Helping A Child Whose Parent Is Struggling With Addiction

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What can you do if you’re a teacher, a neighbor, a churchgoer, a coach … and you suspect a child is being impacted by a parent’s addiction? Maybe you’re thinking, “I’d love to help but it’s not my business.” Or “I want to reach out but I don’t know much about addiction.” Remember that episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, where …

What No One Tells You About Becoming a Mother

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A psychiatrist explains that difficult emotions are natural in new motherhood—and how partners and society at large can be supportive. You can find plenty of practical information out there about pregnancy and parenting, but what about the emotional rollercoaster and identity shift that occurs for many women and their partners when they have a child? We don’t talk much about …

Why All Parents Should Talk With Their Kids About Social Identity

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A majority of parents rarely, if ever, discuss race/ethnicity, gender, class or other categories of social identity with their kids, according to a new, nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 parents conducted by Sesame Workshop and NORC at the University of Chicago. The researchers behind Sesame Street say the fact that so many families aren’t talking about these issues …

Is Your Child Struggling in School? Talk to Your Pediatrician

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The American Academy of Pediatrics has just issued a report on what pediatricians can — and should — do to help “school-aged children who are not progressing academically.” Dr. Arthur Lavin, one of the lead authors of the report and the chairman of the A.A.P. committee on the psychosocial aspects of child and family health, said that pediatricians can play …

Relief for Children’s Migraine Headaches

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New guidelines for therapies for children and adolescents can reduce or eliminate attacks of migraine and greatly shorten their duration. My grandson Stefan was about 8 years old when he began to get migraine headaches. As soon as he could after getting home from school, he would lie down and go to sleep, awakening an hour or two later, usually …

How Children Evolved To Whine

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And how to stop them from driving you bonkers. Little kids are diabolically engineered to make their parents do what they want. That’s the overwhelming impression I got when I talked to a bunch of academics about the origins of whining. “Children are good at co-opting whatever arsenal of behaviors they have” to get parental attention, said James A. Green, …

What Makes a ‘Good’ Parent?

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Parents can feel inadequate if they fall short of the idealized view of intensive parenting, in which they act directly and decisively in the child’s life. Last year when Patrick Ishizuka published a parenting study, he set off another round of discussion about what we call good parenting, and who is able to do it. The study looked at the …

The Gap Between The Science On Kids And Reading, And How It Is Taught

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Mark Seidenberg is not the first researcher to reach the stunning conclusion that only a third of the nation’s schoolchildren read at grade level. The reasons are numerous, but one that Seidenberg cites over and over again is this: The way kids are taught to read in school is disconnected from the latest research, namely how language and speech actually …

How to Safeguard Children Against Cyberbullying

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Recognizing warning signs and documenting the bullying may help, experts say. The bullying started with some teasing and mean comments, but escalated significantly when Mallory Grossman, 12, a cheerleader and gymnast from New Jersey, began middle school. It spread to social media where a group of children tormented her. They took pictures of Mallory at school, without her knowledge, posted …

What If You Could Change Your Child’s Future In One Hour Every Week?

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On a summer afternoon, Ciara Whelan, a teacher at a New York City elementary school, knocks on the apartment door of one of her students in the Bronx. Melissa, the student’s mother, welcomes her guest with a huge platter of snacks — shrimp rolls and dill dip. Melissa explains that this past school year — third grade — her daughter, …

We Have Ruined Childhood

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For youngsters these days, an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they’re miserable. According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War. A 2019 study published in the Journal …

Why Affluent Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test

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Affluence—not willpower—seems to be what’s behind some kids’ capacity to delay gratification. The marshmallow test is one of the most famous pieces of social-science research: Put a marshmallow in front of a child, tell her that she can have a second one if she can go 15 minutes without eating the first one, and then leave the room. Whether she’s …

How Doctors Can Stop Stigmatizing — And Start Helping — Kids With Obesity

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Kids with obesity face a host of health problems related to their weight, like high blood pressure, diabetes and joint problems. Research points to another way heavier children and teens are at risk: their own doctors’ bias. This prejudice has real health consequences for kids, making families less likely to show up for appointments or get recommended vaccines. I am …

I’m Darker Than My Daughter. Here’s Why It Matters.

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Breaching colorism with my little girl sent me reeling back into my childhood shame. mostly sweet. After making our way through brushing teeth and getting into pajamas, my daughter and I lay down on her bedroom floor to sing songs, the final step before crawling into bed. When I tried to curl up next to my 4-year-old, though, I sensed …

Kindness Vs. Cruelty: Helping Kids Hear The Better Angels Of Their Nature

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Are humans born kind? We both assumed, as parents of young children, that kindness is just something our kids would pick up by osmosis, because we love them. It’s a common assumption. “We often just expect people to be kind without talking about it,” says Jennifer Kotler, vice president of research and evaluation at Sesame Workshop. “We think, ‘Oh, you’re …

At Your Wits’ End With A Screen-Obsessed Kid?

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Geoff and Ellie live in a suburban Chicago neighborhood that looks familiar from movies like Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — both filmed in the area. They have three kids — Nathan, 5, Benji, 11, and Abby, 14 — and they’re worried that all three are too into their screens. An all-too-common experience Ninety-eight percent of families …

Can Screens Help Your Child’s Brain? 4 Tips To Get The Most From Kids’ Media

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The family that plays video games together stays together. When parents become digital mentors, children can learn empathy and resilience and prepare for careers. From NPR’s Life Kit, Here are four ways to harness the advantages of screen time. 1. Whenever possible, share screens with your kids. With the littlest kids, treat screens like a picture book. As they get …

What Kids Can Learn From A Water Balloon Fight

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“Don’t chase me!” is one of my daughter’s favorite invitations. Of course, this is a cue to run shrieking through the house, grab her up in a fireman’s carry, hold her upside down and finally nosh on her legs as she mock-protests, “Don’t eat me! I’m a person, not a snack!” As part of the “Men in America” series on …

Why Every Student Needs Caring Adults in Their Life

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A new book argues that caring adult mentors are critical to students’ success in school and in life. Being a public school counselor can feel like barely contained chaos. In the large urban school where I worked, I was constantly interrupted by students in distress, lock-down drills, teachers who needed support, and parents seeking guidance. I often joked that the …

When Schools Restrain Students

When Schools Restrain Students

Every time Jennifer Tidd’s son was secluded or restrained at school, she received a letter from his teachers. Her son has autism and behavioral issues, and over three years — from 2013 to 2016 — Tidd got 437 of those letters. “I see this pile of documents that’s 5 inches tall that represents hundreds of hours of being locked into …

How To Help A Kid Survive Early Puberty

How To Help A Kid Survive Early Puberty

From surging hormones and acne to body hair and body odor, puberty can be a rocky transition for any kid. But girls and boys who start physically developing sooner than their peers face particular social and emotional challenges, researchers find. “Puberty is a pivotal time in kids’ lives, and early maturing boys and girls may be more likely to struggle …

Drowning In Parenting Advice? Here’s Some Advice For That

Drowning In Parenting Advice? Here's Some Advice For That

At my baby’s six-month appointment a few months back, I got a one-pager from the pediatrician titled “Starting Solid Foods.” “It is critical that the baby develop a taste for rice cereal at the beginning, to offset the loss of iron from formula or breast milk,” it reads. Sounds serious. Then come the all caps: “THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF …

Prenatal Testing Can Ease Minds Or Heighten Anxieties

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It wasn’t hard for Shara Watkins to get pregnant. It was hard for her to stay pregnant. In 2016, she was devastated by two miscarriages. With the help of several medications, she successfully carried a child last year. Shara and her husband, Robert, were elated when she reached her second trimester, the phase when the highest risk of miscarriage subsides. …

What Parents Can Do About Gendered Toys

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With Rainbow Butterfly Unicorn Kitty on one side and bulbous-headed Fart Ninjas on the other, the gender divide was impossible to avoid at the North American International Toy Fair in New York City back in February. The light-up Barbie mermaids vying for space with Gatling-style foam-dart blasters in Manhattan’s Javits Center raised a question: Have toys really progressed since our …

How Much Sleep Do Kids Need? Not Such A Mystery After All

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Are doctors really clueless on how much sleep children need? That was the provocative premise of a study we reported on recently. It sparked a lot of attention from parents like me, who were left wondering where pediatricians come up those recommendations for hours of nightly sleep. It turns out that the study also sparked attention — no, let’s make …

Building Teens Into Strong Readers — By Letting Them Teach

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Two afternoons a week, Mikala Tardy walks six blocks from Eastern High School to Payne Elementary School, not far from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. She signs in at the front desk just after 3:30 p.m. and makes her way to a classroom, where she’ll be tutoring second- and third-graders who are full of energy after the school day. Today, …

The Costs of Motherhood Are Rising

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College-educated women in particular underestimate the demands of parenthood and the difficulties of combining working and parenting, new research shows. An economic mystery of the last few decades has been why more women aren’t working. A new paper offers one answer: Most plan to, but are increasingly caught off guard by the time and effort it takes to raise children. …

A Rise In Depression Could Be Linked To Social Media Use

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A study published Thursday in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology finds the percentage of U.S. teens and young adults reporting mental distress, depression and suicidal thoughts and actions has risen significantly over the past decade. While these problems also increased among adults 26 and older, the increase was not nearly as large as among younger people. Depression Treatment Raleigh Do …

For Some Teens With Debilitating Pain, The Treatment Is More Pain

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There’s a before, and there’s an after. In the before, it was a relatively normal night. The kind of night any 14-year-old girl might have. Devyn ate dinner, watched TV and had small, unremarkable interactions with her family. Then, around 10 o’clock, she decided to turn in. “I went to bed as I normally would, and then all of a …

For Kids With Anxiety, Parents Learn To Let Them Face Their Fears

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The first time Jessica Calise can remember her 9-year-old son Joseph’s anxiety spiking was about a year ago, when he had to perform at a school concert. He said his stomach hurt and he might throw up. “We spent the whole performance in the bathroom,” she recalls. After that, Joseph struggled whenever he had to do something alone, like showering …