When I advise parents in my therapy practice to consider not demanding straight A’s, I get some looks. Like I-have-grown-two-heads type of looks. Why in the world would a parent consider lowering their expectations for school?  Hopefully this post makes clear that letting go of the demand for A’s is not about lowering expectations. Rather, it’s about interacting with our children around school in a way that nurtures their internal motivation to perform well academically. It may seem counterintuitive to reduce pressure on grades, especially if we see our child as achieving below their capa ..read more

When your tween says “I’m so glad you’re my parent” it sticks with you. In a rare moment of gratitude for having me as a mom, my daughter had been telling me about all the kids at her middle school who complain about how upset their parents get when their children get lower than an A. My daughter elaborated, “I’m glad you’re a therapist who’s my mom.” I think this implied that I understood the emotional impact of this grades pressure. If you read my previous posts about school, you know I have gone through quite the internal struggle to not emphasize high achievement and “perfect” grades. As a ..read more

Before you became a parent, fantasies of parenting life may have included dreamy bedtime stories and giggle-filled bathtimes. Fast forward to reality: reading the same book for the 1000th time does not feel dreamy, and bathtime mostly revolves around begging a slippery child to put their head underwater. In another exposure of my nerd-dom, one of my pre-parenting fantasies was helping with homework. As you may guess, when homework finally made an appearance in our family life, a harmonious celebration of learning did not ensue. When my oldest was in second grade, we encountered “the homework r ..read more

School is the part of parenting in which I struggle the most to not be controlling. I am a lifelong perfectionist and high achiever who loves school and always excelled. My kids complain about their math homework and I (not so helpfully) respond “algebra is so much fun!” I came into this world with an internal drive to learn and be the best student I could be. I read fluently at age three and was reading years ahead in kindergarten. After years of positive reinforcement for being a top student, in my teen years, I became laser-focused on grades, test scores, and rankings. I wasn’t much of an a ..read more

A new school year doesn't just mean emails flooding your inbox and endless forms and meetings to remember, it brings the energy of fresh starts and hope for the next year of growth! Right? I mean, it at least means the kids are finally out of the house and you can hear yourself think for a few minutes. Which also means that maybe you can take a deep breath and believe your kids can start doing more for themselves so you can do more for yourself. (Like think and breathe.) My book was originally slated to come out this past February. But the publishing industry did its thing and the release got ..read more

As my 11-year-old anticipated her second season of competitive gymnastics last year, she practiced her beam routine in the kitchen. I asked how she felt about getting back to competition and she said she wasn’t as nervous as her first year. I posed the question, what did she think happened if competing became all about winning? She responded, “It’s not fun anymore and that’s when people quit.” My son’s most recent soccer season sadly illustrated this truth. After a few seasons with coaches encouraging a positive and cooperative team culture focused on learning and enjoying soccer, he ended up ..read more

Have you noticed? Youth sports has been swept up in the intensive parenting tsunami, becoming yet another symbol of our status and success as parents while wreaking destruction on family life, family budgets, and even the love of the game. I have gone on record in my piece, Youth Sports in Overdrive, that youth sports has ballooned from a character-building pasttime to a pressure cooker that dangerously pushes kids past physical and emotional limits. AND. A few months ago, my 8-year-old son announced his plan to try out for travel soccer. Opposing thoughts and emotions battled in my brain. On ..read more

Last Halloween, my daughter’s group Halloween costume with her friends required significant construction. I ordered the materials to create human-sized tic tac boxes but I advised my 11-year-old that she was primarily responsible for making it happen. She dutifully put the red plastic easter eggs in the bins and taped them according to the Pinterest directions (much more meticulously than I would have, by the way). Despite the Pinterest lady’s suggestion that all of this was super easy, we hit a snag with how to make the eponymous green and white label. In a group text thread, the other moms p ..read more

I’ll never forget the mother in my office who looked at me with that “I’m so over it” face as she described how her 11-year-old yells for her from the basement instead of getting up to do what he’s begging her to do for him. As this mother’s son directed her to do something for him while in my office, she said “I’m not your servant” to which he replied, “Yes you are.” Did he just say what all our kids are thinking??   I’ve been routinely reminding my kids a mother is not a servant as my 8-year-old sits like a prince on the couch ordering snacks and water to be brought to him. It takes exa ..read more

For the last couple years, an industrious mother of a middle schooler has shared in our Facebook parent group her well-organized Excel document designed to capture a student’s entire schedule on paper sized to fit their IDs. The gratitude and praise poured in as other parents (let’s be honest, mothers) clamored to use the template to help their own middle schooler feel prepared on the first day of school. I did not clamor. I thought to myself, “can’t our middle schoolers do this without us?”   I didn’t say a word about this to my sixth-grade daughter, yet she announced her plan to make an ..read more