Parenting | KidsDirect

Games for your Baby

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Baby Games The first year is packed with games that look simple but do a lot of quiet work. Every round of peekaboo, every silly song, every made up rhyme is also bonding time and brain building time rolled into one. You don’t need toys, flash cards, or a real plan. Babies are wired to connect through faces, voices, and repetition, and a lot of that wiring gets built through ordinary play like this. UNICEF has a good rundown on why play matters so much this early, if you want the deeper explanation. Here are some

Breastfeeding Techniques and Positions

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Breastfeeding Techniques Good technique makes breastfeeding feel less like guesswork. It turns into something you and your baby can actually get the hang of together. A lot of early struggles come down to position and latch. They often have nothing to do with your body or your supply. Small adjustments can turn a frustrating, painful feed into a calm one. None of this needs to be perfect on the first try. Most moms land on one or two favorite positions within the first couple weeks and stick with them from there. Our complete breastfeeding guide covers

The High School Senior Year: A Parent’s Guide

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Junior year was about carrying a heavier load. Senior year is about carrying it to the finish line, and then handing most of it over. There’s real relief in that, for you and your teen both. There’s also a strange kind of pressure that shows up right when everyone expects things to ease up. Applications, financial aid, a countdown to graduation, and a teen who’s mentally halfway out the door already. Senior year asks you to do two things at once. Help your teen close this chapter well, and start loosening your grip before they even

The High School Sophomore Year: A Parent’s Guide

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Freshman year is loud. Everyone talks about the new building, the older kids, the adjustment. Sophomore year is quieter, and that’s exactly what makes it sneaky. Nobody warns you about tenth grade the way they warn you about ninth. But this is often the year a teen either settles into who they’re becoming. Or they start drifting somewhere you didn’t expect. This is high school sophomore year parent’s guide The Sophomore Slump Is Real, and It’s Not About Effort A lot of parents notice a strange dip in motivation right around tenth grade. Freshman year had

Teen Independence, When Should Parents Step Back

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Your teen forgets their project at home for the second time this month. The first instinct is to drive it over. The better instinct, the one worth listening to, is to let them handle what happens next. That gap between those two instincts is where a lot of teen independence actually gets built. Not in some big dramatic moment, but in a hundred small ones where you decide whether the problem belongs to you or to them. Why Stepping Back Is Harder Than It Sounds Nobody sets out to smother their kid. Most over-involved parenting starts

How to Raise a Responsible Teenager, A High School Parent’s Guide

Somewhere around freshman year, most parents start asking the same question. How does a kid who forgets their own backpack turn into an adult who pays rent on time. The honest answer is that responsibility isn’t something teens wake up with one day. It gets built, piece by piece, through actual practice with actual stakes. High school hands you more of those chances than almost any other stretch of parenting. Most of them don’t look like lessons though. They look like arguments about chores. Responsibility Grows From Real Stakes, Not Reminders A teenager who’s never faced a real consequence has

Teenagers, Dating and Relationships, What Parents Need to Know

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Your teen mentions someone they like. Or you spot a name texting them constantly. Suddenly dating is a real thing happening in your house. It’s a strange moment for most parents. Part of you wants to know everything. Part of you wants to pretend it isn’t happening yet. Neither extreme serves your teen well. What actually helps is understanding what a healthy relationship looks like at this age. It also helps to stay close enough to notice when something isn’t healthy. Why This Conversation Is Worth Having Early A teen’s first relationships are practice, whether they

When Your Teen Starts to get Bad Grades

By KidsDirect Editorial Team A report card comes home and it’s nothing like the last one. Maybe it’s one class that’s suddenly a disaster. Maybe it’s several at once. Your first instinct is probably somewhere between worry and frustration. Before you land on either one, it helps to know something. A sudden grade drop almost never means your teen just stopped caring. Something specific is usually driving it. Finding that thing matters more than the grade itself. Why a Grade Drop Is Rarely Just About the Grade Academic decline is often the most visible symptom of something else. Sleep deprivation

How to Know If Your Teen Is Hanging Out With the Wrong Crowd

By KidsDirect Editorial Team You meet one of your teen’s newer friends for the first time and something feels off. Or your kid starts using phrases and making choices that don’t sound like them at all. Every parent hits this moment eventually, wondering whether they’re overreacting or missing something real. There’s no perfect test for this. But there is a real difference between ordinary teenage friendship churn and a pattern worth stepping in on. Knowing which one you’re looking at makes the next move a lot clearer. Why Friend Groups Matter So Much Right Now Peer relationships take on outsized

How to Talk to Your Teen Without Starting an Argument

By KidsDirect Editorial Team You ask a simple question, something like “how was your day.” Somehow you’re both raising your voices within two minutes. If that sounds familiar, you’re not doing anything wrong as a parent. Your teenager isn’t secretly plotting against you either. Something about the teenage brain, combined with how most of us were taught to talk to kids, sets up a lot of ordinary conversations to go sideways fast. The good news is that the shift that fixes most of it isn’t complicated. It’s just not what feels natural in the moment, which is exactly why it’s

A Parent’s Guide to Age Appropriate Independence with Teens

Every parent of a teenager eventually lands on some version of the same question. Is this too much freedom, or not enough. A freshman wants to walk to a friend’s house alone. Then a junior wants the car keys on a Friday night. By senior year, they want you to stop asking where they are at all. There’s no chart that tells you exactly when to say yes. But there’s a surprising amount of research on what actually helps teenagers grow into capable adults. It points in a pretty clear direction. This isn’t about handing over the keys to everything

The High School Freshman Year: A Parent’s Guide

By KidsDirect Editorial Team Freshman year hits different than parents expect. You brace for the obvious stuff, the bigger building, the older kids, maybe a rougher class or two. What catches most families off guard is how much freshman year actually matters. In this high school freshman year parent’s guide, we show you that It happens quietly, in the background, while everyone’s still adjusting to locker combinations and lunch schedules. Here’s what the research actually shows. Researchers at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research have spent years tracking what predicts graduation. Ninth grade performance turns out to be

The Pros and Cons of Holding Your Child Back for School or Sports

Should I Hold My Child Back a Grade? The Pros and Cons of Holding Your Child Back for School or Sports Should I hold my child back a grade? Otherwise known as Reclassing. It’s a question more parents are asking, especially when sports are involved. You may hear it called a holdback, redshirting, repeating a grade, or reclassing. The basic idea is simple. A child stays in the same grade for another year, often with the hope of being more prepared academically, socially, physically, or athletically. For some families, it can make sense. For others, it creates problems they didn’t

Tantrums

Every parent deals with tantrums. Nobody brags about them at pickup. Most of us just want to forget they happened, and we secretly wonder if our kid is the only one who does this. Handled the wrong way, a tantrum can spiral fast and leave everyone rattled. This is toddler tantrum. It’s easy to read a tantrum as pure defiance, a kid trying to run the show. That reading misses what’s actually going on underneath. Miss it, and you end up fighting the tantrum instead of getting through it. What a Tantrum Actually Is A few basic truths make tantrums

Email Safety

Email Safety for Kids Email is typically a one to one communication tool. Just like regular mail, you write to someone and they write back. It’s not the flashiest way kids talk to each other anymore, but it’s still how they get school updates, talk to teachers, and connect with family, so it’s worth understanding the risks along with the benefits. Email safety tips for kids is one of the most important tips out there. Did You Know Spam hasn’t gone away. In fact, more than half of all email sent worldwide, about 52 percent, is spam. The good news

You Will Dream New Dreams

By Dr. Robert Naseef, Psychologist You Will Dream New Dreams It’s been 20 years now since my son was a seemingly normal, happy toddler. It’s been eighteen years since I first heard the word “autism” used to describe my baby. It was a grief from which I thought I’d never recover, never feel good again, unless he recovered and had a typical life. It took me two years before I could get the word “autism” out of my mouth. Like the other 62 writers in You Will Dream New Dreams: Inspiring Personal Stories by Parents of Children With Disabilities, my

how fathers stay connected long work hours

Birth of a Parent

By Dr. Robert Naseef, Psychologist Through the tangled mysteries of love and biology, a man and a woman make a baby together. What’s less obvious is how that one small person turns around and makes two parents. The moment your child is born, you become a mother or a father, and a brand new identity starts to take shape right alongside your baby’s. This is birth of a parent For most of us, nine months of hopes, dreams and worries build to a rush of love that hands you a drive and an energy you didn’t know you had. You’re

Families Need Help and Dignity, not Punishment

By Dr. Robert Naseef, Psychologist Families Need Help and Dignity, Not Punishment Many people find it hard to fathom what could drive a couple like Dawn and Richard Kelso of Chester County to leave their fragile child, Steven, at a hospital the day after Christmas in 1999. I, for one, do not. The image of the boy in a wheelchair who needed a respirator to breathe jolted me as I read about it while visiting relatives in Florida. This is written for parents of children with special needs support. By all accounts, the Kelsos had loved their child dearly. They’d

Four Ways Attachment Parenting Can Reduce the Risk of S.I.D.S.

Why closeness matters in the early months Attachment parenting has been around for decades, and it’s stuck around for good reason. When you respond quickly to your baby’s cries, hold them often, and keep them physically close, you’re building the kind of trust that shapes how they handle stress and relationships for years down the road. Parents who practice this style often notice their babies seem calmer and more securely attached, and there’s real research backing up that feeling, not just parental instinct. The case for sleeping close to your baby Breastfeeding at night comes a lot easier when your

Do Children have a Right to Privacy?

By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist The schoolbag was sitting on the kitchen counter. Not a typical occurrence. Usually it’s on the floor in the hall. Ellie wasn’t sure what prompted her, but she had a strong urge to look inside. She didn’t really suspect anything. Sure, John had his problems, inconsistent schoolwork, a bit more moodiness, but that seemed mostly like the normal impact of adolescence. “He’s really a good kid,” she thought. “I shouldn’t be doing this.” But Ellie reached in anyway. Where Privacy and Safety Collide Parents often struggle with the boundaries of a child’s

Questions about Parenting Teenagers

By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist When “I Want to Get Into a Top College” Doesn’t Match the Effort Q: Our 16 year old daughter says she wants to get into a top college, but she doesn’t take her homework seriously, complains that it’s boring, and ends up with lower grades because of missing or low-quality assignments. We have nightly conflicts about this and feel genuinely confused, since what she’s doing directly contradicts what she says she wants for herself. We’re also frustrated because she’s clearly bright, does very well on classroom tests, and could easily be earning

The Afternoons of Quiet Young Teens

By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist If Parenting Young Teens Is Hard, Imagine Being One We all know how challenging it is to parent a 13 to 15 year old. That alone should tell us it’s equally challenging to actually be one. Jonathan is starting high school. He’s not especially athletic and not an above-average student. He has a couple of friends, but mostly they just hang out, listening to music his parents can’t relate to and playing video games. Jon doesn’t say much about his day. It’s understandable to assume that’s because his life feels rather empty.

Adolescent Tragedies and my Teenager

By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist A Tragedy That Leaves Us Searching for Answers Once again, I’m writing in the wake of a terrible tragedy. Fifteen dead children. Fifteen lives ended prematurely and violently. An entire community that won’t recover for generations. An entire nation searching for answers that don’t fully exist. Acts of violence have always been part of human nature, and that won’t change unless we become some kind of science fiction world of engineered chemistry and genetics. Experts will point to the usual list of contributing factors, alienation, access to guns, too much exposure to violence,

It’s not the College, it’s the Person

By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist The College Obsession Starts in the Crib We’ve become a nation obsessed with the idea that a college education isn’t just a must for everyone, practically an inalienable right, but that a truly successful life requires attending the very best college possible. This is a myth, and yes, it really is one. It creates unreasonable stress on high school students and their families, and it trickles all the way down to preschools, even to the crib. The age old question is does it matter which college you attend? Parents have been sold unproven

student-centered learning vs traditional education

Education Designed for Children

By Dr. Kalman Heller, Child and Family Psychologist Time for a Better Vision In my last article, I made the case that homework fails to prove its value as a way to improve learning or build character. That’s especially true at the elementary level, where there’s really no solid basis for assigning it at all. The research gets more mixed as kids get older, but even at the high school level, the evidence for homework’s value is genuinely shaky. Just as important, there’s growing evidence that homework can actually cause harm. It creates chronic stress for kids and families, and