How My Need to Clean Was a Childhood Coping Skill
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ~E.E. Cummings When I was a little girl, I had the smallest bedroom in the house. It was tiny. Honestly, probably the size of a small walk-in closet. But it was mine. And for the first time, I got to choose what it […]
What Happens When Parents Say “I Was Wrong”
A teen girl approaches her parents with a grievance: She believes she is treated unfairly. “I feel like you’re giving my older brother much more privileges. It’s not just my age, I feel like you trust him more than you’ll ever trust me.” Jean-Michel Robichaud, a psychologist at the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick, […]
What Research Says About Gender Representation in…
In April of this year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) called for an investigation into the TV ratings system to assess whether or not “content related to gender identity” was being “adequately flagged for parents.” Though that phrasing could be interpreted broadly, the full statement makes clear that the government agency is not worried about […]
On Juneteenth, Black Women Reflect on Seeking Freedom…
On June 19, 1865—the day we now commemorate as “Juneteenth”—the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas, learned they were free. The Emancipation Proclamation had been signed more than two years earlier. The news had simply not arrived until then. I think about that gap often. The distance between the announcement of freedom and the experience of […]
What We Get Wrong About Fathers Who Don’t Live With…
Popular culture tends to stigmatize fathers who don’t live with their children. From reality television to TikTok shaming, nonresident fathers are often thought to be absent from their children’s lives: “deadbeat dads.” The reality is quite different. As a researcher who studies nonresident fathers, as we call fathers who don’t currently live with their minor […]
Seven Ways Fatherhood Rewired My Brain
It was midnight, and my son, Zade, was three months old in his crib, crying. I would rock him to sleep while singing “Hush Little Baby” and “You Are My Sunshine,” while begging the universe to quiet him down. Around two in the morning, he finally fell asleep, and I passed out on top of […]
What Is Social Resilience—and How Can You Foster It?
Imagine two ship crews marooned on opposite coasts of the same wild and inhospitable island. One group drops seafaring formalities and coalesces around collective survival. They tend to each other, work together, and split what they have. Each person’s subsistence is tied to the other’s. The other crew maintain their maritime hierarchy, compete for power […]
A Playful Way to Help Children Learn Resilience
I sat around a table with a group of fourth graders learning to be mentors for younger students, and a girl looked at me and said, “Now whenever I am upset, I have Buddy and Snuggles in my head.” Buddy the dog and Snuggles the bunny are two of the five resilience habit animals that […]
What Helped Me When My Life Felt Uncertain and Unstable
“Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.” ~Pema Chödrön Evicted. The word stared up at me from the letter in my hands. It was the summer of 2022, near the tail end of the Covid […]
How to Improve Emotional Intelligence — the Skill Behind It Is Emotional Literacy How to Improve Emotional Intelligence (the Gottman Way)
Most advice on how to improve Emotional intelligence starts by telling you to be more empathetic, more self-aware, more regulated — worthy goals, but hard to act on directly. There is an earlier, more practical skill underneath all of them, and there is a name for it: emotional literacy. It is the ability to notice […]