• Supporting Sadness

A young child’s sadness provokes an exquisite kind of pain. Children of any age can have big overwhelming feelings. Knowing that parents will stay as present and loving as the child gets through them instills hope.

Healthy Aggression

 

• Understanding Agression and Connecting

When a parent’s own distress distorts their ability to receive and contain their young child’s healthy aggression, a downward spiral of dysregulation for both parent and child may occur.

 

• Parenting Styles

The differences among authoritative, authoritarian and permissive parenting are important. Authoritarian parenting is linked to difficulty with emotional regulation in children. Authoritative parenting, in contrast, is associated with children having a greater capacity for emotional regulation, flexible thinking, and social competence. 

 

• Teaching Kindness

There is a Quaker saying: “Attitudes are caught, not taught.” Children want to be like the important adults in their lives. They’re watching and listening. Make your vote a teaching moment.

How to Talk About the Coronavirus

• Virus Talk Tips Tailored for Age
It starts with being aware of developmental stages, anticipating how a child might be processing what s/he is hearing, and being ready with responses that are both honest and age-appropriate.

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.

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.

When Bad Things Happen

• Reassuring Children In Times of National Crisis
In times of community or world-wide crisis, even young children sense their parents are really worried. Parents and teachers can reassure children if they follow these simple steps.

Smart Phone-Impaired Parenting

• Parents' Screen Time is Hurting Children
Child development is relational, a conversational duet between parent and child. Smart phone-impaired parenting interrupts the emotional cueing system, whose hallmark is responsive communication, the basis of most human learning.

Inattentional Blindness through Tech

• Head Down Interactions
More and more is we’re not talking to our children––we put them in front of the tech when they’re young and parents are absorbed in their own tech.

Parent-Child Mental Health

• Engaging Families From the Start
A toddler's troubling behaviors can be understood as difficulties managing both his/her body and developing mind in a social context––consisting initially of parent-child. Helping these families means intensive support from the very beginning.

Reaching Your Child

* Tips for Reconnecting
When a child is prickly and most difficult is when you need to try something else. Here are some options to make it work.

Mobile Social Media

• Intimacy & Empathy in the New Age of Media
The communication revolution is degrading the quality of human relationships—with family and friends, as well as colleagues and romantic partners.

The Perils of Sticker Charts

• Creating Transactional Family Relationships
Priming children to expect rewards for good behavior can harm their social skills in the long term.

Laughing at Your Children

• Empathy, Compassion, Respect
Suzanne Zeedyk examines the impact of "funny" videos on a baby’s developing sense of self.

Early Childhood Mental Health

• Helping Young Children
“Early childhood mental health consultant” evokes an image of a toddler on a couch talking to a therapist. In fact, the work focuses on helping adults to create healthy environments.

Relationship in Therapy

• Facilitating Parent and Child Reunion

Child mental health is about relationships, as is therapy. Happy Valentine's Day.

Rasing Good Children

• Molding Morals in Children
If you want children to care about others, teach them to feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave.

Child Training

The Pearl Epistomology
Scottish research scientist Suzanne Zeedyk discusses authors Michael and Debi Pearl's advocacy for parental use of physical violence.

Stranger Danger

• How Fear Affects Development
"...we have ended up scared....of risk. Scared of what some adults do — in secret. Scared of what other adults might think, mistakenly — of us....We are made anxious by our children’s physiological, evolutionary, human desire for physical affection — from us."