Your Children Will Give You What You Seem to Expect
When parents are overly preoccupied with something their child does, the child may think the parents need to be thusly preoccupied, and so increase the behavior's frequency.
The College Mental Health Crisis: Focus on Suicide
College is often said to be among the best times of our lives. Yet today college students are seriously stressed and have few mental health resources. Suicide is a serious risk.
The Surprising Effects of Parents’ Sleep Deprivation
Sleep deprivation inhibits parents' ability to manage their emotions and reactivity to negative stimuli. It may also interfere with their verbal and nonverbal expressions of joy.
Finding the “Why” of Your Special-Needs Child’s Behavior
Behavior is a form of communication, and more often than not, especially in young children, it is not communicating a desire to be non-compliant or troublesome.
Learning to Manage Emotions Boosts Children’s Well-being
Schools lay the groundwork for cognitive development, especially in academic areas. But what about emotional development?
Life Skills to Have Before Starting Kindergarten
Life skills are ways we learn, through experience and teaching, to manage our behavior in and outside of our families.
Why Is It So Difficult to Stop Obsessing About Your Child?
Do you obsess about your child? Is it wearing you out?
What Motivates Teens to Exercise?
Unless actively involved in sports, many students entering high school drop their activity levels to a minimum, setting the stage for sedentary-related adult diseases. In a new pilot study, researchers set out to investigate what types of energy level...
3 Strategies to Talk With Kids About Suicidal Thoughts
There is no age limit for suicidal thoughts. Parents and healthcare professionals can learn to talk openly and safely with children about suicide.
New Approach Reduces Teen Risk for Drug Addiction
Emerging research suggest programs that ultimately improve impulse control are the best method to prevent substance abuse.
Drug use in adolescence is often linked to later substance-abuse problems. The new study finds that key risk factors include a c...
The Missing Piece for Many Parents: Time to Reflect
Stress, exhaustion, and overwork may be edging out the time parents need to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the parenting lessons that they glean from their experiences.
Rethinking the College Mental Health Crisis
Do bubble wrap and special snowflake myths distract us from the realities today's students face? A biopsychosocial lens can help us find ways to cultivate agility and resilience.
Are You Addicted to Your Kid?
It's possible for people to be addicted to other people—including their children.
When Your Teenager’s “In Love”
Why Do You Think We Call That First Love a Crush?
Adolescence: Your Parenting Work Is Not Over Yet
A parent’s job changes at a child’s adolescence. Be available while letting go. Argue. Laugh. Love the person your child really is, underneath all the identities they’re trying on
Harsh Parenting Can Hurt Academics and Peer Relationships
A new study helps to explain how parenting affects children’s educational outcomes via relationships with peers, sexual behavior, and delinquency. Children exposed to harsh parenting are at greater risk of having poor school outcomes. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh discovered that both direct and indirect effects of parenting play a role in shaping children’s behavior, as well as their relationships with peers. The study appears in the journal Child Development.
Overnights Good for Divorced Dads, Moms and Their Babies
New research shows that children of divorce — no matter what age — benefit from having time with each parent, which includes sleepovers at each parent’s house. “Not only did overnight parenting time with fathers during infancy and toddlerhood cause no harm to the mother-child relationship, it actually appeared to benefit children’s relationships with both their mothers and their fathers,” said Dr. William Fabricius, an associate professor of psychology at Arizona State University and lead author of the study. “Children who had overnights with their fathers when they were infants or toddlers had higher-quality relationships with their fathers, as well ...
Experts Recommend More Interventions for At-Risk Youth
A disturbing number of youth suffer from psychological and psychiatric problems ranging from depression to substance abuse. And although highly effective, science-based intervention programs do exist for troubled young people and their families, there...
What to Teach Young Athletes About Bullying
Bullying is a deplorable behavior that has no place in sports.
The Most Important 5 Minutes You Can Spend to Stop Bullying
Young people don’t care if we have all of the right words or if we sometimes give “out-there” advice. What they do care about is that we genuinely care about them.