Category: Early Childhood Development

Making friends is one of the most important developmentaltasks of childhood — and one of the most painful to watchwhen it is not going well. A child who struggles socially,who comes home from school saying they have no one to playwith, or who is repeatedly excluded from peer groups, isexperiencing something that parents often feel…

Gentle parenting is one of the most talked-about parentingapproaches of the past decade — and one of the mostmisunderstood. Critics describe it as permissive parentingwith a rebrand: children who never hear no, parents whonever set limits, households where feelings are prioritizedover behavior. Supporters describe it as the mostcompassionate and research-backed approach available. Neither description is…

Attachment parenting is one of the most discussed and mostmisunderstood approaches in contemporary parenting culture.Supporters describe it as the most natural, research-backedway to raise secure, connected children. Critics describeit as exhausting, impractical, and based on a misreadingof the science it claims to represent. The truth, as usual, is more nuanced than either positionsuggests. This article…

Emotional intelligence is one of those terms that gets usedconstantly in parenting conversations and defined almost never.Most parents have a general sense that it is something theywant for their children — the ability to understand and managefeelings, to connect with others, to navigate the social worldwith some degree of skill and grace — without a…

Almost every child experiences some degree of separation anxietyat some point in their development. For many parents, watchinga child cling, cry, or beg them not to leave is one of the mostemotionally difficult experiences of early parenthood — madeharder by the fact that most parenting advice either dismissesthe anxiety as normal and not worth addressing,…

If you have ever watched a child completely fall apart over somethingthat seems trivial — a broken cracker, the wrong colored plate, asock that doesn’t feel right — and wondered why they cannot simplycalm down, you have encountered one of the most important conceptsin child development: emotional regulation. Understanding what emotional regulation actually is, why…

If you have ever watched a toddler dissolve into a screaming,floor-prostrate meltdown over something that seems completelytrivial — the wrong color cup, a banana broken in half, a sockthat feels wrong — you have witnessed one of the mostmisunderstood events in early childhood. Toddler tantrums are not manipulation. They are not bad behavior.They are not…

If you have spent any time reading about early childhood development,you may have come across the term “serve and return.” It sounds simple— and it is. It is also one of the most well-supported findings inall of developmental neuroscience, and understanding it changes howyou think about every ordinary interaction with your baby. This article explains…