Blog

Research Shows These Parenting Beliefs Help Kids Most

More than anything, parents want to do their best for their kids. But every parent I know lives in the pressures of the ShouldStorm, which bombards them with shoulds. Always telling them what they should and should not be doing to maximize their child’s development. 

Now, new research from the University of Chicago has shed light on a sinister way the ShouldStorm actually drives parents to undermine their child’s development, all while thinking they are helping. It all comes down to what parents are told is good for kids. 

Continue reading “Research Shows These Parenting Beliefs Help Kids Most”

How Parents Can Help With Kids’ Back To School Anxiety in 2021

For kids, going to school has never felt more uncertain than it does in fall 2021, as they enter their third school year affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Will they be able to keep going to school or will their school shut down, as some already are? What if they get COVID, or what if they bring the Delta variant home to siblings too young to be vaccinated? Will they be okay?

Now more than ever, parents need to know how to help their kids navigate all the usual school stress,  plus deal with the fear and uncertainty they face during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Continue reading “How Parents Can Help With Kids’ Back To School Anxiety in 2021”

Practical Parenting Ideas to Keep Your Child From Vaping

Simon’s mom stepped into the hallway so he could talk with me alone. I asked him the usual pediatrician checkup questions. But when we got to the questions about alcohol or smoking, Simon shared that he had been vaping for more than a year.

Simon told me he was scared. At 13 years old he had developed chest pain and a cough he and his friends called vape cough. That was because they vaped too, and they also had the painful cough.

Unfortunately, research shows that it’s tough to get kids to quit vaping, due to how addictive it is. So the key for parents is to try to keep their kids off vape and juul in the first place. New research, which I recently covered for Forbes, has found that what parents and pediatricians have been doing isn’t working.

But the good news is that the research also shows what DOES work. When parents make their kids feel supported and help them set positive goals for their futures, kids are much less likely to vape. In this post, we’ll look at how to actually do that.

Continue reading “Practical Parenting Ideas to Keep Your Child From Vaping”

Why Your Depressed Kid Won’t Go To School

It’s a familiar visit in my pediatric office. The frustrated parent brings their child to see me because they won’t go to school. The young person, usually a pre-teen or adolescent, has been increasingly anxious about school. And now, the child can’t even get up in the morning, so the missed days of school are piling up.

Continue reading “Why Your Depressed Kid Won’t Go To School”

How To Tell When Your Kids Are Lying To You

What parent doesn’t want a foolproof way to tell when their child is lying? Now researchers have identified distinct sound signatures we use when we are lying or telling the truth.

The folded socks were lined up in an evenly spaced row running down the hallway. Again. It had been happening for days. I’d gather the socks up and before I knew it they were laid out on the floor again. Clearly someone was playing a trick on me, but which of my kids was it? When I asked my son about it he hesitated and looked to the side, and there was something about his voice when he said it wasn’t him that made me feel sure he was lying.

Being able to tell when kids are lying is a skill every parent wants. It’s true that some lies are easy to pick up on: a child whose room has just been designated a disaster area by FEMA is lying when they say they have cleaned it. But other lies are much harder to detect.

Continue reading “How To Tell When Your Kids Are Lying To You”

We’ve Misunderstood Depression: It’s Trying to Save Us.

For generations, we have seen depression as an illness, an unnecessary deviation from normal functioning. It’s an idea that makes sense because depression causes suffering and even death. But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if depression is not an aberration at all, but an important part of our biological defense system?

Continue reading “We’ve Misunderstood Depression: It’s Trying to Save Us.”

What Happens When A Pediatrician Takes The Dog To The Vet

I am a pediatrician and I am a mom. But I never really understood what parents feel like when their kids get sick until I got a dog. It’s not that pediatricians don’t worry about our kids. We definitely do, but we worry about weird rare stuff you’ve never heard of. But we do have the ability to deal with the basics of our kids’ illnesses.

Continue reading “What Happens When A Pediatrician Takes The Dog To The Vet”

Why Your Child Won’t Let You Leave For A Second

Zach’s mom was at her wit’s end. Even after three months of trying, she could not leave Zach alone in the room with his father for even a moment without Zach crying. During the coronavirus pandemic, she’d been alone with Zach most of the time, and her husband’s demanding job kept him from spending much time with them. But he wanted to play with his fifteen-month-old son, and she wanted five minutes to herself. Due to Zach’s crying, his mom couldn’t even get that. 

It is normal for kids to be attached to their mothers in the toddler years, but that attachment often comes with separation anxiety. Some kids are so attached, that they won’t even go to other trusted family members without their mothers in the room. This can happen under normal circumstances, but the problem seems more intense for families during the pandemic. 

Continue reading “Why Your Child Won’t Let You Leave For A Second”

Why You Should Never Play Monopoly With Your Kids! (It Was Never Designed To Be Fun)

If I had known that Monopoly was never meant to be fun, I wouldn’t have made the disastrous decision to play it with my kids.

It was Labor Day, and we were looking for a way to spend time together as a family. “How about a board game,” my husband suggested. The boys headed to our game cabinet because we’d been having a lot of fun with board games lately.

But then we made a huge mistake! Maybe all those good family experiences made us overconfident, or maybe we just weren’t thinking. Whatever the reason, we decided to play Monopoly.

Continue reading “Why You Should Never Play Monopoly With Your Kids! (It Was Never Designed To Be Fun)”
Verified by ExactMetrics