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Hey Parents! It’s Going to Be Okay.

The first time I spoke an editor at Psychology Today, and she offered me the chance to blog for them. I was really excited to start writing about what’s going on with parenting these days. How could we parent effectively with all the anxiety in our culture?

But then she said something that surprised me. “This is going to be great,” she said. “We need a pediatrician to be telling parents it’s going to be okay so they can stop worrying so much.”

What Is the ShouldStorm and Why Should You Care?

Parents face a culture of criticism and anxiety, and so do their kids.

Parents can’t avoid the culture of criticism that pushes perfectionistic parenting. They are told everything they do matters, and that one little mistake could mess up their child for life. Then, they are told that parents are too anxious these days. They are pelted with advice on how to worry less because anxious over-parenting is… messing up their children.

Why Does My 3-year-old Hurt the Dog?

This question comes from a concerned mother. She writes, “Our current challenge is that we adopted a dog, and my 3-year-old son seems to be acting out because maybe he is jealous? He’s normally very kind and gentle, but has been acting out in a general and has been a bit aggressive or overzealous to the dog. He’s not responding to our respectful interference.”

Screen Time Roundup: What the Lastest Research Says

Every day in my pediatric practice parents ask me advice about screen time and social media. How much is okay? Is screen time bad for kids? Should parents try to control it when kids get older, or are the teenagers old enough that they should be managing it themselves?

14 Things My Kids Learned at Camp

The first thing I saw when I got down to the cabins in the woods was two wild looking boys having a piggy back ride. The one of top was my son, and he yelled, “It’s my Mom, run away quick!” Next, another wild boy walked out of his cabin, took one look at me, and ran back into his cabin. He was my other son.

The Reality Behind Inside Out.

Have you ever wondered if the movie Inside Out might actually be real? This is one of my all time favorite movies, because it does an amazing job of showing something true about how we work on the inside. If you saw it, you watched a little girl try to live her life, while colorful little people with the names of her emotions competed for control of her brain.

A guest post by Dr. Melissa Welby.

I make parenting mistakes daily. Maybe I forget to do something I said I was going to do, not have enough patience to adeptly navigate parenting challenges, or waste my time mindlessly scrolling social media instead of focusing on more productive areas. I will never be perfect, despite doing my best.

My Article “Mothers Are Drowning In Stress” Is Going Viral

Mothers Really Needed to Hear that the Stress Is Not Their Fault.

When I saw the publisher’s summary of Dr. Caitlyn Collin’s book, Making Motherhood Work, I knew this was the research I was looking for. I couldn’t put it down; I read her book in 4 days. Here at last was documentation of what I claimed in my TEDx talk, The Parenting “ShouldStorm”. Dr. Collins’ research shows how mothers all over the world feel the pressure. But American mothers are the ones drowning in stress they didn’t create and can’t fix on their own. In a world that still believes in intensive mothering, American women get the least support.

How Do I Limit My Child’s Screen Time?

Today’s question comes from a mom who’s really struggling to set screen time limits with her kids. She says, “How do I limit screen time?” That is a really good question and one we ask in my house a lot. Every time my husband and I get a handle on our kids’ screen time, some kind of schedule disruption comes up and we make an exception. Then we have to get practical again and ask ourselves, “So…how do I limit my child’s screen time?”

A Toddler Dismisses Her Dad

“How do I stay close to my daughter?” wrote a worried father. He shared with me how much he loves his 16 month old toddler. To care for her and provide for his family, he commutes an hour and a half each way to and from work every day. But when he arrives home from work, eager to see her, this toddler keeps rejecting her father.

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