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 […]
What We Get Wrong About Teaching Kids to Apologize…
As an expert on the topic of interpersonal forgiveness, it is difficult for me to hear of situations when teachers and parents demand children to apologize and forgive immediately after an offense. Those are often viewed as quick behavioral fixes in situations of conflict or when one individual has been hurt by another. This process […]
Why I Let My Kids See My Sadness Now (After Hiding It for Years)
“I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you—truly, deeply, seeing you.” ~Brené Brown The first time my kids saw me truly cry was Christmas of 2021. My oldest was sixteen, and my youngest was twelve. […]
Five Steps to Help Kids Transform Anger Into a Force…
When my daughter Anjali was young, she was tiny but fierce. She would erupt over small injustices, like having to set one more plate on the table than her sister. Her small body was scarcely able to contain the outrage! Though her outbursts were rarely skillful, I could sense that her fiery righteousness was something […]
Kids Today: Thoughts From Research, Practice, and the Classroom
Across time and generations, elders have often bemoaned with exasperation, “Kids today!” As a quintessential “baby boomer,” I often hear same-aged peers complain about youth (e.g., those born between the late 1990s and early 2000s). While developmental psychologists eschew using broad labels to describe large generational cohorts (i.e., the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, […]
How to Help Your Kids Regulate Their Emotions
Today, Marc Brackett is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional intelligence. But he remembers what it was like to be a kid who struggled with his emotions. “I would sometimes just sit in a room and cry and catastrophize, like I’m never going to figure this out,” he recalls. He would think, […]
How Parents Can Help Kids Ask the Big Questions
“I can do it myself!” That’s a phrase we typically associate with young children when they learn to get dressed and eat breakfast. Later, they might use it as they start riding a bike or reading a chapter book. But what does the question have to do with their spiritual development? A lot, it turns […]
Five Habits to Help Kids Be Resilient
What resources do you find helpful when you’re struggling? In the wake of the pandemic, a series of federal grants brought me into Milwaukee Public Schools to support children’s well-being and resilience. In one fourth-grade bilingual classroom, students were so engaged with our playful mindful Self-compassion practices that I returned the following year as a […]
How to Raise Kids in an Anxious, Chaotic World
Parenting with confidence and ease seems to get harder each week. How do we honestly encourage our children to believe in a safe future when headlines are covered with violence, from the streets of our cities to the Middle East? Meanwhile, heat waves and natural disasters make it impossible to ignore the reality of climate […]
Seven Tips for Talking With Your Kids About Terminal…
Some of the most challenging moments in parenting occur when we need to provide comfort and guidance to our child during a time when we are also hurting. And one of the biggest challenges we may face is when we or a loved one has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. These situations may involve […]