the schools. Dr. Scoresby provides some practical ways parents can become more informed and involved with their children’s school experience so they can coordinate the good things kids are doing at school with what they experience at home.
The lost wisdom of yesteryear would tell us that we make choices about who we consider our enemies, and when we choose people to be our enemies, we should be careful because the chances are good we will become like them. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how wisdom of the past will show that families are the places where children can learn the skills to unify, cooperate, and more likely choose people to be friends rather than enemies. We are in great need of this lost wisdom to help us find unity and mutual support during our modern times.
In contrast to no discipline at all or discipline that is highly reactive and somewhat negative, there is a third option: positive discipline, which includes parenting practices that promote growth instead of just limiting bad behavior. In this interview, Dr. Scoresby explains how this approach differs from traditional child discipline and begins a discussion on what parents can do about it now.
When children’s brains grow rapidly, they become more sensitive to the stimulation and learning that may present itself. These sensitive periods are called windows of learning because they offer parents windows of time where they can actually influence the structure of their children’s brains. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby explains the times of life when children are likely to learn more quickly about numbers, emotions, and language.
In our current busy world, it is entirely possible for parents to fail to learn about their children. So when other people contact parents to inform them of what is going on, quite often parents have little clue. Research has demonstrated this fact when it comes to children becoming involved with addictive substances and pornography. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about the importance of learning children’s innate needs as a beginning way to remind yourself what children need to thrive and succeed.
In a time when there is great confusion, there is more opportunity for children to learn things about themselves that are untrue. These false beliefs can have very harmful effects on children, including influencing them to do self-destructive things or miss out on opportunities they are qualified for but do not see. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will explain what identity means and how it forms so you can ensure your children know themselves well.
We’re excited to announce a new series coming soon on Do What Matters Most—an 8-part series called The Best Way to Improve Your Marriage. Dr. Scoresby has packed each episode with tons of practical solutions so lasting improvement is possible. Watch for the first episode soon!
In this episode in the Great Leaders series, Dr. Scoresby talks about the idea that few people succeed by themselves. In the world today, we have learned that, regardless of the type of organization, the most successful leaders are those who know how to create alliances with others and energize them. When alliances are energized, they work, improve efficiency, and make people’s lives more cooperative. Learn the interpersonal tools good leaders use to make alliances work, and then learn the steps to creating a good alliance inside your organization.
Any attempt to arrive at a trustworthy conclusion of what causes things is more likely to succeed when you take into account your emotional and psychological circumstances as well as accurately assess and understand the problem. People who learn to react and cope tend to make one type of decision, and people who create and move forward make another. You will likely be more accurate when you do both.
Learning to love well, especially when someone is not very loveable, is one of the hallmark characteristics of someone who is emotionally mature. And when love is expressed to soothe and comfort someone, it increases the possibility that it will be accepted and believed. Using love to soothe and comfort makes it possible for both people to trust that love exists and is real.
The remarkable increase in the rates of depression and debilitating anxiety for girls makes us look around both for causes and solutions. As it turns out, parents can do a great deal to promote self-reliance in their daughters to prevent the likelihood of depression and anxiety. Learn what emotional self-reliance looks like and what you can do to mentor girls to be self-reliant, confident, and successful in their relationships.
While conducting training programs for leaders in several companies, Dr. Scoresby was able to identify what the truly great leaders were like. They were able to give a personal touch to their relationships with others and possessed several other personal qualities that made their leadership really effective. You can learn what they did and make yourself a great leader.
In one of the truly unexpected events of growing boys, it turns out that the stories they learn from parents and other leaders can increase their sense of self-reliance. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how these stories help boys see what they can do to take charge of their lives and make themselves the most successful. Then these same boys offer help to the next generation just like great men do.
In former years, folklore wisdom grew out of people’s everyday experiences. Some of these were kernelized into phrases that have passed the test of time. Dr. Scoresby talks about how these two phrases can be used today and the effective forms of communication and teaching they represent.
Great leaders are very good at crafting a strategy designed to ensure that goals and desired outcomes are achieved. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about the four elements of a successful strategy and how to use this process to help those you lead make connections from the ideas they have to the actions necessary to achieve them.
When family-owned businesses do not succeed, the consequences might be found in both the business and the family. Dr. Scoresby talks about how to enable both your business and your family to be successful by selecting priorities and creating boundaries to ensure there are resources for both.
It seems like there is an increasing number of parents who protect their children from responsibility. They do this in several different ways, but the discouraging consequences are almost always the same for the children. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby will describe those consequences, the most common methods parents use, and what parents might do instead.
Love has many powers, one of which is the desire to change when we are loved and the motivation to love those who are trying to change. Some of the most dramatic changes in anyone’s life are the result of being loved or wishing to love someone else. Learn how to successfully use several genuine forms of love to promote change in yourself and others.
Our forebears didn’t have the same ease and abundance of communication that we do, so they had to put a lot of meaning into a very few words—and the words had to have the power to instruct and influence. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how people of yesteryear taught their children about being frugal and self-reliant.
Learn how emotional and mental processes collaborate to help us be certain about faith, which means we are certain about being uncertain. This provides the power to act when there is a need for charity toward others. Learning to be certain in this fashion will help us add strength to the ties that bind us and lift our spirits as human beings.
When people want to follow a leader, the effort they give and their achievement is usually greater. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby explains how the most successful leaders define the direction for all who follow and inspire great effort, which leads to remarkable success.
Like a small plague, the rise of parental lying to and for their children is now being recognized as one of the most harmful forms of parenting. Learn about several types of dishonesty and the consequences for you and your children, and then learn how to make corrections.
The methods of helping people solve problems can also lead us to great ideas about how to promote wellness and happiness. In the last ten years, great strides have been made in the world of counseling. Learning about them will enable you to better understand what takes place and will help you make informed decisions when you or your family need help.
Most people find some conflict between the demands of work and the needs at home. It is often more difficult to manage when your family owns and operates the business. Learn how to create harmony between work and home, and understand some procedures you can follow to make sure your family business succeeds.
Girls face several challenges depending on the gender roles influenced by their culture. These challenges can be used by parents and mentors to help girls learn a form of honesty, humility, and realism that marks the lives of great women.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby describes what mentors and parents can do to teach boys to be resilient in the face of adversity so they are confident and strong. When boys learn how to be resilient, they can also learn how to inspire others and make the same contribution that great men make to the lives of other people.
Parents should respond very quickly to several forms of child behavior, or problems can become more complex and opportunities to easily resolve misbehavior are lost. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby describes several situations when it is best for the child if parents seize the moment and respond quickly to prevent potential harm to a child. He also discusses several forms of parental response so parents can follow through and find a good solution.
Three personal characteristics are almost always found in great women: personal boundaries, grit, and positive social skills. When helping girls learn these three qualities, parents and mentors are also communicating how much they love their girls and how committed they are to their success. Both fathers and mothers play an important role in helping a girl acquire the skills of developing her own boundaries, carrying them out, and displaying the grit that makes it possible for her to do hard things, take risks, and finish what she starts.
This series is designed to identify several methods people can use to avoid instant certainty or not being certain about anything. This can be made possible by looking for patterns to help stabilize us and provide a starting point when we search for truth when confronted with something new. Searching for and finding patterns enables us to improve the possibility that what we believe is correct and will serve us well. Plus, it will help us maintain our moorings when we are uncertain.
Finding new ways to communicate love helps us learn to be free, to feel it more intensely, and to feel it more completely. This episode describes what many people have done to communicate love and how committing to love deeply and well makes one much happier and much more satisfied.
The human brain provides several natural methods that, when used well, can create high motivation, interest, and diligent learning. These include a child’s inherited learning style, brain functions children are born with, and several natural learning methods—such as logic, problem solving, creativity, etc. Teach these to your children, and help them progress toward mastering their own minds.
With changing sexual mores, the resulting potential harm, and increased confusion about morality, it is crucial that families rediscover their roles in promoting sexual morality for their children. Learn a five-part recipe showing how to create standards and effectively teach about moral behavior, self-respect, and impulse control.
New research findings are teaching us about the marvellous workings of the brain. Combined with research showing the effects of electronics on brain growth, we now can see the potential risks and opportunities for our children more clearly. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby describes the potential harm of hyperstimulation, explains how this affects brain growth, and also provides suggestions for how parents can promote healthy mental growth for their children.
Our forebears gave greater emphasis to the quality of language we use because language was believed to reflect on the character of the person and the quality of their ideas. If poor language was used, this likely meant there were fewer ideas that made hearts soar. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby gives suggestions about how we can learn from the past and come up with more ideas related to love, forgiveness, patience, and hopefulness.
Most great men have a strong sense of duty, honor, and responsibility, but many mentors and parents might not know how to ensure boys learn these qualities. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how to help a boy become someone filled with these qualities and one who acts when it's time. He describes induction communication, showing how to capture boys’ feelings, and explains a mentoring relationship along with boundaries and important lessons.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how, when some people attempt to lead, they aren’t successful because they fail to understand what it is that motivates people to engage and follow. Trust motivates people’s commitment, and learning the sources of trust and building it is the beginning of a leader’s ability to take people to a place they’ve never been.
There is not enough love in the world, so it is a great blessing to know how to find and feel more of it. In this episode, Dr Scoresby describes love as a healer, a behavior modifier, an antidote to condemnation and criticism, and the path to forgiveness. He describes intimacy, passion, and commitment as the three parts of love and explains how someone can create more love for themselves using these three elements as a guide.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how those in past generations tended to be self-reliant and fixed things on their own. They whistled in the dark to remove fear and create more confidence. This confidence and resilience helped them be more cautious and avoid going on wild goose chases—wisdom we could use more of.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how learning how to know what you know to be true requires a cognitive style that permits people to establish anchors and moorings. Without these conditions, some people resort to instant certainty, which makes them rigid or dogmatic. Others feel like they can’t be certain about much of anything. Learning to use your own body and mind as sources of information is one way to begin forming the type of anchors and moorings that will let you be certain—with flexibility.
Often the headlong emphasis on achievement creates serious problems for boys and eventually for men who come to believe their performance is the only measure of themselves. This episode details the parts of great achievement that include humility and other character qualities and then describes how to link those characteristics and relationship skills to a boy’s work.
Instead of allowing social forces to define and direct what girls should become, Dr. Scoresby suggests the girl herself and her family should be in charge. When this is the case, girls can more easily find the golden balance between strong individuality and success in relationships with others. They can also find more peace of mind and less anxiety and stress.
People who are successful with other people and have the fewest problems tend to communicate very differently than people whose lives are plagued with people problems. In this episode, you can learn about ten very effective forms of communication that make success with people possible and enjoyable.
Some people understand moral principles and apply them, and others understand the same principles and do nothing about them. Dr. Scoresby explains how families can play a very significant role in promoting moral character, which is the stable and consistent form of morality in every situation. This is typically the behavior parents want most.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby hits on two topics that are nearly forgotten today: first, being suspicious of too much talk because it might mean false promises, and second, understanding and valuing both sides of an issue for a discussion to have the best outcome. Compromise is not weak; it was how things got done.
The single biggest reason why people have problems with one another can be found in the ineffective forms of emotional communication they use. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about the ten most common forms of emotional communication involved in most people problems. Becoming aware of what you do is the first step to finding solutions.
Boys can be motivated by using a push and/or pull form of motivation. Dr. Scoresby explains each method, natural forms of motivation, and motivation that originates from high-quality interpersonal skills. Learn how these forms of motivation enable parents and mentors to inspire boys on their way to becoming great men.
Our pell-mell rush to test scores, paper writing, and good grades has led us to educational outcomes for many of our children that overlook the importance of developing their capacity to learn. Dr. Scoresby describes what parents can do to help their children learn better and be more excited about learning by mastering their minds.
This is Part 2 in a series about raising children in a fragmented and sexualized society. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby explains that when sexuality and isolation intrude too much, there are significant consequences, such as increased sexual activity, objectification of others, impaired person perception, and self concepts that excessively emphasize sexuality. Parents and caretakers can learn what they can do to promote healthy development when children are being reared in these high-risk conditions.
This is the first episode in a two-part series about raising healthy children in a fragmented and sexualized society. Children can feel fragmented and isolated in homes where parents are too busy to listen or where they are mistreated. Society’s hyper emphasis on sexuality in media, language, pornography, and actual sexual experience further complicates healthy growth. Dr. Scoresby explains how growing up with these two concerning social conditions can hinder children’s development, but learning about positive development and emotional growth can help parents ensure healthy development for their kids.
We can do much better by first learning about and then using the wisdom of previous generations. If we don’t, it’s lost to us—and it may be knowledge that can benefit us. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby uses three forms of social knowledge—barn burners, burrs under blankets, and feathers in your cap—to illustrate what we might have lost and how it has affected what now happens in our society.
Many people who believe they can’t be great leaders have more potential than they think. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how great leaders can take people to places they've never been. They do this by applying two parts of leadership. Learn the set of personal qualities that create respect and trust and the best principles of organizing the work to unite people and motivate them to achieve the outcomes you want.
This series is designed to describe what great leaders do. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby identifies seven myths many people believe about leaders and leadership, including the idea that women don’t have what it takes. Believing in any of these myths limits the abilities of current leaders and keeps people from even wanting to be leaders in the first place.
Mentors and teachers can help good boys become great men by helping them go through a process of taking charge of their own lives. Dr. Scoresby identifies ten steps that enable boys to progress toward a mature life of being a man who believes that the origin of his thoughts, feelings, and actions lie within rather than being unduly influenced by what is external.
Understanding principles of human development provides parents with a growth mindset that lets them know when to act and when to be patient. Dr. Scoresby explains how understanding mental, social, emotional, physical, and moral development can give parents many strategies to enhance the lives of their children.
Dr. Scoresby talks about potential problems parents may face if they are unaware of the way children grow. He teaches how parents can be more observant, more accurate in their understanding, and better able to enjoy their children and confidently provide help.
In this episode, Dr. Scoresby talks about how the internet, social divisions, and the age of deception are game changers for our children. He then explains how providing better help for them begins with understanding basic principles of human development.
This episode is the second in a two-part series on conscience. What parents can do to nurture a healthy conscience for their children depends on how well they adapt to the emotional style of their children. Dr. Scoresby describes four different styles in order to help parents apply the PIDA teaching approach. Along with tying children’s feelings to whether they do what is right or wrong—that is, help or harm someone—parents can teach their children to pay attention, interpret, discover, and find assurance from their conscience.
The idea of conscience is resurging nowadays because there has been a rapid increase in problems with impulse control, like addictions. When parents promote a healthy conscience, they are making their children less vulnerable to these types of problems. Dr. Scoresby presents several methods that help parents nurture their child’s inner voice so children recognize it, consult it, and use it to avoid harming themselves or others.
Being able to depend on someone who is reliable is the precursor for learning to be dependable. A boy can depend on a mentor for love, support, example, guidance, and correction. He can also learn to be dependable when asked to carry out a course of action which results from an assignment or request of another. Dr. Scoresby explains the process of teaching dependability so mentors can promote this positive virtue.
Helping or influencing a boy depends on the creation of an emotional tie between the boy and those who guide him. It is created when the mentor communicates a desire to understand the boy in a unique way. This may include understanding his social and psychological stage or his type of intelligence. Using these tools will help motivate the boy to participate in this important emotional tie.
When we learn about applying moral concepts and principles, it becomes clear that family relationships are an excellent environment in which to teach about and apply them. This is how and why strong families are the foundation of a society. Dr. Scoresby explains how you can organize your family to ensure that the lessons your children learn within the family are displayed by them outside the family. This can really strengthen your parenting.
Moral behavior can be applied easier if we understand some things about the origin of how and why moral principles and concepts evolve. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby discusses God, science, and society and shows how these origins lead to three different types of morality, which is where we usually get our ideas. You can see where the ideas came from and hear examples of how to apply them.
We are learning more about morality, ethics, and character, but the real question is whether we want to use and apply what we know. In this episode, Dr. Scoresby defines morality, ethics, and character and describes how applying the significant ideas found in each of these three knowledge domains can improve our lives as individuals and enhance our friendships, marriages, and family relationships.
Dr. Scoresby identifies four environments where violence tends to take place as a beginning step in developing an effective method of altering it. Knowing and changing what happens in these situations will be an essential part of any strategy we design to stop it. We must stop it where it is planted and where it grows.
Grappling with the urgent need to stop the violence around us requires that we understand more about the elements of violence and how they lead us to strategies for preventing it. Dr. Scoresby talks about common ingredients in all acts of violence: 1) intention, 2) an active perpetrator, 3) a victim or victims, 4) the context or situation in which it occurs, and 5) a culture that tolerates violence instead of cultivating nonviolence. Included are several examples for parents and children.
Dr. Scoresby talks about some of the most common obstacles to happiness and what can be done to remove or overcome them. Since most obstacles to happiness lie within us, in order to address and solve them, we need to look closely at ourselves and learn how to organize ourselves to overcome them.