Setting expectations for your children is an essential responsibility of parenting. Expectations communicate messages to your children about what’s important to you and establish a standard toward which your children can strive. But expectations can be double-edged swords. They can be a tremendous benefit to your children’s development or they can be weighty burdens that [...]
This disturbing article describes the growing use of technology (e.g., tablets, smartphones, apps) among very young children (0-8 years old). Here's a scary quote, from a physician no less: "I know if I need Zoe to be quiet for an hour, I can hand her the iPad and I won’t hear from her,” said Dr. [...]
I'm honored to have been asked to give two talks at the Young President's Organization (YPO) central division annual conference in Napa, CA later this week. YPO is an international association of more than 20,000 CEOs of companies around the world. Other speakers will be Jim Abbott, the retired Major League Baseball pitcher who was born [...]
I was recently interviewed for an article about spoiled children for U.S. News & World Report online.
Back in 2011, I wrote a blog post arguing that early childhood education was far more important to positive outcomes for poor children than current efforts to reform public education once kids get to elementary and secondary school. A recent commentary in the New York Times by James Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics from [...]
The messages about love that you send to your children at a young age are so important because love is a powerful, complex, often wonderful, and sometimes painful emotion that will play a central role in their lives. The messages you communicate in your expressions of love toward your children provide the context for the [...]
Beyond the specific areas in which you need to prepare your children for this crazy new world and, as I have shown, in which popular culture and technology is not helping you, there is an overriding way you can best ready your children for what lies ahead. You need to prepare them for life. You [...]
Sleep may be the most important, though overlooked, contributor to your children’s development and health. The reality is that children can survive without exercise and on little food (though I don’t recommend either), but all children need sleep. It’s often unnoticed because you don’t usually see your children sleeping and its benefits are not readily [...]
Your children’s physical health is the foundation for everything they become and do. As corporeal beings, they, like the rest of humanity, are at the mercy of the fitness of their bodies to handle the ordinary challenges and extraordinary demands that are placed on them during childhood and beyond. You are responsible for ensuring that [...]