1. Children ages 3-5 enter the “Why Phase” when they ask endless questions to understand how the world works.
2. Quick Google (or AI) answers teach fact-collecting instead of thinking skills and can actually shut down your child’s curiosity
3. Try responding with: “Hmmm…what do you think?” first to engage their reasoning before providing answers and show you value their thinking.
4. Turn questions into mini investigations by exploring together rather than jumping straight to final answers – or trying to teach a lesson.
5. Let children lead their own learning without forcing teachable moments.
6. Their questions build critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills that matter more for future success than content knowledge.
7. The questioning phase develops lifelong learning foundations and intrinsic motivation – it’s something to celebrate!

You’re barely three sips into your coffee when it starts. “Mama, why is the sky so blue today?” Before you can even formulate an answer, the next one comes: “Why are the birds singing so loud? Why can’t I go swimming right now? Why do we have to eat breakfast when it’s already so hot outside? Why does the sun make everything bright?”

By the time you’ve managed to pour cereal into a bowl you’ve fielded seventeen questions, and you still have the looooong summer day stretching ahead of you.

Nearly every parent of a young child has experienced this at some point – that mix of pride in your child’s curiosity and complete overwhelm at the sheer volume of questions coming your way. (The other parents have kids who rarely ask questions, and we have ideas for them, too!)

Summer seems to make it even more intense, with longer days, less structure, and more time for those little minds to wonder about everything they see, hear, and experience.

Here’s what I want you to know: your child isn’t trying to drive you up the wall (even though it might feel that way). They’re not just asking random questions. They’re actively trying to connect the dots in their world.

The challenge isn’t that your child asks too many questions. The challenge is that most of us were never taught how to handle this phase of development in a way that supports both our child’s growth and our own sanity.

The Science Behind All Those Questions

If your child is between the ages of three and five, you’re in what researchers call the “Why Phase“.  While children ask who, what, where, why questions throughout their development, the Why Phase specifically refers to when ‘why’ questions dominate their curiosity. 

Around this age, children begin to understand something pretty remarkable: that people have knowledge, and that this knowledge can be accessed simply by asking questions. Think about how sophisticated that realization actually is. Your child has figured out that you know things they don’t know, and that they can get access to that information just by putting their thoughts into words.

This surge in curiosity happens alongside huge leaps in brain development. Language is exploding – not just vocabulary, but the ability to use words to explore ideas. Logical reasoning is emerging, helping them connect cause and effect. And they’re starting to develop what psychologists call “theory of mind“, basically, they’re figuring out that other people have different thoughts and knowledge than they do.

What’s fascinating is that this learning isn’t happening just in their brains. Research shows that we think with our whole bodies through movement, through our hands as we explore objects, through our environment. When your child picks up a stick and examines it while asking about trees, or jumps up and down while wondering about gravity, they’re not getting distracted from learning. They’re actually enhancing it by engaging their extended mind.

I like to think of it this way: your child has turned into a tiny researcher. They notice something that doesn’t fit with what they already understand, they form a guess about how it might work, and then they test that guess by asking you about it. When you give them an answer, they’re not just filing it away. They’re connecting it to other things they know, seeing where it fits in the bigger picture.

The Hidden Problem: Why “Just Answering” Doesn’t Actually Help

When your child asks “Why is the grass green?” your instinct is probably to pull out your phone and ask Google, Alexa, or ChatGPT. Quick answer delivered: “Because of something called chlorophyll.” Question answered, right? You can move on with your day.

But here’s what research shows us: jumping straight to answers can actually do more harm than good. It teaches children that learning is about collecting facts, not exploring ideas. They learn that questions have quick, simple answers that come from others, not from their own thinking.

Imagine giving a quick Google answer about chlorophyll. Your child says, “Oh, okay,” and moves on. But did they actually learn anything meaningful? Probably not. They didn’t explore what chlorophyll does, why plants differ in color, or how it connects to the sun. What they learned is that questions get answered by devices – and they’ll likely forget what you told them in an hour anyway.

This creates answer-seeking behavior instead of thinking behavior. Kids start to believe every question has one “right” answer out there and their job is to find it fast. Curiosity becomes a finish line, not a doorway to discovery.

Here’s the thing that might surprise you: research shows that by the end of first grade, most kids stop asking the rich, wondering questions they asked as toddlers. Instead, they only ask “Do I have to learn this?” and “How do I do this thing you’re telling me to do?” We’ve accidentally trained them out of their inherent curiosity.

But what if we approached their questions differently? What if, instead of jumping in with an answer, we paused to wonder together? This simple shift changes everything. It often means re-examining our own relationship with learning.

3 More Effective Ways to Respond to Your Child’s Constant Questions

Supporting your child’s endless curiosity doesn’t mean you need to be an expert or create elaborate Pinterest-worthy activities. In fact, the most powerful approaches are surprisingly simple and they work better than traditional ‘teaching’ methods.

Click here to download the 3 Better Ways to Respond to Your Child’s Constant Questions

Responding to your child’s questions #1: Start With “What Do You Think?”

The next time your child asks, “Why is the sky blue?”, pause. Look up at the sky together. And then say something like: “Huh. That’s a great question. What do you think?”

This simple shift is more than just a way to buy yourself a second to think. It tells your child:

• I take your question seriously.
• I believe you’re capable of thinking about this.
• We can explore this together.

This gives your child time to engage their own thinking before being handed an answer. It strengthens their ability to reason, hypothesize, and make connections.

When we respond immediately with facts (or a quick “Alexa, why is the sky blue?”), we accidentally send the message that learning comes from outside themselves and not from within. Over time, that can squash the very curiosity we want to nurture.

Responding to your child’s questions #2: Turn their questions into mini learning investigations

Rather than seeing each question as something to answer and move on from, think of them as launching points for exploration. This doesn’t mean turning everything into a formal lesson. It means following their curiosity one step further.

Here’s what this might look like in real life: When your child asks about why fish live in water, you might say: “I wonder about that too. Do we have any books about fish? Should we see what we can find out?” Or: “What do you think would happen if a fish tried to live on land like we do?”

The key is taking just one step forward, not jumping to the final answer. This is what’s called scaffolding. You provide just enough support to keep your child engaged and learning, but not so much that you take over their thinking process. 

Maybe you look at a book together. Maybe you watch a short video. Maybe you have a conversation while you’re doing dishes. The goal isn’t to become experts on fish biology.  It’s to show your child that their questions are worth exploring.

Responding to your child’s questions #3: Let kids lead without needing to teach a lesson

This might be the hardest shift for many of us, especially if we went to school ourselves and learned that adults ask questions and children provide answers. But when we let children lead their own learning, they stay engaged much longer and go much deeper than we ever could have pushed them.

Instead of becoming the “sage on the stage,” try being the “guide on the side“. Your job isn’t to lecture about everything you know on the topic (which often makes kids’ eyes glaze over). Your job is more like being a helpful travel companion – someone who helps them find resources, asks good questions, and celebrates their discoveries.

This might mean biting your tongue when they’re building something and you can see it won’t work the way they think it will. It might mean letting them spend way more time on something than you think is “productive.” It might mean following their interests into territory you know nothing about, which, by the way, is perfectly fine.

This kind of trust in your child and in yourself doesn’t always come easily, especially if you went through traditional schooling yourself. Many parents find themselves feeling like their job is to rush and provide answers or resources the moment their child shows interest in something. But learning to step back and trust both your child’s own learning process (and your own instincts as a parent) is often the most powerful thing you can do.

Whether your child asks three questions a day or thirty. Whether they’re obsessed with bugs or want to know why people have different skin colors.

The method stays the same:

• Pause.
• Wonder together.
• Take one step forward.
• And let them lead the way.

Why This Phase Matters More Than You Think

I get it. Sometimes it can feel like you’re trapped in an endless loop of questions from your child.

But here’s what I want you to know: those questions aren’t just something to endure until your child grows out of this phase. They’re actually building the exact skills your child will need to thrive in the future.

When your child seems compelled to ask all these questions throughout the day, they’re not just being curious. They’re developing critical thinking skills.

When I looked into what skills will actually matter for our children’s success, I found something surprising. A McKinsey report identified 56 critical skills for the future job market. Want to guess how many had to do with coding or technology?

Eleven. Just eleven out of 56.

The other 45 skills? Things like critical thinking, communication, self-awareness, and problem-solving. In other words, exactly what your questioning child is practicing right now. While schools focus heavily on content knowledge, these other skills are primarily developed through the kinds of interactions you’re having at home every single day.

The Hidden Skills Behind Your Child’s Endless Questions

When your child fires off what seems like their millionth question of the day, “Why do dogs wag their tails?” followed immediately by “What makes the sky blue?”, it’s easy to feel like they’re just trying to drive you to distraction. But something much more important is happening.

Your child isn’t just hunting for random facts. They are developing the thinking skills they will need throughout their lives. Every time they notice something and wonder about it, they’re strengthening their ability to see patterns and make connections. When they ask why water freezes or how birds know where to fly, they’re doing the same work scientists do, trying to make sense of the world around them.

And when they keep asking follow-up questions? That’s not them being difficult. That’s their way of exploring ideas from different angles and learning to think flexibly. 

Perhaps most importantly, when your child follows their own curiosity, they’re learning to set their own learning goals and stick with them, even when understanding gets challenging. These are the foundations of intrinsic motivation that will serve them far better than any external reward system ever could.

The questioning phase isn’t something to survive. It’s something to celebrate – because it’s building the very foundation of lifelong learning.

What to say when kids keep asking why?

Not all ‘why’ questions are equal…sometimes your child will just ask ‘why’ endlessly, even when it doesn’t seem like they’re trying to understand:

Child: Why are we going to Grandma’s house?

You: Because we haven’t seen her since last week.

Child: Why?

You: Because we’ve been busy.

Child: Why?

Your child has discovered a new tool for connecting with you!  Very often, these kinds of questions are a way to prolong the conversation, rather than get information.  If you sense this is happening, try getting down on their level and asking: “It seems like you’d really like to connect with me right now.  Is there something you’d like to do together?” or “Would you like a hug?” (depending on how much time you have available).  

In the Learning Membership we call this ‘looking for the question underneath the question: this child isn’t really asking about Grandma; they’re asking for time with you.

If Your Child Isn’t Asking Questions

If your child isn’t asking many questions, that doesn’t mean they’re not curious. They might just be showing their curiosity differently. 

Some children are more hands-on learners who prefer to explore through doing rather than asking. Others might be processing quietly, taking in information before they’re ready to wonder out loud. 

The key is to become a detective of your child’s interests by watching what they gravitate toward during free time. What do they choose to do when you’re not directing their activities? What lights them up when you suggest it? 

Parent Anne discovered this when she sat with a notebook and observed her son’s LEGO play, realizing there was “SO MUCH going on”. He was working through ideas about solar power and movement that she’d never noticed before. 

Try sitting quietly and watching your child for just five or ten minutes during their play. Notice what captures their attention, what they return to again and again, what makes them lean in with focus. 

Then you can gently offer related experiences: “I noticed you’ve been really interested in how water moves. Want to see what happens when we pour it through different things?” This approach meets children where their curiosity already lives, rather than trying to manufacture interest in topics that don’t resonate with them.

Final Thoughts

When your kids ask you question after question, try to keep your eye on how amazing this stage of your child’s development is! Their questions are a window into how your child’s mind works. 

You don’t need to become Google/Alexa/ChatGPT in human form. You don’t need to craft perfect educational moments with Pinterest-worthy setups. What your child really needs is to know that their questions matter to you and that their curiosity is seen and valued.

You also don’t have to have the answers to every question they ask. Your job is to show your child that their questions matter, and that thinking together is more valuable than knowing everything.

Instead of feeling drained by constant questions, you start noticing the incredible mind at work behind them. Your child learns that their curiosity matters. They develop confidence in their own thinking. And you get to rediscover the world through their eyes – which, honestly, is pretty magical.

Those questions aren’t interrupting your day. They’re showing you exactly how to connect with the remarkable little person you’re raising.

Transform those daily questions into meaningful learning moments

If you want more support turning your child’s everyday curiosity into meaningful learning without pressure, lectures, or constant Googling, my ‘You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher masterclass’ can help.  It gives you practical tools to turn everyday curiosity into rich learning and connection without lectures, pressure, or overwhelm.

You’ll discover how to:

• Support your child’s intrinsic curiosity (without becoming their personal Googler)
• Turn everyday moments into rich learning opportunities
• Help your child develop confidence as an independent thinker and learner
• Navigate challenging phases (like constant questioning) with understanding instead of exhaustion
• Build your relationship while supporting their development

Click the banner to learn more and sign up.

Frequently Asked Questions About Kids’ Endless Questions

1. Why does my child constantly ask questions?

Your child isn’t trying to drive you crazy. They’re in the “Why Phase” (typically ages 3-5) when their brain is developing critical thinking skills. They’ve realized that other people have knowledge they can access by asking questions. This constant questioning shows they’re connecting dots in their world, developing language skills, and building the foundation for lifelong learning.

2. How to deal with kids asking why?

Instead of jumping straight to answers, pause and ask “What do you think?” first. This strengthens their reasoning abilities and shows you value their thinking. Turn their questions into mini investigations by saying “I wonder about that too” and exploring together. Let them lead the learning process rather than lecturing with facts.

3. At what stage of development does the child ask many questions?

The Why Phase typically occurs between ages 3-5 when children experience huge leaps in brain development. During this stage, language explodes, logical reasoning emerges, and they develop “theory of mind” – understanding that other people have different thoughts and knowledge. This is when “why” questions dominate their curiosity about the world around them.

4. What to say when kids keep asking why?

Try responses like “That’s a great question – what do you think?” or “I wonder about that too. Should we see what we can find out?” Take one step forward in exploration rather than jumping to final answers. This scaffolding approach provides just enough support to keep them engaged without taking over their thinking process.

5. Why is children’s curiosity valuable to learning?

Children’s questions build exactly the skills they’ll need for future success. Research shows 45 of 56 critical future job skills involve critical thinking, communication, and problem-solving – not just content knowledge. When kids ask questions, they’re developing pattern recognition, flexible thinking, and intrinsic motivation that serves them better than any external reward system.

6. How to help kids answer why questions?

Don’t rush to provide answers yourself. Instead, help them explore by asking follow-up questions, looking at books together, or having conversations during daily activities. Be a “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage.” Trust their learning process and follow their interests, even into territory you know nothing about.

References

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2271-7 

Dondi, M., Klier, J., Panier, F., & Schubert, J. (2021, June 25). Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/defining-the-skills-citizens-will-need-in-the-future-world-of-work

Engel, S. (2011). Children’s need to know: Curiosity in schools. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 625–645. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.81.4.h054131316473115 

Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A., & Wellman, H. M. (2009). Preschoolers’ search for explanatory information within adult-child conversation. Child development, 80(6), 1592–1611. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01356.x

Gopnik, A. (2012). Scientific thinking in young children: Theoretical advances, empirical research,and policy implications. Science, 337(6102), 1623–1627. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1223416

Kuhn, D. (2000). Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5), 178–181. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00088 

Lumanlan, J. (2024). The skills your child will need in the age of AI. Your Parenting Mojo.

https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/ai/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2023, July 16). How to learn way beyond ‘doing well in school’. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/beyondschool/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2022, September 11). Learning to trust your child – and yourself. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/claire/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2021, September 5). The Extended Mind with Annie Murphy Paul. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/extendedmind/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2020, December 17). Doing Self-Directed Education. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/freepeople/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2016, September 26). How to “scaffold” children’s learning to help them succeed. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/005-how-to-scaffold-childrens-learning/ 

Schulz, L. (2012). The origins of inquiry: Inductive inference and exploration in early childhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(7), 382-389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.06.004

Wang, X., Wang, C., Ye, P., & Tao, G. (2025). The role of intrinsic motivation in enhancing deep learning in early childhood education: Intrinsic motivation and deep learning in ECE. International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2(6), 274-290. https://doi.org/10.70693/itphss.v2i6.847

Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: the truth about false belief. Child development, 72(3), 655–684. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00304 

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1. The teen mental health crisis may be less severe than headlines (and The Anxious Generation) suggest. Much of the scary data shows better screening and diagnosis rather than new cases caused by social media. The changes are not as widespread as the book makes them appear. They are at least partly explained by changes in how we diagnose and label mental health conditions.
2. Social media’s impact on youth mental health is surprisingly small. Research shows social media explains less than 1% of teen wellbeing. It’s about the same as whether or not the teen eats potatoes. While statistically significant in large studies, this effect on an individual child is tiny compared to factors like family relationships and academic pressure.
3. The most vulnerable teens aren’t the ones that The Anxious Generation focuses on. While The Anxious Generation prioritizes (assumed: White middle class) teenage girls, suicide rates and signs of youth depression remain much higher for boys and men. LGBTQ+ teens and some Native American communities face the biggest mental health risks. These problems often have nothing to do with social media. Helping these groups would make a much bigger difference than just keeping white middle-class girls off social media.
4. Family relationships, friendships, and school stress matter way more than screen time for youth mental health. When teens go to emergency rooms for self-harm, 64% say family problems are their biggest worry. School stress, friend drama, money troubles, and school problems matter way more than technology for Gen Z mental health.
5. Phone bans address symptoms while ignoring underlying needs. Kids use phones because they meet needs for independence and connection. School often doesn’t provide these. Banning devices without addressing why kids want them is like taking away a crutch without healing the broken leg.
6. Control-based parenting approaches often backfire with technology. Just like the failed “Just Say No” drug campaigns, strict phone rules can damage trust and push teens away when they need guidance most. Kids who fear punishment can’t come to parents when they encounter problems online.
7. Building connection works better than imposing restrictions for mental health for teenagers. The best protection for teen mental health isn’t limiting screen time. It’s creating relationships where kids feel seen and supported. Working together on technology rules works better than forcing blanket rules.

Note: This blog post is based on a four-part podcast series, where we took a deep dive into Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. 

• The Anxious Generation Review (Part 1): Is There Really a Mental Health Crisis in the U.S.?

• The Anxious Generation Review (Part 2): Does Social Media Actually Cause Kids’ Depression and Anxiety?

• The Anxious Generation Review (Part 3): Should we ban cell phones in school?

• The Anxious Generation Review (Part 4): Should we ban cell phones at home? 

Find a collection of resources related to The Anxious Generation on this page.

If you’re a parent, you might worry when you see your child on their phone all the time. You might feel upset when they pick their screen over talking at dinner. Or maybe you’re scared that their phone is somehow changing their brain in bad ways. You might wonder: Is this normal teen stuff, or is something different happening to kids today?

Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book The Anxious Generation seems to confirm our worst fears. The book shows scary charts of teen depression and anxiety going way up. Haidt says this is clear proof that smartphones and social media are causing a mental health crisis in our kids like never before.

The book’s central claim is compelling in its simplicity.  Between 2010 and 2015, Haidt says kids stopped having a “play-based childhood” and started having a “phone-based childhood.” He thinks this change rewired kids’ growing brains and caused more suffering than any kids before them had experienced.

For worried parents, The Anxious Generation offers both validation and a clear villain. Those endless battles over screen time? The way your once-chatty teen now grunts responses while staring at their phone? The anxiety you see in their eyes that wasn’t there a few years ago? According to Haidt, these changes are not just connected to but caused by their phone.

But before we panic and ban our kids’ phones (at school or at home), we should look more closely at what the research actually shows. Our parental worries about technology might feel urgent. But the scientific picture is far more complex than Haidt’s compelling narrative suggests.

What if the crisis isn’t as big as those graphs make it look? What if the jump in reported mental health problems just shows changes in how we find and track these conditions? Not new cases caused by social media? What if focusing only on screens makes us miss the real things causing our teens’ problems?

Parents everywhere are asking: Is social media really destroying our kids’ mental health? The answer isn’t as simple as The Anxious Generation makes us believe.

What Is The Anxious Generation About?

Haidt’s book presents a clear narrative. Between 2010 and 2015, we saw the decline of what he calls the “play-based childhood” and the rise of the “phone-based childhood.” This shift, he argues, is responsible for dramatic changes in Gen Z mental health. The evidence seems compelling at first glance. The seemingly endless graphs show rising rates of teen depression, anxiety in teenagers, and self-harm episodes.

He also points to the front-facing camera on the iPhone 4 as a key driver of the shift in 2010, as well as Instagram reaching mass usage in 2012. This means that Haidt sometimes points to 2010 as the beginning of a key shift, and sometimes to 2012. His collaborator Dr. Jean Twenge was raising the alarm as early as 2007, when the first iPhone came out. This raises the question of whether the data have been picked to confirm a theory, rather than the theory coming from the data.

And when we dig deeper into this data, some troubling patterns emerge. Many of these dramatic-looking increases might not be what they seem. 

The Hockey Stick Graphs: Crisis or Perception?

The Anxious Generation review of data includes dozens of alarming statistics, many on graphs that are shaped similarly to the ‘hockey stick’ graph responsible for convincing many people that climate change is real:

In the first of my detailed podcast episodes on The Anxious Generation, I focused heavily on suicide data. I figured it would be easier to understand than the many different measures of whether someone is experiencing mental health challenges.

Here’s the data I found on the suicide rate for girls age 10-14:

Data Source: https://wonder.cdc.gov/mortsql.html  (Note: Haidt’s graph continues with data from 2017-2020, which I couldn’t independently verify from CDC sources)

According to Haidt’s data, the suicide rate for girls is up 167% from 2010 to 2020.  Haidt also says that the rate for girls age 15-19 doubled from 2010-2020, which may be true, but 2009 was a historic low point and overall the rate isn’t a lot higher than it was in the late 1980s:

Data source: https://wonder.cdc.gov/mortsql.html

But the Pew Research Center found that older teens are much more likely to be online ‘constantly,’ with half of 15-17 year olds saying they were online ‘constantly’ in 2024, compared to 38% of those aged 13-14 (and we can assume that kids younger than 13 are spending less time than this online).  So if being online is driving girls to suicide, why aren’t the girls spending most time on social media committing suicide at higher rates?

What this means for you: Those scary numbers you see in The Anxious Generation aren’t happening everywhere like the book makes it seem. The author picks one number from one place and another number from somewhere else to make his point. Some teens really are struggling, but the problem is not universal across all teens.

Here are some other explanations I discovered when we examined the data more carefully:

Changes in mental health screening and diagnosis affect reported rates

Between 2009 and 2015, we made big changes in the U.S. in how we identify and track youth mental health issues:

• 2009: The US Preventive Task Force recommended depression screening for teens aged 12-18.
• 2011: The Affordable Care Act required coverage for evidence-based mental health services.
• 2012: Health insurance plans were required to cover annual depression screenings for girls aged 12 and older.
• 2015: Mandatory new diagnostic codes made it easier to identify intentional self-harm in hospital records.
• 2016: CDC guidance changes ICD-10 coding guidelines to include symptoms and signs codes (R40-R46) as an Exclusion 2 note for mental disorder codes (F01-F99) implies that SI should be coded as a secondary disorder when other mental health disorders are primary.

Figure source: https://jhr.uwpress.org/content/59/S/S14

Author’s notes: These figures plot trends in suicide-related hospital visits, suicide deaths, and suicidal ideation hospital visits in New Jersey. The vertical lines at 2011 and 2016 help to visualize the changes related to the implementation of the Women’s Preventive Services Guidelines in 2012, as well the difference between 2015 and 2016 (implementation of ICD-10) and between 2016 and 2017 (implementation of the “include SI” [Jen’s note: as a secondary diagnosis when other mental health conditions are present] guidance).

The authors conclude: “These results suggest that underlying suicide-related behaviors among children, while alarmingly high, may not have risen as sharply as reported rates suggest.”

What this means for you: The dramatic increases in reported teen depression might say more about our healthcare system getting better at identifying, treating, and classifying problems. They aren’t about phones making things worse. Before panicking about your teen’s screen time, consider other changes in their life. These may be academic pressure, family stress, or friendship issues, might be more important to address.

The scale of the increases look worse than they really are

Haidt also visually manipulates data on the graphs in the book. When he describes “dramatic increases” in school alienation worldwide, he’s actually talking about changes of about 0.2 points on a 4-point scale (Figure 1.12, Alienation in School, Worldwide) but the graph is zoomed in to the scale between 1.6 and 2.2 so those 0.2 points look like a huge increase. 

Figure 1.8 shows Excellent or Very Good Mental Health, Canadian Women; those aged 15-30 visually appear to have reported near-perfect mental health in 2003 and are now close to the baseline.  But the baseline is 50%, and the top of the scale is at 80%, so the decline appears far more dramatic than it really is.

In a collaborative Google doc that Haidt maintains, Haidt observes two ‘big’ jumps in suicides of 10-14-year-old females in the U.S., from 66 to 88 in 2009, and from 85 to 141 in 2013. He says that the rate for the last five years of data is nearly triple the rate for the first five years. Dr. Chris Ferguson’s counter-argument in the document is that the raw increase in the number of suicides among 45-49-year-old men is 1000 deaths, which is a 900% increase, among comparably-sized populations of about 10 million each. 

I want to be clear that I believe that any suicide death is one too many for the families who are left behind. I can’t even imagine the pain and suffering of each of the families who have lost a child in this way, and I’m so sorry they have to experience that. But if you’re looking at raw numbers rather than an increase in rates, you’d do a lot more to prevent deaths by focusing on older men than on teenage girls.  Ferguson would fail a senior student research project for trying to make the inferential leaps that Haidt is trying to reach. 

The language we use matters. When we talk about a “mental health emergency” or “surge of suffering”, it shapes how we think about solutions. If we believe there’s a tsunami, we reach for emergency measures like blanket phone bans. If we recognize it’s a modest tide, we might consider more thoughtful responses.

The International Data Doesn’t Add Up

Haidt often points to similar trends across multiple countries as evidence for his theory. But when you look closely at the data from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the patterns aren’t as consistent as they first appear.

Haidt says that “we see similar trends in the other major Anglosphere nations, including Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia” (p.40-41).  Again, while you can see an overall increase from 2009 to 2015 in New Zealand, the suicide rates for girls and young women are within historical averages, and have declined for boys and young men.

Data Source: https://www.health.govt.nz/publications/suicide-facts-data-tables-1996-2015

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare did the hard work of the graphing for me (although I couldn’t find data by gender), and yes, there was a substantial increase in suicides among 15-17 year-olds from around 2010 to 2018, and among 18-24 year olds from around 2009-2020. But the preliminary data shows that the rate has dropped pretty sharply for both groups since 2022, and I don’t think social media has been banned in Australia.

Data Source: https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/population-groups/young-people/suicide-self-harm-young-people 

In the U.K., the suicide rate for girls has doubled from 1.4 per 100,000 in 2007 to 3.1 per 100,000 in 2023. But, the rate for boys is a third less than it was at its peak in 1990.

Data Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/suicidesintheunitedkingdom/2023

Haidt’s graphs describing mental health crisis symptoms do seem dramatic when the graphs are shown one right after another.  When he shows suicide rates for young teens in the U.S., self-harm for U.K. teens, and mental health hospital visits for Australian teens, The Anxious Generation gives the impression that the changes are happening consistently across all the different types of data, across the entire Anglosphere.  But this isn’t always the case.

What this means for you: If smartphones were really the main cause of teen mental health problems, we’d see the same patterns in all countries where lots of kids use phones. Since we don’t, it means the real causes are more complicated. This means the solutions need to fit your specific child’s situation.

Only Looking at Gender Camouflages Other Trends

Haidt fails to analyze risk factors other than gender in The Anxious Generation.  Among Australian First Nations people aged 0–24, suicide rates were 3.1 times as high compared to non-Indigenous Australians. 

Inuit females age 15-24 had a suicide rate that was 33 times higher than non-Indigenous females between 2011-2016.  

I have yet to find suicide data that breaks out transgender youth statistics, but in 2021, more than a quarter (26.3%) of high school students identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual reported attempting suicide in the prior 12 months. This was five times higher than the prevalence among heterosexual students (5.2%).

The photo of the slim, blonde, straight, and White-presenting girl looking at her phone on the front of The Anxious Generation isn’t really representative of the actual suicide risk that teens face.

Depression Doesn’t Always Lead to Self-Harm

Studies of people who have considered suicide reveal that different communities experience distress very differently:

• Latinx Americans are more likely to see suicide as escape from poverty, discrimination, and social problems rather than internal mental health issues
• Asian Americans showed higher suicide risk related to interpersonal problems and academic pressure
• LGBTQ+ people aged 18-44 had lifetime suicide attempt rates of 38-44%, often driven by rejection and discrimination

School problems are more than twice as likely to contribute to suicide for Asian and Pacific Islander-Americans compared to white teens. This might be because many Asian-Americans and their parents put a lot of pressure on them to do well in school. But this pressure isn’t only an Asian-American problem. A study of Latina teens who had attempted suicide included one girl named Lola who said:

“I guess I started thinking about, like, my life, like about school. I’m not doing so good. I’m like, “What am I doing with my future?” And I guess it made me kind of sad. [My mom] screams at me. She’s like, “Why don’t you do better? Why don’t you try?” I do try.” 

Lola’s mom said: 

“I don’t remember these issues growing up. You just did what you had to do, and that was pretty much the end of it. You just do it. You don’t get a gold star.” 

Sofia described frequent arguments with her mother about chores. When Sofia did her chores, she believed her mother didn’t notice. 

Sofia’s mom told her during a fight: “I don’t care what you do no more. I don’t care!” 

Sofia thought her participation in the family was inconsequential, and concluded: “So you don’t care if I die,” and then she took pills. 

Her mother interpreted Sofia’s behavior in terms of resistance: “She just doesn’t want to listen. I hope it’s a phase, I just don’t think it’s a phase. I wanna know what it is with her. Because what happens is her anger comes to, ‘I don’t have to do this’. That attitude, it’s like, it’s disrespectful. I’m not your child. I’m your mother.”

A Scottish meta-analysis of ethnographic studies found that teens who self-harmed were often deeply frustrated by adult efforts to link their behavior to social media. Many felt frustrated by attempts to blame social media for their behavior. They saw the narrative that social media was driving their self-harm as wrong and unhelpful. In fact, trying to pin their struggles to one cause often increased their sense of shame and isolation.

These young people talked about self-harm in complicated ways. They said it helped them cope, process big feelings, or they couldn’t explain why they did it at all. If we try to make their pain sound simple, we might miss what they really need for help.

This matters because Haidt thinks that measuring depression and suicide rates shows us what’s wrong with teens. But if different communities understand and feel distress in different ways, we might be missing huge pieces of what’s really going on.

Most research on social media focuses on similar groups of college students. So we might not fully understand how screen time, mental health problems, and suicide connect.

So if the crisis isn’t as bad as claimed, what about the other half of Haidt’s argument? Does social media really cause the mental health problems that teens do face?

Does Social Media Actually Cause Teen Depression?

Jonathan Haidt is adamant that social media causes teen depression. In The Anxious Generation, he writes: “Taken as a whole, the dozens of experiments that Jean Twenge, Zach Rausch, and I have collected confirm and extend the patterns found in the correlational studies: Social media use is a cause of anxiety, depression, and other ailments, not just a correlate.”

That’s a bold claim. But when we dig into those “dozens of experiments,” we find research that’s far less convincing than it first appears.

The Problem with Social Media Research

When students know what you’re studying

Let’s start with one of the studies supporting Haidt’s position: Melissa Hunt’s “No More FOMO” experiment. Researchers told 143 psychology students they were studying social media use, then asked some to limit Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to 10 minutes per platform per day for three weeks.

Here’s the problem: the students knew exactly what the study was about. They’d heard countless times that social media is bad for mental health. When researchers then asked them to report on their wellbeing, is there any chance they didn’t know the “right” answer?

Here’s the problem: when you tell college students you’re studying whether social media is bad for them, and they’ve heard this message their whole lives, what do you think they’re going to report?  Dr. Peter Gray, who has extensively critiqued this research, points out that despite this built-in bias toward finding negative effects, the study still found:

• No significant effect on overall psychological wellbeing
• No effect on anxiety
• No effect on self-esteem
• No effect on autonomy
• No effect on self-acceptance

Even with this built-in bias toward finding problems, the study barely found anything. No effects on anxiety, self-esteem, or overall wellbeing. Just small changes in loneliness and depression, and only for students who were already struggling.

The Instagram “beauty filter” study

Another study Haidt cites (Kleemans et al. 2018) randomly assigned teen girls to view Instagram selfies, some original, some digitally enhanced to look “extra attractive.” The researchers found that viewing the enhanced photos led to lower body satisfaction.

But again, every teenage girl has heard that perfect Instagram images harm body image. When you tell participants you’re studying “facial preferences” and then show them obviously manipulated photos before asking about body satisfaction, you’re practically telegraphing what you want them to say.

The study also had other limitations:

• Participants viewed 10 selfies in a row (not typical Instagram use)
• Only Dutch girls from similar backgrounds participated
• Effects were measured immediately, not over time
• No control for participants’ mood or baseline body satisfaction

When researchers make it obvious to the study participants that they’re studying whether social media is bad for you, it isn’t surprising when they find that social media is bad for you.

What this means for you: The research claiming to prove that social media harms teens is far weaker than headlines suggest. Studies with serious flaws shouldn’t drive major family decisions. Your energy might be better spent on building a strong relationship with your teen rather than battling over their phone.

The “Natural Experiment” Problem

Given the obvious issues with controlled experiments, researchers have turned to “natural experiments”, studying what happens when broadband internet rolls out to different regions at different times. The logic: if social media really harms mental health, we should see clear declines in mental health as internet speed improves.

Haidt cites studies from England, Spain, and Italy. But the results don’t support his thesis as cleanly as he suggests:

Spain: Effects for men only (or men and women?)

Researchers in Spain tried to look at the connection between the timing of negative mental health effects and the rise of Instagram and TikTok. 

They did find a link between broadband and depression, but only for men born between 1985 and 1995, not women. Yet the study’s abstract claims effects for “both males and females.” This kind of inconsistency between results and reporting undermines confidence in the findings.  

Italy: Mental health impacts likely aren’t only caused by social media

The Italian study mostly covers a period before widespread social media use, yet still found mental health effects. This suggests that mental health impacts aren’t uniquely tied to social media. They could come from other online activities like gambling or pornography.

England: Confusing results

The English study was the most rigorous, tracking 6,000 children across 3,765 neighborhoods as broadband speeds improved. But the results were puzzling:

• Broadband was associated with better exam performance at age 10-11
• But worse performance at age 16
• The largest effect was a 0.6% decrease in how children felt about their appearance
• No statistically significant relationship between the use of social media and girls’ satisfaction with their friends or family relationships
• Spending 5+ hours on social media per day had an effect size comparable to bullying or family conflict found in other research

One challenge with both the English and Spanish studies is that the researchers split their data by factors like gender, age, and urban/rural areas.  But they didn’t state up-front that they were planning to do this analysis.  This is a red flag in research when you keep slicing data different ways until you find something that looks significant, you might just be finding statistical noise.

Dr. Jean Twenge’s Work: A Clear Finding of Harm

I looked at all of the papers Dr. Twenge lists on her website that are related to screen time, and I can see why she would be alarmed!

She looks at multiple large datasets, often of over 100,000 people that represent the U.S. population. She finds that teens who use a lot of digital media, especially social media, are twice as likely to report low well-being, depressive symptoms, and suicide risk factors compared to light users.

She finds that this pattern happens in the U.K. as well and is especially strong for girls. The relationship isn’t straight. Teens who use social media for up to an hour a day often have slightly higher well-being than teens who don’t use it. But well-being goes down steadily as you go beyond 1-2 hours per day.

Most of Twenge’s findings are correlational. This means she can say that screen time and wellbeing are linked, but can’t prove that one causes the other. She does cite studies that follow people over time. She does cite longitudinal studies suggesting that more social media use can predict later declines in well-being, rather than a decline in well-being preceding social media use. 

She proposes that sleep disruption, displacement of in-person interactions and exercise, social comparison, and cyberbullying create the negative effects.

The Potato Problem: When Big Data Misleads

This brings us to one of the most revealing critiques in this entire debate. Dr. Amy Orben, a leading researcher at Cambridge University, looked at teens’ digital technology use and their wellbeing to see if there was a relationship.  She found that there was an association: one approximately the same size as the one between teen wellbeing and eating potatoes.

Both correlations were statistically significant in a dataset of over 60,000 people. Both explained similar tiny amounts of variance in teen wellbeing (less than 1%).

We don’t blame potatoes for teen depression. So why do we blame social media?

This illustrates a crucial problem with big datasets. When you have enough participants, you can find statistically significant correlations between almost anything. The question isn’t whether the correlation exists. It’s whether it matters in the real world.

What the Research on the So-Called Harms of Social Media Actually Shows

When we look at the full body of research on social media and teen mental health, here’s what emerges:

The effects are tiny: Even studies that find bad effects usually explain less than 1% of how teens feel. That’s like saying a teen feels sad because they didn’t eat breakfast while ignoring their family problems, money stress, school pressure, and sleep. Dr. Twenge says 1% matters when you’re talking about millions of people. But other things are still way more important.

The effects aren’t consistent: Dr. Orben’s research shows that scientists can get very different results from the same information depending on how they look at it. Some studies (including Dr. Twenge’s) that show social media is bad pick “the most negative possible” way to look at the data.

Within-person effects are even smaller: Studies that track how changes in one person’s social media use affect their own wellbeing over time show even smaller effects than studies comparing different people at one point in time.  This is important because when we think about banning social media or screen time, we’re trying to create a change in a specific person which may not happen.

What this means for you: If social media affects your teen’s mood less than 1%, trying to control their phone all the time might not help much. You should address things like your relationship with them, their sleep, their stress, and how supported they feel at home and school.

What Affects Teen Mental Health More Than Social Media

If social media explains less than 1% of teen wellbeing, what explains the other 99%? Research consistently points to several factors:

What affects teen mental health #1: Family relationships 

In the UK study of teens who showed up at emergency rooms for self-harm, 64% cited family relationships as their primary problem. Mental health issues – supposedly driven by social media – ranked fifth.

There’s a significant association between positive supportive relationships with parents and young people’s wellbeing and life satisfaction.

What affects teen mental health #2: Social connections

This isn’t just about having friends, but the quality of those friendships. Strong friendships can be especially protective when teens aren’t getting support from family.

What affects teen mental health #3: Economic security

The stress of poverty affects everything from where families live to whether parents are home or working multiple jobs. Financial instability has massive impacts on teen mental health that dwarf any effects from screen time. 

Children’s suicide rates are higher in counties with a higher concentration of poverty than counties with less poverty. Having money is protective for the people who have it, but not having money can be incredibly difficult for those who don’t.

What affects teen mental health #4: Sleep and physical health

Poor sleep is both a cause and effect of mental health struggles. While screens can interfere with sleep, other factors can too. This may include family stress, feeling unsafe in your neighborhood, and early school start times.

What affects teen mental health #5: Academic pressure

A meta-analysis of 52 studies found evidence linking academic pressure to mental health problems in 48 of them. 

In research on communities like Palo Alto, CA and the anonymized ‘Poplar Grove’ in the book Life Under Pressure where suicide rates are many times national averages, kids don’t describe social media as being an important component of their distress.  

These case studies are important because the Palo Alto and ‘Poplar Grove’ teens had everything Haidt says should protect them from social media’s harms. They have tiight community bonds, involved parents, shared values. Yet they experienced suicide rates four to five times the national average.  These are the statistically significant risk factors for past year suicidal ideation among the six school districts in Santa Clara County (in which Palo Alto sits):

1. Drank alcohol, ever in lifetime
2. Use illicit drugs (marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine), ever in lifetime
3. Used pain medication, ever in lifetime
4. Smoked a cigarette, ever in lifetime
5. Female gender
6. Self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual
7. Feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more, past 12-months
8. Experienced violent victimization at school, past 12-months
9. Experienced psychological bullying at school, past 12-months
10. Experienced cyberbullying on internet, past 12-months > The only item related to phones/social media
11. Ever skipped school, past 12-months

In addition to these factors, students perceived academic pressure or distress, general life challenges, depression, feeling disconnected and socially isolated, family or cultural pressure, lack of access to mental health care, poor coping skills, sleep deprivation/disorders, and family economic distress as important risk factors for suicide.

What affects teen mental health #6: School environment

Beyond academic pressure, factors like bullying, feeling unsafe, lack of belonging, and unsupportive teachers all contribute to mental health challenges.

We’ve seen recent increases in the percentage of students who were threatened or injured with a weapon at school, and in the percentage of students who were bullied at school.  There has also been a jump in the percentage of students who missed school because of safety concerns either at school or on the way to school.

What this means for you: Focus on being a parent your teen feels safe talking to rather than a parent who monitors their every online move. Ask about their friendships. Notice if they seem overwhelmed by school, and pay attention to how your family dynamics might be affecting them. These factors have far more impact than their Instagram usage.

Blanket Phone Bans Won’t Help All Teens

The Anxious Generation glosses over the idea that smartphone and social media bans may not be beneficial for all teens:

• LGBTQ+ youth often use social media as a lifeline when their families and communities don’t accept them.
• Black teens are more likely than white teens to use social media to get information about mental health.
• Native American girls aged 15-19, who have suicide rates five times higher than white girls, might rely on social media to connect with other Native youth in geographically isolated communities or access mental health resources.

When we create blanket policies for young teens based on research conducted predominantly on advantaged young adults at university, we risk harming the very teens who most need support.

Why This Matters for Your Family

You might be thinking: “Studies have limitations, so what? Shouldn’t we err on the side of caution?”

Here’s why the research quality matters: when studies are this flawed, we can’t tell the difference between correlation and causation. And if we can’t tell what’s actually causing the problems our teens face, we might be fighting the wrong battle.

Imagine if doctors treated every fever by putting patients in ice baths, without checking whether the fever was caused by infection, heat exhaustion, or medication side effects. That’s essentially what happens when we assume screens are the problem without solid evidence.

Haidt points to what he says is a clear decline in children’s mental health and the ‘obvious’ smoking gun of screen time as the single cause. But in our incredibly complicated world with so many things affecting us, what’s more likely? That there’s one single issue creating such a big impact and that screen time is it? Or is it more likely that it’s a complex interplay of issues, of which screen time makes up a fairly small part? Based on the evidence we’ve reviewed, I argue for the latter.  

School Phone Bans: Are We Solving the Wrong Problem?

Given the mixed evidence on social media’s harms, you might wonder: what about the practical solutions being implemented?  Twenty-one states are now studying or have already enforced school phone bans. Florida led the charge, banning cell phones during instructional time and restricting social media access on school Wi-Fi. Louisiana, Virginia, and Indiana just finished their first year of implementation, while Oklahoma, North Dakota, and New York have bans coming next school year.

The logic seems simple: if phones are distracting students and harming their mental health, removing them should help. But what if we’re missing something crucial about why kids turn to their phones in the first place?

The Myth of the Golden Age of Childhood

Before diving into phone bans, we need to examine the premise behind them. Jonathan Haidt argues we should return to a “golden age” of childhood when children played freely without adult supervision. He describes his own 1960s childhood in suburban Scarsdale, riding bikes and going on neighborhood adventures. Dr. Peter Gray similarly recalls the 1950s, playing pickup baseball and basketball with no adults in sight.

But this “golden age” narrative has some serious blind spots.

Who actually had this freedom?

This idealized childhood was primarily available to White, middle-class boys. Here’s what the research shows about who was actually free to play:

Girls had far less freedom due to cultural expectations that kept them closer to home. Even today, young men and boys spend 85% more time outdoors than young women and girls. In interviews with English girls, many report feeling unwelcome or unsafe in parks when boys are using the spaces.

Black and immigrant children faced segregation and discrimination that made many public spaces unsafe. In 1945, Washington D.C. officially segregated public recreation spaces. Four Black boys were arrested when their ball hit a street lamp outside a park they were barred from entering.

Working-class children often had jobs from young ages. Child labor wasn’t federally regulated until 1938, and many children worked in dangerous conditions in factories and mines.

The “golden age” was golden for some, but it wasn’t universal. And even for those who experienced it, the complete absence of adult guidance had its own problems.

What Actually Happens During Unsupervised Play

While Haidt and Gray celebrate adult-free childhood environments, research shows this freedom came with costs. During recess, one of the few times kids still play with minimal supervision, we see:

• Boys taking over sports fields while girls (and boys who don’t play football) are marginalized
• Racial hierarchies being established and reinforced.  Dr. Debra Van Ausdale’s ethnography of preschool classrooms found white children “trying on” the use of power over non-White classmates, seeing if adults would notice or intervene. By and large, nobody did
• Bullying and exclusion of children with less social capital, neurodivergence, etc.
• Boys’ sexual harassment of girls is normalized

These findings suggest that completely unsupervised play doesn’t automatically create the inclusive, character-building environment that phone ban advocates envision.

The Academic Performance Argument Falls Apart

Haidt claims that declining test scores since 2012 prove phones are destroying education. He points to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data showing drops in reading and math scores coinciding with smartphone adoption.

But when we look closely at the numbers, the story changes:

The “decline” in test scores is tiny

For 9-year-olds, reading scores dropped by one point from 2012 to 2020 on a scale of 0 to 500. Math scores dropped by three points.  (Declines in 2020 and beyond point to COVID as a factor, rather than screens.)

Figure Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9

For 13-year-olds, reading dropped three points and math dropped five points over eight years – again on a scale of 0 to 500.

Figure Source: National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=13

These aren’t “substantial” declines – they’re barely measurable changes on a massive scale.

International data doesn’t support the theory

If smartphones were driving academic decline, we’d expect to see them in countries with high smartphone adoption. But when we compare data on smartphone penetration in 2013 and PISA (an international test of student achievement) scores, we find:

• Singapore and Norway maintained or improved their high scores despite high phone penetration.
• The UK, Hong Kong, and Israel had flat or improving trends.
• Sweden hit a low point in 2012, then rebounded (pre-COVID), with a smart phone penetration 8 points higher than the U.S.
• The United Arab Emirates, with the highest phone penetration in 2012, held steady in reading (pre-COVID) and improved in math.
• Australia’s scores have declined linearly, a trend which began well before 2010 (first smart phones) / 2012 (front-facing camera/Instagram) / 2013 (first smartphone penetration data available).

While we have to assume that smartphone penetration was similar for adults and teens (as separate data on teens isn’t available), there’s no consistent pattern linking high smartphone penetration to academic decline.

Other factors driving school outcomes were ignored

Haidt ignores that both Common Core standards and the Race to the Top program were implemented in 2010, exactly when he claims phone-related decline began. These programs cost $10-20 billion federally plus billions more at state level, fundamentally changing how teachers taught and students learned.  Research indicates that these programs (especially Common Core) have not improved students’ learning outcomes, and may have done harm.

It’s unlikely that disengagement with school, or test score performance, is driven solely, or even mostly, by kids’ mobile phone use.  So is banning phones in school the right answer?

What Research on School Phone Bans Actually Show

The research on phone bans in schools reveals mixed results at best:

Denmark: Mixed results on physical activity from a not-real ban

A four-week ban on smartphones during recess found increased moderate physical activity but decreased vigorous activity. However:

• Only 68% of students actually complied with the “ban” (so was the study even a real test of smartphone bans?)
• There were no control schools that didn’t ban phones for comparison
• The study occurred during COVID with various outdoor recess mandates, which could have affected the results
• Four weeks isn’t long enough to determine lasting effects

England: No significant differences (probably driven by study design)

Researchers compared 30 schools with restrictive versus permissive phone policies and found no significant differences in:

• Student mental wellbeing
• Anxiety or depression
• Academic achievement
• Disruptive behavior
• Sleep or physical activity

The “restrictive” schools often still allowed phones in bags or lockers, and while in-school phone use decreased, overall daily usage didn’t change – suggesting kids just used phones more outside school.

Industry-supported study: Miraculous results!

Yondr, the company that makes locking pouches for phones commissioned a study showing dramatic improvements in academic success and behavior. But this “research” had:

• No control group
• No accounting for other variables that might affect outcomes
• Marketing-style displays of data rather than rigorous analysis
• A clear financial conflict of interest

What this means for you: If your child’s school bans phones, don’t expect it to dramatically improve their mental health or grades. Research suggests these bans treat symptoms rather than causes. Stay focused on what actually helps your child do well: feeling connected, having some control over their life, and dealing with real stress they face.

A Teacher’s Story Reveals the Real Problem

The most revealing insight for me came from physical education teacher Gilbert Schuerch, whose account of his school’s phone ban was featured on Haidt’s blog. Schuerch describes the elaborate lengths students went to circumvent phone restrictions:

• Stabbing through the Yondr pouches with pens
• Bringing two phones (one decoy to put in the Yondr pouch; one real to keep in their pocket)
• One enterprising student bought the Yondr unlock magnet on Amazon and charged classmates $1 per unlock

But the most telling part is Schuerch’s typical interaction with a disengaged student. When a student doesn’t want to participate in gym class, Schuerch tells them:

“You have to learn how to do the things you don’t want to do… Here’s what I actually want right now. I want to be home, on my couch, watching Netflix, with a girl on my left arm, and a girl on my right… But here I am, because we have to do the things we don’t want to do.”

Setting aside the teacher’s sexist dream that he’s holding up as a model to his student, and also that the teacher’s own dream involves zoning out in front of a screen even as he’s telling his student to engage in the class.  

What’s most important to me is that Schuerch sees the main purpose of school is to train kids to do things they don’t want to do, so they can spend the rest of their lives doing things they don’t want to do.

Is this really the purpose of school?  Is this what we hope our kids will aspire to in life?

The Missing Piece: Why Kids Want Phones

This exchange reveals what phone ban advocates miss: kids turn to phones because phones meet needs that school doesn’t. Kids turn to their phones to meet needs like:

• Autonomy: Choice over what to engage with and when
• Connection: Real relationships with peers on their terms
• Relevance: Content that feels meaningful to their lives
• Agency: The ability to shape their own experience

School, by contrast, often provides:

• Forced compliance with predetermined curricula
• Limited choice in activities or pace of learning
• Minimal opportunity for authentic peer connection
• Content disconnected from students’ interests and experiences

When we ban phones without addressing these underlying needs, we’re treating symptoms while ignoring the underlying disease.

What Students Actually Say About School Engagement

When researchers ask teens directly about school engagement (instead of just studying numerical data), students report that engagement is fostered by:

• Supportive relationships with teachers and staff
• Opportunities for real choice and voice
• Relevant, hands-on learning experiences
• Classroom environments focused on growth rather than just grades
• Respect and fair treatment from adults

School disengagement is associated with:

• Strict, punitive rules and policies (perhaps including phone bans?)
• Irrelevant or boring curriculum
• Limited autonomy and voice (perhaps on policies like phone bans?)
• Lack of respect from adults
• Peer exclusion and social problems

Some researchers in Spain worked with middle schoolers in several different schools to co-design ethnographic research on the middle school experience. One student said: 

“I learn little in school. I spend most of my time looking for information … I look for things not explained at school in Internet … [ … ] In the class, I listen, but not too much, because just being attentive you get the picture. I know too much…I learned to produce videos, movies, songs … The camera … I know a lot about videos: effects, how to assemble a video, and so on.”

An adult researcher on the project observed: 

“What the students learn in school somehow helps them to understand the outside world, but what they learn outside is not usually incorporated and taken into account at school. Only in a very few classes teachers pay attention to their experience, knowledge and understandings. At school they learn things to pass exams, but once passed they find difficult to remember them. They tend to remember what they learn outside, because for them this learning is more meaningful, is more related to their experiences, interests, and social and emotional relationships. Although digital technology is increasingly incorporated in classes, it is used differently inside and outside school. Within often its use places them as spectators and recipients of information, outside its use increases their responsibility, agency, ability to scan information, to communicate and express.”

Phone access might be related to school disengagement, but it’s only a small part of what drives disengagement. Relationships, relevance, and respect are what matter.  Where teachers and schools can build real relationships with kids, kids thrive.  When kids know that their voice doesn’t matter, and that the adults are trying to get kids to do things that don’t matter, kids disengage.  

Phone bans are unlikely to lead to a huge improvement in kids’ mental health (since they may just use their phones more outside of school) or test scores.  Fortunately this will be relatively easy to test: in a year or two, we’ll expect to see kids’ mental health and test scores increasing in the states where bans have been implemented.

What this means for you: If your teen seems checked out from school, their phone probably isn’t the main problem. Look for signs they feel unheard, overwhelmed, or disconnected from learning. The solution likely means pushing for better school experiences, not just taking away their device.

Now we’ve looked at schools, what should we do about our kids’ use of smartphones and social media at home?

Should We Ban Our Kids from Using Smartphones at Home?

Dr. Jean Twenge, Jonathan Haidt’s frequent collaborator, will release a book in September 2025 offering what seems like the perfect solution: 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World: How Parents Can Stop Smartphones, Social Media, and Gaming from Taking Over Their Children’s Lives. 

Her rules include “You’re in charge,” “No social media until 16,” and “Give the first smartphone with the driver’s license.”

These rules are appealing to parents. They’re clear, easy to communicate, and give us something concrete to do. But what if this approach, built on control and restriction, actually pushes our kids further away from us when they need our guidance most?

The Problem with “You’re in Charge”

Twenge’s Rule #1 is “You’re in charge.” While I understand the appeal of parental authority, especially when dealing with apps designed to capture our kids’ attention, this approach has a fundamental flaw: it’s really hard to change someone else’s behavior.

Nobody likes it when others try to control their behavior, and kids are no exception. When we make ourselves “in charge” of our teen’s technology use, we’re essentially trying to control their behavior rather than helping them develop their own internal compass.

Here’s a personal example: My husband loves mountain biking and has been encouraging our daughter to ride with him for years. Despite his enthusiasm and constant invitations, she increasingly resists. The more she’s asked to ride, the less she wants to do it because she wants it to be her own decision.

Contrast this with hiking, something I love but stopped pushing her to do. Once I gave up asking, she started occasionally suggesting hikes herself. She wants to make choices about her own activities, just like she chooses to walk dogs for her pet-sitting business.  She doesn’t love walking, but she does it because she chose the goal of building her business.

What this means for you: Rules and restrictions might seem like the obvious solution. But, they often backfire by damaging the trust and communication you need most. Before implementing strict limits, ask yourself: Am I trying to control my teen’s behavior, or am I trying to help them develop their own healthy relationship with technology?

Why Control-Based Approaches Backfire

The sneaking problem

When we ban technology, kids don’t just comply. They get creative. They already know how to:

• Create secret social media accounts
• Hide social media app icons behind calculator logos
• Access devices at friends’ houses

The real danger isn’t that they’ll only reduce their screen time slightly when we take their phone away (which Twenge says is still beneficial). The danger is that they’ll lose the ability to come to us when they encounter disturbing content, inappropriate contact, or confusing situations online.

Imagine two scenarios:

Scenario 1: A teen with open dialogue about technology encounters disturbing content on their device and thinks: “I saw something online that made me uncomfortable. I’m going to tell my parent so I can understand this better and make a plan so I don’t see that kind of content again.”

Scenario 2: A teen who’s banned from smartphones sees the same content on a friend’s device but thinks: “That’s really disturbing.  But my friend says it’s normal, so I guess it must be normal.  I can’t tell my parent about this because I’m not supposed to be on a phone at all and they’ll kill me if they find out.”

Which teen is safer?

The historical failure of “Just say no”

We’ve tried control-based approaches before. The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program in the 1980s and 1990s taught kids to “just say no” to drugs through willpower alone. Not only did DARE fail to reduce drug use, in some cases, it actually increased it.

Why did it fail?

• It promoted abstinence without addressing underlying reasons kids use drugs (stress, trauma, curiosity, social pressure)
• Zero-tolerance messaging discouraged honest conversations
• Kids knew they’d be punished if caught, so they couldn’t seek help

Sound familiar? Kids use social media for many of the same reasons they might use drugs. They use it to cope with stress, connect with others, escape boredom, or explore identity.  When they thought about using drugs or actually tried them, they didn’t talk with caring adults because they knew they’d be in trouble.

The Relationship Cost of Control

When we focus primarily on controlling our teen’s behavior, we risk damaging the very relationship that could help them navigate technology healthily. Consider this story from the book Hold On To Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté:

Melanie was thirteen years old.  Her father could barely contain his anger when he talked about his daughter.  Life with her changed after Melanie’s grandmother had died when the child was in the sixth grade.  Until that time, Melanie had been cooperative at home, a good student at school, and a loving sister to her brother…Now she was missing classes and couldn’t care less about homework.  She was sneaking out of the house on a regular basis.  She refused to talk to her parents, declaring that she hated them and that she just wanted to be left alone…

The mother felt traumatized.  She spent much of her time pleading with her daughter to be “nice,” to be home on time, and to stop sneaking out.  

The father could not abide Melanie’s insolent attitude.  He believed that the solution was somehow to lay down the law, to teach the adolescent ‘a lesson she would never forget.’  As far as he was concerned, anything less than a hard-line approach was only indulging Melanie’s unacceptable behavior and made matters worse.  He was all the more enraged since, until this abrupt change in her personality, Melanie had been ‘daddy’s girl,’ sweet and compliant.

Everyone wants Melanie to be ‘nice’ and ‘sweet’ and ‘compliant’ again.  Perhaps she was short with them at times in her grief after her grandmother’s death, and they responded by pushing her away.  

She withdrew further, so they punished her more. They created a cycle where her friends became more accepting than her parents, and she no longer wants to be with her family.

If the book had been written more recently than 2004, Melanie’s Dad would have shouted at her for always being on her phone, and then taken it away.  But would this have improved their relationship?  The “solution” of imposing stricter rules doesn’t address why Melanie pulled away in the first place. It just continues the pattern that created the problem.

What this means for you: The relationship you have with your teen matters more for their mental health than any rule you could make about their phone. If screen time restrictions are causing constant fights and pushing your child away from you, the cure might be worse than the problem.

What Kids Are Really Moving Away From

Here’s something crucial to understand: when kids spend excessive time on screens, they’re not just moving toward technology. They’re often moving away from something, and sometimes that thing is us.

Many teens become what Neufeld and Maté call “peer-oriented”. They are more attached to their friends than to their parents. While cutting off screen time might seem like it would bring them back to us, it won’t work if we haven’t addressed why they moved away in the first place.

If your relationship with your teen has become primarily about rules, consequences, and compliance, removing their phone won’t suddenly create the warm, connected relationship you want. It might just leave them feeling more alone and powerless.

Make Offline Life Compelling

Instead of restricting online activities, we need to make offline experiences genuinely interesting:

• Support kids in taking on real responsibility: My daughter loves her pet-sitting business partly because clients trust her with important things like their pets’ safety and their house keys. (It’s not like we hadn’t tried to get her to take on more responsibility around the house but again, it being self-chosen is key!)
• Acknowledge their contributions: Even for routine chores, acknowledgment matters. Just like adults appreciate being thanked for cooking dinner, kids appreciate recognition for their efforts.  I now thank Carys each day for unloading the dishwasher and putting her plates in the kitchen after dinner.
• Support their goals: When Carys wanted to expand her business, she needed pet first aid certification. The online course was miserable. The written content was hard for her dyslexic brain to process. I supported her by showing her how to use a screen reader (which read in a boring monotone).  But she persevered because it served her goal, not something imposed on her.
• Create opportunities for autonomy: Let them make meaningful decisions about their classes, schedules, and activities.  When we push them into doing things they don’t want to do they might learn a skill, but it might come at the cost of our relationship with them.

What this means for you: If your teen seems “addicted” to their phone, look at what they might be avoiding in real life. Are they stressed about school? Feeling disconnected from family? Bored with their daily routine? Address the underlying issue, not just the symptom.

Moving Forward: 6 Strategies Better Than Just Banning Phones

I’m not directly facing challenges with phones or social media yet, because Carys doesn’t use either of them by her choice.  I still use the following strategies around discussions about iPad time.

Instead of focusing solely on restriction, I hope you’ll consider involving your kids in any rules around phone usage, model healthy device use yourselves, and address broader sources of stress and disconnection in your family.

Here are strategies that work better than simply banning phones:

Screen time strategy #1: Look at the whole picture, not just the screen

Teen mental health comes from many different places. It can be from school stress, family problems, being excluded by friends. For example, if your teen seems ‘addicted’ to their phone, ask yourself: Are they avoiding homework they find overwhelming? Using social media to stay connected with friends when they feel left out at school? Scrolling to decompress after a stressful day of advanced classes? The phone might be their coping mechanism, not the actual problem.

Social media is just one small piece of this puzzle. When we only focus on phones, we might miss the bigger problems that are really causing our teens to struggle. While the exact mechanisms will be different, kids will face these issues regardless of whether they’re online.

Screen time strategy #2: Build strong connections through listening

The best protection for our teens is having close relationships with parents and other caring adults. Set aside time for real conversations about what’s happening in your child’s life, both online and offline. Listen more than you talk. 

Instead of ‘How was school?’, try ‘What was the best part of your day?’. Or ask about something specific that you know your child was looking forward to or was feeling worried about. When they share something from their phone, resist saying ‘You’re always on that thing’. Instead try: ‘That’s interesting, tell me more about that’ or ‘How did you feel about that?’.

Don’t jump in with quick fixes. Instead, help your kids figure out their own solutions to the problems they face.

Screen time strategy #3: Work together instead of just setting rules

Instead of making strict rules or banning things completely, include your child in deciding what healthy limits look like. Help them think about how different activities make them feel. Support them in learning to make good choices about technology on their own. When kids help create the rules, they’re much more likely to follow them.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: Sit down with your teen and say, ‘I’ve been reading about screen time and I’m curious about your perspective. How do you feel after spending time on different apps? Are there times when your phone feels helpful versus stressful? What would healthy phone use look like for our family?’ Then actually listen to their answers and build agreements together.

If you start by threatening to take away their phones, your kids will never tell you when phones are actually causing problems for them.

Screen time strategy #4: Focus on the bigger sources of stress for the most stressed people

Pay attention to the pressure you might be putting on your child about grades, activities, or being “successful”. Sometimes the kids who look like they have everything figured out are actually carrying the heaviest loads. Talk with your kids about what success means to them and what kind of support they need. 

Look for signs your child is overwhelmed: Are they staying up late doing homework? Stressed about college applications? Feeling pressure to get perfect grades? Having friendship drama? 

Ask what support your child would like to receive from you. Maybe that means talking to teachers about workload, helping them develop better study habits, or simply acknowledging that things are hard for them right now.

Look for ways to make the biggest difference. It can be making sure your child supports LGBTQ teens at school or helping young men access resources when they’re struggling. Both of these are likely to reduce the rate of harm more than keeping middle class White girls off social media.

Screen time strategy #5: Create phone-free connection opportunities that don’t feel like rules

Instead of declaring ‘no phones at dinner’, try ‘I miss talking with you. Do you want to cook together tonight?’ 

If your teen loves a particular game, TV show, or YouTube creator, engage with their interests. Ask genuine questions about what they’re watching or playing. 

You might be able to find a shared project to work on, like learning to make sourdough bread, planning a family trip, or working on a room makeover. When you’re both invested in the outcome, phones naturally take a backseat. 

When I’m helping my daughter with her business to help other kids start their own businesses we are often using screens. But, there’s a big difference between social media scrolling and recording videos, updating her website, and managing her retirement savings account.

Timing matters: Don’t try to create connection when your teen is stressed, tired, or in the middle of something important to them. Pay attention to when they seem most open. They may need time alone to decompress after school. Dinner might have become a battleground. A quiet late evening or weekend may be a better opportunity.

Make it low-pressure: The goal isn’t deep emotional conversations every time. Sometimes connection can happen by just being in the same room doing different things. It can also happen by sharing a funny meme or having them help you figure out why the printer isn’t working. These small moments build trust that makes the bigger conversations possible.

Follow their lead: If your teen starts telling you about something, put down whatever you’re doing and listen, even if it’s not a convenient time. 

The magic happens when your teen starts thinking: ‘I want to tell my parents about this’. Not ‘I have to talk to my parents because they’re making me put my phone away’.

Screen time strategy #6: Remember that every child is different

What helps one child might not help another. For some kids, social media causes stress. For others, it’s where they find important support. For many kids, social media can be supportive in one moment and a stressor in the next.

Think about your child’s personality and what they’re dealing with when making decisions (with them!) about screen time. If your child seems really affected by social media, talk with them about what you’re seeing and ask what help they want. And if your teen is using social media to cope with real-life problems, you’ll need different strategies to support them.

Final Thoughts

The Anxious Generation has received a lot of publicity. A lot of parents are worried about the ideas in the book. This matters because if we believe smartphones and social media cause our children’s problems when they really don’t, we’ll take actions that might not work. They might even be harmful.

The research shows us that social media does influence our kids’ mental health.  But a far bigger influence on kids’ mental health is the relationships, pressures, and experiences in their real lives. This doesn’t mean phones are harmless or that we should ignore concerning behaviors. But it does mean that banning devices without addressing the deeper issues is like taking away a teenager’s diary because they’re writing sad entries in it.

Instead of asking “How do I get my kid off their phone?” we might ask:

• “What is my child getting from their phone that they’re not getting elsewhere?”
• “What pressures are they facing that I might not fully understand?”
• “How can I create more opportunities for real connection and meaningful conversation?”
• “What kind of support does my child actually want from me?”

The teens who are struggling most need us to be curious, not controlling. They need us to listen without immediately jumping to solutions. They need to know they can tell us when something online bothers them without worrying we’ll take their devices away.

I know this approach can feel more difficult than simple rules. It would be so much easier if we could just ban smartphones and solve our kids’ problems. But the evidence tells us that the issues our teens face are more complex than any single solution can address.

Our kids are growing up in a world we didn’t experience. Whether we like it or not, technology will be a part of their lives. The question isn’t how to protect them from that reality. It’s how to help them develop the skills and judgment to handle it well.

That happens not through control, but through connection. Not through fear, but through trust. Not by solving their problems for them, but by supporting them as they figure out their own solutions.

Your relationship with your teen is the most powerful tool you have for supporting their mental health. It’s worth protecting, even if it means taking a more nuanced approach to the phone in their pocket.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Anxious Generation

1. What is the summary of The Anxious Generation?

Jonathan Haidt’s book says that between 2010-2015, smartphones and social media created a mental health crisis among teens. He says phones replaced “play-based childhood” with “phone-based childhood.” He presents dramatic statistics showing increases in depression, anxiety, and self-harm. But when you look closely, these increases may come from cherry picked research, better mental health screening, and changes in how mental health problems are reported. They may not be new cases caused by technology.

2. How do you define a mental health crisis?

A true mental health crisis would show big, consistent increases in problems across different groups and countries. What we actually see are changes that happen inconsistently both within and across countries. For example, suicide rates among kids aged 10-14 increased from 0.8 to 2.2 per 100,000. That rate is still far below middle aged men. It’s also much lower than teens aged 15-19, who tend to spend more time on smartphones and social media than the 10-14 year-olds.

3. Why are today’s youth so anxious?

Research shows the biggest factors aren’t social media. These are family relationship problems (cited by 64% of teens seeking help), school pressure, money stress, sleep problems, and school environment issues. Different communities experience stress differently. This is often related to discrimination, poverty, or cultural pressures that have nothing to do with phones.

4. Does social media cause depression in teens?

The evidence for causation is much weaker than headlines suggest. Studies claiming to prove this have major flaws: participants know what researchers are studying, effects are measured immediately rather than over time, and many recruit only from middle class, predominantly White communities. The correlation exists but is extremely small. Some researchers argue that the practical significance in real life is much less than for factors like family relationships, friendships, and school stress.

5. Should parents allow their child to use social media?

Rather than blanket bans, focus on building strong relationships and open communication. When we ban technology, kids often find ways around restrictions but lose the ability to come to us when they encounter problems online. The real protection comes from having teens who feel safe discussing their online experiences with parents.

6. How do you set social media limits with your teen?

Work together rather than imposing strict rules. Include your teen in deciding what healthy limits look like. Help them think about how different activities make them feel. When kids help create the rules, they’re much more likely to follow them and come to you when problems arise.

7. Should parents control their child’s phone?

Control-based approaches often backfire. Kids get creative with secret accounts, hidden apps, and borrowed devices. More importantly, they lose the ability to come to you when they encounter disturbing content or inappropriate contact. Focus on connection over control. The relationship is your most powerful tool.

8. What’s the best way to support teens’ mental health

Look at the whole picture, not just screens. Build strong connections through listening more than talking. Address bigger sources of stress like academic pressure or family problems. Make offline activities genuinely interesting and support kids in taking on real responsibility and autonomy when they’re ready for it. Remember that every child is different in what they need, and try to meet your child where they are.

9. How do I manage my teen’s phone?

Instead of trying to manage the phone, focus on the relationship. Ask what they’re getting from their phone that they’re not getting elsewhere. Listen to their perspective without immediately jumping to solutions. Address any bigger stressors in their life. Create opportunities for meaningful offline connection and real responsibility.

10. Should parents have the right to monitor teens’ activity on social media?

Monitoring can damage trust and push teens away when they need guidance most. Instead of surveillance, focus on creating an environment where teens feel safe discussing their online experiences. When they encounter problems, you want them thinking “I can talk to my parents about this” rather than “I have to hide this so I don’t get in trouble.”

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References

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1. Summer boredom happens when kids lose school structure and face too many choices without knowing how to navigate free time independently.
2. Kids with ADHD experience boredom differently due to lower dopamine levels that make time feel slower and increase their need for stimulation.
3. Traditional activity lists fail because they ignore each child’s unique interests and create overwhelm instead of genuine engagement.
4. Child-led learning means following what naturally captures your child’s attention and building on those interests together as their guide.
5. When kids say “I’m bored,” respond with curiosity instead of immediate solutions – it’s valuable information about what they need.
6. Boredom creates space for creativity and self-discovery when we resist filling every moment with structured activities and entertainment.

It’s 10 a.m. on a Wednesday. You’re one coffee in and already Googling “summer activities for 8 year olds” while your child lies dramatically on the floor groaning: “I’m bored! There’s nothing to dooooo!” You click through Pinterest boards and pre-made printables, hoping for a magic fix, but deep down, you know the novelty will wear off by lunchtime.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Summer boredom is real. It’s frustrating. And it often feels like your child is begging you to be their full-time entertainment director. But what if I told you that the best “summer boredom busters” don’t come from a screen or a subscription box?

They’re already inside your home and inside your child.

Today, I want to reframe how we think about summer, boredom, and learning. Instead of asking how can I keep my child busy? Let’s ask: What are they trying to tell me when they say they’re bored?

Why Is Summer So Boring

If you’ve ever wondered why your child seems more bored during summer than during the school year, you’re asking exactly the right question.

Summer break can feel boring to many kids because it takes away the routine they’re used to. During the school year, their days are filled with challenges, school work, and clear goals. When summer arrives, that framework disappears, leaving children with endless stretches of time but no roadmap for how to fill it. But here’s the thing – many kids find school boring too, for the very same reason. When children don’t have real choices about what they’re learning or how they’re spending their time, when they can’t pursue what genuinely interests them, that lack of autonomy leaves them feeling disconnected and bored, whether they’re sitting in a classroom or lounging at home.

There’s also the paradox of choice at play. When children have “everything” available to them – toys, books, games, outdoor space – the abundance can actually make it harder to settle on something that feels genuinely engaging. It’s similar to how adults sometimes stand in front of a full refrigerator and declare that there’s “nothing to eat”.

The cultural pressure to have an amazing summer doesn’t help either. When kids hear about camps, vacations, and all those perfect activities they see online, regular time at home doesn’t seem as fun. Without meaning to, we’ve taught them that summer should be exciting all the time. This makes normal, everyday moments feel disappointing.

What Causes Boredom in Kids

At its core, boredom happens when there’s a mismatch between what our brain can handle and what we’re asking it to do. Think of it like Goldilocks and the three bears – the porridge can’t be too hot or too cold. Our kids need mental stimulation that’s just right.

When a task is too easy, kids zone out because their brain isn’t engaged. But here’s what might surprise you: when something is overly challenging, kids get bored too. Their cognitive resources get overwhelmed, making it hard to pay attention to anything.

Do kids with ADHD get bored more easily?

This mismatch becomes even more complex for neurodivergent kids, particularly those with ADHD. There’s fascinating research showing that children with ADHD experience boredom differently because of how their brains process dopamine – that feel-good neurotransmitter that’s part of our reward system and triggers emotions like joy and excitement.

For kids with ADHD, lower dopamine levels affect how they experience time. Minutes crawl by more slowly than they do for other people, which means they feel bored much more quickly during periods of inactivity. Dr. Katya Rubia at King’s College London found that when these kids look for new and exciting things or take risks, they’re actually trying to help themselves feel better. They’re boosting chemicals in their brain to make time feel normal again and get rid of that awful boredom. 

Here’s the reframe I want to offer: when we see our kids sprawled on the couch declaring “I’m bored!”, that’s not a problem to solve immediately. It’s valuable information about what’s happening in their world right now. Instead of rushing to fix it, we can get curious about what they’re really telling us.

I know that can feel uncomfortable. When your child says they’re bored, something inside you might start scrambling – your mind racing through activity lists, wondering if you’re failing them somehow, feeling that familiar pressure to be their entertainment director. That discomfort is completely normal, but here’s what I want you to remember: your child’s boredom is not your problem to fix.

What can help both you and your child is building in predictable daily one-on-one connection time. This doesn’t have to be elaborate. Maybe it’s fifteen minutes of undivided attention after breakfast, or a brief check-in before bedtime where you’re fully present with them. When children know they have that reliable connection time coming, they’re often more willing to navigate boredom on their own. They’re not using “I’m bored” as a bid for your attention because they already know when that attention will come.

So how do we teach kids to handle boredom? The answer might surprise you: we don’t teach them to handle it. We teach them to listen to it. When your child says “I’m bored,” that’s actually their internal compass pointing toward what they need. Maybe they need more challenge, maybe they need to rest, or maybe they’re ready to dive deeper into something that genuinely interests them. By responding with curiosity instead of immediate solutions, we’re teaching them that boredom isn’t something to fear or fix quickly – it’s information they can use to guide their own choices.

Why Traditional Summer Activity Lists Don’t Work

I know you’ve seen them: “100 Summer Activities for Kids!” “12 Ways to Keep Your Child Learning This Summer!” I get why these lists feel appealing. As parents, we want to do right by our children, especially during those long summer months when the structure of school disappears.

But these one-size-fits-all approaches often create more problems than they solve.

These lists assume that what sparks joy in one child will automatically work for yours. They ignore your child’s unique interests, learning style, and developmental needs. Even more concerning? They often pack in so many activities that children never get the chance to dive deep into anything that truly captures their attention. And they also assume that if a child is doing something not on the list, they aren’t really learning.

When we over-schedule our children, especially during summer, we’re not creating opportunities for growth. We’re creating stress. Instead of fostering the curiosity and engagement we’re hoping for, we often end up with overwhelmed, resistant children.

So when your child comes to you and says, “I’m bored”, pause before you reach for that activity list. They might not be telling you they need more to do. They might be telling you they need more say in what they do.

How to Help Bored Children: A Different Approach

Here’s the shift I’m inviting you to make: let go of the pressure to fill every moment with structured activities. Step away from the Pinterest-perfect summer schedules and the guilt that comes with them.

Instead, get genuinely curious about what your child already loves. This doesn’t require you to become an expert in dinosaurs or coding or whatever captures their attention. Your role is to be a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage, someone who helps them explore deeper rather than someone who teaches from a position of authority.

The beautiful thing about this approach is that it’s entirely flexible. Some families might spend hours each day following their child’s interests, while others might dedicate just a weekend afternoon here and there to extending what their child is curious about. There’s no right amount of time. It’s about following your child’s lead and your family’s rhythm.

When your child announces “I’m bored,” resist the urge to immediately offer solutions or activities. Try responding with a simple “Oh, yeah?” in a non-judgmental voice. This communicates that boredom isn’t a problem that needs fixing. If they persist with “I’m BORED! I have nothing to do!” you might offer: “We don’t have to do something every moment of every day. It’s okay to just be. Sometimes you’ll have an idea about what you want to do, but if not, that’s fine too.”

You can even sit with them in that boredom. Notice what comes up in your own body when faced with empty time. Many of us learned as children that we should always be productive, always be doing something. But there’s enormous value in simply being present with our children without any agenda to change or fix anything.

Learning doesn’t have to look like worksheets and educational apps. It can look like baking experiments, cataloging backyard insects, or building elaborate stick forts. When we follow our children’s authentic interests, we don’t just support their learning – we reconnect with our own capacity to wonder and discover alongside them.

What Child-Led Summer Activities Look Like

Let me be clear: this is not another activity list. What I’m about to share are examples of what some children might be drawn to during summer but your job isn’t to copy these ideas. Your job is to observe your child and discover what genuinely lights them up.

Summer activities for 3 and 4 year olds: Following their natural curiosity

Some preschoolers might become fascinated with mud. Not just playing in it, but mixing it with water in different ratios, adding leaves and stones, treating their backyard like a laboratory. Others might discover the magic of water and measuring cups, spending hours pouring, comparing, and experimenting with cause and effect.

The key question isn’t “What activity should I plan?”. It’s “What is my child already drawn to?” Then we follow their lead. If you’re curious about why some activities capture your child’s attention while others fall flat, it might be because you’re tapping into what researchers call their current “schema” – those patterns of repeated behavior that drive their play.

Summer activities for 5 and 6 year olds: When independence meets imagination

A 5-year-old might become captivated by creating their own restaurant, spending days designing menus, taking orders from family members, and preparing elaborate pretend meals. Some 6-year-olds discover the joy of collecting – interesting rocks from neighborhood walks, each one carefully examined and sorted by color, size, or texture.

This is the age where children often want to be “helpers” in real family tasks. A child drawn to cooking might graduate from stirring to measuring ingredients and following simple recipes. The key is noticing when your child expresses genuine interest in joining adult activities, then finding ways to let them contribute meaningfully.

Summer activities for 7, 8, and 9 year olds: When interests deepen

A 7-year-old might spend an entire summer cataloging every insect in the backyard, creating detailed drawings and descriptions. What starts as simple curiosity could become a deep dive into biology, art, and scientific observation. An 8-year-old who thrives on organization might create elaborate color-coded schedules for playdates and family activities, exploring systems and planning in their own way.

When you notice these deeper interests emerging, you can help them build on what they’re already drawn to. The child fascinated by insects might love trips to the library to find field guides, or you might help them connect with a local nature center’s junior naturalist program. The organizer might enjoy learning about different planning systems or helping coordinate a family project. The key is offering resources and connections that extend their existing curiosity rather than redirecting it toward what we think they should be learning.

Summer activities for 10 year olds and up: The power of autonomy

A 10-year-old passionate about baking might document their experiments, take photos, and share discoveries with friends. Another child might research everything about starting a pet-sitting business, from pricing to marketing. Some children devour mythology books all summer, then write their own modern retellings.

At this age, autonomy becomes crucial. The more ownership children have over their learning, the more deeply they’ll engage.

The pattern here isn’t the specific activities. It’s that each one emerges from the child’s own interests and develops naturally.

How to Discover What Actually Interests Your Child

So how do we uncover what truly excites them? The answer is simpler than you might think, but it requires us to slow down and pay attention.

Start by watching your child during free time.  What activities do they gravitate to?

What do they choose when no one is telling them what to do? 

What activities do they go back to over and over, even when other options are available? 

These patterns tell us much more about their real interests than any test or questionnaire ever could.

When you want to learn more about what’s catching their attention, try writing down their questions if you don’t have time to address them in the moment. Then return to them when your child has free time.

And here’s something that might surprise you: treat boredom as helpful information, not a problem to fix right away. When your child says “I’m bored”, don’t jump in with suggestions. Let that moment breathe. What happens when they’re given space to figure it out themselves often points directly to their real interests.

These sparks of genuine curiosity are your best guide toward summer experiences that will actually engage your child, rather than just fill time.

Child-Led Learning: The Key to Busting Summer Boredom

You may have heard the phrase “child-led learning” before. But what does it really mean, especially when it comes to creating effective summer boredom busters?

It’s not about letting your child “do whatever they want” with no boundaries. True child-led learning means taking what genuinely captures their attention and building on it together. Think of yourself as a guide on the side rather than a teacher delivering lessons from the front of the room.

Here’s what this looks like in practice: when a child becomes fascinated with fire trucks, that interest can naturally grow into drawing them, reading about them, building them with blocks, learning about community helpers, and maybe even visiting a fire station. A child who loves cats might explore biology through animal studies, practice writing by creating cat stories, and learn about different cultures by learning how cats are viewed around the world. 

This is where scaffolding becomes your best tool as a parent. You’re providing just enough support to help your child dive deeper into what they’re curious about, without taking over their exploration. You may scaffold your child to learn more about firetrucks by helping them find books about fire trucks. 

The key is that these interest-based learning activities come from the child’s real curiosity, not from a predetermined curriculum.

When you’re wondering how to follow your child’s lead, resist the urge to immediately turn their interest into a formal lesson. Instead, you might ask, “Would you like me to help you learn more about this?” or “What else would you like to discover about that?”

This approach works as one of the most effective summer boredom busters for tweens and younger children alike because it addresses boredom’s root cause: the mismatch between what children find meaningful and what they’re being asked to do.

Benefits of Child-Led Learning

The research on child-led learning is compelling, and the benefits extend far beyond just keeping children occupied during summer months.

Child-led learning benefit #1: Enhanced performance and persistence 

When children have autonomy over their learning – when they can exert control over what and how they explore – we see dramatically improved performance and persistence. They stick with challenges longer because the motivation comes from within, not from external pressure.

A child who decides to build a fort in the backyard might spend hours working through problems like how to make walls that won’t fall down, which materials work best, and how to create a roof that keeps out rain. Even when their first attempts don’t work perfectly, they keep trying different approaches without any external pressure to succeed.

Child-led learning benefit #2: Increased creativity and critical thinking 

Interest-based learning activities naturally foster creative problem-solving. When children are really curious about something, they look at it from different angles, ask deeper questions, and make connections that wouldn’t happen in more structured learning.

When a child wants to build something with blocks or cardboard, that simple interest can naturally grow into planning, designing, testing ideas, trying different ways, using what’s available, and understanding how things fit in space. All of these skills can grow naturally from the child’s own curiosity – no curriculum needed.

What we might dismiss as ‘just playing around’ is actually how children are wired to learn. When we give them space for this kind of exploration, we’re letting them do what comes naturally – and what they need to grow into flexible, creative thinkers.

Child-led learning benefit #3: Stronger intrinsic motivation 

This is perhaps the most important benefit. Young children demonstrate this naturally. Think about how effortlessly preschoolers acquire language and explore their world. You rarely hear parents complaining about their toddler’s lack of motivation to learn new words or figure out how things work.

Instead of rushing to provide answers, you might notice your child asking better questions when given space to think. They might muse over ideas in their own head, coming up with surprisingly thoughtful answers that remind you just how smart kids really are.

Child-led learning benefit #4: Better long-term retention 

Children remember what they’ve learned when it comes from real interest instead of what adults require. The knowledge becomes personally important to them rather than just facts to memorize for a test.

A child who gets interested in how shadows change during the day might still be playing with flashlights and objects months later. They might draw maps showing where the sun hits their backyard at different times. This kind of deep interest that leads to creative work can’t be forced. It has to come from the child themselves.

Child-led learning benefit #5: Less pressure for parents

Perhaps one of the most surprising benefits is how much easier this approach makes parenting. Many parents feel like they need to be a fountain of knowledge, always ready with the right answer. But child-led learning reveals something freeing: you don’t need to have all the answers. It’s actually okay to not know something and help your child through the process of finding out on their own. 

This connects to what we know about self-directed education – it’s not about leaving children to figure everything out alone. It’s about becoming a facilitator of their learning rather than the director of it. You’re still deeply involved, but in a way that supports their natural curiosity rather than replacing it with your agenda.

This shift can feel incredibly liberating because you get to simply enjoy the process of your child’s learning and trust them to find answers, taking on more of a support role with much less pressure.

Final Thoughts

Boredom isn’t the enemy we’ve been taught to believe it is. It’s actually a nudge toward deeper exploration, creativity, and connection with what truly matters to our children.

When we rush to fill every empty moment with activities and entertainment, we’re inadvertently teaching our children that they can’t trust themselves to navigate uncertainty. We’re suggesting that discomfort should be avoided rather than explored. But what if we flipped that script entirely?

As Nietzsche once said, creative people require periods of unstimulated time for their best work to emerge. I think the same is true for our children. They don’t just need quiet time for future creative work. They need it for their basic growth as people who can be comfortable alone, come up with their own ideas, and find meaning in peaceful moments.

This summer, you have an opportunity to give your child something far more valuable than a packed schedule of activities. You can give them the gift of space – space to be bored, space to wonder, space to discover what genuinely captivates them when no one else is directing their attention.

This isn’t about being a “lazy” parent or abandoning your role as a guide. It’s about trusting that your child has an innate capacity for curiosity and learning that doesn’t need to be manufactured or managed. It’s about recognizing that the most profound discoveries often happen in the spaces between structured activities.

When we make space for boredom and respond with curiosity instead of trying to control everything, we’re helping our children take charge of their own learning. We’re helping them build the inner guide they’ll need long after summer is over.

So this summer, when your child inevitably comes to you and says “I’m bored,” take a breath. Resist the urge to immediately solve or fix. Instead, you might smile and say: “That sounds like the beginning of something wonderful.”

Because it just might be.

Ready to become your child’s best teacher this summer?

If you’re feeling inspired to try this approach but wondering “Where do I actually start?”, I’ve got you covered.

In my You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher masterclass, I’ll show you how to turn what your child is curious about into great learning experiences. You’ll use simple things you already have at home. No Pinterest prep required.

Parent Wynne discovered this when her son wanted to tackle a sewing project alone. Instead of jumping in to teach, she sat nearby working on her own project, offering gentle encouragement. Her son developed planning skills, focus, patience, and problem-solving abilities all by himself and was incredibly proud of what he created.

“I found that I didn’t need to ‘teach’ him a thing.” – Wynne

If you want to discover how to be the guide on the side your child needs just like Wynne did, then come join us in the workshop!

Click the banner to learn more and sign up.

Want a Deeper Dive into the Science and Psychology of Boredom?

My full podcast episode will tell you all about:

• Why school environments often cause chronic boredom (and what that means long-term)
• The history of boredom, from medieval monks to modern researchers
• How different cultures experience or even lack the concept of boredom (like the Warlpiri people of Australia)
• What Buddhism and mindfulness can teach us about tolerating boredom
• How boredom might be the gateway to creativity, self-reflection, and learning
• Practical strategies for helping kids navigate boredom in and out of school—not just “fixing” it

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why do kids get more bored in summer than during the school year?

Summer removes the structured routine kids are used to during school. After nine months of adults directing their schedule, they suddenly have lots of free time but no roadmap for filling it. This shift from external control to self-direction feels overwhelming rather than exciting for many children.

2. Do kids with ADHD get bored more easily?

Yes, children with ADHD often feel bored more easily than ‘neurotypical’ kids. Children with ADHD have lower dopamine levels, which affects how they experience time. Minutes pass more slowly for them, making periods of inactivity feel much longer. When they seek exciting activities or take risks, they’re actually trying to boost brain chemicals to make time feel ‘normal’ again.

3. Why don’t summer activity lists work?

Activity lists assume what works for one child will work for yours, ignoring individual interests and developmental needs. They often pack in so many activities that children never dive deep into anything meaningful. Over-scheduling creates stress and overwhelm instead of the engagement parents hope for.

4. What does child-led learning look like in practice?

It means taking what genuinely captures your child’s attention and building on it together. You become a guide on the side rather than directing from the front. For example, a child interested in fire trucks might naturally explore drawing them, reading about them, learning about community helpers, and maybe even a visit to a fire station. 

5. How should I respond when my child says they’re bored?

Instead of immediately offering solutions, try responding with “Oh, yeah?” in a non-judgmental tone. Let the moment breathe. You might say, “We don’t have to do something every moment. It’s okay to just be. Sometimes you’ll have an idea, but if not, that’s fine too.”

6. What are the benefits of child-led learning?

Research shows improved performance and persistence when children have autonomy over learning. It increases creativity and critical thinking, strengthens intrinsic motivation, and leads to better long-term retention. Children remember what they learn from genuine interest rather than external requirements.

7. How do I discover what actually interests my child?

Watch them during free time. What do they choose when no one directs them? What activities do they return to repeatedly? Ask open-ended questions like “What’s something you’ve been wondering about?” rather than “Did you have fun?” These patterns reveal authentic interests better than any test.

8. Is it okay to let my child be bored?

Absolutely. Boredom provides valuable information about what your child needs – more challenge, rest, or deeper exploration of genuine interests. Creative people need periods of unstimulated time for their best work to emerge. The same is true for children’s growth and self-discovery.

References

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

Eastwood, J. D., Frischen, A., Fenske, M. J., & Smilek, D. (2012). The unengaged mind: Defining boredom in terms of attention. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 482–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612456044 

Grolnick, W. S., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). Autonomy in children’s learning: An experimental and individual difference investigation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(5), 890–898. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.5.890

Guay, F. (2021). Applying Self-Determination Theory to Education: Regulations Types, Psychological Needs, and Autonomy Supporting Behaviors. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 37(1), 75-92. https://doi.org/10.1177/08295735211055355 (Original work published 2022)

Lumanlan, J. (2023, July 9). What to do when my child says: “I’m booored!”?. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/bored/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2020, December 17). Doing Self-Directed Education. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/freepeople/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2020, April 3). How to keep your child busy (and learning!) while you work. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/schemas/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2018, February 11). What is the value of play?. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/play/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2016, September 26). How to “scaffold” children’s learning to help them succeed. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/005-how-to-scaffold-childrens-learning/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2016, September 18). How to encourage creativity and artistic ability in young children – Interview with Dr. Tara Callaghan. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/004-how-to-encourage-creativity-and-artistic-ability-in-young-children/ 

Lumanlan, J. (n.d.). Needs list. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/needs 

Mahoney, J. L., Harris, A. L., & Eccles, J. S. (2006). Organized activity participation, positive youth development, and the over-scheduling hypothesis. Social Policy Report, 20(4), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2379-3988.2006.tb00049.x

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Daniels, L. M., Stupnisky, R. H., & Perry, R. P. (2010). Boredom in achievement settings: Exploring control–value antecedents and performance outcomes of a neglected emotion. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(3), 531–549. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019243 

Renninger, K. A., & Hidi, S. (2016). The power of interest for motivation and engagement. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315771045 

Rubia K. (2018). Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Its Clinical Translation. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 12, 100. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00100

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1020

Schiffrin, H. H., Godfrey, H., Liss, M., & Erchull, M. J. (2015). Intensive parenting: Does it have the desired impact on child outcomes? Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(8), 2322–2331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-014-0035-0

Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. HarperCollins. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-psychology/198

Thornton, L., & Brunton, P. (2014). Bringing the Reggio approach to your early years practice (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203935378

Whitebread, D., Coltman, P., Jameson, H., & Lander, R. (2009). Play, cognition and self-regulation: What exactly are children learning when they learn through play? Educational and Child Psychology, 26(2), 40–52.

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1. Emotional awareness is internal (recognizing feelings), while social-emotional skills are action-oriented (using emotions to navigate relationships).
2. Social-emotional skills include five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and decision-making.
3. Two-year-olds may express big feelings through tantrums; parents can help by naming feelings, offering comfort during meltdowns, and using books to discuss emotions.
4. Three-year-olds are beginning to develop social awareness; they recognize others’ feelings and understand that different people can have different feelings about the same situation.
5. Four-year-olds may identify complex emotions beyond happy/sad/angry and begin managing feelings independently through better communication and impulse control.
6. Five to six-year-olds might demonstrate empathy in action, understand multiple emotions simultaneously, and can follow rules in group settings.
7. A child’s age doesn’t always align with their emotional capabilities – the best guide to what your child should be able to do is what your child can do.

Emotional awareness is an important step in helping children thrive — but it’s only one of a set of skills many children will go on to develop to understand and regulate their emotions. Once children recognize and name how they feel, they start developing more complex skills. These skills help them manage those feelings, connect with others, and respond effectively to the world around them.

In our previous post, How to Teach Emotional Awareness to Children, we explored the importance of emotional awareness and different strategies to nurture them. But being aware of emotions is just the beginning. Now, we’ll build on that foundation and look at what to expect as your child’s emotional development progresses from toddlerhood to kindergarten.

In some ways, I find it very difficult to offer an age-by-age guide.  The study of what we consider to be ‘age-appropriate’ is fraught with cultural assumptions about what children ‘should’ be able to do and when.  It tends to pathologize any behavior that doesn’t fit these guidelines, which means that when children resist our requests, the problem is always their resistance and never our request.

We may want them to ‘share’ and ‘play nicely’ because it helps to spare us from the feeling of embarrassment of being judged by other parents (or our own parents), and we hope it will meet our need for ease when we don’t have to referee their squabbles.

This guide will help you understand key emotional development milestones, what social emotional skills look like by age, and how you can support your child at every stage.  I’ll also offer thoughts on what to do when your child is not yet able to regulate their emotions that help, rather than hurt them.

From Emotional Awareness to Social-Emotional Skills 

Here’s where things get really exciting. If emotional awareness is like learning the alphabet, social emotional skills are like writing poetry. Both are essential, but they serve completely different purposes in your child’s development.

Emotional awareness is largely internal and cognitive. When your three-year-old says, “I’m sad because my toy broke,” they demonstrate emotional awareness. They can identify what they’re feeling and why. 

Social emotional skills, on the other hand, are action-oriented and interpersonal. These skills involve using emotional awareness to get along with others, solve problems, and make decisions that consider both their own needs and other people’s needs.

Think of it this way: emotional awareness asks “Why am I feeling this way?” while social emotional skills ask “What am I going to do about it, and how will it affect others?”

As children grow, they go from just noticing feelings to using social and emotional skills in everyday situations. You’ll eventually see them do things like share, take turns, use words when they’re upset instead of hitting, comfort a sad friend, and wait patiently for their turn.

What Are Social Emotional Skills?

According to leading experts in the field, social emotional skills can be organized into five core competencies. Think of these as five interconnected tools that work together like a Swiss Army knife for navigating relationships and managing life’s ups and downs:

Social emotional skill core competency #1: Self-awareness

This is your child’s ability to accurately recognize their own emotions, thoughts, and values, and understand how these influence their behavior. It’s the difference between a child saying “I’m bad” versus “I made a mistake and I feel disappointed in myself.” When your seven-year-old says, “I get really nervous before tests because I want to do well,” they’re demonstrating self-awareness.

This also includes understanding your own strengths and areas for growth. A child with strong self-awareness might say, “I’m really good at helping friends feel better, but I have a hard time when things don’t go as planned.” This kind of honest self-reflection helps children make better choices and ask for support when they need it.

Social emotional skill core competency #2: Self-management

This involves effectively regulating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations. Imagine a child who calms down by counting to ten when they’re angry, takes deep breaths when they’re nervous, or asks for a hug when they feel stressed. It also means working toward self-chosen goals (which may be different from the goals you would want them to choose!).

Self-management isn’t about suppressing feelings or always being “good.” It’s about finding healthy ways to express emotions and bounce back from setbacks. A child showing strong self-management might feel frustrated when they lose a game but still congratulate the winner, or feel disappointed about a grade but use that feeling to motivate studying differently next time.

Social emotional skill core competency #3: Social awareness

This means the ability to understand how other people feel and see things, even if they come from different backgrounds. It helps a child notice when a friend looks sad and asks what’s wrong, or see that a younger sibling might need help with something that seems easy to them.

Social awareness also means recognizing the unwritten social rules in different settings. A child with good social awareness understands that the way they talk with friends at recess is different from how they speak during a family dinner, or that their teacher’s frustrated tone might mean the class needs to settle down, even if no direct instruction was given.

Social emotional skill core competency #4: Relationship skills

These involve establishing and maintaining healthy, rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups. This includes everything from sharing toys and taking turns as a preschooler to navigating peer pressure and resolving conflicts as a teenager.

Strong relationship skills also mean knowing how to repair connections when things go wrong. A child might apologize sincerely when they’ve hurt someone’s feelings, listen carefully when a friend is upset with them, or suggest a compromise when siblings disagree about what game to play. These skills help children build lasting friendships and feel confident in social situations.

Social emotional skill core competency #5: Thoughtful decision-making

This means making kind and smart choices about how to act and treat others. These actions are based on what’s right, safe, and respectful. When your child invites a new classmate to join a game even though their friends don’t want to, they’re showing thoughtful decision-making.

This also involves considering the longer-term effects of choices, not just immediate consequences. A child demonstrating this skill might choose to tell the truth about breaking something even though they’ll get in trouble, or decide not to share a mean joke because they realize it could hurt someone’s feelings later.

These five competencies don’t develop in isolation. They’re deeply interconnected. Children need self-awareness to practice self-management. They need social awareness to build relationship skills. All of these work together to support thoughtful decision-making.

Social Emotional Development Milestones by Age

Here are the social emotional development milestones in early childhood and how you can best support your child at each stage:

Click here to download the Social Emotional Development Milestones: Ages 2 to 6

Social emotional development milestone for 2-year-olds

At two, toddlers are just beginning to understand that they have feelings, and they don’t always know what to do with them. 

During the toddler years, emotions feel BIG. A two-year-old’s disappointment about the wrong color cup can feel like the end of the world. This intensity is normal and necessary. They’re learning that emotions are temporary and manageable.

Common milestones for 2-year-olds:

• Expresses verbal references to emotions
• Their frustration tends to erupt suddenly in the form of tantrums
• Notices when others are hurt or upset
• Likes to explore and is more independent

How to support social emotional skills at age 2:

• Name their emotions for them, in the form of questions (since we can never be sure how another person is feeling until they let us know): “Are you feeling upset because the toy broke?”
• Offer comfort, not correction, during meltdowns.  Kids need to know we can handle their big feelings and just like us, they won’t remember a lesson someone tries to teach them when they’re feeling overwhelmed.
• Use books and toys to talk about feelings.  These don’t have to be special books – just pause during pivotal moments in any story, wonder aloud what the character might be feeling, and offer a hypothesis from a feelings list.
• Model calm behavior during stressful moments: like saying aloud: “I’m feeling really overwhelmed.  I’m going to take a deep breath.  Would you like to take one with me?” (If you need help to respond with more calm and confidence, and break patterns you don’t want to pass on to your children, the Calm Parent Toolkit can help.)
• Encourage them to try new emotion regulation strategies of their own, and celebrate their effort.

Social emotional development milestone for 3-year-olds

Three-year-olds start to become more socially aware. They begin to recognize emotions in others and may offer hugs or comfort when someone else is upset or in pain.  They begin to understand that different people can feel differently about the same situation. A child might realize that while they love scary movies, their friend finds them frightening.  (This also means that they finally understand that when they hit another child, their own fist isn’t the only thing that hurts!)

Common milestones for 3-year-olds:

• Understanding emotions better and knowing what kinds of situations can lead to upset felings
• Shows concern for others by asking, “Are you okay?”
• Imitates emotional behavior in play (a child might make their doll cry and then comfort it with gentle pats, or they might play “angry monster” and then transform into a “happy helper.”)
• Begins to play cooperatively in short bursts (with lots of ruptures and plenty of solo play along the way)

How to support social emotional skills at age 3:

• Help them label feelings in themselves and others.  Make sure to use real feelings words, not ‘fake’ feelings like “I feel like you never clean up your toys.”
• Discuss strategies with your child that they think might help them to re-regulate when they feel upset, like taking deep breaths, getting a hug, or squeezing a toy.
• Use pretend play to explore emotions and social roles.  This can be a great chance for you to learn about their feelings if they don’t say anything when you ask direct questions.
• Young children often don’t realize that their feelings will change in a few minutes!  Use the construct: “I’m feeling happy” or “Are you feeling exuberant?” (rather than “I’m happy”).  Adding the ‘feeling’ helps to communicate that feelings are temporary rather than permanent states.  
• Parents tend to talk about feelings more with girls (and math concepts more with boys).  If we want boys to feel comfortable sharing their feelings, we have to model that language for them – this is especially important for male parents and caregivers.

Social emotional development milestone for 4-year-olds

By age four, many children can identify complex emotions beyond basic happy, sad, angry, and scared. They might recognize feeling “frustrated,” “disappointed,” or “excited.” This expanded emotional vocabulary gives them better tools for communication.  

We aren’t trying to develop the largest possible vocabulary for the sake of having the largest possible vocabulary.  Rather, experts recognize that when you can understand your feelings more precisely, you’re better able to understand what needs you’re trying to meet.  Then you’re better able to meet those needs – a need for indulgence may well be effectively met by a big scoop of ice cream; a need for connection with others may be more effectively met by a call to a friend.

Four-year-olds may begin to manage emotions more independently. They can handle small disappointments and may start solving some of their social problems. They are also developing the critical skill of impulse control.

Common milestones for 4-year-olds:

• May engage in more imaginative play
• Can differentiate between real and imaginary (although will sometimes ‘lie’ because they are describing something they wish had happened)
• Expresses feelings in words more often than actions (saying “I’m feeling mad!” instead of hitting, or “That makes me feel sad” instead of just crying)
• Takes turns and shares more easily, since they know that not having an item right now doesn’t mean they’ll never get it back
• Begins to resolve minor conflicts with peers
• Asks to play with children if none are around
• Likes to help – with tasks they choose (which might not always be the tasks you choose!)
• May change their behavior based on where they are – e.g. knowing that there are different expectations on their behavior at school/home/grandparents’ house

How to support social emotional skills at age 4:

• Create opportunities for cooperative play with peers, staying close if your child needs support during play
• Use emotion-rich vocabulary in everyday conversations (“I’m feeling disappointed that our meet-up got canceled,” “I’m feeling really encouraged because I got help with a difficult project today.”)
• Validate their feelings when they’re having a hard time.  They need to be understood by you before they can consider your perspective and needs.
• Encourage problem-solving: “What could you do when you feel frustrated?”
• Role-play challenging social scenarios to help the child know what to expect
• Give them meaningful responsibilities and acknowledge their contributions

Social emotional development milestone for 5 to 6-year-olds

In kindergarten and early school age, children are ready for group learning and friendships. They understand social rules better and can use emotional skills in more complex ways.

Five-year-olds often show developing empathy in action. They might comfort a friend who’s hurt or share a toy with someone who looks left out. 

Six-year-olds start understanding that they can experience multiple feelings at once – excited about a playdate but nervous about meeting new kids.

Common milestones for 5 to 6-year-olds:

• Follow rules or take turns when playing games with other children – but they may still want to play by their own rules at times!
• Works more cooperatively in group settings
• Uses self-talk to manage frustration (e.g. “I want to play with the train, and it’s not fair that Jane still has it.”)
• Shows empathy and apologizes with meaning – although this may happen on their slower schedule, and not immediately after the incident

How to support social emotional skills at age 5 to 6:

• Have regular family discussions about emotions and relationships.  When your child brings home stories about friend disagreements, create space to hear their feelings and needs, and try to hypothesize what might have been the other child’s feelings and needs.
• Use collaborative problem-solving: “Let’s figure out what to do about this together.”
• Create opportunities for structured group play with gradually decreasing adult supervision.  Try to be in the next room rather than hovering over them, and just step closer when you hear difficulties arise.
• Practice perspective-taking: “How do you think your friend felt when that happened?”  You can also practice this by taking your child’s perspective: “I wonder if you felt excited when you saw the glitter, and didn’t think to check that the cap was on properly before you shook the jar?”
• Many children can have conversations about meeting both people’s needs with their adult caregiver by now, and if this language is used regularly in the home they will likely begin to use it with siblings and peers
• Introduce mindfulness practices appropriate for young children

Social-Emotional Development Red Flags in Children

While every child develops at their own pace, certain patterns may signal that additional support could be beneficial. 

If your child often shows some of these behaviors and you don’t see other children struggling in the same way, it’s a good idea to talk to a pediatrician or parenting coach:

• Persistent, intense tantrums that continue beyond preschool years or occur multiple times daily
• Limited social interest or difficulty connecting with peers and family members
• Emotional recognition challenges, including the inability to identify basic feelings in themselves or others
• Excessive aggression toward others that doesn’t respond to consistent guidance
• Extreme social withdrawal or avoidance of eye contact and interaction
• Rigid behavioral patterns that cause significant distress when routines change
• Delayed emotional regulation skills compared to same-age peers

Helping kids build social-emotional skills early on can make a big difference in their lives. Many behaviors that worry parents are just a normal part of growing up. We can also consider that often their resistance is the best strategy they have available to them to meet their needs.

When we ask a young child to do something they don’t want to do, they may resist by having a tantrum, stalling, refusing to participate, or by stomping their feet as they do what you’ve asked.  It can seem like they have to learn to regulate their emotions, because we ‘need’ them to do what we asked. 

The academic research follows this approach too. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy practitioners teach parents to use Time-Outs to change children’s behavior. The practitioners say it is justified because our children depend on us for love and care.  Withdrawing our love and care gets many children to change their behavior (the ones who resist are often diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder).

Instead, we can consider why the child is resisting our request.  They are resisting because our request is blocking them from meeting their need – perhaps for connection, play, or autonomy.  When we see their need for connection and our need for ease, we can shift from a strategy. Instead of “Learn to regulate your emotions and put your shoes on yourself,” we can use: “I can see you have a need for connection before we separate for the day.  How about I help you put your shoes on, which will meet my need for ease as well?”

Before, it might have seemed like the only option was that the child learn to regulate their emotions.  When we understand our child’s most important needs and meet these more often, we often find they – and we! – have far fewer problems with emotion regulation.

Final Thoughts

Emotional development is not linear. Your child might soar in one area while needing more time in another. Understanding these milestones simply gives you a roadmap to better support your child as they grow into emotionally aware, socially skilled individuals.

The goal isn’t to raise a child who never feels negative emotions. It’s to raise a child who can work through emotions with skill, compassion, and resilience.

Remember that children’s resistance to our requests often signals an unmet need rather than a lack of emotional regulation skills. When your four-year-old melts down about putting on shoes, they might need connection before separating for the day. When your three-year-old refuses to share, they might need to feel secure in their ownership before they can consider others’ needs. Instead of focusing solely on getting them to regulate their emotions to comply with our requests, we can look deeper at what need their behavior is trying to meet.

This approach shifts us away from seeing emotional outbursts as problems to be fixed and toward seeing them as communication about important needs. When we meet children’s core needs for connection, play, and autonomy more consistently, we often find that both they and we have far fewer struggles with emotional regulation. A child who feels truly seen and understood is much more likely to develop the social-emotional skills that will serve them throughout their lives.

Most importantly, trust your child’s individual timeline. Some children will naturally develop strong empathy early while taking longer to master impulse control. Others might excel at self-awareness but need more support with social situations. These differences don’t indicate problems. They reflect the beautiful complexity of human development. Your loving presence and patient guidance matter far more than hitting every milestone right on schedule.

Ready to Put These Skills Into Practice?

Understanding these milestones is good, but what happens when your child’s big emotions lead to challenging behaviors? When your two-year-old has a meltdown about the wrong color cup or your four-year-old hits their sibling during a frustrating moment, it can feel overwhelming to stay calm and supportive while still setting boundaries.

Many parents want to support their child’s emotional development, but they often struggle when those big feelings turn into tantrums, defiance, or aggression. They end up yelling, bribing, or giving in – none of which helps their child learn to manage emotions effectively.

When you have effective limit-setting tools, along with an understanding of how to meet your child’s needs and your own – you create a safe environment for both of you to practice your social-emotional skills. Instead of getting derailed by challenging behavior, you can stay focused on helping your child learn to navigate their big feelings, and finding strategies that meet both of your needs.

Do you want to respond to your child’s next meltdown with confidence instead of panic? Sign up for the Setting Loving (& Effective) Limits workshop now. Click the banner to learn more.

Frequently Asked Questions About Children’s Emotional Development

1. What’s the difference between emotional awareness and social-emotional skills?

Emotional awareness is internal – a child recognizes and names their feelings. Social-emotional skills are action-oriented and involve using those feelings to navigate relationships. If emotional awareness is like learning the alphabet, social-emotional skills are like writing poetry. One helps children identify “Why am I feeling this way?” while the other addresses “What will I do about it, and how might it affect others?”

2. What are the five core social-emotional competencies children develop?

The five interconnected competencies are: self-awareness (recognizing your own emotions), self-management (regulating emotions effectively), social awareness (understanding others’ feelings), relationship skills (building healthy connections with diverse people), and thoughtful decision-making (making choices based on what’s right and respectful). These work together like a Swiss Army knife for navigating relationships and life’s challenges.

3. How can I support my two-year-old’s emotional development?

Name their emotions for them: “Are you feeling upset because the toy broke?” Always question rather than telling a child how they feel, and offer comfort, not correction, during meltdowns. Use books and toys to talk about feelings. Model calm behavior during stressful moments. Remember that big feelings are normal at this age – a wrong-colored cup can feel like the end of the world to them. This intensity helps them learn that emotions are temporary.

4. What social-emotional milestones should I expect from my three-year-old?

Three-year-olds become more socially aware and begin recognizing emotions in others. They understand what makes people upset and may ask “Are you okay?” when someone seems to feel sad. They imitate emotional behaviors in play and can understand that different people have different feelings about the same situation. They’re beginning to play cooperatively for short periods, which builds their relationship skills.

5. What social-emotional milestones should I expect from my four-year-old?

Four-year-olds may identify more complex emotions beyond basic happy/sad/angry, if you’ve modeled this language for them. They express feelings in words more than actions, take turns more easily, and begin resolving minor conflicts with peers. They engage in imaginative play, can tell real from pretend, and adjust behavior based on settings. They may also show a desire to help and play with others.

6. How can I help my five-year-old develop better social-emotional skills?

Have regular family discussions about emotions. Use collaborative problem-solving: “Let’s figure this out together.” Create opportunities for structured group play with gradually less adult supervision. Practice perspective-taking: “How do you think your friend felt?” Teach conflict resolution steps. Read books featuring characters navigating social situations. Introduce age-appropriate mindfulness practices.

7. What are some red flags in social-emotional development I should watch for?

Look for persistent, intense tantrums beyond preschool years, limited social interest, difficulty identifying basic feelings, excessive aggression that doesn’t respond to guidance, extreme social withdrawal, rigid behavioral patterns causing distress when routines change, or delayed emotional regulation compared to peers. While development varies by child, trust your instincts if these behaviors persist.

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References

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Important milestones: Your child by age. Learn the Signs. Act Early. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html

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Guo, J., Tang, X., Marsh, H. W., Parker, P., Basarkod, G., Sahdra, B., Ranta, M., & Salmela-Aro, K. (2021). The roles of social-emotional skills in students’ academic and life success: A multi-informant, multi-cohort perspective. Educational Psychology Review, 34(2), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ahg8p

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Lumanlan, J. (2025, June 3). How to Teach Emotional Awareness to Children. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/teach-emotional-awareness-children/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2025, May 12). 55 Ways to Support, Encourage, and Celebrate Your Child Without Praise. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/55-ways-to-support-encourage-and-celebrate/

Lumanlan, J. (2025, March 23). Validating children’s emotions: Why it’s important, and how to do it with Dr. Caroline Fleck. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/validation-dr-caroline-fleck/ 

Lumanlan, J. (2025, January 12). Time Outs: Helpful or harmful? Here’s what the research says. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/timeoutsforkids/ 

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Lumanlan, J. (2018, July 8). Do I HAVE to pretend play with my child?. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/fantasy/ 

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Rubab, U., Parveen, N., Jafari, S., & Yousuf, M. (2024). Social and Emotional Self-Awareness Skills among Students: A Case Study. Qlantic Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities. 5. 336-343. 10.55737/qjssh.649789352. 

Saarni, C. (2011). Emotional development in childhood. In Encyclopedia on early childhood development. Retrieved from http://www.child-encyclopedia.com

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1. Why does emotional awareness matter? It’s key for brain development, social skills, and how children learn to handle life’s challenges.
2. Children with emotional awareness and emotional intelligence build better relationships, achieve more academically, and enjoy better physical and mental health.
3. Even before speaking, infants show emotion by communicating through crying and facial expressions, and begin recognizing others’ emotions around 6 months.
4. How can I help my child identify emotions? Use strategies like being curious about facial expressions, connecting emotions to body sensations, and building emotional vocabulary.
5. How do I help my child understand emotions? Teach cause-effect relationships between events and feelings, validate all emotions while guiding behavior, and meet your child’s needs.

Have you ever worried when your child laughs after they hurt you or another child? Or been shocked when they suddenly hit their sibling, apparently out of the blue? Emotional awareness enables us to understand our inner experiences, as well as the inner experiences of those around us.

Children learn through emotions, which also guide their play activities and relationship development. Young children lack the ability to express their emotions through words because emotions exist as a human-made concept to explain internal processes. That’s something they learn over time, with our help.

Emotional awareness isn’t just a “nice-to-have” skill. It’s a key part of how children connect with others and deal with life’s ups and downs. In this post, we’re going to look at what science tells us about how children’s emotional worlds develop, and more importantly, how you can guide your child through this process.

Why Emotional Awareness is Important in Early Childhood

The link between emotional awareness and brain development

During this time, your child’s early years are critical for brain development. The emotional centers of your child’s brain are developing rapidly during this stage. Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child found that responsive, emotionally supportive interactions between you and your child directly influence how these neural circuits develop.

Teaching our kids to name and process emotions helps their brains grow in healthy ways. This promotes important skills such as planning, attention, and self-control.

How does emotional awareness impact a child’s social skills?

When kids learn to understand their own emotions and other’s emotions, they’re much more likely to get along well with people. When children develop emotional intelligence, it helps them form friendships, play cooperatively, and handle disagreements without acting out or shutting down.

Children who are able to say what they’re feeling (“I’m feeling upset,” “I’m feeling nervous,” “I’m feeling excited”) help others to understand their experience.  It also helps them to understand the experience of others.  This makes it easier for them to share, wait their turn, and work through problems with their peers. When kids don’t understand how emotions work—either their own or someone else’s—they may act out, become withdrawn, or struggle to make and keep friends.

Other important things that affect how kids develop these skills include:

• Temperament (how they’re naturally wired to respond to the world),
• How well they understand that others can feel differently than they do, which develops with age,
• Neurodivergence, such as Autism, which can affect how well we can perceive others’ emotions, and
• Their language development, which helps them talk about their feelings.

Even though some kids are naturally more shy or get frustrated more easily, parents can still make a big difference in children’s ability to understand their own and others’ emotions.

What Are the Long-Term Benefits of Emotional Intelligence?

Here are three long-term benefits of emotional intelligence:

Benefit of emotional intelligence #1: Develop and sustain social relationships

Emotional intelligence is key to building and keeping good relationships. When we understand our own emotions and recognize emotions in others, it’s easier to handle social situations and get along with people.

This directly impacts our social relationships in many ways:

• Better communication: Emotionally intelligent people are better at saying what they feel and need. They’re also more effective at really listening to others. They are better able to read both verbal and non-verbal cues, picking up on subtle signals that others might miss. This reduces misunderstandings and creates space for more meaningful conversations.
• Conflict resolution: When people disagree, those with emotional intelligence are better able to stay calm and try to see the other person’s point of view. They don’t make the problem bigger, and de-escalate the conflict by working to find a solution that helps everyone.
• Deeper connections: Understanding emotions helps us connect with others. When we acknowledge someone’s feelings and show that it matters to us too, we can form stronger bonds with them.
• Trust building: Emotional intelligence helps us be consistent, reliable, and honest in our interactions. These qualities form the foundation of trust in relationships.
• Social awareness: People with strong emotional intelligence know how to act in different social situations. They understand the rules of social behavior and can adjust how they act to make others feel comfortable and respected. Developing emotional intelligence isn’t just about improving ourselves. It also helps us connect better with everyone around us.

Benefit of emotional intelligence #2: Academic achievement

Emotional intelligence doesn’t just shape our social world. It also plays a surprisingly significant role in academic success. Research shows that students with stronger emotional skills often perform better in school.

They typically demonstrate the following:

• Better focus and attention: They can regulate emotions that might otherwise distract them from learning, helping them stay engaged during lessons and study sessions.
• Reduced procrastination: Academic pressures can trigger stress, which can lead to procrastination as a way to avoid uncomfortable emotions. Emotionally intelligent students recognize these feelings early and develop strategies to cope.
• Enhanced problem-solving: When faced with challenging academic material, these students manage frustration better. They’re better at handling frustration and can push through challenges.
• Better relationships with teachers and peers: Students who understand emotions get along better with others. This can help them build a more supportive learning environment.

Benefit of emotional intelligence #3: Better physical and mental health

Emotional intelligence doesn’t just influence our relationships and academic success. It also has profound connections to both our physical and mental well-being. Research has shown that the ability to understand and manage emotions plays an important role in health outcomes.

Here are some of its health benefits:

Mental health

• Reduced anxiety and depression: People with higher emotional intelligence can identify negative emotions earlier and have more effective coping strategies.
• Greater resilience: Emotionally intelligent individuals recover more quickly from setbacks and challenges. They’re more likely to seek support when needed and use adaptive coping mechanisms rather than turning to harmful behaviors.
• Better stress management: They can recognize when they’re stressed and stay calm under pressure. This may help to protect their mental health and reduce the risk of long-term stress-related issues.

Physical health

• Better immune function: Chronic negative emotions and stress can suppress immune function. Those who manage emotions effectively tend to have stronger immune systems.
• Healthier behaviors: Emotionally intelligent people are more likely to engage in self-care. This can be in the form of exercise, proper nutrition, adequate sleep, and avoiding harmful substances.
• Improved cardiovascular health: People who feel more positive emotions, like joy and gratitude, often have healthier hearts and lower risk of heart problems over time.

Emotional intelligence helps us in many ways—not just in making friends, but also in having healthy minds and bodies.

What Are the Emotional Development Milestones?

When we understand how children grow emotionally, we can support them more effectively. Milestones can be somewhat helpful in understanding how children develop, although we should be cautious about considering these to be hard lines.  Many children struggle with emotion regulation, especially when they’re tired and/or hungry.  Use developmental milestones as a guide rather than hard lines that will be crossed at a particular point in your child’s life.

Here’s a brief overview of the emotional development milestones in early childhood:

Emotional developmental milestone of infants (0-12 months)

Even before your baby can speak, they already communicate emotions through crying, facial expressions, and body language.

Research shows that around 6 months, babies begin recognizing emotional expressions. This emotional recognition is important for social referencing—the process where babies look at their parents’ facial expressions to make sense of uncertain situations.

When you comfort your crying baby or smile while playing, you’re showing them their feelings are important and that others will respond to them. This helps build secure attachment which is linked to healthy emotional development.

Emotional development milestone of toddlers (1-3 Years)

As language develops, your toddler begins naming emotions. “Happy,” “sad,” and “mad” usually appear around age 2. During this stage, they also begin to imitate their surroundings and start displaying early signs of empathy and self-conscious emotions. They may appear upset when others cry or show self-conscious reactions when receiving adult feedback about their behavior.

At this stage, toddlers become more independent and show their own unique personalities. They enjoy pretend play and play next to other kids, but not always with them. They also start learning how to control their emotions in social situations – but their ability to do this very much varies with their capacity at a particular time.  If they feel tired or stressed, their ability to control their emotions will be much less than when they’re better resourced.  Just because you’ve seen your child restrain themselves from hitting another child on one day doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do it on another, when they’ve had a difficult day.

Emotional development milestone of preschoolers (3-5 Years)

By preschool, they begin to talk about more complex feelings and begin to understand that people can feel different emotions. They might say they feel “embarrassed” or “proud” and start to comfort friends who are hurt or sad. While they may show guilt, they don’t fully understand why someone else might feel guilty yet.

As their emotional awareness grows, children also start to experiment with managing their feelings but this process is far from smooth. You might see them trying to hide frustration, laugh when they’re nervous, or claim they’re “not sad” even when tears are streaming down their face. These are signs that they’re beginning to notice their internal experiences, even if they don’t yet have the skills to regulate them effectively. This is where adult guidance becomes crucial: helping them name their emotions, make sense of them, and find safe ways to express what’s going on inside.

Knowing the stages of emotional development gives us a helpful guide, but just knowing the steps isn’t enough. Each child will go through the stages at their own pace, so your child may be ‘ahead’ or ‘behind’ these milestones.  What a child should be able to do is what the child in front of you is actually doing.  They are already doing the best they can with the tools they have.  That said, there are some strategies we can use to support them in developing their emotional awareness, and their emotion regulation skills.

How Does Neurodivergence Impact Children’s Emotional Development?

Neurodivergent children—including those with ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, or learning differences—may experience and express emotions differently than neurotypical children. Their brains process sensory information, social cues, and emotional regulation in unique ways that require tailored support.

Sensory Processing and Emotions

Many neurodivergent children have heightened or reduced sensitivity to sensory input, which directly affects their emotional experiences.  A child with sensory processing differences might become overwhelmed by the texture of clothing, leading to what looks like a tantrum but is actually sensory distress. Understanding these connections helps parents respond with compassion rather than frustration.

Executive Function Challenges

Children with ADHD or autism often struggle with executive function skills, making it harder to identify, process, and regulate emotions. They might have intense emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to the situation, not because they’re being dramatic, but because their brain’s emotional regulation system works differently.

Communication Differences

Some neurodivergent children may struggle to verbalize their emotions or may express them through behavior rather than words. A child who seems defiant might actually be communicating anxiety or confusion. Creating alternative ways to express emotions through pictures, movement, or sensory tools can be helpful to parents and children (as long as the child has the option to not participate if they prefer).

How to Help Children Identify Emotions

Here are 3 strategies you can use to help children identify their emotions:

Identifying emotion strategy #1: Beginning to recognize emotions through facial expressions

Emotion recognition is often the first step in emotional awareness. It involves noticing that an emotional response is happening.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work tells us that it can be difficult to recognize emotions from an arrangement of our facial features.  Different people’s faces look different when they’re expressing the same emotion, and each of us also uses expressions differently.  Sometimes when I purse my lips I’m feeling frustrated, and other times I’m feeling angry: how could another person possibly know which one I’m feeling if I don’t tell them?!

We also see that relying on facial expressions gets us in trouble when our children laugh after they hit us.  We interpret that laughter as ‘fun/enjoyment,’ but actually it can often mean ‘ashamed.’

Rather than teaching children that specific facial expressions are linked to specific emotions, we can teach them to notice that a person seems to be experiencing an emotion, and helping them to wonder or ask the other person what’s happening by doing things like:

• Pointing out facial expressions in books: “Look, that character is smiling! How do you think they’re feeling now their cake is finished?”
• Observing facial expressions in people: “Liam is crying.  I’m wondering what’s going on for him.  Should we check?”
• Playing games where you act out different emotions, like the ones that come with the Grok card games.

Identifying emotion strategy #2: Connecting emotions to body sensations

Emotions aren’t just experienced in our faces – they live in our bodies too. We can teach children to notice how emotions show up in their bodies:

• How their heart might race when they’re excited or scared
• The way their shoulders might tense when they’re angry
• The heaviness they might feel in their stomach when they’re worried
• The lightness they might feel in their chest when they’re happy

You can start by observing what you see: “I’m noticing that your shoulders are up high and your fists are clenched and I’m wondering if you’re feeling angry?”

Identifying emotion strategy #3: Build an emotion vocabulary

Many children default to simple terms like “good” or “bad” to describe how they’re feeling. Expand their emotional vocabulary by:

• Introducing new emotion words during daily conversations.
• Labeling your own emotions precisely: “I’m feeling frustrated because the computer isn’t working” rather than just “Ugh!” (or yelling at the child later).
• Use a feelings list that helps children identify emotions they experience when their needs are met and when they’re unmet (multiple languages and printable options available!)
• Noticing emotions in children’s books: you don’t have to buy any special books for this.  Just use any story you’re reading, and when you get to a turning point in the plot, ask: “I wonder how that character is feeling right now?  What do you think?”  If your child makes a basic happy/sad/mad guess, try using another word to expand on it: “I think the character might be feeling happy – or maybe even elated, which means really really happy!”
• Playing emotion games: Make learning about emotions more fun by playing emotion charades or matching games where kids have to pair facial expression with emotion words.
• Daily check-ins: Make it a habit to ask “How are you feeling right now?” during transition times like after school or before bedtime.

After kids learn to name their feelings, the next step is teaching them awareness of why they feel that way. While identification answers “What am I feeling?” emotional awareness addresses the crucial “Why am I feeling this way?” question that helps emotions make sense.

By developing emotional awareness, kids can go from saying “I’m mad!” to “I’m feeling mad because I wanted to pour my own milk and you did it for me.” This shift from labeling to emotional awareness is where emotional intelligence develops.

6 Strategies in Teaching Emotional Awareness to Children

Here are 6 ways on how to teach emotional awareness:

Click here to download the 6 Strategies in Teaching Emotional Awareness to Children

Emotional awareness strategy #1: Teaching the cause-and-effect relationship

Help children connect events to their emotional responses:

• “Are you feeling disappointed because we had to cancel the beach trip?”
• “I see you jumping up and down – are you feeling proud right now?  You worked hard on your drawing.”

Simple cause-and-effect talks help children understand that emotions happen for a reason, not just out of nowhere.  (Note: this is a key lesson for parents to learn as well!)  Notice that the observations are phrased as questions, not statements.  We can never be sure how another person is feeling unless they tell us.  They may communicate this non-verbally, using a nod or a grunt.

It’s important not to make a child responsible for your own feelings.  “You yelled, and now I feel angry” isn’t what we’re going for here.

Emotional awareness strategy #2: Validating children’s emotions

Validating children’s emotions is a critical strategy for parents; my conversation with Dr. Caroline Fleck shows you exactly how to do it effectively using the Validation Ladder:

• Be present: Give your child your full attention without waiting for your turn to speak or planning what you’ll say next
• Accurately reflect: “What I’m hearing is that you feel frustrated because your tower keeps falling down. Is that right?”
• Contextualize or equalize: “Given that you’ve been working on this for a long time, it makes sense you’d feel upset when it doesn’t work” (contextualize) or “Building with blocks can be really tricky. I get frustrated with puzzles sometimes too” (equalize)
• Make a proposal: “I’m wondering if you felt that mix of disappointment and anger when the blocks fell?”
• Express true empathy: Share genuine reactions to what they’re experiencing (“That sounds really frustrating!”)
• Take action: Consider what you will do differently to support your child (“I’m wondering if you felt more frustrated because we were rushing to clean up. Maybe next time I can give you a longer warning before dinner time?”)

Emotional awareness strategy #3: Use “I’m feeling…”

Instead of the sentence construct: “Are you upset?”, instead try using “Are you feeling upset?”.  Kids often think that their feelings last a really long time.  One time after my daughter had calmed down from an episode of anger, I asked her: “How long do you think you felt angry?”

She thought she had been angry for hours – actually it was more like 10 minutes.  Using “I feel tired” and “Do you feel frustrated?” helps children to see that feelings come and go; they aren’t permanent states.  If they just wait a few minutes, a new feeling will come along.

Emotional awareness strategy #4: Expanding your emotion vocabulary

Move beyond basic emotion words as children grow. Help them develop more nuanced emotion words:

• Instead of just “happy”: content, joyful, pleased, delighted, grateful
• Instead of just “sad”: disappointed, lonely, discouraged, heartbroken
• Instead of just “angry”: frustrated, irritated, annoyed, furious

Studies show that kids who have strong language skills are better at understanding and talking about emotions.

Modeling is a great way to grow this vocabulary. For example: “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed today because we have so many errands to run. That means I have a lot on my mind.”

Print a feelings list and refer to it when a more nuanced word would be helpful.

Emotional awareness strategy #5: Creating an emotion-friendly home environment

The best way to help children develop emotional awareness is to create a safe space where they feel okay sharing any feeling. This means:

• Avoid brushing off their emotions with phrases like “You’re OK” or “It’s not a big deal.”
• Modeling healthy emotion identification and expression yourself
• Taking time to listen and validate emotional experiences
• Offering comfort and support during difficult emotions without rushing to fix the problem

Emotional awareness strategy #6: Meeting your child’s needs

Our emotions are the body and brain’s response to whether our needs are met. When children engage in difficult behaviors, it’s always an attempt to meet a need.

If a child melts down after daycare, they may not be “misbehaving”. They might just need comfort, food, or quiet time.

Meeting those needs helps the emotion settle and teaches them that feelings are manageable. That’s why it’s important for parents to know what their kid’s needs might be.

When a child’s needs are consistently met, they develop a sense of emotional security. This secure foundation allows them to explore emotions without fear, because they trust that someone will be there to help them through it.

Ready to Transform Your Daily Struggles Into Cooperation?

Parenting often feels like going through an unpredictable storm. One minute everything is calm, the next you’re facing a tidal wave of yelling, refusal, or sudden outbursts. You’re doing your best to stay patient, but the constant power struggles and emotional chaos can leave you drained and unsure of what your child really needs. The truth is, behind most challenging behavior is a child overwhelmed by emotions they don’t yet know how to manage and a parent desperate for tools that actually work.

The challenging behaviors you’re seeing – the morning battles, mealtime fights, and bedtime struggles – aren’t signs of a “difficult” child. They’re your child’s way of communicating unmet needs when they don’t have the emotional vocabulary or regulation skills to do it differently.

It can be tempting to teach them to stop expressing their big feelings, especially when these come out as hitting and hurting others.  It is important to know how to set limits on children’s behavior.  But there are much more effective tools we can use to support them in regulating their emotions and creating the calm home environment we so desperately want.  The Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop will help you make a big shift in the emotional climate of your home in just a few days.

Parent Lucy shared: “I feel significantly more confident as a parent: more calm and centered. I have more empathy and patience for my children for sure. I’ve noticed that both of my children are genuinely more at ease as well.”

Ready to move from daily battles to genuine cooperation? The Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is available right now – you don’t have to wait to make the changes you want to see!

Click the banner to learn more.

Final Thoughts

Helping your child develop their emotional awareness and gain emotional intelligence is one of the most powerful things you can do as a parent. By recognizing emotional milestones, supporting your child in identifying and being aware of emotions, you’re helping them build emotional intelligence that will benefit them throughout their life.

What strategy will you try first with your child today?

Frequently Asked Questions About Children’s Emotional Development

1. Why is emotional understanding important for my child’s development?

Emotional understanding helps your child’s brain grow in healthy ways. The emotional centers in your child’s brain develop rapidly in early years. When you help your child understand feelings, you support their ability to plan, pay attention, and stay in control. Children who understand emotions also connect better with others, handle disagreements without acting out, and build stronger friendships.

2. What are the long-term benefits of emotional intelligence?

Children with strong emotional intelligence tend to develop and maintain better relationships throughout life. They also achieve more in school because they can focus better and handle frustration when learning gets tough. Another major benefit is improved physical and mental health – they experience less anxiety, recover more quickly from setbacks, and often make healthier choices. These advantages help them thrive both now and later in life.

3. When do babies start developing emotional awareness?

Babies communicate emotions through crying, facial expressions, and body language from birth. Around 6 months, they begin recognizing emotional expressions in others. This helps them with social referencing – looking at their parents’ faces to understand uncertain situations. When you respond to your baby’s emotional needs, you’re teaching them that their feelings matter and building secure attachment, which supports healthy emotional development.

4. What emotional milestones should I expect in my toddler?

Around age 2, toddlers begin naming basic emotions like “happy,” “sad,” and “mad” as their language develops. They show early empathy by getting upset when others cry and display pride when praised. Toddlers become more independent and develop their unique personalities during this stage. They enjoy pretend play and play near other children (parallel play), and start learning to manage their emotions in social settings.

5. How can I help my child identify their emotions?

Help your child notice facial expressions in books or play emotion charades together. Teach them to connect emotions with body sensations, like a racing heart when scared or tight shoulders when angry. Build their emotional vocabulary beyond “good” and “bad” by introducing specific feeling words during daily conversations. Print a feelings list (either words or the picture-based version for young kids) point out the feelings characters experience in books, and do regular emotion check-ins to make identifying feelings a natural part of your routine.

6. What’s the difference between identifying and understanding emotions?

Identifying emotions answers “What am I feeling?” while understanding addresses “Why am I feeling this way?” When children understand emotions, they move from simply saying “I’m mad!” to “I’m mad because you poured my milk when I wanted to do it myself.” This connection between events and feelings helps emotions make sense. Understanding that emotions happen for reasons is where true emotional intelligence develops.

7. How can I create an emotion-friendly home environment?

Create a safe space where children feel comfortable sharing any feeling. Model healthy emotion identification by naming your own feelings: “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed today.” Avoid dismissing their emotions with phrases like “You’re OK” or “It’s not a big deal.” Take time to listen and validate their emotional experiences. Offer comfort during difficult emotions without rushing to fix the problem. Remember that meeting your child’s needs helps to create a calmer emotional climate in your home.

8. Why do children have emotional outbursts, and how should I respond?

Children’s emotional outbursts often signal unmet needs. For example, a meltdown after daycare might mean they need comfort, food, or quiet time—not that they’re “misbehaving.” Respond by trying to identify and meet the underlying need. This approach helps the emotion settle naturally and teaches children that feelings are manageable. When children know their needs will be consistently met, they develop emotional security and learn to explore feelings without fear.

References

Agustín, E., González, A., Piqueras, J., & Linares, V. (2010). Emotional intelligence in physical and mental health. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 8(21), 861-890. https://doi.org/10.25115/ejrep.v8i21.1388

Armstrong, A. R., Galligan, R. F., & Critchley, C. R. (2011). Emotional intelligence and psychological resilience to negative life events. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(3), 331–336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.03.025

Barkley, R. A. (1997). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.121.1.65

Beck, L., Kumschick, I. R., Eid, M., & Klann-Delius, G. (2012). Relationship between language competence and emotional competence in middle childhood. Emotion, 12(3), 503–514. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026320

Ben-Sasson, A., Hen, L., Fluss, R., Cermak, S. A., Engel-Yeger, B., & Gal, E. (2009). A meta-analysis of sensory modulation symptoms in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-008-0593-3

Boehm, J. K., Chen, Y., Qureshi, F., Soo, J., Umukoro, P., Hernandez, R., Lloyd-Jones, D., & Kubzansky, L. D. (2020). Positive emotions and favorable cardiovascular health: A 20-year longitudinal study. Preventive Medicine, 136, Article 106103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106103

Center on the Developing Child. (2011). Building the brain’s “air traffic control” system: How early experiences shape the development of executive function (Working Paper No. 11). Harvard University. https://www.developingchild.harvard.edu

Cohen, S., Doyle, W. J., Turner, R. B., Alper, C. M., & Skoner, D. P. (2003). Emotional style and susceptibility to the common cold. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65(4), 652–657. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.psy.0000077508.57784.da

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, I. S. (Eds.). (2006). A life worth living: Contributions to positive psychology. Oxford University Press.

Guarnera, M., Hichy, Z., Cascio, M. I., & Carrubba, S. (2015). Facial expressions and ability to recognize emotions from eyes or mouth in children. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 11(2), 183–196. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i2.890

Harris, P. L. (2008). Children’s understanding of emotion. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. F. Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (3rd ed., pp. 320–331). The Guilford Press.

Ionescu, C. E. (2017). Emotional intelligence, emotional skills and social skills at school age. In European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 1485–1492). https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.05.02.227

Lumanlan, J. (2025, May 12). 55 ways to support, encourage, and celebrate your child without praise. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/55-ways-to-support-encourage-and-celebrate/

Lumanlan, J. (2025, April 1). How to help children who procrastinate. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/how-to-help-children-who-procrastinate/

Lumanlan, J. (2025, March 23). Validating children’s emotions: Why it’s important, and how to do it with Dr. Caroline Fleck. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/validation-dr-caroline-fleck/

Lumanlan, J. (2025, January 5). 10 game-changing parenting hacks – straight from master dog trainers. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/dogtrainers/

Lumanlan, J. (2024, October 20). Where emotions come from (and why it matters) Part 2. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/emotionspart2/

Lumanlan, J. (2024, October 6). Where emotions come from (and why it matters) Part 1. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/emotionspart1/

Lumanlan, J. (2018, September 30). Attachment: What it is, what it’s not, how to do it, and how to stop stressing about it. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/attachment/

Lumanlan, J. (2018, July 25). An age-by-age guide to teaching your child to share. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/sharing/

Lumanlan, J. (2018, July 8). Do I HAVE to pretend play with my child? Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/fantasy/

Lumanlan, J. (2018, June 10). Is the 30 million word gap real? Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/wordgap/

Lumanlan, J. (2018, January 28). Beyond “You’re OK!”: Modeling emotion regulation. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/emotionregulation/

Lumanlan, J. (2017, December 31). Three reasons not to say “You’re OK!”. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/youreok/

Lumanlan, J. (n.d.-a). Feelings list. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/feelings/

Lumanlan, J. (n.d.-b). Identifying your child’s wants quiz. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/quiz

Lumanlan, J. (n.d.-c). Needs list. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/needs/

Malik, F., & Marwaha, R. (2022, September 18). Developmental stages of social emotional development in children. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534819/

Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2014). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), 646–651. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1321664111

Pandey, N. (2022). An exploratory study of relationship between emotional intelligence and stress management among working professionals. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 10(3), 637–644. https://doi.org/10.25215/1003.065

Prizant, B. M., Wetherby, A. M., Rubin, E., & Laurent, A. C. (2003). The SCERTS model: A transactional, family-centered approach to enhancing communication and socioemotional abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder. Infants & Young Children, 16(4), 296–316. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001163-200310000-00004

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Shengyao, Y., Xuefen, L., Jenatabadi, H. S., Aladdin, A., Bilad, M. R., Binti Aminuddin, S. A., Almogren, A. S., & Linh, N. T. T. (2024). Emotional intelligence impact on academic achievement and psychological well-being among university students: The mediating role of positive psychological characteristics. BMC Psychology, 12(1), Article 389. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-01886-4

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Widen, S. C., & Russell, J. A. (2010). Children’s scripts for social emotions: causes and consequences are more central than are facial expressions. The British journal of developmental psychology, 28(Pt 3), 565–581. https://doi.org/10.1348/026151009x457550d

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Parents often ask me: “How can I prepare my child for the real world?” This question emerges in three distinct contexts:

• Navigating external influences like junk food and media;
• Dealing with broader social systems that don’t align with our values;
• Concerns about using traditional disciplinary methods, combined with worries that children won’t learn to function in a world where rewards and punishments are part of life.

In this post, I’ll explore practical approaches to addressing these challenges while honoring our children’s authentic selves.

Food Battles and Body Image

Let’s start with a familiar scenario: You’ve prepared a nutritious meal, but your child is munching on bread while ignoring everything else. You remind them about the protein and vegetables. They take a tiny nibble of chicken but refuse to touch the “green stuff.” As frustration builds, you wonder: “How will my child get the nutrients they need if all they eat is carbs?!”

Behind this concern lies a web of social pressures, including:

• Judgment from other parents
• Comments from relatives about your child’s body size
• Medical professionals evaluating growth curves
• A culture that’s unkind to children with diverse body types.

This creates tremendous stress around mealtimes. It goes far beyond your relationship with your child.

In my conversation with Dr. Lindo Bacon, we discussed how Body Mass Index (BMI) was never designed to measure individual health. It was created to assess population trends, not determine if a specific person is healthy. Now it’s used everywhere from schools to doctor’s offices to public health campaigns.

Even more surprising, research shows that the group with the longest lifespan isn’t those in the “normal” weight category – it’s those classified as “overweight.” And most people in the “obese” category live as long as those in the “normal” category.

So why are we so focused on controlling children’s eating habits? It can seem like the least bad option. The food industry has spent billions perfecting irresistible foods. Frito-Lay employs 500 chemists, psychologists, and technicians to find the “bliss point” in snack foods. Scientists engineered Cheetos with what one food scientist called “uncanny ability to melt in the mouth.” This creates “vanishing caloric density” that tricks your brain into thinking “you can just keep eating forever.”

Marketers bombard children with advertisements for these products. At the same time, you face immense pressure to ensure your kids eat “properly.” If your child refuses vegetables, society tells you it’s your fault and your responsibility to fix it.

One approach many parents find helpful is Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility model:

• Parents decide what, when, and where food is offered.
• Kids decide how much they eat—or whether they eat at all.

(In the episode we addressed a lot of the questions parents ask about reading books on DoR as they struggle to apply it in their own lives.)

Making foods forbidden tends to increase our desire for them. Instead, we can include them in our daily consumption, and treat them like any other food.  Serve dessert with dinner, and allow your child to decide which to eat first.  If you’re going to allow them to eat a square of chocolate today, does it matter when they eat it?  If they decide they want to eat it for breakfast, they get to meet their need for autonomy as well as for indulgent food.

We can learn what is a serving size of lots of different foods. When our child has eaten a serving of one food and they ask for another, we can say something like: “You’ve already had a serving of apples today.  Our bodies do best when we eat lots of different kinds of foods.  What else would you like?”

The key is that we treat apples the same as chips apples, so no food is ‘better’ than any other.  (The main exception to this would be with neurodivergent children, where you’ve decided that their emotional regulation is more important right now than what they eat.  A feeding therapist may be able to offer support if you and your child would like to make progress on their ability to tolerate and accept a wider variety of foods.)

Screen Time and Digital Media

Just as with food, parents often struggle with technology. Game designers, like food scientists, have engineered digital experiences to be extraordinarily compelling. They offer immediate feedback, achievable challenges, and social connection. They’re designed to meet children’s psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relationships.

Contrary to common belief, research doesn’t show a compelling link between video games and violence. In fact, as video game usage has increased globally, violent crime rates have generally decreased. Countries with higher percentages of young gamers than the US often have lower violence rates.

What’s more important are the cultural messages embedded within games and media. Many popular games reinforce limiting gender roles and social hierarchies. It can be tempting to shield children from these ideas. These ideas are out in the world, so we can’t shield our kids forever. Games can give us a way to discuss the topics and support our kids’ developing critical thinking skills.

Many parents’ most immediate concern is how to stop the battles at the end of screen time.  Seeing this as a gradual journey can help both us and our children. Expecting a child to go from having all screen time managed by you to managing it independently isn’t realistic. Break it down into stages:

• First you manage the timer;
• Then they manage it with your backup;
• Then they manage their time independently, with ongoing conversations about balance.

Social Expectations and Human Development

The cultural messages in video games aren’t isolated phenomenon. They’re reflections of broader social expectations that divide human qualities into rigid categories. For instance, games often portray male characters as warriors and female characters as healers. They reinforce the same limiting patterns that show up in children’s books, movies, and everyday interactions.

Our society often elevates certain qualities over others based on these divisions. Research by Dr. Carol Gilligan shows that boys as young as four demonstrate remarkable emotional intelligence. Between the ages of 5 and 7, they begin to shield these qualities, afraid of being seen as “soft.” Many girls learn between ages 9 and 13 that their authentic voice is “too much,” replacing it with a version that says what others want to hear.

Children naturally resist these divisions. They arrive in the world with both voice and desire for connection. They play freely across gender lines until social conditioning teaches them otherwise. When we force them to choose between these fundamental human capacities, they lose an important part of themselves.

You can help your child to see these influences when you read books or watch movies with your kids. I recently read the New York Times bestselling Fablehaven series to my daughter. In the second book, there’s a scene where the main character, Kendra, warns her friend Alyssa about walking home alone with a new boy (who Kendra knows is actually a disguised goblin). Kendra takes Alyssa aside and says: “Think about it. We hardly know anything about him. You just met him today. He’s not a little guy. Are you sure you want to go walking alone in the dark with him? Girls can get in a lot of trouble that way.”

The next day, Alyssa reveals he kissed her: “I was having so much fun. We talked in front of my house for a while after you drove away. He was being really cute and funny, and then he moved in close. I was terrified. I mean, I hardly know him, but it was also sort of exciting until we actually kissed.”

This seemingly innocent middle-grade fantasy novel was teaching troubling lessons:

• That it’s girls’ responsibility to protect themselves from boys (not boys’ responsibility to respect boundaries);
• That feeling “terrified” during a romantic encounter is normal and should be pushed through;
• That boys should pursue while girls should be pursued.

I paused after I read this passage and we discussed how this narrative reinforces harmful expectations for both genders. It teaches girls to ignore their instincts and boys to adopt an aggressive role they might not be comfortable with. These discussions help children develop critical awareness of messaging they might otherwise absorb without questioning.

Rethinking Discipline

Behind questions about managing challenging behavior often lies the concern:

“How do I discipline my child so they’ll be ready for the real world (and also do what I say)?”

Researchers developed tools like Time-outs after they saw that pigeons and chimps would change their behavior to get rewards and avoid punishments. When you give a Time-out, you’re removing the child from the opportunity to get positive reinforcement (your attention) to discourage unwanted behavior.

This approach may reduce immediate problematic behaviors. But we have to wonder: What is time-out teaching our children about relationships? Many children interpret temporary withdrawal of attention as withdrawal of love, even when we don’t intend it that way.

This misses the crucial understanding that behavior is communication. When we look deeper at “misbehavior,” we typically find unmet needs:

• The child hitting a sibling might be desperately seeking connection
• The child throwing toys might be experiencing sensory overload
• The child refusing directions might be trying to meet their need for autonomy

Consider one parent I worked with whose 11-year-old had been diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. When she shifted from demanding compliance to asking, “What’s going on? Do you need help?” her son responded with connection rather than resistance. Later, he wrote: “Mom, I’m so sorry I didn’t get us to school on time. I really needed your help. Thank you for giving me grace this morning.”

As she reflected, “My son wasn’t being defiant. His needs weren’t being met.”

The Need for Acceptance

Dr. Marsha Linehan’s memoir Building a Life Worth Living illustrates how parents’ attempts to shape children can create profound harm, even with good intentions.

Dr. Linehan’s mother continually berated her about her weight, her looks, her clothing, and her lack of social graces.  Dr. Linehan was intellectually curious, but her questions were not welcomed by her parents.  She felt completely alone in a family of eight, with nobody who could understand her experience.

This created what Linehan calls “traumatic invalidation.” This is a pervasive misreading of emotions that led her to feel like an outsider in her own family.  What Dr. Linehan needed—what all children need—was acceptance of who she really was.  The irony was that Linehan’s parents tried to shape her behavior because they loved her, and they wanted her to be successful in life.  They wanted to make her acceptable in a world where her only job was to get married to a man who made enough money to maintain a middle class lifestyle.  They appear to have succeeded with Dr. Linehan’s siblings; Linehan’s mental health was the price that the family paid.

Most parents aren’t trying to harm their children; they’re trying to prepare them for what they believe is necessary for success. But in doing this, they communicate: “I’ll give you love and acceptance only when your behavior fits my expectations.” The child learns to cover up their real feelings and needs, and eventually forgets who they really are.

When we think about changing our child’s behavior, we must be clear on why we’re doing it. We might think it’s for their own benefit, just as Dr. Linehan’s mother thought as well. We, too, want our kids to to fit in social systems that dictate appropriate body size, emotional expression, and behavior. But this creates disconnection between us, instead of the validation and acceptance that we all crave. We might have done well in school and work ourselves, and now explode at our kids when they ask us to really ‘see’ them.  Our ‘success’ in life has come at the expense of our mental health, and the same thing may happen with our kids if we don’t make a conscious decision to do things differently.

Bringing It All Together

Whether we’re navigating food choices, screen time, social expectations, or discipline, the underlying question remains:

How do we prepare our children for the real world while honoring their authentic selves?

The thread connecting these areas is the tension between external pressures (from marketers, media, social systems) and children’s innate wisdom about their own needs. Our role isn’t to shield them completely, nor force them to conform, but to help them learn how to to navigate these influences with awareness.

These insights play out in everyday moments. When your child resists getting ready in the morning, instead of assuming defiance, try asking with genuine curiosity: “Why is this hard today?”

Maybe they’re seeking connection or avoiding a problem at school. Understanding the underlying need allows you to address it while teaching valuable life skills.

This approach doesn’t coddle children; it validates them. It teaches them they’re lovable exactly as they are—the foundation they need to navigate our complex world.

To prepare children for the real world, our most powerful tool isn’t protection or control, but connection. We’re working to create relationships where children feel seen, understood, and valued, while developing skills to engage critically with the world around them.

If some of these ideas challenge your current parenting approaches, please be gentle with yourself. We parent from our own histories and with the tools we’ve been given. Your children benefit not from perfect parenting, but from your willingness to learn and grow alongside them.

References

Linehan, M.M. (2021). Building a life worth living. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Moss, M. (2013, February 20). The extraordinary science of addictive junk food. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

National Center for Education Statistics (1996). Do rich and poor districts spend alike? Author. Retrieved from:

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp#:~:text=Districts%20with%20high%2Dincome%20households,to%20spend%20for%20public%20education.&text=districts%20with%20moderate%2Dto%2Dhigh,student%20(%245%2C411%2D%20%244%2C774).

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The 2024 election season has put a lot of us through the wringer.  We may have deeply held values around fairness, freedom, and what it means to belong in a community – and it can feel scary when other people don’t share those values. For parents, the election obviously gives us an opportunity to discuss our values with our children, and how these values may be different from those of people who voted for other candidates.  But beyond that, it also creates an opportunity to examine whether we’ve really been living our values as much as we think we have – and to adjust course if needed.

In a recent podcast episode 229: Raising kids in divisive times: Where do we go after the 2024 election?, I discussed in depth the ways that we liberals may not have been living our values as much as we think we have.  I offered strategies that we as parents can use to bring our actions into greater alignment with our values.  In this blog post I focus more specifically on ways we can be with our children that are value-aligned.

Understanding Differences: What’s Behind People’s Beliefs

I have found that Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s research into moral foundations provides a useful framework to understand why people think (and vote) the way they do.

In his book The Righteous Mind, Haidt identified five moral ‘foundations’ that shape how we view right and wrong:

1. Care/Harm: Concern for others and a desire to protect those who are vulnerable.
2. Fairness/Cheating: A focus on justice, fairness, and avoiding people who cheat or take advantage of others.
3. Loyalty/Betrayal: The importance of being loyal to a group or community.
4. Authority/Subversion: Respect for tradition, authority, and social order.
5. Sanctity/Degradation: Valuing purity and a sense of what’s “right” in a moral or even physical sense.

The diagram below, which is recreated from Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind, shows the five foundations:

People who lean toward liberal values often prioritize care and fairness with the other values being relatively less important, while those with conservative views tend to see all five as more equally important.

We liberals have been hypocritical in how we live some of our values

Liberal values often emphasize ideals like care for all (not just those in our immediate families), fairness, and belonging, but I think we have to admit that we haven’t been great at living those values.

When we think about caring for all, we look at economic indicators like the ever-growing GDP and low unemployment rates and tell people with relatively low incomes that “everything’s fine.”  We ignore the 25% jump in house prices during the pandemic, that rental rates rose 8% from 2022-2023, childcare costs are up 32% from 2019…and hourly wages only rose 4%.  Meanwhile, propelled by the stock market, relatively wealthy liberals are moving away from expensive urban and suburban areas to places where conservatives have long been able to afford homes and are now priced out of the market.  How are we ‘caring for all’?

Similarly, the liberal commitment to fairness sometimes falters when we’re advancing our own goals. Liberals advocate for a shift to low-carbon energy sources at a much greater rate than conservatives.  Many more conservatives live in states where energy is produced and when we argue for shutting down coal-fired power plants, we don’t incorporate plans to help workers transition into new jobs.  This can leave conservatives believing that they can’t meet their need for autonomy, which is the ability to make decisions that feel important to us that affect our lives – it’s no wonder they resist these policies.  An approach called Targeted Universalism helps us to develop policies that benefit everyone, while providing more support to those who need it the most.  People tend not to protest others getting more help than them, as long as they’re being helped as well.

We also haven’t been very successful at creating family structures that are truly fair.  I can’t tell you how many women I work with have husbands whose trauma takes on an outsized role in the relationship (but the father refuses to acknowledge it), while the mother is in therapy and learning new parenting techniques and the father refuses to try anything new – or go to couple’s therapy.  The mother finds herself stuck in an endless cycle of appeasing him, and trying to reassure herself that research shows that kids do OK if they have at least one parent who tries to meet their needs.  She resists divorce because she knows it counts as an Adverse Childhood Experience, and she’s trying to protect the kids from as much trauma of their own as possible.  Why would we think that conservatives would want our family structures, when many of us don’t really want what we have either?

And while we might argue in principle for a world where everyone belongs, we haven’t been able to create and model this in our own lives.  While many liberals advocate for inclusivity and equitable public resources, many of us still make choices that prioritize our own family’s opportunities over community-wide equity. For example, some liberal families support public schooling in principle yet enroll their children in private schools or highly competitive public schools to avoid being in the minority in a majority-Black school, or to make sure our kids don’t miss out on opportunities to help them get ahead in life.

We talk about letting more immigrants into the country, but here in the Bay Area local residents resist building affordable housing (because it will ‘change the character of the neighborhood’), so many teachers now have a 3-hour daily commute because they can’t afford to live where they teach.

We preach ‘inclusion,’ but at the first sign that someone doesn’t use exactly the right words, or think about an issue in exactly the same way we do, we kick them out of the tent. It’s no wonder that nobody else wants to buy the ‘belonging’ we’re selling.

We’re all trying to meet our needs

I wanted to see whether the moral foundations could be translated into needs, so I pulled up the needs list and tried to understand what need a liberal and a conservative is trying to meet when we use these moral foundations – and how this translates into policy positions.  I found that it actually does translate pretty well:

Then I realized that all of these needs really ladder up to the need for safety – and liberals and conservatives use different strategies to meet those needs.  Liberals want to be able to express our whole selves (including our identities as women, LGBTQ, BIPOC), and to live in integrity with our values.  Conservatives want the safety that comes with both cultural and financial security – and that they have a real say in how these decisions are made.  I believe that when we live our values more authentically, and also truly listen to conservatives and develop policies that address their concerns, that we’ll be able to move toward creating a world where everyone can be their whole selves – and create true belonging.

Actionable steps for parents

It can seem like the most obvious action to take is to talk about our values with our children, and make sure they know that we prioritize care for all, fairness, and belonging.  If you’ve ever sworn in front of your kids and then told your child not to swear, you’ll know that kids remember the lessons of our actions much more effectively than they remember the lessons of our words.  With that in mind, here are some practical ways to live your values through your relationship with your kids:

1. Practice fairness by recognizing different needs

Kids have an eagle eye for fairness, but they tend to get stuck on whether everyone else has exactly the same as them.  But we can practice Targeted Universalism in our families as well!  It doesn’t make sense to spend 30 minutes reading to Child A just because you spent 30 minutes reading to Child B, when Child B would much prefer you to play LEGOs or Let’s Pretend.  When we give each child what they need, they complain a lot less about what their sibling got, instead of perceiving ‘unfairness’ in every interaction.

What you can do: During family decisions, encourage open conversations about each person’s needs. In Parenting Beyond Power we call the needs that a child is trying to meet over and over again their ‘cherry’ needs (the cherry on top of the frosting and cupcake of other needs).  Try to make sure that your child’s cherry needs are met most of the time, and that your cherry needs are met as well.

2. Build a culture of belonging by prioritizing inclusion

Belonging means that everyone’s voice is heard in the community; they have agency and can help develop the community’s values.  So rather than buying one of those posters that tells kids about your family’s values (which invariably end up being things parents want children to do/not do (like “We are kind” and “We use our manners”).

What you can do: Ask your kids what’s important to them, and how they can live those values.  So if they say it’s important to be kind, what does kindness mean to them?  How will they live out their value of being kind?  If they say: “I’ll never call [sibling] a bad name again,” don’t be surprised if they forget in a difficult moment.  Afterward, you can remind them: “I thought we said that we wouldn’t call each other names?  What happened?  Do we still hold that value?  If so, what about that interaction was hard for you?  How can we support you much earlier on next time so you don’t get so frustrated you call [sibling] a name?

3. Show care through mutual aid

Volunteering is a traditional way of supporting others but when we volunteer, we’re putting ourselves in a position of superiority over others.  We’re saying: “I don’t need help; I’m only here to help you.”

When we engage in mutual aid, we’re acknowledging that we all have needs and we can support each other in meeting those needs.  We can share childcare, carpool, and meal preparation.  We can develop communities where it’s not just OK but encouraged to reach out and say: “I’m having a hard week.  Can anyone pick up some groceries for me or cook me a meal?,” knowing that we will do the same for someone else in future.  We’re seeing that all people have resources and can make valuable contributions to the community, rather than one person always giving and the other always receiving.

And while we’re at it, we’re making it clear that the reason we can’t cope is not because we are failing individually, but because our social systems are failing us.

What you can do: Get to know your neighbors.  Offer help when you see someone in need.  Ask for help yourself, instead of trying to go it alone.  I offer free babysitting for our neighbors whose babies are young enough to go to bed early, and old enough to sleep for several hours at a stretch.  I read bedtime stories to Carys at their house, and it’s no more difficult than being at home.  Let your kids see you doing this mutual support work with others.

4. Acknowledge privilege and advocate for equity

While we may say we support inclusivity, our decisions may not align with those values.  If we have a relatively large amount of privilege, we may find that systems like those found in schools are set up to support us.  If we ask for something to be done then it happens; if other parents ask then the request is sidelined and then forgotten.  The same faces get voted onto the PTA year after year, and while people may ask: “Whose voices aren’t here?” no plans are ever made to make sure those voices are not just present but heard next time.

What you can do: Listen to this podcast episode on How to advocate for the schools our children deserve, which is packed with ideas and resources you can use to create change at your kids’ school – whether you’re the kind of parent who wants to be on the PTA, or who prefers to stay in the background.

5. Create a culture of accountability and integrity at home

Living out our values can be messy and imperfect. Our intentions may not always align with our actions, and our actions don’t always have the impact we intend. When you make decisions that don’t align perfectly with your values, talk about it with your kids. Explain that integrity isn’t about perfection but about honesty and growth, and help them to understand why you made this choice.

When you recognize that your actions had an impact that was different from what you intended – even when the person impacted is your child, apologize.  This doesn’t make you a ‘weak’ parent.  It’s likely to lead to greater connection and closeness with your child.

What you can do: Be open with your children when you make a decision that doesn’t fully align with your family’s values. Use it as an opportunity to discuss why it happened, what you learned, and how you’ll work to do better next time. Modeling accountability shows that living with integrity means learning from mistakes.

Try apologizing to your child about something you did recently that you know hurt them, even if that wasn’t your intention.  Tell them how you’re planning to do things differently the next time this situation comes up.

7. Support each child’s individual identity and need for belonging

You may have had the experience when you were a child of being told you were too big, too loud, or too much for your parents to cope with.  They were doing the best they could to raise you with the tools they had, but they couldn’t cope with all of your needs.

True belonging involves giving people space to express who they are, without trying to get them to conform to our standards.  (Parents I work with often worry that this will mean their children will be unprepared for the real world, and yet they themselves found the experience of not being accepted by their parents to be extremely hurtful and even traumatizing.)

What you can do: Try to find value in each of your kids’ traits.  If they have to have to have the last word, it’s not that ‘they’ll be a great lawyer someday’ – it’s that they aren’t afraid to advocate for their needs now, which is a good thing!

8. Encourage self-advocacy balanced with community responsibility

Care, fairness, and belonging are needs that are important to many people. Teach your kids that advocating for their own needs is important, but so is considering how their actions impact others. If we advocate for Advanced Placement classes for our child, will all children be able to benefit?  Are there also children who would benefit from classes to support them with more basic skills?

If you want to start a drama club, and you’re proposing that rehearsals happen after school, does everyone have access to transportation to attend?

Is your child aware of how they take up space?  If they eat while you’re grocery shopping, or take their own toy into a store where toys are sold, is your child likely to be accused of stealing?  If not, they may want to consider not eating or taking their toy, in acknowledgement that not everyone can do this.

What you can do: If one of your children wants to ask that something in the family be done differently or request an exception, encourage them to explain why it matters to them. Then, help them consider how this change might impact everyone else before making a decision together. This practice helps them see that personal choices are part of a larger family dynamic and that considering others’ needs is part of responsible self-advocacy.

9. Participate in civic engagement as a family

Community involvement as a way to support collective well-being. Participating in local elections, attending town meetings, getting involved in a place of worship or your kids’ school, or working on an issue that’s important to your kids are ways to live out your commitment to community care and fairness.  Plus they create belonging: people who participate in one type of civic engagement have improved health outcomes over people who don’t participate in any.  The benefit is even greater when you participate in more than one type of engagement.

What you can do: Choose an issue that’s important to you and/or your kids, and decide together how you can best contribute to it.  Doing the work together provides even more opportunities for the show-rather-than-tell approach to learning, which is much more impactful for kids.

​

References

Lumanlan, J. (2024, November 12). Episode 229: Raising kids in divisive times: Where do we go after the 2024 election?  Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/trump/

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.

Powell, J. A., Menendian, S., & Ake, W. (2019, May). Targeted universalism: Policy & practice. Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley.

Lumanlan, J. (2024). Needs list for parents. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/needs/

Lumanlan, J. (2023). Parenting beyond power: How to use connection and collaboration to transform your family—and the world. https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/book

Lumanlan, J. (2022, September 25). Episode 167: Healing and helping with mutual aid with Dean Spade. Your Parenting Mojo. https://www.yourparentingmojo.com/mutualaid

Lumanlan, J. (2024, August 18). Episode 221: How to advocate for the schools our children deserve with Allyson Criner Brown & Cassie Gardener Manjikian [Audio podcast episode]. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/equitableoutcomes/

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In this post I’m going to discuss six of the most significant causes of parental anxiety including the newest cause -COVID-19 – which amplifies the other five.

Cause #1 – Unwanted Opinions

We fear our children being seen too spoiled, too selfish, too nice, too overweight/underweight, too addicted to screens, too active, too lazy, too loud, too quiet, too stubborn, too obedient —shall I go on?

We struggle to identify the “just right” qualities we hope our children will develop and waste untold amounts of mental and physical energy trying to manipulate our children into developing these “just right” qualities that we can’t even fully  identify.  And the primary way we evaluate our children’s qualities is through what other people think of them – at school; at the doctor’s office; in the checkout line at the supermarket.

Everyone has an opinion on parenting.  It’s impossible to please them all, and we shouldn’t even try.  We  have to find our own North Star so we can set goals that are uniquely right for our family, so that when the little everyday challenges arise, we’re not just reacting to them based on how we feel in that moment.

I know how hard it is to look behind the headlines and figure out what is true, what is important, and what it means to you.

Once you find your parenting North Star, you’ll be able to get to the root of the problems you’re having with your child and have a plan to confidently address these, which means you can stop feeling overwhelmed by the constant barrage of competing opinions from relatives, friends, and the media.

Cause #2 –Isolation

Loneliness is both very widespread and seriously problematic in Western Society. Parents of young children are particularly vulnerable to isolation and loneliness.

According to psychologist Aisling Leonard-Curtin, loneliness and isolation of parents can lead to anxiety, depression, and parental burnout.

Drs. Moïra Mikolajczak, whom I’ve interviewed for the Your Parenting Mojo podcast, and Isabelle Roskam have researched parenting burnout and how to address it. They’ve  noted that burnout is much more common in Westernized cultures than in other places around the world.

If you can believe it, Western parents with 1 or 2 children were more likely to experience burnout than African parents with 8-9 children.

This is at least partly because of the very different beliefs about raising children. The African phrase “it takes a village” to raise a child means that we need social support to raise a child. The task is too enormous for one or two people to do on their own. In the non-Western World, there is much more social support, whereas in the West, parents are largely left on their own. Compounding the problem, parents in Western cultures often feel they are solely responsible for making sure their children develop strong cognitive and social/emotional skills in addition to being healthy and happy.

When we feel that we’re on the hook for all of it, no-one else can help, and we’ll be judged if we get it wrong, it’s not surprising that we feel anxious about our children.

Cause #3 – Media Sensationalism

The media in general grabs onto any parenting issue that can be sensationalized to draw interest. Rather than presenting nuanced findings from research, correlations and anecdotes are presented as scientific fact. Creating controversy is how they expand their audience, but slight correlations or surprising results from small studies have to be discussed in more nuanced ways. Unfortunately, that practice would be bad for the business of generating clicks for advertising views.

The debate about screen time for children is a perfect example of how the media creates anxiety for parents. Headlines, like “Scientists finally know what screen time does to your toddler’s brain,” promise definitive information and try to guilt parents with assertions about screen time slowing brain development. The truth about screen time is far more nuanced, but that’s less likely to inspire heated Twitter debates or 20 million shares on Facebook.

Compounding the problem, scientific research and expert opinions on parenting have changed substantially in the last hundred years. Best practices in psychological research have definitely improved since the days when pregnant mothers were advised to “avoid thinking of ugly people,” to avoid producing unattractive children.

Unfortunately, the combination of poor research and media sensationalism gives some people the impression that all expert advice is worthless as evidenced by the constant, dramatic shifts seen in the media. Parents absolutely need a reliable resource for research-based information regarding child development and parenting.

Cause #4 – You’re not on the same page as your partner

When I interviewed Dr. Laura Froyen, she explained that parenting and discipline is one of the most common areas where couples disagree. Making matters worse, seeing parental conflict about parenting can be very upsetting for children. It can lead to self-blame, guilt, and insecurity.

On the other hand, children learn about conflict resolution and problem solving within their family. If parents can work together as a team, to resolve conflicts and solve problems, children will learn that people who love each other can disagree and work through their problems respectfully.

Many of us grew up in homes with poor examples of conflict and as a result learned that it is uncomfortable and best avoided. Dr. John Gottman, a prolific couple’s researcher identified four conflict starters as the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” These argument inciters are:

1. Criticism
2. Defensiveness
3. Contempt
4. Stonewalling

The presence of these four characteristics of conflict is closely related to marital dissatisfaction and potentially even marital breakdown.

Gottman’s research shows that successful couples don’t avoid conflict; they actually welcome it as an opportunity to connect with their partner, to experience acceptance and understanding within a significant attachment relationship.

Getting on the same page with your partner may seem impossible if you are coming from extremely different backgrounds, and when you and your partner don’t know how to discuss disagreements without the Four Horsemen becoming involved.

It can be very difficult to overcome communication habits that have become ingrained, but with the right information and participation by both parties, it is possible.  While it’s true that the only person you can really change is yourself, it’s much easier to make progress if your partner isn’t knowingly or unknowingly doing things that trigger you and take you back to square one each time.

Cause #5 – Parenting is hard!

If you’ve made it this far into the post, you probably don’t need much elaboration on this.  Children are demanding!

Food, messes, safety, potty training, bedtimes, and sibling rivalry create a never-ending drain on our energy.

Then there are the tantrums!

Somehow toddlers seem to have magical powers that help them discern the moments when you are the most exhausted, anxious, busy, or distraught–that impeccable sense of timing should serve them well someday, but that’s little comfort when you’re just trying to get out of the grocery store without a giant canister of cheese curls.

We know young children are learning and developing at an incredibly fast pace, and it is really hard for parents to keep up!

One path forward here is to understand a little more about your child’s development.  Research has shown that parents who understand more about their child’s development have more positive interactions with their children.  This may well be because parents who understand developmental milestones don’t put unrealistic expectations on their children.

For example, 56% of parents surveyed by the organization Zero to Three thought that children under age 3 should be able to resist the urge to do something that the parent has forbidden, but actually this ability often develops between the ages of 3.5-4 – or even later for some children.

If we are continually expecting our children to comply with our wishes when their brain structures don’t yet allow them to do this, we’re making parenting even more difficult for ourselves.

Cause #6 – Parenting and the pandemic

COVID-19 has amplified almost every anxiety-producing aspect of parenting young children.

How can we make sure our children are ‘doing okay’ or exceling cognitively, socially, and emotionally when socialization is limited and schools are closed?

Where can we turn for support when some relatives are isolating and those willing to take the risk to come to our homes and provide childcare pose a risk that we’re not comfortable taking?

What is the truth about the risks posed for children? Are they immune to the virus? (Of course, they aren’t, but the message is out there nonetheless.) Will it have any impact on them? Can they spread it to adults? Are they less likely to contract the virus? Will the virus cause long-term problems for them even if they don’t get terribly sick? If a vaccine emerges, will it be safe enough to give to them? Will it be worse for them to get the virus, or miss out on school?

How are we supposed to co-parent effectively with our partner when we’re together ALL the time?

And how can we do all this while we’re working remotely as well?

One way is to shift from a mindset of scarcity (“there is never enough of me to go around; I can’t do it all…” to a mindset of abundance (“I am enough.  There is enough of me to go around.”). 

Yes, we need to advocate for better social safety nets.  And while we still don’t have them, we can shift our own mindset, which changes the way we feel about the situation and the way we respond to others.

What is the solution?

Parents need unbiased information and non-judgmental support. Combined, these two components combat the conflicting advice, the isolation, and the media sensationalism. With solid information and strategies, parents can approach the incredibly difficult task of parenting from common ground as a team, using strategies that are grounded in a clear understanding of their children’s brain development.

To help, I’m bringing back my popular Finding Your Parenting Mojo membership. If you love the research-based information you hear on the Your Parenting Mojo podcast and read on the blog but struggle to apply the ideas in your real life with your unique family, then the membership is designed for you.

New this year, I’ve restructured the membership to make it even more immediately useful to you.  When you join, you get immediate access to three or 12 modules of content (depending on which option you select).  You can download a Guide to walk you through a series of activities, or watch a video presentation or listen to an audio read-through.  No matter how you learn, I’ve got you covered.

There are pre-recorded Q&As available to watch immediately – not hours-long calls that you have to wade through to find the nuggets of useful information, but a series of 5-10 minute videos with each one addressing a different challenge – so you can find exactly the support you need for your specific problem, and fast.

You’ll also connect with like-minded parents in a supportive private community, and can opt to join a small group of parents to help you bring your learning to life by taking small but meaningful steps toward your goals.

In the first module of the membership, we’ll create some breathing room by developing tools to dramatically reduce the number of tantrums at your house. We’ll introduce a Problem Solving Conversation Tool to help you find solutions to those problems that seem to recur again and again so you can get out of that negative cycle.

In the second module, you’ll learn to parent as a team with your partner.  You’ll figure out where you need to become more aligned in your approaches, and where it’s OK to disagree.  And you’ll gain some new tools to approach these conversations with your partner in a way that doesn’t get their back up but instead invites them to share how they’re really feeling, so you can do the same.

During the third module, you’ll set a family vision and goals based on your unique family values, and you’ll learn how to align daily interactions with long-term goals.  Because if you’re trying to raise a child who is independent but you step in and take over every time they struggle, there’s a misalignment between your goals and what your child is actually learning about how the world works.

These three modules form the core content, and you can choose to start with just those.  Or you could take your family life  to the next level and use your new tools and skills to address topics like raising healthy eaters, navigating screens, and supporting siblings. In each module, you’ll make a plan with goals that are both based on research-based ideas and aligned with your values.

One parent who is in the membership recently said “I think one thing I love about your work is it just makes it OK to hang out, enjoy and do what you want to with your family. Just be together, talk to each other, share yourselves and do what you need. No need to worry…You’ve cured my anxiety about all things parenting.”

Click here to learn more about the Finding Your Parenting Mojo membership, and to sign up.  Enrollment is now open!

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Many families are facing incredible challenges. Most of us don’t have the supplies, knowledge, time, or know-how to jump into this endeavor and be immediately successful. Much like your child, you’re going to have a steep learning curve.

What’s the alternative?

Experienced homeschooling parents rarely educate their children in a vacuum. They have strong communities and tap into many resources. But even if you’re not ready to formally withdraw your child from school now, you can take advantage of some of the benefits of homeschooling in a community.

Enter Pandemic Pods.

Pandemic pods can take a number of forms, including:

1. Parents swapping care for each other’s children, most likely rotating the children between houses, with less of a specific focus on learning (perhaps for younger children)
2. Hiring an online tutor to coach a group of students primarily online
3. Hiring a caregiver to work with the children in-person to make sure they stay on track with school-provided curriculum
4. Either swapping care or hire a caregiver to focus on aspects of learning that aren’t traditionally covered in school (e.g. interest-led learning, explicitly anti-racist, anti-patriarchal learning, etc.)

Whether you plan for this arrangement to be temporary or permanent, you are taking the toughest job a person can have – being a parent – and combining it with another famously difficult job – teaching. It can seem like an insurmountable task, but I’m here to make it manageable for you!

Before I get into the rationale for a Pandemic Pod, a quick word about public schools. If you plan to send your children back to school at some point, please do consider staying enrolled in school. Different states are approaching funding in different ways (some are freezing funding for this year based on last year’s enrollment), but for the most part funding for next year is determined by this year’s enrollment. Due to the unique situation created by COVID, you can probably maintain enrollment even if your child doesn’t attend in-person, and even if you decide that you’re too busy to submit assignments online at the moment.

Why form a Pandemic Pod?

1. Spread the load of meeting your children’s needs

The volume of work involved in effectively teaching children can be enormous. In public schools, although teachers have more work than any one person should have, they are also supported by a district and teams of teachers. They don’t have to choose their curriculum. They don’t have to worry about a budget for their teaching (although we know many dip into their personal bank accounts regularly). They get ideas from other teachers, they share tasks like assessment design and daily planning, and they usually aren’t responsible for art, music, and PE.

Even if you’re planning to use the curriculum that school is sending home, and you aren’t responsible for 25 children, it can still feel like there’s a tremendous amount of mental work that goes into keeping on top of it all.  A Pod can reduce this workload, especially if you decide to work with a teacher who can coordinate these activities.  Even if you’re just sharing care between parents, if you’re working with other children in your own child’s class, you can split the load of making sure work gets submitted on-time.

And, of course, if you decide not to follow the school curriculum then a Pod gives you opportunities to share that workload too – whether or not you choose to follow a formal curriculum.  Rather than taking on everything yourself, you can tap into the strengths and interests of other parents. Maybe you can find someone to take on the tasks that really drain you in exchange for sharing your work in an area that you actually enjoy.

A Pod reduces the pressure on each set of parents to do EVERYTHING for their child. You and your child will be better off for it.

2. Reduce the financial burden

Supporting young children’s learning at home can be a significant financial burden. Investments in books, activities, subscriptions, and basic supplies can be a real drain.

Maybe you want to do a project that involves using a material that is typically sold in bulk, but you know you won’t need all of it. Rather than buying a large supply yourself letting most of it end up in a landfill, you can pool your money with a few parents and share the materials.   By sharing resources, you can ease your financial burden and even help the environment.

Even if you’re participating in a school-based curriculum, if you’re working then you probably don’t have time to make sure they’re on the required video calls (and paying attention!), as well as submitting work on-time.  Yet hiring a teacher/tutor just for your children can be cost-prohibitive.

This is where a Pod can really help.  By Podding with another family you can share this expense in a way that makes it much more affordable.  If you Pod with other children who are in your child’s class then it could almost be like a continuation of the school experience.

Or if you choose to Pod with families who aren’t in your school, then it might be easier to choose a different curriculum that you all follow together – or perhaps decide that it’s time to give interest-led learning a try.

3. Have more time for your own needs!

In my post about how COVID-19 is revealing the weaknesses in our social systems, I discussed how a quarantine constellation could be used to share the burden of childcare and allow adults some focused time for work. A Pod could function in a similar way. No matter what type of learning you’re doing—even participating in a virtual program through public school, there will be demands on parents’ time.

Young children struggle to operate laptops and stay focused. They also don’t have the executive function skills to move from one activity to another independently, and you don’t need me to tell you that just having children in the house – even relatively quiet ones – is a distraction.

By moving children from one house to another within your constellation (or perhaps having a parent work elsewhere while the Pod runs out of one house), parents will get some time when they can attend to tasks that require concentration without wondering why the water in the bathroom has been running for so long, what made that strange noise, or why it suddenly got very quiet in the other room.

Maybe you’d even get the opportunity to read or go for a walk at a normal pace.

4. Children gain social experience

There is quite a bit of anxiety in the US about how children are missing out on the social aspects of being in (pre)school.  There’s no ‘one size fits all’ advice on this front, because the impacts on each child will vary based on their circumstances.  Children who crave social interaction, who don’t have siblings, and have stressed-out parents may very much need to spend time with others.  Children who don’t get their energy from being around others, who have relaxed and engaged parents are probably doing just fine.

Your child’s behavior is your biggest clue as to how things are going for them: if they are generally happy and interested in activities then they are probably doing well.  If they seem anxious (remember that children’s ‘difficult’ behavior can be an indicator of anxiety) then it’s time to assess some ways to help them.

I remember visiting a friend’s house as a child and being surprised by some of the manners that were expected that were different from my home. At her house we had to pray before we ate and ask to be excused from the dinner table. When we were playing outside, we could pick grapes and blueberries from the garden if we wanted a snack. These minor differences showed me that not all families operated the same way that my family did – and that was okay. I learned how to adapt my behavior. We can talk to our children and show them movies and books where families operate differently, but it isn’t the same as experiencing differences first-hand.

It’s also good for children to hear important messages from other adults. As frustrating as it may be, sometimes children absorb ideas better from people other than their parents. You may have told your child a thousand times that they should clean up their toys when they are done using them, but for some reason when Kayla’s dad tells them they should clean up their toys when they are finished using them it sinks in and they come home and inform you of this incredibly helpful tip they learned at Kayla’s house.

Sometimes children learn academics better from each other as well. Partner reading is one example of a research-based strategy that is frequently used in early childhood to build reading fluency. One advantage of a classroom full of students is that teachers can create opportunities for students to solve problems together. This simultaneously builds higher-order thinking skills and social skills.

When children engage with one another, they learn skills like negotiation and they can develop leadership skills that can be more difficult to learn with adults, unless the adults are willing to let the child ‘lead’ some of the time. They learn the art of compromise and how to hold each other accountable. Children may also be more willing to put forth effort and try new things when they are around other children who are working on a similar task.

5. Fill in curriculum gaps

Whether we’re Podding or not, we can use this time to educate our children about social responsibility and how to be anti-racist. I’ve published a number of blog posts and podcast episodes discussing white privilege and how we can talk to our preschool-aged children about Black Lives Matter.

I’d also like to share an Instagram channel I recently discovered called savewithstories. What I like about this is that they have an extremely diverse collection of readers and there are quite a few books that focus on topics related to race and gender. It’s an easy way to introduce your child to people with skin tones, genders, and ages–especially if you happen to live in a very homogeneous area.

When you’re ready to move on from that, consider taking some of the steps in my 39 Actions Parents Can Take on Racial Justice post.  Talk with the children about what actions you’re taking and why you’re taking them, and involve them in decision making to the extent it’s possible.  It’s pretty rare to get this depth of learning on social justice issues in school, so this is the perfect opportunity to supplement school-based learning.

This is also a good time to include some social and emotional learning skills to learn and practice coping skills related to current events.  Social and emotional learning is likely to be most effective when it’s woven into literature, science, and social studies by asking extension questions and making comparisons that make unfamiliar topics relatable.

For example, a book about the changing seasons could be a springboard into a discussion of changes within our lives and how sometimes in our life are very exciting and we’re learning new things, that’s like spring. Other times in our lives, we feel lonely like the tree that has lost all its leaves, but that just like the tree’s leaves will grow back, our times of sadness and loneliness won’t last forever.

You can also introduce mindfulness tools through activities like blowing bubbles or a pinwheel (observing how taking deep breaths makes you feel more relaxed), taking a ‘noticing walk,’ or count all the things they can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste right now.  These activities help them to get in touch with their physical sensations, which can be calming when they are feeling destabilized.  My daughter specifically requests the ‘counting what we can sense’ activity when she’s having a hard time.

6. Reduce social inequality created by school closings

As we form Pods,  there’s a very real problem of continuing the ‘opportunity hoarding’ that often happens in schools.  This is when affluent (often white) families share access to information and resources with each other and members of non-dominant cultures are left out. If we don’t intentionally work to dismantle all forms of racism, then we are perpetuating racism and teaching it to our children.

The pandemic is clearly hitting some groups harder than others. Generally speaking, children and families from non-dominant cultures are hit harder by every aspect of the pandemic. Those of us who are members of the dominant culture are probably at a lower risk both with regard to our physical health and our employment status. We can use this privilege to further widen inequalities or work toward finding a solution.

What are some effective ways to form Pods in a way that reduce social inequality?  It starts by asking yourself questions like ‘Who will we invite to our Pod?’ If your Pod of families all look like you, you will be sending a strong message to your child. If you are genuinely interested in promoting social justice, use those principles in the formation of your Pod.

If you are thinking you should invite a Latinx family to be in your pod so your child can learn Spanish, you’re missing the point. Diversity is invaluable for all of us; it shouldn’t be something we sprinkle on at the end as a finishing touch.  For many of us, this is the first time that our social support systems have truly failed us.  But families of non-dominant cultures have been developing underground networks all along and we might find that rather than us needing to ‘rescue’ them, that they can instead teach us things we need to know.

The best approach is to involve a diverse group of families from the start with the goal of learning from and supporting one another. Ideally, you’ll be able to connect with a diverse group of families you already know (e.g. your child’s classmates), but if that isn’t possible, you could reach out to community groups to ask about the best way to connect with families to find out if they’re interested in working with you. You can learn more about this important topic in my recent podcast Socialization and Pandemic Pods.

How to build Pandemic Pods that work for you and your community.

Once you’ve decided you want to move forward with creating a Pandemic Pod that is safe, effective and socially just, there’s the enormous question: How am I going to actually do this (while also working and parenting full time!)

Pandemic Pods are great, but they are also brand new which means they’re simultaneously an exciting opportunity and a daunting challenge. I’ve heard from many parents who are interested in the benefits of a Pod but concerned about the implications they have for social justice. I firmly believe that we can create socially just Pods.

The Pandemic Pods ‘in a box’ course gives you the essential information to make the best decision for your family while keeping in mind the needs of our broader community. Through this course, you’ll learn how to create a plan that fits your family’s unique needs and how to put your plan into action, including finding a group of families to work with, hiring a teacher/caregiver, finding balance, and promoting positive social change.

As you make decisions about your child’s education this fall, remember that you know your family’s situation the best. If making the decision to go back to school, withdraw from school entirely, or form a Pod seems overwhelming, my new FREE School Decision Tool can help.  Just click here to use it right now to get past all the fear and uncertainty to a decision that’s right for your family.

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“I don’t want to.”

“Put your shoes away now.”

“No!”

“If you don’t put them away you can’t watch cartoons tonight, and maybe we won’t have dessert either!”

~sigh~ 

(A conversation like this has never happened in your house, right?  Didn’t think so.  Mine either😉) 

When we ask our child to put their shoes away it might seem to us that we are asking them to do an incredibly simple, easy thing that should take a few seconds at most, but often what we’re actually trying to do is to exert some control.  We parents have a bit of a habit of doing this with our children at the best of times, but when everything else around us seems out of control and also our children just won’t put their shoes away, the sense of a loss of control can feel like it’s taking us over and seem completely overwhelming.

And then our child refuses, and we realize that all the conventional parenting advice in the world is about to get us into a very sticky spot.

Conventional parenting advice tells us not to back down.  Don’t give any impression that you don’t know what you’re doing.  Present a united front (with your partner) toward your child.  

And once we’re committed to that approach, we have no choice but to dig in.  And that gives our child no choice but to dig in the trenches too.

We dig; they dig.

It’s hostile.  The shields are up, the swords are out, and a truce seems unlikely.

The problem only gets ‘resolved’ when one person capitulates.

We might realize – possibly even at the point when we said “Put your shoes away now!” where this is going – but feel powerless to stop it.  Because what’s the alternative?  

Our child will walk all over us and they will NEVER help around the house and our in-laws will think we’re terrible parents and…

Let’s pause for a minute and take a deep breath.

The key idea that I want to convey today is one that I know you’re on board with already: that our relationship with our child is the most important thing in this situation.

And when our relationship with our child is the most important thing – more important than whether they put their shoes away or walk or over us or never help out around the house or what our in-laws think – we can create space to respond differently.

This is called ‘dropping the rope.’

Imagine that conversation again: you ask your child to put their shoes away.  You’re picking up one end of a thick tug-of-war rope.  Your child says ‘no.’ They’re picking up the other end of the rope.  It might seem as though there is now no way out of this situation except to see who can pull hardest.  

But there is.

Drop the rope.

But what do we do instead to prevent our child from walking all over us and never helping out around the house and having our in-laws think we are terrible parents?  

I choose between two potential responses, depending on whether this is a one-off situation (like a spilled drink) or something that happens regularly (like putting shoes away).

How to handle one-off situations

In one-off situations like a spilled drink I use parent educator Robin Einzig’s tool of modeling graciousness.  There’s a long and beautiful post about it here, but the gist of it is that we should “demonstrate and model for them the authentic spirit and intention that we wish for them to possess.”  So if we want them to respond graciously and offer to help clean up when we spill a drink, we should respond graciously and offer to help clean up when they spill a drink.

A slightly less abstract way to think about it is to imagine that instead of being your child, it was your closest friend who spilled the drink.  Would you say “You made the mess; you clean it up!”?  Hand them a rag and stand over them until they did it?  Of course not.  You’d say “oops!” and grab a rag and start cleaning, or if it was a big spill you’d get two and hand one to them.

Another tool to help think about it is to imagine if we were visiting a friend’s house and spilled a drink.  Wouldn’t we already feel mortified without being shamed into cleaning it up?

So in these situations I get two cloths, hand one to my daughter, and start wiping.  She will usually start wiping as well, and before long the mess is gone.  Once the emotional charge of the event has passed, if it seems necessary I might remind her about what can happen when we put cups close to the edge of the table, but not in an “I’ve told you this a million times” kind of tone.

The beauty of this approach is that it results in an “it doesn’t matter who made the mess; we all help to clean it up” attitude.  And don’t we want that in our house?

How to handle regularly occurring situations

In the Modeling Graciousness post Robin also talks about the idea that parents must still “set expectations.”  But how do we do that, exactly?  

I developed a method after interviewing a professor who studies how children in different cultures do chores, and after reflecting that I was starting to feel walked-all-over when my daughter refused to put her shoes away every afternoon.  Modeling graciousness wasn’t helping.

The next time she came home and left her shoes in the hallway, I asked her to put them away.  She said “no.”  

I responded: “Well, in our family we all help each other out.  I’m happy to do it for you this time, and I’ll appreciate your help with it tomorrow.”

[Note the “and” instead of “but,” which would have negated the idea that I’m happy to help.]

It took two days, and then she began putting her shoes away.

Then, after a couple of weeks, we had a few days of backsliding.

I used the same phrase, and waited for her to come and ask for my help with something (which I knew would happen in <5 minutes).

I got down on her level and said, gently and kindly: “Do you remember a few minutes ago I asked for your help putting shoes away?  You didn’t want to help me, and now you’re asking me for my help.  When you help me it makes me WANT to help you.  When you don’t help me, it makes me feel like I don’t want to help you.  I’m going to help you now, and tomorrow I’d really appreciate your help with the shoes.”

She does still occasionally forget, but at that point a quick and kind: “I see shoes in the hallway!” reminder is enough.  

Putting shoes away is now a habit but, more importantly, we have made the habit of helping each other stronger as well.

No rope required.

Want to learn more strategies so you can limits that your child will respect?

• How to define when limits need to be set (using criteria that’s uniquely right for your family!)
• How to use the Three Zones of Behavior to set loving and effective limits that your child will respect
• What to do in difficult situations (when you can’t set a limit, or when the child refuses to comply with a limit you’ve set)

It’s available in two different forms:

• Mid-May to Mid-March each year: Take the course at your own pace
• Mid-March to Mid-May each year: Sign up and take the course with my support in early May!

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Everywhere you turn there are suggestions and promotions for the best gift you can buy for your loved ones: a simple Google search for ‘holiday gift guide 2019,’ already pulls up 704 million results. So it’s no surprise that it’s practically impossible to use social media or the Internet without coming across some form of “holiday gift guide.”

How to use holiday gift guides

While gift guides can be helpful, when we use them we should make sure we are using them to meet our needs rather than anyone else’s.  So we should always consider:

• Why the guide was created?
• What is the objective behind the guide?
• Who is the target audience?
• How buying these recommendations will affect my family?

Bloggers and influencers of all genres jump on the bandwagon of creating gift guides during the holiday season. These guides are full of the hottest toys and products that can be found on Amazon or elsewhere online. The outward intent of these guides is to help you pick the perfect gift for your loved one but most of the time they are created simply to generate income.

Most of these products are linked directly to sales pages through affiliate links, where the blogger gets a share of the sale, and holiday gift guides allow bloggers to share their links ‘for your benefit.’ This is a big reason why we see so many gift guides published during the holiday season when people are already primed to spend money.

If you found a specific product that perfectly meets your needs and you never would have identified without the blogger’s help then of course there’s nothing wrong with clicking through their link to ‘thank’ them (and do be aware that, on Amazon, they also get a cut of whatever else you put in your cart within 24 hours of clicking their link and then purchase within 90 days).  But do be aware that this affiliate revenue is why these posts are created in the first place – not because your child needs the items on the list.

The problem with most holiday gift guides

With so many bloggers creating holiday gift giving guides, it can be confusing to keep them all straight. Why? Largely because most of them tend to offer the same predictable advice. During the holiday season you’ll find gift guide after gift guide that recommends:

• Choosing open-ended toys to promote creativity
• Choosing only high-quality pieces that will last (which are often expensive)
• Choosing toys that are made of natural materials since they are better than plastic toys
• Avoiding branded toys that ‘constrain’ or limit the imagination
• Avoiding electronic toys, especially toys with screens!
• Buying toys that support skills they will need in the future (i.e. coding, engineering, etc.)

One of the biggest problems with most of the holiday gift giving guides is that they solely focus on the question “which toys should I buy for my child?” The problem with this is that when we focus on this particular question we are ignoring the unspoken cultural subtext “which toys will help my child get ahead in life?” as well as the real question we should be asking:

We hope we’re buying toys that will support our child’s development in some way when in fact it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether they have the authentic $150 Grimm’s Rainbow (“made by hand in Germany”), the $50 knockoff version (note: these are not affiliate links…), or no rainbow at all.  Billions of children around the world have grown into competent adults, and even attended elite universities, without the benefit of a wooden rainbow – Grimm’s or otherwise.  The same can be said of every other toy that appears on these lists, without exception.

Making assumptions about your family

Another problem with many of the gift giving guides is that they make assumptions about the reader and their family. One of the predictable recommendations is to purchase toys that they deem to be ‘high-quality’ toys. These high-quality toys often come with a hefty price tag, costing significantly more than other available toys that serve the same purpose (remember, commissions are made as a percentage of sales so the higher the dollar value of your purchase, the more the blogger earns). This also assumes that parents reading the blog have lump sums of disposable income available to spend on these toys.

Gift guide writers are often in the business of telling parents parents to buy less stuff – but making sure what they do buy is the right stuff (the stuff they’re recommending). Many parents view their children NOT having certain toys as evidence of parental restraint – as sort of a metaphorical “I mean, the materialistic culture around here is just terrible” kind of eyeroll. Dr. Alison Pugh calls this “symbolic deprivation,” where affluent parents indulge their children’s consumption but present their spending decisions as restrained. Parents do this in an effort to show they are not materialistic and that they have the ‘right values’ as defined by the station to which they aspire in society.  After all, if you have serious money it’s generally considered rather gauche to buy your child everything they want – so what we don’t buy sends a signal about our values just as much as what we do buy.

Toys serve as a social currency

While symbolic deprivation may make sense to parents, it’s a concept that most children simply cannot grasp. A big part of symbolic deprivation is that parents are choosing to only purchase toys that are deemed ‘high-quality.’ However, children are often oblivious about why parents see some toys as ‘high-quality’ and other toys as ‘low-quality.’ Instead, rather, children are more focused on their peer group and what toys everyone else is getting.

This focus on their peer group is important given that children tend to use toy ownership as a kind of social currency. What this means is that children use toys as a ticket to have the ‘right’ conversations with the ‘right’ children. In other words, toys are a kind of ticket to get attention and fit in with their desired peers.

Most parents to want their children to be liked, but in individualistic cultures like ours we also have a competing instinct – that of disparaging conformity, and wanting to make sure our child is unique and stands out from the crowd. In fact, many parents who are now affluent had the experience of not fitting in as children. In turn, they don’t want their own children to have these experiences or to feel the way they felt when they didn’t fit in. This creates an internal conflict for parents who struggle to give their children the best they possibly can while also fighting against excessive consumption.

So, what should we buy?

If we don’t want to buy in excess but still want to give our children the experience of fitting in, what should we do?

Consider not buying anything

Researchers have observed that gifts were rarely exchanged in times when families used to engage in cooperative labor.  Now we no longer use this method of maintaining ties with our kin, ritualized gift giving has stepped in to fill the void.  It also serves to reinforce the mother’s role in the family: since the mother’s role is to provide caring to achieve her own self-fulfillment, gift giving becomes a way to express that caring.  The kinship work of identifying gifts, purchasing them, and wrapping them is usually done by the mother (I’m of course aware that we are taking a hetero-normative perspective here – and we’ll dig deeper into the patriarchal implications of this kinship work in coming months).

We are also trying to send a message to our child – usually something along the lines of “I love you and I will do everything I can for you,” but when there’s a chance the message might not be received, we amplify its signal by repeating the message – and giving more gifts.

Yes, giving a gift or buying something for someone can show that we care about them. But that is not the only way to show you love them. You can show your child that you love them by spending quality time with them or doing something special for them that you know they will appreciate. You could give them a ‘coupon book’ for activities they really enjoy that are special treats.

You can absolutely show your child that you care without having to buy a toy or gift.

Focus on why we give

While the person receiving the gift will feel special initially, the feeling typically doesn’t last. In fact, when it comes to giving a toy, this feeling decreases with each gift a child receives – and an excess of physical objects can actually be overwhelming and contribute to feelings of anxiety.

Keeping this in mind, it really doesn’t matter what you give. Even if you get your child the top 10 hottest toys of the season, they quickly get over them and move on to wanting the next best thing with little thought or consideration to the gifts they just received.  Last year my daughter campaigned for the Hungry Hippos game that she had played at a friend’s house.  My husband tried to sell her on a new bike – she consented, but only if it was accompanied by Hungry Hippos.  She probably played Hungry Hippos 10 times, and it has sat untouched in her closet ever since.

For this reason, before you rush out to stand in line for hours to get the hot ticket item this year, think about why you are giving your child that particular gift. In addition to your desire to give your child what they want, part of the reason for your gift is likely to be self-gratification – the warm feeling you get when giving a gift.  But if both your child’s need and your need for positive feelings in your relationship can be satisfied in other ways, then do you really need to buy a gift?

Think inside the box

Many of the predictable suggestions on holiday gift giving guides are related to open-ended toys. While wooden rainbows and water-filled blocks can promote creativity and encourage a child to use their imagination, you don’t need specifically-designed toys to do this.

There are plenty of other options that can encourage creativity and imagination. Even using items from the recycle bin can do just as well, free of cost.  The anecdote about the child unwrapping a large expensive gift and then spending the rest of the day playing with the box it came in is tired for a reason – it’s really true.

If you still wanted to focus on giving your children something geared towards creativity and imagination, gift them supplies that will allow them to make new creations from found materials, such as craft supplies.  You could even treat them to a visit to your local creative reuse store – there are few excursions that my daughter loves more than this.

One of the reasons that ‘educational’ toys are so popular among parents is that there is often an underlying fear that our children won’t have the necessary skills to be successful in life. This is also a big reason why we see so many toys that are geared towards teaching children specific skills like coding.

However, many of these toys fail to focus on the actual skill that is needed to be successful. For instance, curiosity, problem-solving, sequencing, and recognizing high quality work are more important in learning to code rather than learning the actual functions of coding itself. So we shouldn’t worry about buying our children toys designed to teach specific skills that may or may not be relevant in two decades but rather toys that will teach them broader skills that are applicable across industries and a variety of careers. As the writer of the article on coding did, you can bake cookies with your child to teach them just as much about coding as a toy specifically designed to do this.

Also, consider experiences too, rather than just toys or things. Sign up for an event related to one of your child’s current interests, or consider a class where you can learn a new skill (like painting or pottery) together.  These experiences will help your child to learn the kinds of abilities that underlie good coding – and may spark a new interest as well.

Longevity is as important as quality

The focus on choosing only high-quality toys simply isn’t possible for a lot of parents. These high-quality toys are often more expensive, with the same objective in terms of teaching skills. Many times, what parents deem as high-quality toys are simply toys that are made of natural materials as opposed to toys that are made from plastic. Yet, there is no evidence that playing with toys that middle class parents deem to be ‘high-quality’ yields more benefits to children than playing with plastic toys (assuming that the toy is no longer being put in the child’s mouth).

Likewise, there is no evidence that the material of the toy impacts children’s play. This means that while it is important to try to minimize and prevent waste by avoiding toys that will obviously fall apart after their first use, plastic toys like Legos are just as good as wooden blocks. Understanding that you can help your child build the same skills whether you give them Legos or wooden blocks and makes these skills more accessible; especially when parents must choose between paying all of the electric bill and putting money towards the holiday layaway.

Teach your child media literacy

It’s essential that we don’t let our desire to give our children the best get clouded with the marketing gimmicks we are inundated with day in and day out during the holiday season. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the toy manufacturers are concerned with their bottom lines, more than the best interests of our children.

This doesn’t mean that children are simply passive recipients of marketing messages. They will use advertised toys to create their own games and will associate their own meanings with the toys. While the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood might argue that branded toys and their advertising are the problem, really they are only part of the issue – and the parts that we as families don’t own.  The parts that we own are whether we teach our children media literacy so they can think critically about the messages advertisers publish, and whether we choose to buy them anyway as a symbol of our love for our children.

Young children are often not able to tell the difference between programming and commercials so that’s a good place to start, and from there you can move on to noticing gendered imagery and language and identifying what the advertiser wants you to feel and why that might make you want to buy their product.

And again, you may still choose to buy the toy – but you’ll be doing it with your eyes wide open.

Consider your individual circumstances

When you are deciding what to buy, if anything, it is important that you keep your specific circumstances in mind. Not everyone can afford ‘high-quality’ toys and that’s okay. There are other toys available that will last that teach the same skills as the more expensive toys. You should only buy what you can afford to purchase.

Likewise, there are toys that may be a better alternative for you that might not be a good option for another family. Electronic toys often come under special criticism for being closed-ended, meaning there is only one way to play with them. This is especially true for screens. However, there are circumstances where playing on screens is safer and preferable to other options. For instance, for children that live in dangerous neighborhoods, it is safer for them to stay indoors and play on a screen when stepping outside to play could lead to a close encounter with a bullet.

Focus on your family values

So, to reiterate: it really doesn’t matter what you buy for your child, or whether you buy anything at all.  Instead, think about your family values and what brings meaning into your life. While you can do this on your own, it can be a good exercise to do together as a family. Sit down together and discuss what the holidays mean and what your family gives importance to–generosity, kindness, etc.

Once you have identified your family values, plan an activity that helps you uphold these values. Getting your entire family involved can help strengthen your relationship with one another and can give special meaning to the holiday season or can even be spread out throughout the entire year. Example activities could include:

• Volunteering
• Making care packages and stockings for the homeless
• Collecting toy donations
• Adopting a family
• Donating to a food bank
• Visiting with the elderly at the nursing home
• Donating and volunteering at an animal shelter

A word of caution on volunteering and donating: it can be very easy to ‘other’ the people to whom we are giving; to see them as members of a group rather than individuals, and thus somewhat less-than-fully-human.  More to come on this topic in upcoming months but in the meantime, try to engage personally with the people you aim to help – and get to know them and their unique struggles just as you hope that someone will know you and yours.

Bonus tip: Discuss it early

Rather than have it comes as a shock, it can be helpful to discuss the meaning of the holidays with your children early on during the season. This also gives you time to discuss your family values and make a plan to focus on these values. This will also help minimize any temporary disappointment that your child may feel if they don’t receive the ‘hot’ item of the season. Doing this can help you have a magical holiday season without the added stress of making sure you have all the right toys from a holiday gift guide.

Respectful Parenting and Supporting Your Child’s Learning Memberships

If you appreciated my ultimate gift giving guide with a research-backed and respectful point of view, then you would be a perfect fit for my Parenting Membership or my Supporting Your Child’s Learning Membership. Inside the memberships we provide Learning + Support + Community. We will hold your hand as your family transitions from a place of chaos and overwhelm to a home filled with harmony, confidence and cooperation.

• You’ll get a learning summary of the most up to date research on a variety of challenging topics in parenting and education, along with tools and methods to implement within your own family.
• You’ll also get support directly from myself and a team of trained leaders that use coaching to help you meet the goals you set for lasting change in your family.
• And you’ll be a part of a private, respectful community of like-minded parents with stories and solutions to share.

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Dressing up in costumes can be fun at Halloween, but then you have to deal with the negotiations over how much candy is too much candy.

Our children receive gifts on their birthdays, but then we’re embarrassed when they refuse to thank the gift-givers.

And on Valentine’s Day we arm them with cards for the entire class, but when they return from school either they didn’t get as many valentines as everyone else or the one child they hoped to particularly impress spurned their offering, leaving us with tears and echoes of the disappointment and rejection we felt as children when the same thing happened to us.

A brief history of Valentine’s Day

While it might seem obvious that the day celebrates the life of St. Valentine, the real origins of the celebration are actually quite murky and likely lie in a pagan Roman purification and fertility ceremony.  It’s possible that a Roman emperor wanted single men who would fight in an army outlawed marriage and that a priest named Valentine continued to perform marriage ceremonies anyway.  Dozens of Christians named Valentine were martyred and became saints in the early church, and two priests named Valentine were reportedly both executed on February 14th sometime in the third century.  Later, the Church converted the pagan festival into a Christian holiday to make conversion to Christianity more palatable.

It was the poet Chaucer who provided the first written record of coupling Valentine’s Day with romanticism:

“For this was on seynt Valentynes day,

When every foul cometh there to chese his make.”

Many other poets and playwrights continued in this vein over the years and St. Valentine was transformed from an intermediary between humanity and God to one between lovers.  By the 17^th century, the meaning of the word “valentine” had shifted to becoming a person or relationship: in Britain, young people would draw lots to gain some hint of their future marital fortune, and would refer to their suitor as a “valentine.”  In the 19th century the meaning had shifted again and was most often used to refer to the fancy lace-paper card which a young person would buy and send to their valentine.

The commercialization of these cards actually originated in Britain but quickly made the leap to the colonies, with a Boston newspaper from 1845 noting that merchants had been reminding consumers of the upcoming holiday for two weeks, and it wasn’t long before the holiday was extended for the entire month of February to allow for return valentines to be sent.  Marketers also expanded the groups of people who were eligible to receive a valentine: “Remember that Valentines are appropriate for brothers, sisters, relatives and friends, as well as for sweethearts and lovers.”

The 19^th century also marked the transformation of our view of children from contributors to the family income to an object of sentimental devotion, beginning the elevation of children’s needs above those of adults.  Cherubic youngsters pictured in juvenile valentines of the period mirrored the newly refashioned image of a cherubic Cupid – a far cry from the Roman God whose arrows were sharpened on a grindstone whetted with infants’ blood.

Even early on, Valentine’s Day had an insidious underside, with “attack valentines” depicting assertive women, flirts, and coquettes implying that the first wave of women seeking suffrage around this period were overstepping their bounds.  And one early observer of a valentine mill commented on the “disenchanting” and “dingy” sight of workers piecing together layers of lace and paper for eleven hours a day.

Today lovers are once again the primary focus of marketing related to Valentine’s Day, perhaps because a holiday geared toward a celebration of their relationship has the potential to generate more expensive purchases than one that is celebrated by everyone.  Children are the exception to this rule because it helps marketers to sell us more stuff as adults: many of us have memories of arts and crafts, candy, time off from school work (permitted due to the secular nature of the holiday) and an egalitarian exchange of sometimes handmade, but often purchased, cards – with thousands of designs available in handy class-sized quantities.  These fond memories set the stage for the heightened expectations of a lifetime of recognition, with many young women anticipating a shower of gifts and affection, and young men uncertain about how to meet these expectations (card?  Flowers?  Chocolates? Movies?  Dinner?  Do I really need to do more this year than I did last year?).

Many of the people that researchers surveyed said they exchange gifts because it is “the thing to do” or because the holiday is about “going to dinner and exchanging gifts”: far from representing an exchange of intimacy, the pressure is on men to make expensive purchases that function as a sexual lubricant.

Must we spend money to express love?

When we talk with children about holidays it’s tempting to try to go back to the source; to make the holiday about what it used to be about.  But with Valentine’s Day, does this mean we go back to just the simple exchange of cards from the 1800s?  Or the games to draw lots and test your luck in love of the 1500s?  Or the non-specific martyred saint(s?) of the third century?  Or we could just say “Valentine’s Day is about love” (which it sort of is…) and be done with it?

But if it’s really about love, why do we need to buy so much stuff?

In part, it’s the peer pressure: not giving a gift when everyone else does sends the signal that a relationship is not important or the desire to terminate that relationship.  We thus feel compelled to give gifts lest we send a message of hostility by not giving one.  We also have to give the right gift: perhaps the man doesn’t realize there’s something ‘off’ about gifting a woman an exercise tape until she gives him “sand gathered from the beach where they first said ‘I love you,’”  but he will pretty soon afterward and he won’t make the same mistake twice.

The average consumer will spend $143.56 on Valentine’s Day this year, with total spending expected to reach $19.6 billion.  “With the holidays behind them and the winter months dragging along, consumers are looking for something to celebrate this time of year” said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay.  And, fortunately for those children not yet in romantic relationships, Prosper Executive Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist added “Valentine’s Day has become a holiday consumers take advantage of not only to spoil their loved ones but themselves.”

It’s helpful that the $19.6bn is very close to the $19bn that Facebook paid for WhatsApp, because a number of websites put together lists of what Facebook could have bought instead with that money.  Like an MMR vaccine for every child in the world.  Clean drinking water for every person on the planet would only have cost $10bn.

Let me be clear: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going out to dinner or buying a box of chocolates every once in a while if in that moment it feels like these gifts express love to your partner.  But I do think there’s something wrong with teaching our children that gifts are the best way to express that love.

So what’s a parent to do?

If you celebrate…

If you decide to celebrate Valentine’s Day, talk with your child about what the day means to you personally.  Discuss the practice of giving cards and gifts, and ask if your child wants to participate.  Most schools have a ‘cards for everyone or cards for no-one’ policy so nobody feels left out, and if your child wants to celebrate a particularly special relationship with another child they should do this outside of school hours.

It may be confusing to children to give them a message that ‘we give gifts to people we love’ but then tell them they have to give valentines to everyone in their class.  You may want to frame valentines as something that are given out in the spirit of fairness (most children have some understanding of fairness at a relatively early age) rather than representing a true gift.

If your child chooses to give valentines, talk with them about the money spent on them and what it could be used for instead.  Consider cutting simple hearts out of paper you already have on-hand, which will make the process cheap and fast.

If you don’t celebrate…

Prepare your child for what will likely happen at school.  Even though schools may have rules about everyone giving cards in the younger grades these may be relaxed as children get older.  Not giving cards in the early years might be remembered and children may decline to send your child cards once this happens.

Discuss how your family shares that you love each other, and reiterate that you are confident that your child loves you even if they don’t give you a valentine.

You might suggest that they privately approach their special friends during the day with a message: “I’m so glad you’re my friend because…”.

Whether or not you celebrate at school or in your family…

Consider doing some good with the $143.46 you saved by not spending on themed gifts.  Maybe your family could use the money for a rainy day fund.  Or you could bring a home-cooked meal to a senior in your community who would enjoy some company.  Or give to a charity that is meaningful to you, your child, and your community.  A child who is old enough to understand valentines is also old enough to understand a conversation about what love is, how we express it, and how not everyone has the luxury of spending money on valentines.

My aim with this post is not to take all the joy out of Valentine’s Day.  If you do genuinely enjoy the occasion and celebrating it is important to you then there’s absolutely no harm in sharing this with your children.  I aim to encourage you to not just do Valentine’s Day because everyone else does it, but to approach the day with intention that reflects your values and parenting goals.

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Everyone’s most stressful time of the year is almost here: big gatherings of family members with different political opinions; beautiful holiday decorations that need to be kept out of the toddler’s grasping hands; endless treats to entice your child so they have no space left for ‘real food.’

Ain’t the holidays great? 😊

We want to enjoy them, but sometimes we just have to get through them.  Here are some ideas to help you spend less time getting through, and more time enjoying.

1. Carefully consider where you’ll stay. If your parents’ house has paper-thin walls, small rooms, and little extra space, then as much as you love your parents, it might not be a great fit for your introverted, noise-sensitive toddler.  Perhaps your family can clear some space in an unused room to create a retreat for your child, but if you end up in there as well for half of the holiday then you may be less than happy.  It might end up being better for everyone if you stayed somewhere close by and visited your parents for a few hours each day rather than being constantly in each other’s space, particularly if your relationship is less-than-perfect.

2. Talk with your family about reasonable expectations for your child’s behavior. Given the stresses of being around unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar environment, opportunities are ripe for big emotions (aka ‘tantrums’).  If your family will respond to your child with “Oh come on; big boys don’t cry” or “I don’t want to hear any more of that noise!” or “If you stop crying, I’ll give you a candy,” set expectations before you arrive of what behavior your family is likely to see and what you’ve found to be helpful to do in response (aka what you would like them to do in response).

3. Consider any hard boundaries that you will not have crossed, and let your family know about these in advance as well. These topics might include comments about anyone’s weight, or racist comments, or anything-but-supportive comments about your child’s shifting gender identity.  Be clear in your own mind about what you will do if these boundaries are crossed, and then don’t be afraid to do that thing if it happens.

4. Let family members know about any strong preferences (that don’t quite meet the ‘hard boundary’ threshold) that you would prefer to have honored. These examples might include not offering soda to your child, offering nutritious foods before junk food, or not having the TV on in the background aaaaaalllllllllll day.  Explain your reasons for these preferences and discuss – in advance – whether your family members are willing to work with you at least some of the time (perhaps you could agree to have the TV off one day and on another day, to catch one important football game rather than all of them).  Be open to ideas that could meet your needs as well as meet your family member’s needs.

5. Protect your child where necessary. If they’re expressing big emotions and Grandpa is being vocal about not wanting to hear them, remove your child to a quiet space.  If Grandma insists on a hug and your child doesn’t want one, step in and say “perhaps [child] will be ready for a hug later!”.  If it’s clear that your child is getting overwhelmed, don’t force them to stay at the dinner table because your family expects it.  You’re not ‘setting the stage for bad habits;’ you’re setting your child up for success in the current situation – and it’ll only be for a few days.

6. Know when to let go. Your parents might not interact with your child in exactly the way you would wish, but they will have their own relationship and (for the most part) that relationship is likely to be fine.  If you’re taking an hour for yourself, you hear your child screaming upstairs at their sibling, and your spouse is close by – let your spouse handle it.  They won’t do it in exactly the same way that you would, but it will end up fine.  Your family isn’t perfect (and – surprise! – neither are you).  It’s OK if not everyone has perfect interactions with your child – children are resilient, and they will know that you are still their parent and how you interact with them is the most important thing in the end.

7. Appreciate what your family DOES bring to your child. Whether it’s exposure to different viewpoints to family history to just knowing that Grandma and Grandpa care about them, your child gets something positive out of the holiday experience, even if it’s stressful for you.  Keep your eyes on the prize, and appreciate the value that your family brings to your child, through your child’s eyes.

Enjoy the holidays!

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She’s in with the fours, fives, and some sixes now and relational aggression is rearing its ugly head.  Almost every day we’re hearing some version of “[Friend] said she didn’t want to play with me today,” or “I’m never going to play with [Friend] again!” or “I’m not going to be [Friend’s] friend any more.”

Typically these issues seem to be forgotten about by the next day and they’re back to playing together again but boy, am I sick of hearing about it already!

What the research says

I was reminded of the episode on social exclusion that we did almost a year ago with Dr. Jamie Ostrov of the State University of New York at Buffalo, who is an expert on childhood aggression and bullying.  He let us know that aggression is actually very, very common in preschoolers, and that relational aggression is especially common amongst girls who seem drawn to a dyadic relationship (or does our society push them toward these by our constant questions about “who is your best friend?”) so one of the most efficient and effective ways to hurt a girl are to harm the relationship she has with you, or that she has with others.

Boys are typically more interested in showing their strength and dominance, which may be why we see more physical aggression from them.

Dr. Ostrov explained that children may engage in aggressive behavior to obtain a goal (e.g. “I won’t be your friend if you don’t give me that toy”) or in a reactive way (“You said something that hurt me so I won’t be your friend any more”).  Children who engaging in reactive behavior may benefit from support in developing empathy, whereas if we teach children about empathy when they are using aggressive behavior to obtain a goal, then they may learn that their behavior is actually having the desired effect.  Children who use relational aggression extensively often have the most positive relationships with teachers and are skilled at manipulation.

Further, teachers and parents may tacitly encourage relational aggression by reprimanding the child who hits but not the child who says “I won’t be friends with you any more if you throw blocks.”  Perhaps teachers and parents do this because the child who is engaging in relational aggression is doing it in a way that works within the school’s or home’s rules (“we shouldn’t throw things”).

Dr. Ostrov developed an intervention, in the form of classroom visits from puppets who would bring a new “friend” puppet who would act out prosocial scenarios together, and then a researcher would walk around the classroom with the puppet during free play and praise them for prosocial behavior and the effect it had on the other person at the moment it happened.  The children all wanted to be praised by the puppet and the only way to do that was to engage in friendship formation and inclusive behavior.  Dr. Ostrov said that the eight-week program was effective at reducing aggressive behavior and increasing prosocial behavior even after the intervention had finished.  Key to the success of the program was praising specific behavior in the moment, rather than offering general praise (“good job!”) or praise a long time after the fact (which causes some students to manufacture prosocial behavior to get a reward).

Honestly, I was rather uncomfortable during the interview about the use of praise to increase prosocial behavior given that this flies in the face of decades of research on the ineffectiveness of praise to motivate people in general and children in particular.  I’d be curious to find out whether the positive effects of the intervention held in the longer-term, although funding to study this kind of outcome is rarely available.

Strategies to help parents 

For our part, parents tend to view relational aggression as a normal part of childhood, but this is really problematic because relational aggression is associated with a host of negative outcomes for both the aggressor and the receiving child.  Both parents and teachers should convey that these behaviors are not OK, should talk about how the receiving child might feel, and help the child to learn and use strategies to deal with it, including reporting it to parents and teachers (which keeps friends safe; not tattling, which is not done for the purpose of keeping friends safe).  One preschool teacher had a useful strategy to help children resolve conflicts by themselves: the first is for one child to say to the other “Please stop.”  The next step is to say “Stop, or else I’ll tell the teacher.”  Only if this is ignored should the children involve the teacher.

I’ve already emailed my daughter’s school to describe some of the stories I’m hearing at home and ask them about their planned approach.  This really helpful (research-based) article from the National Association for the Education of Young Children contains some good pointers to discuss with the school, including the need to understand why the aggression is occurring, which can provide new clues about reducing its incidence.

One strategy that may be especially helpful at home that also reiterates something Alfie Kohn mentions in his book Unconditional Parenting is to view behavior in its best possible light: when one child knocks another child’s block tower over, the parent/teacher can say “Oh, it looks like he wants to play blocks with you.”  Even “Uh oh; the blocks fell over” would be better than “[Friend] knocked over the blocks” as the former avoids the need to blame anyone for the incident.

You can play games that encourage cooperation rather than winning.  We enjoy playing Granny’s House, a cooperative version of Chutes and Ladders.  Encourage natural leaders to lead by helping others, rather than by ordering them around.  And consider characters’ feelings as you read children’s books – you can do this while you read any book, although here is a list of books specifically about friendship issues, organized by age-appropriateness.

If your child is in a classroom with children who look a lot different from them, you might also be interested in my episode on how social groups form, since looking different can become the basis for prejudiced behavior toward people in other groups (unfortunately we don’t really have that issue in my daughter’s preschool because pretty much all the children look a lot alike, although we’re addressing this issue in other ways).

Being in a classroom with children who don’t look like them provides enormous opportunities for children to see the person behind the skin color/disability/whatever makes the other child different, which can be really important in helping the child see that all different kinds of people are really individuals just like them, not just “members of a group who look different from me.”

We’re at the beginning of a looong phase for girls (parents of boys may get a reprieve in the beginning, although Dr. Ostrov says they often catch on to tools of relational aggression eventually – and they are often taught these tools by girls).

Hopefully if enough of us give our children the message that relational aggression is not OK, we’ll start to see less of it…here’s hoping, eh?

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On the first day of school, did your child give you a sweet hug and run off cheerfully to play with their friends?

Or were they stuck to you like a limpet, screaming “Don’t go!  Don’t go!” as you tried to extricate yourself, highly ambivalent yourself about whether this transition was the right one to make?

And on the second day, did they happily get into the car and strap themselves in, or skip along beside you as you walked to school?

Or did they dig in their heels and refuse to get into the car seat, and then refuse to get out of the car at the other end, and give you the “Don’t go!  Don’t go!” treatment again?

~sigh~

Transitions are tough, right?  And the transitions to preschool/kindergarten/school are among the toughest, because they’re some of the first ones that your child essentially needs to learn to navigate by themselves.

How can we make this easier on our children, and on ourselves?

I have a couple of episodes queued up in the next few weeks that are going to help with this, but I know a lot of you are in the thick of it right now so wanted to offer some ideas based on those interviews.  One interview was with Dr. Arietta Slade, an internationally-recognized attachment theorist, and the other was with Dr. Jonathan Dalton, who leads the Center for Anxiety and Behavioral Change in Rockville, Maryland, and who specializes in helping children with what is known as “school refusal.”

Firstly, know that it’s normal for children to have some trouble with the school transition.  It’s normal for them to want to spend time with you: you’re who they know and trust.  Think about it from their perspective: they don’t know the teachers or the other students or the environment; they don’t know you spent months agonizing over the decision about where to send them and that it’s as safe as anywhere can be.  All they know is that you’ve said they have to go to this place where they don’t know anyone or any of the systems and routines that make the place work, and they have to try to figure it out by themselves.  And they’re still so small!  No wonder they have a hard time with it.

Hopefully, your school allows you to be with your child in the classroom for a period of time for the first few days.  Making transitions longer than usual (for example, by reading a book or playing a game) is a great way to start to get your child comfortable with the environment.  The school may have a process they like parents to follow when it’s time to go – perhaps a hug, a goodbye, and a high-five through the window.

Some crying during the first week of this transition is very normal.  If your school (and you, and your child) are of the especially gentle variety they may allow you to stay in the classroom for an extended period of time during the first week.  But most schools want parents to be mostly out of the way so the teachers can take care of the work of integrating the children, which is likely to result in more crying.  The school may ask you to bring in a set of photos of your family to put in an album that they can direct the child toward when they are struggling during the day.

Dr. Slade will remind us to not make it harder on yourselves by making our ‘goodbye’ quick and clean: a hug, a “goodbye,” and out the door.  (And don’t sneak out without saying goodbye – it might be easier in the short term, but it can lead to trust issues when your child realizes you left without them knowing).  Don’t say “I’m leaving now…OK, I’m going to go…are you SURE you’re going to be OK?…” which can lead to tears that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.

How do I know if this is a transition my child will work through, or if it’s a real problem?

The key to understanding whether there is really a problem is to be sure to ask the teacher at the end of each day how the day went.  You’re looking for a general improvement over time – there may be days where things back-slide after they’ve been going well for a while, which is also normal.  But the one reliable indicator you can look out for is what your child is like fifteen minutes after you’ve left the building.  If your child is happily engaged with others and is playing as they might at home by then, then no great harm is being done.  If the child spends periods of time throughout the day – especially substantial periods of time – upset, then the situation is one you might want to reevaluate.

If your child is having substantial difficulties, you can try asking them why they don’t want to go to school – which might give you a useful answer that you can address, although Dr. Dalton reminds us that children might not always know (or be able to articulate) their reasons.  (I was reminded of this this morning when my four-year-old had a tantrum ostensibly because I drew some lines next to the dinosaur toy we had drawn around so we could measure it more easily, but was probably actually because I was away for several hours yesterday on a long bike ride and she missed me.)

If you don’t get a useful answer, you can try to ask the teacher what seems to be triggering the upset – perhaps your child hasn’t yet made friends, or perhaps they are struggling with adapting to the systems and routines of the school.

Your options about what to do about your child’s feelings are defined both by your approach to parenting, as well as by your reasons for putting them in school in the first place.

If the child is in school because you are going to work and your family needs your income, and family care or other avenues are not an option, then it doesn’t seem like your child has much of a choice: they need to be in school.  The reality is that children are highly adaptable and the majority of them will end up making friends and fitting in at school, even if they struggle in the beginning.

But some parents don’t want their child to experience the discomfort that will occur during this process, or the cause of the discomfort is not something that’s likely to go away (e.g. a personality mismatch with a teacher, and there is no opportunity to move to a different class), and you have the financial option to not have your child in school, then you may choose to pull them out.

This is unlikely to be a big deal at the preschool level, although at the school level the choice becomes more difficult.  The statistics on school refusal indicate that children who refuse school have worse academic outcomes than those who attend routinely, so if you intend for your child to attend school, this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

A visit to your pediatrician can rule out any illness of physical origin (your child might complain of headache or stomachache, although this could just be a delaying tactic…); if the anxiety persists then ask for a referral to a child psychologist or a psychologist who specializes in treating anxiety, like Dr. Dalton.

Regular listeners might recall that I spent a year researching the decision to homeschool my daughter, and based on that I really wouldn’t advocate for choosing homeschooling because of school refusal unless it’s due to a situation that really cannot be changed or addressed (which does sometimes happen).

Or perhaps you’re settling into the school year a bit and you’re starting to recognize some of the limitations of the school system, like large class sizes, over-worked teachers, a focus on using rote memorization to prepare for standardized tests, and the fact that by third grade, our curious toddlers who essentially would never stop asking questions no longer ask any questions except “HOW do I do this thing you’ve asked me to do” and “will this be on the test?”.

If you’re thinking about homeschooling but you can’t get your head around the legalities of it, or whether your child would be able to get into college, or how they would be socialized, or how you could afford to homeschool, or if you’re under the impression that only “certain kinds” of people homeschool, then you might be interested in a course that I developed to help parents figure out if homeschooling is right for them (and you might also be reassured to learn that secular homeschoolers are the fastest-growing group right now).

If you’re even vaguely interested in learning more about homeschooling, you might want to head over to yourhomeschoolingmojo.com and take the free quiz on that page that emails you *personalized* results about your readiness for homeschooling right now.  Click the image to take the quiz and learn more about the course:

And if you already know that homeschooling isn’t right for you, for whatever reason, I actually have another course that might be a better fit for you called Supporting Your Child’s Learning in School.  Parental participation in children’s learning has been shown time and time again in research studies to be crucial to a child’s academic success, but there are so many different ways to participate that you might wonder which ones are most effective in your specific circumstance.  The course can help you to understand this, as well as understand how your child’s brain processes knowledge related to reading and math, so you can help to get them ready for success in school in a low-pressure way (no flash cards!)

Click the image to learn more about this course (as well as to grab a free infographic on 11 things you can do to help your child learn key math concepts using simple, everyday activities):

Both courses are designed for parents of children aged between about three and eight; you could take them on the earlier side if you really like to prepare in advance, like I do, or if you think you will need extra time to put systems in place like shifting careers to prepare for homeschooling.

Or if you want to do them in the year before your child starts Kindergarten then that would be a good time, or if your child is already in school but you see signs of problems, either in your own perception of school or in how your child interacts with the school system, then they could work for you at that point too.

As always, let me know if you have questions by dropping me an email through the contact form here.

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1. Most children develop sharing abilities around 3.5-4 years old, not at 1-2 years as many parents expect.
2. Use “taking turns” instead of “sharing” and model sharing behavior yourself rather than forcing children to give up toys.
3. Children under 3 lack understanding of others’ perspectives and time concepts, making sharing difficult developmentally.
4. Forcing sharing teaches obedience, not genuine sharing. Focus on supporting turn-taking and respecting ownership.
5. Normal sharing behavior by age looks like: Before 3: parallel play; Ages 3-5: increased interest in sharing; Age 5+: most sharing conflicts resolve naturally.

Child 1: “Nooooooo, it’s mine!”

Child 2: “I want it!” [Grabs for the toy]

Child 1: [Hangs on tight and won’t let go]

Child 2: [Hits Child 1]

How many parents have ever been in that scenario?

(I’d be surprised if any of you haven’t.)

And how many parents are sick of hearing it?

(I’d be surprised if any of you who have more than one child aren’t…)

Young children find sharing difficult!

We know that children develop the mental skills needed to engage in sharing behavior over time, and yet we find ourselves in a pickle over sharing all the time.  Our own children take things from each other.  Our child takes something from another child at preschool.  Someone else’s child takes something from our child at the park.

When it’s just our own children at home, we might just step in and say: “Well if you can’t stop fighting over it, I’m just going to take it away so neither of you can have it.”  In a public place, we immediately find ourselves getting hot and anxious.  We see other parents watching and we worry that they’re judging our children – and our parenting. 

Being judged is hard, right?

We also get ourselves in trouble when we expect children to be able to share before they’re developmentally ready.  Many parents expect their one- or two-year-olds to be able to share, when most children don’t develop the mental ability to be able to do this until at least 3.5-4.  

So how should we handle these types of situations?

Our goals in raising our children are important here.  We also have to understand what is developmentally appropriate by age.

Parents in Eurocentric cultures are usually trying to socialize their children (especially girls) to be liked by others, and adults see this sharing behavior as an indication that their child will be liked.  We also want them to share with others spontaneously, of their own volition: because we (in our society) think it’s the right thing to do, and not just because someone is telling them to do it.

Parents in different cultures use a variety of approaches at home to encourage sharing.  In cultures where individualism is less pronounced and members of society are interdependent, parents may state that there are no privately owned toys: all toys belong to all the children in a household.

Teachers in Japanese preschools may start the school year with several of a usually-favored toy, and over the course of a few months they withdraw some of these to ‘force’ children to figure out arrangements to share the toys.

At the more individualistic-oriented end of the spectrum, parents who follow the Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) approach to parenting might have separate gated areas within their house where children spend some portion of the day when they are not actively supervised.

When the children are in the same space the parent is close by, narrating what the children are doing during tricky situations: “Maria, you’re playing with the truck.  Nate would like to play as well.  When you’re done with the truck, please let us know because Nate is waiting.”  Maria might continue to play with the truck for some minutes but quite often she will voluntarily offer the truck to Nate sooner than you might expect, because there was no pressure on her to share and she was able to do it while saving face.

We should also acknowledge that, most of the time, we say “sharing” when we don’t really mean it: children are “sharing” when they split a banana or a cookie.  “Sharing” a toy really means “giving up the thing you have and really want to keep to someone else” – a concept that young children can find confusing and irritating.  When they have little understanding of how time works, toddlers know they have the toy now, and if they give the toy up they can’t understand how long it will be until they get it back again. 

Using the phrase “taking turns” rather than “sharing” can help a child understand what is expected of them much more easily.  “Taking turns” helps the child to see that they will get the toy back again.

Ready to stop the fighting over toys (and everything else)?

Sharing struggles often come with other challenging behaviors like tantrums, hitting, and talking back. The Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop shows you how to handle all of these – and cut the number of limits you need to set by at least half.

Click here to learn more about the workshop.

When do kids learn to share?

Any discussion of sharing by age will, of course, depend on your child’s own temperament, experience with sharing, and development.  So feel free to ‘size up’ or ‘size down’ depending on your child’s own abilities and experience.

Before age ~3

Very young toddlers don’t understand the concept of sharing very well.  Some studies have found that a child as young as 10-12 months will bring toys or offer food to parents in apparent acts of sharing, but they are likely seeking a positive reaction or approval from the parent, or it may be part of how the two play together, or they might even be trying to keep a toy away from a sibling.  Many children will hold out an object as if to share it and then withdraw it, as they test what happens during social interactions.

By around age two, children can usually understand the concept of ownership.  They’ve likely been told many times by then: “No, we can’t use that item – it isn’t ours.”  

The opposite of “not mine” is “mine,” and will begin to protest their own toys being taken away more than neutral toys.  But they have very little understanding of how others think.  They don’t know that the other child doesn’t know they want the toy if the other child didn’t ask directly, which is why you find yourself in the following exchange:

“I want the toy!  Johnny won’t give it to me!”

“Well, did you ask him for a turn?”

“Noooooooo…”.

Parents’ tasks at this age focus around modelling sharing behaviors: “I’m going to have a cookie.  Would you like to share it with me?” or “You have a lot of toys there.  Would you mind if I use it now, please?  Thanks!  We’re sharing!”

You can set your child up for success by not taking favorite toys to playdates (and by putting these away for playdates at your home), and by playing outdoors where there are lots of “toys” (sticks, rocks, sand, and the like).

Outside of situations where sharing is required, you can support the development of these capabilities by encouraging your child to name their own feelings and the feelings of other people and characters in books.  Many young children can recognize facial expressions but may not understand what emotions go with those expressions.  Their vocabulary around emotions might initially be limited to “happy” and “sad,” so introduce them to the names for other emotions as well.  Expand both of your vocabularies using a feelings list – there’s a printable version available, as well as a picture-based option for pre-readers.

Importantly, parents are NOT telling children to share, or forcing one child to give up an item so another child can play with it.  This just teaches children that a strong person can force a smaller person to give something up, which isn’t the lesson we want them to take from this interaction.  We can tell children to share, but if they do offer up their toy then they’ve learned how to be obedient, not how to share.  

In a public place, sit close to the children to block any hits that may occur.  Talk them through what you see: “I see Maria is reaching for the toy.  Luca, are you still playing with it?  Luca is holding on tightly to the toy.  I don’t think he’s done yet.  What can we do while we wait, Maria?”

Age ~3 to ~5

Around this age children become much more interested in playing together rather than ‘parallel playing’ next to each other, so sharing suddenly becomes relevant: a child who doesn’t share might find that their friend doesn’t want to play with them again tomorrow.  Children are also starting to develop the capability to understand what others think and want, and can take a short break from their own play to consider that another child might want the toy they currently have.

Their concept of time is evolving over this period too; at around age 3 they might still be focused entirely on the present and cannot foresee “five minutes from now” when they can have the toy.  You can scaffold this knowledge by being honest about time: don’t say you’ll be there “in a minute” or “in just a sec” when you know it’s actually going to be at least five: say “I’ll be there in five minutes, which is when the big hand on the clock reaches the four.”

They are also developing some impulse control: the ability to wait and not just grab what they want, which is an enormous help with sharing.  Parents can scaffold this ability by empathizing: “I know you want to play with the truck.  Maria has it right now.  It can be hard to wait.  When Maria has finished, you can have the truck.”  You can also suggest other toys the child might want to play with while they are waiting.

By this time the child might have a new sibling and you may find you need new strategies to deal with sharing than you had used with an only child.  You may decide that all toys belong to everyone, or each child has a special few toys that they keep aside, or (if the age difference is pronounced) that small toys need to be kept away from baby and large toys are fair game for anyone as long as they aren’t currently being used.  

If the child is old enough, you can involve them in the process of deciding how to keep baby safe.  If both children are old enough, they can both have input into what strategies they want to use for preferred toys.

You can begin to scaffold the development of sharing strategies: things like taking turns, setting a timer, playing with another toy while waiting, and playing with the toy together.  In the beginning you might need to suggest these strategies but over time, children will use these by themselves and will develop their own strategies too.

It’s important that the children involved agree to the strategies, rather than having you (or the older/bigger child) impose them, so the smaller/younger child gets to understand that their needs are important too.  The child who has the toy should also have the option to say “I’m using this right now.  I don’t want you to play with it.”

In public places, where a conflict between children is brewing, you might ask the other parent “Are you OK with letting them work it out by themselves?”  You may still want to move in closer so you can support the children by narrating what you see if they’re having a hard time.

Age 5+

Hopefully by this age you’re starting to reap the benefits of the work you’ve put in thus far as the children become more able to use the skills you’ve been working on.  The child may have a few very special possessions that they don’t want others to play with – special Lego structures, for example – which works in most families as long as there’s enough Lego to go around.  

If you’re still not seeing sharing behavior by this point, it might be time to step in with some new tools.  You could role-play with your child: play alongside them, and when they ask you if they can use something that’s already in your hands, say ‘No, I’d like to keep playing with it.’  Then talk about how the child feels, and how their friend probably feels in a similar situation.

You might be tempted to praise “good sharing” when you see it, but a whole host of research suggests we should resist doing this. Children are less likely to engage in an activity again after being praised for it, and are especially less likely to do the activity spontaneously (i.e. without first looking around to see if a suitable adult is watching).  If you feel you need to reinforce the benefits of sharing, focus on the impact on the other child: “Carly looked so happy when you gave her the toy!  She waited so patiently, and you gave it to her right when the timer went off, just like you said you would.”

Most of all, have confidence that your child will learn to share when they are ready!

For a deeper dive on sharing, check out my podcast episode on this topic.  You’ll learn:

• The concept of altruism as distinct from sharing
• More specific research findings about sharing behavior
• The concept of ownership development, including when children recognize their own possessions versus others’
• Alfie Kohn’s theories and specific research studies on intrinsic motivation

Frequently Asked Questions About Sharing

1. Should I force my child to share?
Forcing sharing teaches obedience, rather than genuine sharing. Instead, focus on supporting turn-taking with toys.  It’s OK to put some highly prized toys away during a playdate!

2. How do I handle sharing conflicts in public?
Stay close, narrate what’s happening (“I see two children who both want the bucket…”, and guide children in resolving conflicts. If needed, check with the other parent before intervening.

3. What’s the best way to handle sibling toy fights?
Sibling toy fights are almost never about the toys!  You may buy two of everything and find that they still fight.  Instead, consider what needs each child has, and whether these are currently being met.  They will likely fight less once their needs – especially for connection – are met more regularly.

4. Does praising sharing help kids do it more?
Overpraising can backfire – it may make children more likely to share when an adult is present to observe their ‘good sharing,’ but when the adult (or the praise) is absent, the sharing behavior disappears. Instead of praising sharing, you could (1) say nothing; or (2) observing the impact of sharing on the other child: “Rosa is smiling!  I think she appreciates getting a turn with the truck.”  Try framing your observation as an idea rather than a fact (so, not: “Rosa is happy she’s getting a turn with the truck!”) because you don’t know for certain that Rosa is feeling happy.

How do you set effective limits on your child’s challenging behaviors?

When parents are having a hard time with their kids’ sharing behavior, there are often other challenges happening as well.  If your child is doing things like:

• Having tantrums
• Talking back
• Stalling, so daily tasks take forrreeeevvveeerrr
• Biting/hitting/kicking
• Using mean words

…then help is here!  Thousands of parents have taken my Setting Loving & Effective Limits workshop and have discovered how to set limits their kids will respect – and also set way fewer limits than they ever thought possible.

By joining the workshop, you’ll discover:

• The 10-minute practice that makes your child want to cooperate with you
• Ways to cut the number of limits set by at least half – without letting your child walk all over you or becoming a permissive parent
• How to stop arguing, tantrumming, yelling, disrespectful tone, ignoring you – as well as bickering, hitting, and fighting between siblings!

It’s available in two different forms:

• Mid-May to Mid-March each year: Take the course at your own pace
• Mid-March to Mid-May each year: Sign up and take the course with my support in early May!

Click the image below to learn more and sign up:

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Ever been in any of these scenarios?

“I took my children on a fantastic vacation to Disney World.  My youngest ate it up but my five-year-old pouted the whole time.  The lines were too long; the weather was too hot; the food sucked.  Why can’t he appreciate the sacrifices we make for him?  It’s not like us parents want to go to Disney World…”

“My mom gave my three-year-old daughter a beautiful and expensive doll for her birthday.  My daughter doesn’t really like dolls, and when she realized what the gift was she threw it aside and went to play with her Legos.  My mom was really hurt, and I was mortified.  Why can’t my daughter just be thankful for a gift even if it’s not exactly what she wanted?”

“My five-year-old has it so easy.  We buy him toys; we pick up after him; we go out for treats (ice cream and the like) all the time.  He really wants for nothing, but he’s so ungrateful.  He has absolutely no idea how good he has it, and that there are people in the world with so much less than him.  What can I do about this?”

Ah, gratitude.

We all want our kids to feel it and to express it, but somehow they seem to have such a hard time doing it.  Really, how hard can it be to say “thank you” when someone gives you a gift?

Let’s start by making a distinction right off the bat that researchers who study gratitude make: the difference between manners and gratitude.  Manners require that we say “please” and “thank you,” but a very young child can be trained to say those things without any real understanding of what they mean.

(As a side note, why is it that children don’t use “please” when they KNOW they will get the thing they want faster if they say it?  😊)

So a child as young as two can say “thank you” on demand, or even spontaneously, when offered something they want.  But is this gratitude?

The researchers say “no.”

The Virtue of Gratitude

True gratitude requires three conditions to be in place:

1. A benefactor, who freely and intentionally provided the beneficiary with something;
2. The beneficiary recognizes the benefactor’s intentionality;
3. The beneficiary freely chooses to repay, if possible and appropriate, with something the benefactor needs or wants.

This is what researchers call the “virtue of gratitude,” and is also different from a general sense of gratitude as an emotional trait that is more like wellbeing, or enjoyment of a certain situation like a beautiful sunset, or thankfulness for having the benefits in life that we enjoy.

So part 1 of the definition is usually not a problem; people give things “freely and intentionally” to children all the time (trips to Disney World; expensive dolls, outings for ice cream…).

Theory of Mind

Part 2 of the definition is where things get sticky.  Now this might sound crazy, but young children actually believe that everyone sees the same thing they see, and thinks the same things they think.  They don’t yet have any concept of the fact that other people sees and thinks different things.  This is why your child will call to you from the next room and say “Can I play with this, Mama?” when you can’t see her: she doesn’t realize you don’t know what she means.

The scientific name for the understanding that your child has beliefs, desires, knowledge, and that other people have different beliefs, desires, and knowledge is Theory of Mind.

Children begin to understand five concepts as they acquire Theory of Mind, which generally develop in roughly this order (although they can come and go a bit as they solidify):

1. That different people want different things;
2. That different people think different things;
3. That seeing (or being told about something) leads to knowing about that thing;
4. That people have “false beliefs” – If my child and I take cookies from the cookie jar and hide them in the fridge, where will my partner look for the cookies when she comes home? If my child thinks my partner will look in the fridge, he doesn’t yet understand false beliefs: he couldn’t understand that my partner doesn’t know we put the cookies in the fridge;
5. That people can feel one way and act a different way.

So to truly feel gratitude, the child has to recognize that the benefactor went out of her way and thought “even though I don’t want to go to Disney World/go to the doll store/get ice cream, I think my child would really enjoy that vacation/doll/ice cream so let’s do that thing,” and young children simply do not have the cognitive ability to do this – and therefore can’t be grateful.

Part 3 of the definition relies on the understanding that people want different things.  If I say: “Grandma really went out of her way to pick out a beautiful doll for you; what do you think she might like as a small gift to say ‘thank you?,’” a three-year-old is likely to say “stickers!” or “Legos!.”  They don’t yet understand that different people want different things and that Grandma may not be thrilled by a gift of stickers or Legos.

As the child gets older, he begins to understand that Grandma won’t appreciate stickers but might like a new book on gardening, and he also develops the ability to understand time and plan for future activities (e.g. “Can we pick out a book on gardening for Grandma at the bookstore when we go into town on Saturday?”).

So all this is to say “stop expecting your young child to feel or express gratitude.  They just can’t do it.”

Supporting your child in developing gratitude-inducing skills

But take comfort in the fact that there are some things you can do to support your child in developing the skills needed to feel and express gratitude.  These include:

1. Use language to help your child understand that people think and want different things. For example: “I wonder what Mama would like to have for dinner.  Shall we call her and ask?”  or “What do you think Jesse would like for his birthday?”  “How do you think Ana felt when Amy took the toy from her?”  Using this strategy while reading books can also be a useful and easy entry point to this activity.  Also point out where your child likes similar or different things/activities than other people.

2. Help your child to understand that not everyone knows what he knows. When he tells a neighbor about something that happened recently, encourage your child to give enough background information for the story to make sense because “our neighbor doesn’t know why we went into town yesterday.”  Note that people from some cultures (primarily those with a strong written tradition) tend to tell stories in this way; children from cultures that use more oral narratives may have different ways to organize stories there’s much more detail on that in my episode on storytelling.

Set up mini-surprises for family members.  Do something special for them, and emphasize to your child that the other person won’t know what you’ve done until you (or your child) tells them.  Just be prepared for your child to blurt it out as soon as the other person walks in the door…

3. Talk about time. Put a calendar on the fridge and mark upcoming appointments; let your child cross off the days as they pass.  Talk about things that happened in the past (ten minutes ago; this morning; yesterday; last week; months ago) and when things will happen in the future.  Try to refer accurately to time when you talk with your child: when she asks you to play, say “I’m busy right now, but I can play in twenty minutes when the big hand on the clock reaches the six.”  Children can be confused about how long it takes time to pass when you say “I’ll be there in a second” or “Just a minute,” when you will actually take much longer.

Watch for the stages of Theory of Mind and the ability to understand time and plan ahead to develop in your child, and then you’ll know when they should be able to express gratitude.  Until that point, you just have to let it go.  (If the child has all these abilities and still don’t express gratitude then there is likely some kind of problem unrelated to the child’s development that should be addressed, possibly in conjunction with an expert.)

Finally, this might sound counter-intuitive, but you might consider spending less time organizing your life around your children.  Part of “different people wanting different things” is that different people want to spend their time doing different things, and sometimes someone else in the family has to do something they don’t want to do so one person can do the things they do want to do.

Perhaps your child can help you to brainstorm creative ways to get everyone spending more time doing things they enjoy, but perhaps sometimes they just have to suck it up and go somewhere with you even if they would rather be somewhere else.  They might also realize that they actually enjoy nature journaling or decorating cakes or browsing used bookstores or whatever it is that gets you going if it means spending time with you.

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