Weekly notes and longer essays. Plainspoken parenting, written by a teacher.
Stop letting your kid change the song in the car
A small parenting pet peeve that's actually a discomfort-tolerance lesson hiding in plain sight.
Your kid can't tell time the way you do
Your 12-year-old has taken a thousand showers. He still doesn't know how long one takes. That's not defiance — it's a missing skill, and the skill has a name.
Why your 12-year-old can't take responsibility yet
If your 12-year-old can't take responsibility for the backpack on the floor, you don't have a discipline problem. You have an emotional intelligence gap — and it's the variable underneath everything else.
They're not lying to disrespect you. They're lying to stay close to you.
When your kid lies about the candy wrapper in their hand, they aren't testing you. They're protecting themselves from you. The fix is quieter than you think.
Catch the turnaround
After your next fight, your kid will give you a four-second window. What you do with it is what they'll remember about love.
Executive function isn't built through reminders
The hundredth reminder doesn't work because reminders were never going to build the skill in the first place.
It's an inside job. You can't get inside.
The number one concern for American parents is their child's mental health. Here's what we actually control.
Apathy isn't a character flaw. It's armor.
When your kid shrugs at the thing they used to love, they're not telling you who they are. They're telling you what they're protecting.
I've spent years trying to fix the slow kid. I think the slow kid is trying to fix me.
Yelling at your kid to hurry up is the thing slowing your morning down. Here's the neuroscience — and a different way in.
Your kid already knows.
Every time you try to prove you're right or drive the point home, you're robbing them of the chance to draw that conclusion themselves.
Take care of your own backyard.
It took me 20 years, hundreds of students, and 3 kids to understand what my mother meant.
When they can't name it, they blame it.
There are 3,000 words for feelings in English. Our kids have access to maybe twelve. Here's what happens when the vocabulary runs out.
Autonomy grows in the space we don't occupy.
My son is batting .090 and loves baseball more than any sport in the world. The reason is his coach — and what his coach doesn't do.