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Kids

Teenager looking at his phone with a smile on his face, demonstrating good digital citizenship

Parenting for Digital Citizenship

Many parents share your love/hate relationship with technology. This ambivalence makes a lot of sense! If you synthesize the mountain of research on technology’s impact on kids it boils down to this: there is a lot of incredible opportunity and a lot of stuff our kids could do without. So how do we respond? The…  Read More

Teenage girl trying to study amidst lots of digital distractions

Digital Distractions and Building Your Child’s Focused Attention

A number of years ago a parent, Eleanor, contacted me after a talk to ask me a question about digital distractions. Eleanor had recently attended her son Jeremy’s school conferences and was surprised to learn that he was having a very difficult time focusing in class. “Dr. Walsh,” she exclaimed, “It doesn’t make any sense!…  Read More

Teenager multitasking while doing homework

Ten Ways to Improve Attention in Children

What’s going on with children and attention in the digital age? Video games, texts, whirling toys, and non-stop entertainment have made it hard to strengthen children’s focused attention systems. Here are some suggestions: Give babies only a couple toys at a time, so they learn to focus on one. Limit television, video games, and movies…  Read More

Two teenage boys playing video games

Video Game Addiction: Symptom Checklist

Are you worried about your child’s video game habits? Take a look at this video game addiction symptoms checklist I created to see if you have cause for alarm. While this is not a diagnostic tool, it can help you assess whether or not games are an unhealthy part of your child’s life and if…  Read More

Teaching empathy by attending to emotional cues of baby

Teaching Empathy

Dr. Dave just wrote a post about mirror neurons, exploring our built-in capacity to grasp the minds and experiences of others by simulating them in our brains. While he focused on the relationship between media violence and mirror neurons in that post, he also shared that mirror neurons are the basis for empathy – the…  Read More

Neurons in brain development photo of inner brain

Brain Development Basics

Each child is walking around with a miracle perched on top of their shoulders. For a long time, the brain was a very difficult thing to study. Now powerful machines allow us to peer into the inner workings of the brain. We have a better sense of how the brain works and how it grows…  Read More

Teen looking sadly at phone while two other teens laugh in the background, indicating that she is experiencing cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying Tips

Preparing our children for kindness online and offline is part of raising kids in the 21st century. It can be tempting to wait until there is an incident to have serious conversations about cyberbullying, cruelty and online drama with your kids. Yet our kids need us to talk early and talk often. As soon as…  Read More

Sensory Processing Disorder

Do you understand anything about sensory processing disorder? We have a 3-year-old grandson who has been diagnosed with this. His parents have tried listening therapy with high and low pitches to organize his nervous system and are doing things to provide propriosepter (spelling?) input. Just wondering if you have any ideas about this or know…  Read More