How to Raise Kids Who Feel Capable in the World
What does it mean to raise a resilient child? Resilience is a skill set that combines emotional awareness, problem solving, and flexibility—qualities that help kids bounce back from stress and adapt to adversity. Parents can help cultivate it by equipping kids with tools to navigate hardships so they feel more confident, courageous, and capable. Whether […]
The Well-Being Practices Helping Educators and…
In Ukraine, school goes on even when nothing feels stable. Lessons restart after nights in shelters, teachers log on from cities under attack, and students join from apartments without windows or from friends’ homes in other countries. The fact that learning continues at all is a testament to the creativity, adaptability, and commitment of educators […]
How Do We Scale Up Compassion?
At a compassion education conference in 2018, Buddhist scholar Thupten Jinpa described new scientific evidence on the effectiveness and benefits of compassion training. Why, he asked, despite the growing popularity of this training, were we not seeing much of an impact in the world? Compassion did not seem to be “scaling up.” “If we want […]
Why Midlife Might Actually Be Awesome
When I turned 40, I kept waiting for the narrative around middle age to catch up with me—the whole “downhill from here” thing. It never did. As I moved from my early to late 40s, one feeling resonated: I felt great! My smartest, most confident, and healthiest version of myself. The disconnect between what I […]
Emotional Manipulation: Signs You Shouldn’t Ignore
Emotional manipulation can be difficult to recognize when you’re in a relationship. While it can become toxic and emotionally abusive, it often begins as an unhealthy relationship dynamic rooted in low self-esteem, poor emotional regulation, or a lack of Emotional intelligence. What Is Emotional Manipulation? Emotional manipulation is “the use of deceptive, indirect, or coercive […]
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 […]