Resources
The Power of Play
Child development expert reassures parents that PLAY is the #1 way to support your preschooler’s learning and development. Learn more about the power of play with Dr. Alan Wenderoff of Everyday Parenting Psychology.
How to Cope With Baby Shower Anxiety
If your upcoming baby shower is making you feel more stressed-out than excited, you're not alone. These expert tips can help you work through your baby shower anxiety in a healthy way. Read More
Teaching Kids About Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviors
It’s natural for your child to act out when she doesn't quite understand what she's feeling. Her thoughts and feelings naturally contribute to her behavior–so teaching your child about her thoughts, feelings and behavior is key to her development and self-awareness. Read More
My child’s whining is starting to drive me crazy! How can I handle it?
Consider whining just another form of toddler communication. After all, even a highly verbal two-year-old doesn’t have access to all the words and phrases that you do. Read More
How to Keep Toddler Busy While Waiting?
In addition to the usual snacks and toys, there’s at least one other important thing to have on hand: Your sense of adventure. If you act excited or curious about your environment, your toddler will, too. Read More
How can I start to teach my two-year-old good manners?
Having what adults might think of as “good manners” is a completely foreign concept to most toddlers–they're right up there with taxes and mortgages. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start to lay the early groundwork. Read More
How can I teach my toddler to do things independently?
You’ve probably become more patient since you started this whole parenthood thing. And you’re going to have to practice patience even more as your toddler learns to become more independent. Read More
My toddler is resisting potty training. How can I move things along?
If your child is saying no to potty training, she could just be telling you that she’s not ready. Most children younger than 18 months won’t sit long enough or follow directions well enough to be properly potty-trained. Read More
Navigating the Children's Special Needs System
As a parent of a child with speech and social-emotional delays who's been through the process of early intervention, I can tell you firsthand that finding help doesn't have to be overwhelming or scary. There's plenty of support for your child–and for you, too. Read More
How to Get Your Toddler Talking
Waiting for your child to say her first words is majorly exciting—but it can also be majorly nerve-wracking. Between watching how other toddlers are developing, reading parenting magazines, and scrolling through your favorite blogs, how can you tell whether what your tot’s doing (or isn’t doing) is normal? Read More
Tips to Soothe Your Toddler’s Boo-Boos
Playground weather is here, meaning your little one will be back to her usual—jumping, climbing, falling down and yes, getting hurt. Here’s how to soothe toddler boo-boos—and get your tot back on the monkey bars, stat. Read More
How to Raise a Kid Who’s Not Materialistic
No parent wants their child to grow up valuing things over people and experiences. Yet a new study suggests that even well intentioned moms and dads might be setting up their kids to be materialistic. Read More
How to Help Kids (Like Prince George) Adjust to a New Sibling
Like all toddlers who find themselves facing a new sibling, the adorable heir is in for a major adjustment period. So what can William and Kate — and other parents due to bring home a second baby — expect? Read More
How to Tame Your Tattletale
Is your little one a tattletale? Here's how to turn that behavior into an opportunity to teach conflict resolutions skills. Read More
4-Year-Old Behavior: Social Milestones Before Age 5
Your 4-year-old is talkative, curious and full of energy – all of which contribute to her amazing social development this year. Here are some of the milestones that your social butterfly will hit before her fifth birthday. Read More
Should you let your toddler play with your iPad?
Long, long gone are the days of stickball, AOL, and Sega Genesis. No more kites. No more dial-up. No more blowing on video games to make them load. Self-entertainment is as quick as a power button with a wait time of mere seconds. You get to decide how far is too far and whether or not you’ve reached your data limit—literally and figuratively—for the day. But what about your child? How much entertainment is too much for them? Read More
How to Know When to Get Help for Teen Anxiety
When teens struggle one way or another, it’s hard to know how to help them. And sometimes, they need more help than we, the parents, are able to give. Below, one teen shares his experience with anxiety and therapy, and then an expert weighs in with some general advice on how to determine if your teen needs professional help. Read More
Should I Push My Son Out of His Comfort Zone? How Much is Too Much?
What happens when a teen feels one way about a particular issue or problem and the parent has a very different take? At Your Teen, we understand that sometimes you need to look at a problem from multiple perspectives. It can also be helpful to hear from a neutral third party. That’s when we bring in a parenting expert to provide the practical advice you need to bridge the divide and guide you in the right direction. Read More
Check Your Vibes: How To Set Boundaries With Emotional Vampires
Most of us have at least one person in our lives who leaves us feeling drained after every interaction with them. This person is usually a family member or close friend, someone you care about deeply enough to try to look past their tendency to stomp all over your personal boundaries. Read More
Effective Strategies for Educating at Home
with Dale Langley, PsyD
Our complimentary web series offers some easy and effective ways to minimize your stress and improve the stay-at-home experience for you and your child. Access Instructional Videos + Printable Resources Here
Part I: Getting Started: Establishing Effective Routines
Within this uncharted territory, many families are trying to balance the demands of education, careers, and family interactions all under one roof. Establishing predictable routines has become more essential than ever. Read More
Part II: Schooling at Home, Create Your Learning Environment
Having the right amount of structure and predictability in an academic schedule can help increase your child’s focus, compliance and fluency in completing their daily tasks. These skill modules present realistic options for how best to schedule your day and optimize your space to facilitate learning.
Part III: Parents as Teachers, Educational Strategies that Work
Most of you are wondering how the heck your child’s classroom teacher does this full time. A pro tip from teachers to parents: the more engaged a learner is in their subject matter, the better the outcomes. In these skill modules you will learn simple but effective ways to increase your child’s autonomy, engagement, and enjoyment in their academic activities. Applications for your child’s play time are also discussed.
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Does My Child Have PTSD?
When someone experiences a traumatic event, they may feel a variety of intense emotions including fear or anger. They may want to confront the situation head-on or flee. These reactions to danger are natural. However, when a person continues to feel these reactions even after the danger is past, he or she may have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder that can greatly interfere with a person’s day-to-day life and personal relationships. Read More
Autism Signs to Watch For in Kids
If you're a parent, you've probably heard that more and more kids are being diagnosed with autism. It's true. In fact, every 1 in 68 children in America is now considered to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. But although signs can be detected as early as age 2, most kids aren't diagnosed until after the age of 4. Read More
How Nannies Can Teach Children About Feelings
It is likely your child may act out or have an emotional outburst at some point, maybe even on a regular basis. However, many times, children do not even understand why they’re feeling or reacting the way they are because they do not know the basics about feelings. Read More
Research Articles
Family Systems
A once narrow focus in child development research on the individual child or the parent (read: mother)–child dyad as the sole subject of study has undergone a steady expansion and been replaced by emphases on relationships and interactions as well as contexts that reach beyond child and mother to encompass the full diversity of the child's social embeddedness. Read More
Mindful Parenting: A Call for Research
Abstract Interest in mindfulness-based interventions for children and adolescents is growing, but despite substantial evidence that parental distress and psychopathology adversely affects children, there is little research on how mindfulness-based parenting interventions might benefit the child as well as the parent. Read More
Conceptual Issues in Studies of Resilience
We begin this article by considering the following critical conceptual issues in research on resilience: (1) distinctions between protective, promotive, and vulnerability factors; (2) the need to unpack underlying processes; (3) the benefits of within-group experimental designs; and (4) the advantages and potential pitfalls of an overwhelming scientific focus on biological and genetic factors (to the relative exclusion of familial and contextual ones). Read More
Mindfulness and Self-Compassion in the Transition to Motherhood:
A Prospective Study of Postnatal Mood and Attachment
This prospective study aimed to examine whether prenatal mindfulness and self-compassion are associated with increased prenatal attachment and fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression in the postpartum. Identifying protective factors in the perinatal period creates an opportunity for prevention against morbidity in offspring, given previous findings indicating that prenatal and postnatal mood disturbance are associated with adverse consequences for child development and attachment. Read More
Interpersonal Mindfulness Training for Well-Being: A Pilot Study With Psychology Graduate Students
Although mindfulness originated in Eastern meditation traditions, notably Buddhism, researchers, clinicians, and, more recently, educators suggest that the cultivation of mindfulness may be beneficial to Westerners uninterested in adopting Buddhist or other Eastern spiritual traditions. Mindfulness is understood as sets of skills that can be developed with practice and taught independently of spiritual origins as a way of being or relating to present-moment experience. Read More
Mindful Parenting, Affective Attunement, and Maternal Depression:
A Call for Research
This paper introduces the construct of mindfulness and highlights research findings on the benefits of mindfulness-based clinical interventions. Drawing on the theoretical perspective of Daniel Stern (1985), mindfulness can be understood as a necessary prerequisite for the affective attunement that occurs within the intersubjective relatedness of mother and infant. Read More
Spiritual Beliefs of Mothers With Potentially Distressing Pregnancies
This study examines the religious/spiritual beliefs of mothers who have experienced difficulties in the formation of their families and their association with maternal–infant attachment and maternal mental health in the pre- and postnatal periods. Read More