The Beauty and Wonder of Childhood

09/09/2024

When Sara Zaske moved from Oregon to Berlin with her family, she knew the transition would be challenging. She was surprised to discover that German parents ...

08/14/2024

“If you don’t replace the virtual world with more independence in the real one, the whole experiment will feel to the kid as though a door is slamming shut instead of a new one opening.”

The Sunday Times (UK) just ran a major story illustrating the twin prescriptions in The Anxious Generation

04/23/2024

Here’s what we are learning about the mental health of our children coming out of the pandemic.

It's been 20 years since Hold On To Your Kids was first released; just before the emergence of Facebook and other social media. In retrospect, the book amply foreshadowed, but could not fully have pictured, the impact of the digital revolution that followed. The book was re-released in 2013 with additional chapters on raising children in a digital world.

Now it is being re-released once again, with an additional chapter on the roots of the current crisis of mental health in our children. The new edition was just released in the USA and will be released on April 9th in Canada.

This chapter was necessitated by the shocking revelation coming out of the pandemic that an alarming number of children are suffering from mental health issues. Without the insights provided by this book, experts were wrongly assuming that the problem was isolation from their peers, the opposite of what was the case. This chapter explores the roots of emotional well-being and confirms the paramount importance of the healthy child-adult relationships.

Written by Dr. Gordon Neufeld, with writing help from Dr. Gabor Maté, this book is about the pivotal importance of children’s relationships to those responsible for them and the devastating impact in today’s society of competing attachments with peers. However, it is much more than a book on peer orientation: it is about parenting with relationship in mind. This book restores parents to their natural intuition, confronting such relationship-devastating devices as time-outs and using what children care about against them.

Visit our website (https://neufeldinstitute.org/resources/hold-on-to-your-kids-book/) for more information or find it on the shelf at your favourite local bookstore (or wherever good books are sold).

04/02/2024

It hijacks the brain.

Four of Ontario's largest school boards have brought a lawsuit against four of the biggest social media companies for causing an epidemic of addiction among teens. The boards are seeking over $4 billion in damages.

01/24/2024

Teachers say mobile phones make their lives a living hell – so one Massachusetts school barred them

12/17/2023

Singing to babies helps them learn language.

Researchers find that babies don’t begin to process phonetic information reliably until seven months old which they say is too late to form the foundation of

12/11/2023

12/10/2023

11/21/2023

Number 3. Don’t let the weather ruin your day.

Swedish-American mom and parenting expert Linda Akeson McGurk shares why the 164-year-old Nordic philosophy of "friluftsliv" is the secret to raising happier kids.

11/21/2023

“What would you like to say to your worry? What would it say back?”

11/21/2023

We need our kids to see their bravery so that when anxiety comes, they know they have overcome it before. They need to understand that anxiety and fear are normal. Kids usually think that bravery is doing something without fear, but we need to teach them that it is doing something in spite of fear.

1. LEAD BY EXAMPLE
For your children, you are their hero. Most likely, they think that you never get scared. Some parents think they must uphold this image, but you might be doing your children a disservice. I'm not saying you should tell your kids about every worry you have. We don't need to put more stress or worry on them. But it is okay for them to know that you are nervous about a presentation you must do at work or about meeting people for the first time. This normalizes anxiety for our kids.

2. USE IMAGINATION
What is something they could use to feel brave? For some kids, you could choose a rock together. You could hold the rock together and put brave feelings into it. That way, when they have to go somewhere that triggers anxiety, they can have their rock in their pocket and feel the brave feelings.

3. CELEBRATE BRAVERY NOT SUCCESS
Nothing reinforces fear more than failure. If they were scared, tried and failed, chances are they won't try again. We need to change the way we view failure. If a child was scared to try something new, but they did try, then that is a success. Praise your child for the bravery and make sure you label it as bravery. Kids need to realize they are brave even if things don't work out how they want. When they know they had some success, they will have the confidence to try again.

CREDIT: (https://ow.ly/RxSU50Q5Gie)

❤️‍🩹 Do you know a child struggling with anxiety- we're here to help. Join us THIS SATURDAY, 9am-4pm MST for our "Childhood Anxiety" workshop!

👉REGISTER:https://ow.ly/tx7550Q5GGX

11/16/2023

A couple of years ago I was driving my daughter home from high school, and she shared something from her Human Development class that day. The students were asked to draw an illustration of their emotional state. “And mom,” she said, “everyone drew pictures of stacks of books and things like t...