Last week I published a long podcast episode on why we shouldn’t read Dr. Louise Bates Ames’ Your X-Year-Old child books any more, which got quite a big response from listeners. In this blog post I’ll briefly summarize the main points of that episode and then answer the question I received most often via email…
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“On average, authoritative parents spanked just as much as the average of all other parents. Undoubtedly, some parents can be authoritative without using spanking but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spank.” Perhaps you won’t even believe the origin of that quote: it’s…
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If you’re like most parents, you find yourself asking ‘why, why, why?’ on a daily basis. Sometimes you’re referring to your child’s behavior–‘why did he decide to lick the floor at the grocery store?’ Other times, you’re likely asking yourself about your own behavior–‘why did I just lose my mind about an unfinished bowl of…
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Have you ever observed a child setting a toy car at the top of a ramp and watching it roll down over and over again? What is it that enables a child to do this for 45 minutes at a time when they won’t sit and listen to a story for more than five minutes?…
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The vast majority of the parents I work with are struggling with some form of anxiety related to their parenting. Sometimes this fits the clinical definition of anxiety, but other times it is just continual self-doubt or fear of ‘messing up’ their children. In this post I’m going to discuss six of the most significant…
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As school districts are beginning to announce plans to move to remote-only instruction for at least the beginning of the fall semester, many parents are understandably feeling pretty panicked. They’re looking back to how difficult online learning was in the Spring and are realizing that that model is not going to work for their child.…
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I’ve been wanting to write about anxiety since COVID-19 lockdowns began in March, and although several months have passed, anxiety remains a major issue for children. Children (and adults) of all ages are anxious about all the upheaval in the world – from COVID to conversations on racism – and these fears aren’t the kind…
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If you identify as White and read my recent blog post on 57 Privileges of White Parents (which is now longer than that thanks to readers who got in touch and added more ideas), you might have come away surprised (shocked?) by the privileges you have, you might be wondering “well, now I know this,…
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A few months ago I was invited to speak to parents at a very nice preschool in a very nice neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area for a panel discussion about school choice. I was invited because a parent at the school had listened to my podcast episode on white privilege, and wanted to…
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This blogpost is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. Note: If you’re a person of a non-dominant culture (a term I use to avoid centering whiteness, and to acknowledge the power differential present in systems of structural racism)…
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