Children & Parenting

Emotion Coaching: How to Better Connect with Your Children

Who taught you to regulate your emotions? Most of us cannot point to a specific person or moment when we learned to control our anger, to express love, to handle our fears. You can do your children a huge, lifelong favor by using a technique — emotion coaching — to teach your children self-regulation. The advantage? Less work for you ...

By |November 21st, 2022|

My Wife is a Stay-at-Home Mom … Will I Have to Pay All Her Bills If We Separate?

Separation and divorce in Virginia are very, very old. The 1607 Jamestown colonists reported abandonment and divorce among the Native Americans they encountered, according to Encyclopedia Virginia1. The Powhatans recognized the need for each gender to contribute to daily life. Any disruption to that model needed quick remedies. Stay-at-home spouses still need support more than four centuries later. Equitable Division ...

By |November 7th, 2022|

5 Huge Reasons You Shouldn’t Fight In Front of Your Children

The longest bare-knuckle fight in history lasted six hours, fifteen minutes for 17 rounds, according to Australian Geographic1. The 1855 spectacle is not meant to set a bar for you and your spouse to overcome. Consider these reasons not to fight in front of your children. When You Fight, Everyone Loses A fight necessarily involves sides, and when your children ...

By |October 17th, 2022|

What is Considered an Unsafe Environment for a Child in Virginia?

Hatmaker may be a funny-sounding last name, but that is the only thing funny about Jordan Hatmaker. The 35-year-old Virginia Beach skydiving native survived a terrifying freefall of 13,500 feet when her parachute tangled. We emphasize her age only because she was not a child. Had she been a minor, such a stunt would qualify as an “unsafe environment.” But ...

By |September 19th, 2022|

Why Would You Get Separated Instead of Divorced?

Barroom lawyers are interesting folks. If you want to start a friendly—or not-so-friendly — argument spirited discussion in a Virginia bar, take bets on the concept of “legal separation in Virginia.” Hint: Virginia has no mechanism for “legal separation.” A married couple is either married or divorced, and during the time before divorce, you two are separated but still married ...

By |September 12th, 2022|

My Wife and I Don’t Agree on How We Discipline Our Children

Teachers often use teaching methods their own teachers used on them, sports coaches rely on outdated training from their own performance years, and parents discipline their children using techniques their parents used on them. Your wife may have been raised in a talk-it-out home while you suffered with The Paddle. What can you two do so you present a united ...

By |September 5th, 2022|

Does Marijuana Use Impact My Virginia Child Custody Case?

The Cannabis Control Authority1 sounds like a sci-fi title, but it is a real Virginia agency, courtesy of the General Assembly and then-governor Northam. Since July 1, 2021, every Virginian has had the right to grow up to four marijuana plants2 and possess up to an ounce of marijuana. The law also hastens expungements of past pot convictions. How does ...

By |July 25th, 2022|

Does an 18-Year-Old Have to Follow a Custody/Visitation Agreement?

In Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” a lowly shepherd discovers an abandoned baby. He says, “Mercy on ’s, a bairn! A very pretty bairn. A boy or a child, I wonder?” And the audience laughs, because “boy or child” sounds like an actor forgetting his lines. But in 16th century England, a “child” was a girl. And today, in Virginia, an ...

By |July 18th, 2022|
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