Protecting Against Sexual Predators

• Video Games and Online Chats Are ‘Hunting Grounds’ for Sexual Predators
Parents need to know what their children are playing online. Sometimes that means blocking users and shutting off chat functions, and sometimes it means monitoring the games as they are being played.

Preventing Teen Suicide

• Put Away the Screen & Go to Bed
Between 2007 and 2017 suicide has increased by 56% in 10 to 24-year-olds. Since 2011 youthful suicide attempts have increased 400% –– and that's an undercount. There is a compelling link between “problematic internet and social media use and sleep disturbance among youth,” and “these associations contribute to depressive symptoms in this group.”

Dressing Up in Costume

• The Meaning of Costumes and Masks
Much of children’s pretending and play comes out of their inner needs and feelings– and helps them work on their fears and master them. Fred Roger's said that play allows children to work on what’s close to their hearts, but from a safe distance.

Spanking

• Resolving Differences About Spanking
Teaching your children how to self-regulate requires tools and strategies for effective discipline. The word discipline, in fact, is derived from the Latin word discere, which means “to learn.”

Strengthening Social Skills

• What Is Social Competence?

It's about being able to deal with conflicts, frustration, jealousy and disappointment and involves skills like problem- solving, self-control, self-regulation, communication, and seeing things from another perspective. It's the foundation of academic success.

If You Ever Hurt My Daughter

• I Swear I Will
Let her navigate her own emotional growth.

Tantrums Take Two

• A Field Guide to Taming Tantrums
When a child has a meltdown it always involves the parent before, during, and after.

Family Photos Post-Divorce

• Pictures Celebrating Common Ground
When parents divorce each other, they don't divorce their children. For a child the photos taken at birthdays, a first day of school, graduations, and other occasions—are pictures of her and her parents celebrating something joyful together.

Post-Divorce Friendships

• Navigating Shared Friendships Post-Divorce
Dealing with the collateral damage of divorce such as tensions with shared friends can be challenging. It's important for your children to do so with grace and equanimity.

ADHD for Toddlers

• Quick Fix is to Medicate
"In acting out and being hard to control, they’re signaling the chaos in their environment" The American Academy of Pediatrics standard practice guidelines for A.D.H.D. do not even address the diagnosis in children 3 and younger. Preschoolers are prescribed only after formal training for parents and teachers to improve the child’s environment were unsuccessful. The safety and effectiveness have barely been explored.

All About Mini-Me

• Mini-Me, Social Media, and Identity
What could be wrong (or right) with telling one’s child that he or she is small, cute and resembles you?

Diagnostic Labels

• DSM vs. Biopsychosocial Formulation
The combination of predisposing, precipitating, perpetuating and protective factors will be different for everyone. If a diagnosis is a stamp, a formulation is more like a fingerprint, unique to each individual.

Smartphone Generation Statistics

• What Smartphones Are Doing To A Generation
iGen: a generation shaped by the smartphone and by the concomitant rise of social media.

Boredom for Kids

I'm Bored
It’s especially important that kids get bored — and be allowed to stay bored — when they’re young.The ability to handle boredom is correlated with the ability to focus, self-discipline, resourcefulness.