Welcome to a new season of The Allergy Mom Podcast! In this new season, I am looking forward to having more guests and topics that address mental health, parenting, and family life issues when living a life with a family member with severe allergy, anaphylaxis, or a related, chronic health condition.

In this episode, I interview Dr. William J. Doherty, the past-President of the National Council on Family Relations, the oldest interdisciplinary family studies organization in North America.

About Bill:
William J. Doherty, Ph.D., is Professor of Family Social Science and Director of the Citizen Professional Center at the University of Minnesota. He is also a practicing marriage and family therapist and co-founder of The Doherty Relationship Institute, LLC, a new venture designed to help engaged couples through couples on the brink. 

Bill has received the Significant Contribution to the Field of Marriage and Family Therapy Award from the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

He is a national leader in the movement to solve the problem of overscheduled kids and underconnected families. Prominent in this work are four community initiatives focused on reclaiming family time in the hurry-up world of contemporary childhood.

He has appeared in a wide range of national media outlets about this issue, including Oprah, The New York Times, USA Today, all of the major network morning shows and evening news programs, Time, and National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation.

His book Take Back Your Kids: Confident Parenting in Turbulent Times (Sorin Books) is a call for parents to assume leadership in their families, instead of anxiously surrendering children to the peer culture and the consumer culture. It won Forward Magazine’s Parenting Book of the Year Award for books from independent publishers.

His book Take Back Your Marriage: Sticking Together in a World That Pulls Us Apart (Guilford Press), describes how marriage has been undermined by the me-first consumer culture, by frenetic busyness, and by over-indulgent parenting, and shows how couples can take back their marriages through rock-solid commitment, rituals of connection and love, and participation in communities that support their marriages. It won the Self-Help Book of the Year Award for books from independent publishers.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

• Family traditions and meals planned with intention to create a safe and fun celebration without the drama
• How to navigate difficult conversations with extended family members about your child’s allergies
• How to discuss and plan with family members to get them involved in the creation of intentional family practices and to improve family life through defining roles
• Bill’s expert insights on how to make changes in the family in ways that won’t be met with resistance and will be accepted by the rest of the family
• How a chronic health issues is what Bill calls, “A call to consciousness”
• “Love and Limits… and leadership” – our role as parents
• “Pinch points & Crunch Points” – when to pick our battles and how to prioritize family 
• Family dinners are the single most important thing you can do as a family
• Why you should force your kids to do stuff with the family even if they don’t want to…
• Why Bill thinks your kids’ opinions of you really don’t matter until they’re 25!
• Peach & Pit, Rose & Thorn, Grateful for & Hopeful for…. my faves! Sharing without Grilling
• Bill’s political work to address polarization and divide -using Couples therapy to heal a country!
• Covid & Family life and what happens after the pandemic ends
• …and more!