Thinking About Kids

Parents, kids, and the way we live together
Nancy Darling

Moody Teen? Three Strategies That Help

It's not hormones that make teens volatile and moody, it's their crazy schedule and their physical needs. Teens grow as fast as toddlers and - like toddlers - will throw tantrums when they don't get what they want and need. You can't change their school days, but you can help them get what they need to stay happy and be easier to live with.
Getting Kids To Do Things: The Foot In The Door

Getting Kids To Do Things: The Foot In The Door

Feel like all you do is nag your kid? It can be hard to help kids do what has to be done. Starting small can help.
Children Who Go to School in Pain

Children Who Go to School in Pain

Imagine pain like an ice pick through your head, vertigo, and nausea. Imagine that a cat's footpad sounds so loud your eardrums feel like they are being sandpapered and the overhead lights feel like a harsh spotlight in your eyes when you've been hiding in the dark. Now imagine yourself in the middle of a high school corridor when classes are changing.
Tech Celibacy Isn't The Answer to Multi-Tasking

Tech Celibacy Isn't The Answer to Multi-Tasking

Tech celibacy probably isn't the answer to your problems. But perhaps inserting a bit of mindfulness into your choices might improve your quality of life.
Authoritative vs. Authoritarian Parenting Style

Authoritative vs. Authoritarian Parenting Style

The difference between discipline and punishment is made clear in the phrases 'self-discipline' and 'self-punishment'. The difference between authoritative and authoritarian parenting is similar.
Cutting Clutter 2: Conquering "Survival By Bluff"

Cutting Clutter 2: Conquering "Survival By Bluff"

It's hard to throw something away when it's 'good enough' and you can imagine some (unlikely) scenario where it might come in handy in the future. Our family calls this 'Surviving by Bluff'. Pulling out and sorting a whole group of similar things can simplify the cognitive process of de-cluttering and make it easier to let things go.
Can Exercise and Cleaning Save 30 Billion in Eldercare?

Can Exercise and Cleaning Save 30 Billion in Eldercare?

Falls are the number one reason for the elderly to have a prolonged hospital stay. Exercise and de-cluttering are inexpensive routes to preventing a 30 billion dollar problem.
Step Away From The Keyboard: How Our Hands Affect Our Brains

Step Away From The Keyboard: How Our Hands Affect Our Brains

Like many people, I spend hours of my day working at a keyboard. Would putting down the keyboard and picking up a pen–or a sewing needle or a hammer or a banjo–push my brain to develop in new ways?
Graduating? Asking for Recommendations

Graduating? Asking for Recommendations

Everyone wants a letter of recommendation. Why do we want them? Why is it so hard to ask for them? How do you ask for one from people you are worried don't even remember you? Some simple tips for moving forward.
Grading Diamonds: Statistics In Real Life

Grading Diamonds: Statistics In Real Life

Listening to someone describe how they were being trained to grade diamonds, I heard all the same things that I'd been telling students in my statistics class.
Graduating? Ten Habits to Cultivate

Graduating? Ten Habits to Cultivate

Do you roll your eyes when an adult says something obvious? How do you sound when you answer your phone? Although students graduating from college have been adults for years, somehow, graduating makes them 'real' adults where they're expected to act differently. Ten things to think about.
Withdrawn, Irritable Teen? Is It A Migraine?

Withdrawn, Irritable Teen? Is It A Migraine?

Migraines often begin around puberty, are triggered by stress, lack of sleep, and hormone cycles, and manifest themselves as irritability, withdrawal, the inability to focus, and absentmindedness. Often they arrive without a headache. Are you sure that's a teen funk and not a migraine?
Raising Kids Who Eat Right

Raising Kids Who Eat Right

Most adults struggle with their own weight. We're bombarded with contradictory messages: Food! Fat! Fun! Diet! SlimFast! and It's all in your genes! What's a parent to do?
Talking With People With Hearing or Speech Problems

Talking With People With Hearing or Speech Problems

Many people - especially older folks - have hearing and language problems that can make it hard to communicate. Some simple tips for making talking easier.
Enjoying Holiday Eating!

Enjoying Holiday Eating!

Most people gain less weight than they think over the holidays. But weight can add up, and the heavier you are to start with, the more you're likely to gain over the holidays. The skinny on holiday eating.

Looking Out For Your Neighbors

As a culture, we are learning to look out for signs of neglect and abuse in children. Perhaps we also need to learn again to look out for our neighbors.
Taming the Teenage Eye Roll

Taming the Teenage Eye Roll

Eye rolls communicate contempt. Nothing is more corrosive to a relationship.
Three Ways to Help Your Kids Stay Thin—and You, Too!

Three Ways to Help Your Kids Stay Thin—and You, Too!

Our grandparents were right. New research tells us exactly how exercise, sleep, and structure help keep us thin. These findings complement a range of studies that show how these same lifestyle choices help us function well in a range of ways. Sounds like good parenting to me.
Cutting Clutter: The Problem of the Ugly Coffee Cup

Cutting Clutter: The Problem of the Ugly Coffee Cup

How to de-clutter? Research on healthy people who are packrats can give us clues about how to make the process of cleaning out that closet a lot easier and less stressful.
Incomplete Acts, Everyday Anxiety, and Getting Things Done

Incomplete Acts, Everyday Anxiety, and Getting Things Done

If you open it, close it; If you turn it on, turn it off; If you unlock it, lock it up. Having a system can reduce low-level, chronic anxiety.
Stuck? Try These Three Steps To Get Moving

Stuck? Try These Three Steps To Get Moving

Staring at the paper and don't know where to start? Try these three steps instead.
A Brief Post On Children And Death

A Brief Post On Children And Death

This evening I listened to two poems by middle schoolers talking about how they had been told of a loved ones' death and hadn't understood. That shouldn't happen.
Music and Dementia

Music and Dementia

Music can be one of the easiest ways to make connections with people suffering from dementia.
Do People Only Help Others Like Themselves?

Do People Only Help Others Like Themselves?

A mugging in the Kalahari and Samaritans in the subway: Sometimes classic psychology studies DO replicate!
I Fear For My Students: The Culture of Adderall

I Fear For My Students: The Culture of Adderall

When you believe a drug will make you MORE successful and not less, what's the incentive not to use it? A culture that expects everyone to develop in lock step and all students to be top of the class does not foster growth or learning.
Lessons From a Kinky Sex Blog

Lessons From a Kinky Sex Blog

ALL of us can learn something important about relationships from Pervocricy's kinky sex blog.
What is Your Teen Doing Right?

What is Your Teen Doing Right?

Writing a list of the things your teen is doing right may help you get out of the 'parenting' mindset and help you parent more effectively.
How Will Your Child Learn About Death?

How Will Your Child Learn About Death?

How are nightmares, sugar water, and parakeets related? They form the basis of one little girls' understanding of what it takes to stay alive. Where do your children's ideas about death come from?
The First Bite Is the Best: Thoughts on Eating

The First Bite Is the Best: Thoughts on Eating

Mindfulness means to give full attention to the present. One of the things I learned from being mindful of my eating is that the first bite tastes so much better than the later ones. And that makes it much easier for me to stop eating when I'm full.
How to Write a Final Exam

How to Write a Final Exam

Feel your final exam is unfair? It may be. Writing good final exams is an art, but based on the science of assessment and measurement. It's a lot harder than it looks.

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