When my family had a conversation about summer screen time a month ago, our agreements and ideas felt so full of promise. They didn’t result from an idyllic family summit or long formal meeting, but the conversation was earnest and grounded in our most positive vision of what life could look like in the ever-shifting… Read More →
“Broken!” Miles exclaimed. “It’s broken!” he repeated, his frustration building. It took me a moment to catch on. My nearly three-year-old was standing in front of the TV, furiously trying to swipe at Daniel Tiger with his index finger. Then it clicked—he was trying to move the character like he would on a tablet. And… Read More →
“Hey, buddy?” I asked my then four-year-old. “Can you hear my voice?” “Uh-huh,” he answered without looking at me, absentmindedly grabbing a french fry from the plate in front of him without ever moving his eyes toward his meal. I moved my hands in front of his face to interrupt the spell cast over him… Read More →
“Your turn!” one of my kids shouted to the other. I looked over to the kitchen table to see that they were engaged in one one of the many card games they had picked up at school. Buoyed by the warm glow of sibling cooperation, I turned to go upstairs. It turns out that the… Read More →
“I try to have a positive attitude about it and give him a fresh start,” a parent recently shared with me. “But it seems like every day there is a blow up when it’s time to stop gaming. It’s miserable.” “Ugh. That sounds so hard,” I responded picturing similar scenes playing out in my own… Read More →
We all have well rehearsed parenting phrases that emerge at different stages in our kids’ lives. Usually they pop into our heads or out of our mouths before we’ve even had time to think them through. You aren’t alone if the dominant phrase during middle and high school is, “PUT. THAT. [INSERT TECH DEVICE]. DOWN.”… Read More →
“Is there such a thing as being too connected?” A parent recently asked. “What do you mean?” I responded. “Well,” she went on, “Obviously I spent a lot of time with our eighth grader in the past two years. We stayed really close and overall did well managing distance learning and all that. But now… Read More →
Whether it is with our toddlers or teens, we all know what it is like to witness big feelings completely overwhelm our kids. This isn’t just because life can be overwhelming and stressful (though it certainly can be). It is also because the cortex, the part of our kids’ brains that helps them manage big… Read More →
“My day was horrible,” my youngest sobbed into his pillow recently at bedtime. My mind immediately raced to two divergent responses at nearly the same time. My first reaction was, “Oh no! That bad?” I had no trouble coming up with all kinds of things that might have made his day horrible, from trouble with… Read More →
Last week I heard myself say in an over-tired and annoyed retort to my kids, “I have asked you every morning this week where your masks are!” What followed was a well rehearsed morning scramble punctuated by exasperated exchanges on all sides. This was far from the morning ritual we aspire to as we all… Read More →
