Do You Know - Number Two

DID YOU KNOW . . .

Family spending on a child born in 2009 would total $286,050 by age 17. A two-child family would cost about $600,000.

*Source: Newsweek August 16, 2010

What I don’t know is what makes up that number. Is it only specific expense outlays for the child or does it include a pro rata share of the family vacations, cost of housing, the family car(s) or what? The average annual cost then is $16,853 for a child and $35,294 for two children.

Hard to image any average middle class family having that much money, I would just like to have a breakdown of how those numbers were compiled.

You know the old expression by Mark Twain, “there are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics.

One more U.S. statistic for you to ponder. In 2005, the median personal income for the population age 25 or older was $39,336. (Median means the one in the middle so half of the workers earn less and half of the workers earn more.)

For more information, feel free to contact me at drbetherickson@aol.com or 888-546-1580.

Do You Know - Number One

DID YOU KNOW . . .

Children who eat dinner with their families at least five times a week are 40 times less likely to be overweight.

I hypothesize that this is because the shared family connection nourishes them far better than sweet or salty snacks.

Ideally, each person gets an opportunity to add to the conversation that goes on around the table. Even babies can be encouraged to join the conversation, even if only gibberish.

A shared family meal gives everyone the vehicle for keeping in touch with each other and therefore, it offers the opportunity to strengthen the fabric of that family’s life. At the same time, it builds the self-esteem and sense of belonging of even the smallest family member.

Failure to Fearless

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You can listen to all 22 interviews for FREE...
In fact, you can attend ALL 22 calls in the Failure to Fearless telesummit series as my GUEST.
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I do hope you take advantage of this opportunity and FREE is a very good price. I am always looking for ways to help change the world and I believe this is one. Empower yourself to take charge of your future. I implore you to invest the time to listen to these teleseminars. Knowledge is priceless.
Dr. Beth

Dr. Beth’s Book Nook

Today I am instituting a new feature on my blog called Dr. Beth's Book Nook. Because I get so many wonderful books from potential guests who want to come on my radio show, I have access to some great titles. And that is how I found Chris Tatevosian’s book LIFE INTERRUPTED – IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT ME.

In his memoir, Chris shares what he has learned through his own personal mistakes in being self-absorbed with his own illness. And this, more than anything, destroyed his first marriage.

Chris has had Multiple Sclerosis for thirty years. As a consequence of this dreadful, degenerative disease, he lives his life in a wheel chair and is legally blind. And yet, he remains undaunted.

Through my decades of being a therapist, I can understand the stresses that a chronic physical disability can cause in any relationship, especially when a spouse or loved one becomes a care giver by default. It often isn't practical or affordable to hire care givers. And so the needs required to care for someone with a physical disability often fall on the spouse. It is easier to see the difficulties of the person with the disability, so we may fail to see the stress that this causes on the care giving spouse.

Chris's book openly and honestly discusses these issues and shares many personal examples to support his ideas in the book. It is well-written and worth reading. Even if you are thinking, "This doesn't apply to me," unfortunately any one of us can find ourselves in Chris's situation. In a single second, an accident can place you in a wheel chair, incapacitated for the rest of your life. It even happened to Superman, a.k.a. Christopher Reeve.

You can obtain this book directly from Chris's website at: www.lifeinterrupted-nolonger.com. It truly is a profile in courage.

Live Conversation with Dr. Beth

People have asked me if there was any way to ask follow up questions after listening to my Relationships 101 conversations on webtalkradio.net.

Because you decide when to listen and there is not a specific day and time I was reluctant to try to have a live call in portion with my show.

Because of you, the listener's interest, I am goingto try this on a test basis I have created a venue where you can call and engage with me live to address issues and answer questions you may have about life, relationships, family, grief theoretical concepts or other emotional concerns.

I invite you to join me for a follow-up to these conversations this Thursday evening October 28, 2020, at 8:00 Eastern 7:00 Central 6:00 Mountain 5:00 Pacific called “Live with Dr. Beth.”

If you would like to attend, please send an e-mail to me at drbetherickson@aol.com.

Put “Talk to Dr. Beth” in the subject line, and we’ll send you the call-in information.

If you would like me to specifically talk with you about a specific issue send me the question in your response email. When I know you are on the call as soon as a natural break occurs I will start discussing with you the issue you provided to me.

I truly hope you can join me. Hope to see you there.

Please feel free to invite others to join these conversations. It is not necessary to be on my mailing list to call in. If you know of a family member or friend who is up against some issue please do invite them to call in.

Just forward a copy of this email to them. I will not have a specific topic but will engage with callers to address their issue regardless of where that takes the conversation.

Dedicated to your health and happiness.

Dr. Beth

What Are Your Biggest Regrets?

Next month, I will be doing an interview on “Relationships 101” on the topic of regrets. A surprisingly large number of people – 30, to be exact - responded to a query I recently posted asking people what are their regrets. That floored me. In fact, I almost didn’t post that query, thinking I’d probably get only a handful of people responding. Instead, I got a large outpouring of people’s heartfelt answers. It almost felt to me as if I were reading people’s confessions.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We all have regrets of one kind or another. Maybe we still remember the time we didn’t help someone when we could have. Or when we were curt with a Customer Service representative. Or maybe when we betrayed ourselves by not pursuing our own dreams in the service of someone else’s vision of what our life should be like.

What follows is a list of some of those regrets. See if you recognize yourself in any of them.

• Being banished from the family because of the mistakes I’ve made in my life.
• Letting my Mother’s ideas for me stand in my way.
• Not pursuing my dream of being a drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
• Marrying the wrong person and staying too long.
• Trusting the wrong person who then betrayed my trust.
• Being overly concerned about what others thought of me.
• Doing drugs.
• Neglecting my children until it was too late.
• Not sticking with my goals, dreams, and passions.
• Letting fear rule my life.
• Not going far enough with my education.
• Surviving a life-threatening illness and then spending the next 25 years believing I didn’t deserve to survive.
• Being jealous of my little sister and coming to grips with that too late to make amends.
• Trying to handle my son’s drug addiction on my own.
• Not doing all I could to help workers at Ground Zero after 9/11, which is my biggest personal failing.
• Not being more attentive to a parent before s/he died.
• Not believing in myself.
• Doing too much too young and failing in the process.
• Switching my kids from Catholic schools to public schools.

The task for each of them now is to find a way to understand and to forgive themselves and others who they believe wronged them.

And that’s the hard part.

Hey Control Freak!! - Want to Stop??

People often ask me, “How can I stop being such a ‘control freak?’”

The first step is to recognize that you are being one. Often, others tend to shy away from those who are being controlling. But those who are controlling don’t often get the message. It is much too subtle for them to discern.

After all, no dialogue is possible with those who insist that “It’s my way or the highway.” Neither is collaboration and mutuality.

Here are some tips and sure signs that you are being controlling.

You know you’re controlling if:
Ten Tip Offs
• You must dominate conversations to avoid feeling invisible
• You enjoy bullying people with your anger
• You have to be “right”
• You constantly feel “swamped”
• You resist learning how to delegate
• You seldom take vacations, and you’re proud of that fact
• You insist on being the center of attention, and if you’re not, you feel deflated and worthless
• You actually believe that no one else can do what you do
• You can’t trust other people to do their job or other tasks they have taken responsibility for, so you micro-manage
• People ask you lots of questions, because they are afraid of doing things “wrong” in your eyes

Once you can see yourself doing these practices you can then figure out what fuels them, it will make it a lot easier for you to stop. The basis most often is from your early childhood so think about what made you uncomfortable when you were young, that is always a good starting point for your development of a controlling personality.

Often people who are married to “control freaks” exhaust themselves trying not to lose themselves. Yes, the ultimate “control freak” controls by violence or threats of violence, intimidation, name calling, sarcasm and put downs. These, of course, wreak havoc on intimate relationships.