All articles
Reading for parents of school-age kids
We’re writing slowly and on purpose. Three pieces are live now; a fourth on sibling dynamics is in progress. If there’s a parenting question you wish someone would answer plainly — with citations, without sanctimony — we want to hear it.
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Development & behavior
Your kid isn't a 'bad listener' — here's what's happening neurologically at ages 4, 8, and 12
"Bad listener" is one of those phrases that sticks to a kid. Most of the time it isn’t a character problem — it’s a developing brain doing exactly what brains at that age do. Here’s what the research actually shows, and what changes when you stop reading it as defiance.
14 min read
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Screens & digital life
The screen time limit that actually stuck in our house (and why the AAP numbers felt wrong)
The AAP retired its "two hours a day" rule in 2016, but most of us are still arguing with it in our heads. Here’s what the current guidance actually says, what the research actually shows, and the rule we landed on after the limit-setting conversation became a nightly fight.
13 min read
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Money & chores
Allowance, chores, and the quiet question of whether to pay your kid for either
Half the parenting internet says never pay kids for chores. The other half says of course — that’s how they learn money. Both are sort of right. Here’s the developmental research on what kids actually learn from each setup, and the version that’s working in our house — including the part where we changed our minds.
12 min read
On the list: sibling dynamics across age gaps; what the actual research says about public versus private versus homeschool versus hybrid; the “village” we keep being told it takes (and what to do when you don’t have one); and a piece on what the discourse around adolescent mental health is and isn’t saying about boys.