Ep. 238: Dr. Paul Kesselman — How to Have Great Communication with Your Kids at Any Age

My guest this week is Dr. Paul Kesselman, a clinical psychologist and close friend of mine. It was Paul’s second time on the podcast (the previous episode is here) and another great discussion. This time we focused on how to keep open lines of communication with our kids.

Topics we discussed included:

• The advantages of keeping open dialogue with our kids
• Creating a safe environment for our kids to talk with us
• The downside of coming to our kids with an agenda
• Talking at, to, or with kids
• Making sure children are engaged when we’re speaking with them
• Capitalizing on moments when our kids are available to talk with us
• How early to start thinking about open dialogue with children
• Many children’s preference to go to Mom to talk rather than Dad
• How to deal respond when our kids do something wrong
• Shifting from content to process with our kids
• Remembering our goals in our interactions with our children
• Our expectations for how children “should” respond to our critiques and corrections
• Letting kids know we’re there while also respecting their privacy and space
• The downsides of jumping in to fix or resolve things for our kids
• The book Paul referenced, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee (affiliate link)

Paul Kesselman, PsyD, completed his doctoral degree in psychology at Yeshiva University. He has taught college level courses in child psychology. He has been working in private practice seeing individuals, families, and running groups since 2003.

Paul works with children as young as four years of age and sees children, pre- teens, adolescents, families, young adults, and adults. He has also conducted research studies on social anxiety at New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Paul grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He and his wife have five children; he enjoys spending time with his family, listening to music, and playing baseball when he is not helping patients and families.

He has a passion for his work and enjoys the opportunity to work with issues such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, learning issues, OCD, anger issues, impulse control disorders, school avoidance and refusal, and adjustments issues.

Paul has spoken at both public and private area schools on a variety of topics including ADHD, anxiety, special needs children, and school anxiety.

Learn more about Paul and his therapy practice at his website.