Parenting Insights
Practical Parenting Advice for Everyday Challenges
How to Bond With Your Adopted Baby (or a Baby Born Through Surrogacy): What the Research Says
Can you bond with a baby you did not give birth to? Yes. How to bond with your adopted by or baby born through surrogacy, what works, how long it will take, and what helps after a hard start for the child.
Gentle Parenting Not Working? Why It Feels So Hard (and What Actually Helps)
Gentle parenting gets a lot of scrutiny from being too permissive, to too taxing on adults who are taught to stay calm at all times and validate every emotion. But what happens when we don’t feel gentle parenting is working? Usually its because a limit, a step or a bandwidth is missing from the equation. Dive into what the research actually says about gentle parenting, the myths that keep haunting it and testing parents, and what actually helps you breath through with your child.
How to Respond When Your Child Gets a Bad Grade
The grade isn't the part your kid carries forward. Your reaction is. Here's what to say instead, and what it means when they can't answer.
Your Kid Is Learning From This Election. Here's How to Make It Count.
Your kid is learning something from this election whether you talk about it or not. Here's how to make sure it's the right thing.
Emotion Coaching at Every Age: What It Looks Like, Why It Matters, and What to Do When Your Teen Stops Letting You In
Emotion coaching starts in infancy and never really ends, it just changes shape. Here's what it looks like at every age, how to hold the line when your kid is losing it, and what to do when your teen stops coming to you.
Validating Your Child's Feelings Isn't Enough: The Missing Step Parents Need
You already know to name your child's feelings. What almost nobody tells you is what to do in the moment your kid pushes back, and the step that comes after naming that actually changes the outcome, years down the line, not tonight.
Highly Sensitive Kids Aren't Fragile, They're Amplifiers
Some kids do fine in almost any environment. Others are wired to absorb everything around them, which means the same sensitivity that makes them fall apart under stress is what makes them exceptional under the right kind of attention. This is the research behind that, and the honest part most parenting content leaves out.
Dreading School Isn't Always Anxiety
Your kid says they don't want to go and you honestly can't tell if it's real. The answer everyone gives you is anxiety. Sometimes it is. Often it's one of three other things, and the response that helps one of them does nothing for the rest.
The Research on Why Some Adult Kids Still Call Their Parents (And It's Not About Being the Perfect One)
My mother tried as hard as she possibly could. I know that now because I've said the exact same sentence to my own kids. This is the research that finally explained what she meant, and what I'm doing differently.
Why Kids Say Yes To Questions They Don't Fully Understand
If your kid says they understand why we don't hit (or kick, scratch, bite), and then does it again anyway, the yes probably isn't the problem you think it is.
What Kids Learn When We Talk About Celebrities' Bodies
I lost 25 pounds this year on a GLP-1. My kids haven't said a word about it. Then I watched a stranger's body become the internet's business, and realized silence doesn't mean my kids aren't watching too, just not the way I assumed.
They Held It Together All Day. You Get What's Left.
A preschool director told me something on the first day of school that has explained every August since. Not just for three year olds. For every age, every year, after every long break, whether its after summer break, winter break, or spring break.
The 3 Year Window That Decides How Your Kid Handles Falling Apart
New longitudinal brain research found that one specific neural circuit, measured at age 11, predicts whether a child's emotional and behavioral difficulties spike three years later. It's not the circuit most parents would guess.
Why Does my Kid Explode Over Nothing?
The pencil, the iPad time lost, the toy they didn’t get wasn't the problem. New research says your kid's anger has an address, and it isn't always the one you'd expect.
What the Homeschooling Research Actually Says (And What It Can't Tell You)
Everyone's picking a side in this week's homeschooling debate. Here's what the research says instead, and why the real answer isn't about the schooling model at all.
Stop Repeating the Rule. Your Kid Needs a Comparison, Not a Repeat.
You've explained the rule clearly, calmly, more than once. It still doesn't transfer to the next situation. New research says the problem was never repetition.
The AI Conversation Gap Between You and Your Teenager
You probably think you have a read on how much your teenager uses AI. New national data says most parents are wrong, and the gap is bigger than a guess.
Why Having Fun Is a Parenting Strategy, Not a Luxury
High-achieving parents often build extraordinary lives and quietly stop enjoying them. Child development research has something specific to say about that — and it has less to do with self-care than with what your child's nervous system is doing every time you walk into the room.
The Parenting Loop That's Making Your Child Harder to Regulate
You're doing all the things in the face of your child’s big emotions: staying calm, co-regulating, doing the work. So why is it getting worse? The research explains the loop that parenting advice forgot to tell parents and how to break it.
The Father Effect: Why Your Child Needs Dad in the Hard Moments, Not Just the Fun Ones
Most conversations about emotional development center on mothers. But a growing body of research including a 2025 meta-analysis across hundreds of studies, points to something fathers do that is unique, irreplaceable, and largely unnamed in mainstream parenting. This is what dad's presence is actually building.