Kids Development

One of the very best scientific predictors for how any child turns out - in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships - is whether at least one adult in their life has consistently shown up for them. In an age of scheduling demands and digital distractions, showing up for your child might sound like a tall order. But as best-selling authors Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson reassuringly explain, it doesn’t take a lot of time, energy, or money. Instead, showing up means offering a quality of presence.

Michele Borba has been a teacher, educational consultant, and parent for 40 years - and she's never been more worried than she is about this current generation of kids. The high-achieving students she talks with every day are more accomplished, better educated, and more privileged than ever before. They're also more stressed, unhappier, and struggling with anxiety, depression, and burnout at younger and younger ages - "we're like pretty packages with nothing inside," said one young teen.

Some 75% of American families want their kids to play sports. Athletics are training grounds for character, friendship, and connection; at their best, sports insulate kids from hardship and prepare them for adult life. But youth sports have changed so dramatically over the last 25 years that they no longer deliver the healthy outcomes everyone wants. Instead, unbeknownst to most parents, kids who play competitive organized sports are more likely to burn out or suffer from overuse injuries than to develop their characters or build healthy habits. What happened to kids' sports?

You don’t need to have the perfect relationship with your ex for the kids to be happy. Life can be better for you after separation or divorce. Some couples aren’t meant to stay together.

Parents and kids pitted against one another, opposing forces pulling in different directions, both determined to win! Every family experiences power struggles, but these daily tugs of war are not inevitable. In Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka presents real strategies for getting to the root of the emotions and needs that can create daily hassles.

Our culture tells parents there's one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college you can. If you can't do that, don't bother. How is that going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness and more. In Family Unfriendly, bestselling author and Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney says it's time to end this failed experiment in overparenting.

A new book from the award-winning teacher and best-selling author, Ron Clark, providing rules for parents and teachers to help kids succeed in school.

In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that our children, if free to pursue their own interests through play, will not only learn all they need to know but will do so with energy and passion. Children come into this world burning to learn, equipped with the curiosity, playfulness, and sociability to direct their own education. Yet we have squelched such instincts in a school model originally developed to indoctrinate, not to promote intellectual growth.

Help prepare the children and teens in your life to face life’s challenges with grace and grit. In this award-winning guide, author and pediatrician Dr. Ken Ginsburg shares his seven crucial Cs: competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control. You’ll discover how to incorporate these concepts into your parenting style and communication strategies, thereby strengthening your connection. And that connection will position you to guide your child to bounce back from life’s challenges and forge a meaningful and successful life.

Soccer star and Olympic gold medalist Christie Pearce Rampone and sports neuropsychologist Dr. Kristine Keane share the best practices that athletes, parents, and coaches can use to turn the lessons learned through sports into lifelong skills.

With this unique and highly practical guide, you'll learn the science of attachment theory, and how to apply it to your coparenting relationship. Secure attachment refers to the bond between a parent and young child, which gives that child a stable and secure basis from which to negotiate life going forward. A child with a secure base can weather the storms of trauma and life changes—such as those caused by divorce—much more easily than a child who doesn't.

One in two children suffer from a chronic or recurring illness. If you feel stuck in a cycle of recurrent antibiotic use, missed school, sleepless nights and ER visits, Dr. Sheila Kilbane can help. In this book, integrative pediatrician Sheila Kilbane, MD, shares the methodology she's developed over almost 20 years of practicing medicine: a seven-step process that can begin to heal your child's chronic illness from the inside out.

How do today's parents cope when the dreams we had for our children clash with reality? What can we do for our 20- and even 30-somethings who can't seem to grow up? Who can we turn to when the kids aren't all right and we, their parents, are frightened, frustrated, resentful, embarrassed, and especially, disappointed? In this groundbreaking book, a social psychologist who's been chronicling the lives of American families for over two decades confronts our deepest concerns when our grown kids have failed to thrive.

Children today live in an unpredictable, disruptive, and often violent world. Many of them live in two different homes with different sets of expectations. They face bullying at school and online. They hear news of school shootings, and racially or religiously motivated violence. They may have lost a friend or a loved one. As parents, the impulse to protect our children is strong, but that very protection can end up handicapping them for life. Rather than seek to save them from the hard things, parents must teach their kids how to cope with and rise above their problems.

The problem is just that we haven’t been taught how to think in a way that sets us up for success in life. You don’t learn it in school, but what is it really that separates the successful people from the unsuccessful, the wealthy from the poor, the healthy from the unhealthy, and the happy from the unhappy? Is it their life circumstances or their actions? Sure, those things definitely play a role. But, perhaps, even more so, they are separated by the way they think.

"If you aim your children at anything less than greatness, you'll set them up to miss the whole point of their lives," says author Tim Kimmel. In Raising Kids for True Greatness, Kimmel turns the definition of success on its head and guides you in preparing your child for a life that will easily eclipse the goals of those who are merely successful.

When she moved her young family to her husband's hometown in northern France, Karen Le Billon expected some cultural adjustment. But she didn't expect to be lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack, or to be forbidden from packing her older daughter a school lunch. Karen is intrigued by the fact that French children happily eat everything-from beets to broccoli, from salad to spinach - while French obesity rates are a fraction of what they are in North America.

Is “joy-building” the secret to raising mature healthy kids? Joy-filled kids aren’t always happy kids, but they do know how to work for and wait for what is truly satisfying in life. In The 4 Habits of Raising Joy-Filled Kids, you will discover a tool box full of skills that you can use with your children to help them grow in maturity and live with greater joy.

Raising Confident Black Kids includes everything Black and multi-racial families need to know to raise empowered, confident children. From the realities of living while Black to age-appropriate ways to discuss racism with your children, educator M.J. Fievre provides a much-needed resource for parents of Black kids everywhere.

Parents today complain of fragmented relationships with their kids. What parents yearn for - and their kids too - is deep, heart-to-heart connections. But how can parents compete with all the other noise fighting for their kids' attention? The answer, says Greta Eskridge, is to break free from regular routines and familiar comforts of home to experience new places and adventures - even if those adventures go awry. From simply reading a book together to going on an overnight backpacking trip, activities together provide unique and crucial bonding opportunities.