Readers and reviewers tell me one of their favorite pieces of advice in my book, Unison Parenting, is to re-introduce yourself to your child every six months. I developed this idea even before I became a parent. I learned it as I worked with church youth over a 30-year period. Noticing how children change, especially in the accelerated middle school and high school years, I realized how much we as parents can miss if we're not alert. I thought back to my own high school days;

We all know human nature and how people enjoy being praised. Yet, too often, we still withhold praise from our children. We also don't want to overpraise to the point it doesn't sound sincere anymore. As a parent, I felt like I really threaded the praise needle when I would catch my children doing something right and praise them. Sometimes they didn't realize they were doing something right or special until I called it out. Delicious were the moments when children could recei

Many parents know the basics of helping their child get to sleep, as they are similar to adult recommendations: · Keep consistent bedtimes and wake times. · Maintain consistent bedtime routines. · Don’t spend time on or in the bed except for sleeping. · Cool the temperature in the room. · Don’t expose your child’s eyes to the blue light of screens for two hours before bed. · No caffeine after dinner. But Seattle Children’s Hospital recommen

Kids with autism and sensory issues have a growing number of options for participation. Our culture is moving from autism and sensory awareness to inclusion. KultureCity® is playing an important role in this change. KultureCity, based in Alabama but with nationwide reach, offers a Sensory Inclusive® certification for businesses, organizations, and venues willing to serve those with autism and sensory processing challenges. Such challenges can also be experienced by individual

image In this second of my two-part blog series on your child's mental health, I again turn to Dr. Leslee Marcum of the Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center for how you can approach your child to discuss mental health concerns. Prepare with your parenting partner. Role-play the conversation. Besides giving you practice, it allows you to synchronize with your parenting partner(s) on the situation and how it should be addressed. This is a crucial conversation to have, as parenting

The number one concern of parents these days is their child's mental health, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center. But talking about mental health is new to most parents. Until recently, mental health topics were taboo. How can a parent change to make mental health part of family dialogue before it's too late? And importantly, how can parents agree on a consistent approach? This is the first of two blogs I'm planning on this topic. To start, parents can work tog

My preacher dad never minded disruptive children during sanctuary worship. He just talked louder. More importantly, he saw the kid noise as an inevitable by-product of a beneficial process: getting your kids used to church. I don't think he held any special research to back his claim, but my dad would say it takes ten years for a kid to acclimate to church. You can start the clock at two years old, five years old, or twelve years old. But it's going to take ten years for them

I’ve been discussing chores, allowances, and money management in my last few posts. Ideally, when your child wants more money, they will supplement their allowance by joining the workforce. But besides networking and connections, how can they secure a job with seemingly no experience? Help them build a strong resume. Let me give an example of how one of my children secured a job with a famous fast chicken restaurant. His only work experience was umpiring t-ball and baseball g

The internet is awash in short-form videos. From YouTube Shorts to TikTok to Instagram Reels, these highly entertaining, algorithm-driven forms of media are the current rage. But the lingering question floating around the medical community is, “Are these short-form videos harming our children?” While research is ongoing into the effects these videos have on our brains, research already shows that heavy consumption of online content harms focus and self-control. A recent rev

My oldest child wanted a mobile phone. We had a family policy to pay for a phone and its service plan when the child reached driving age. They were allowed to have a phone by sixth grade if they would pay for the phone and service on our account themselves. To help the child make the decision, I created a spreadsheet that mapped their income (allowances plus accumulated savings) to the expenses of a mobile phone. The results indicated the child could afford a phone and the se

How do you start teaching kids about money? Basically, allow them to have some money and let them make mistakes. From my last post, remember the purpose for separating chores from allowances (with one exception below). Chores are about living in a household together and being responsible to those you live with. A child should not get paid every time they do a chore; this is an unrealistic expectation about life. Establish a consequence for not doing chores. On the other hand,

Two things can both be true: Kids need chores. Kids need allowances. Kids need chores for their development. They must understand what it means to participate in a family, to run a household, and to get through things you don't really want to do. It builds their self-esteem, self-discipline, and ability to work with others as a team. Kids need allowances. OK, "need" is a strong word. But they do need experiences with money long before they become adults. They need to understa

Tired of hearing about how your toddler’s tablet habits are harmful, but don’t know what to do? Here are ten ways you can establish healthier routines. 1. Don’t quit cold turkey. Begin by shortening the tablet session or limiting it to a single, predictable time of day. For example, a thirty-minute window while you’re cooking dinner. 2. Make screens boring. Turn off autoplay, lower the brightness and volume levels, and avoid fast, flashy apps. When the tablet loses it

A fine line exists between validating your child's emotions and focusing primarily on your child's emotions. If you take my newsletter (and if you don't, sign up at UnisonFamily.com ), you'll recall my recent article on Gentle Parenting and how it fails your child. Emotional validation is a tactic or technique, while Gentle Parenting is an overall strategy, weak in setting limits and boundaries. I recommend a balance of love and limits found in Authoritative (not Authoritaria

In recent decades, but especially post-Covid, church attendance has declined. Instead of delving into the many reasons for it, I’ll just say: That’s a bad trend for families. In my decades of youth ministry, I witnessed how the arrival of children leads many families to church after years of absence. I also witnessed when children grow up and leave home, parents abandon the church again. Participating in a church home is a biblical principle. Jesus ordained the church’s creat

My two preschool boys had somehow developed a fear of ghosts. Telling them ghosts weren't real did not dissipate their fear, because somebody at preschool had actually seen a ghost. Parental take 2: We discussed what they knew about ghosts, and I confirmed they sounded scary. I wanted to reassure their safety, so I told them our security system came with a special ghost alarm. Once I set the system each evening, the ghosts could not come in secretly. If a ghost moved, our sys

A grandmother was telling me how her grandchildren started sharing what they were scared of. Everyone was surprised when her fourteen-year-old granddaughter revealed how terrified she was of being killed by a school shooter. The granddaughter said her dreams were often filled with scenes of school shootings. During the school day, she refuses to use the restroom at school, because it was a place where she would be trapped without escape if a shooter appeared. This girl sends

New research now shows that when toddlers spend too much time on screens, measurable changes occur in their brains that can lead to anxiety and learning difficulties in their teenage years. The 2025 study, based in Singapore, found a biological explanation for why limiting screen time in the first two years is crucial, according to its senior author, Assistant Professor Tan Ai Peng. The longitudinal study tracked 168 children for more than a decade, using brain scans at ages

A friend and I were discussing one of the trickiest parts of parenting: how to respond to various kinds of disobedience. Parents can fall into a trap of customizing their rules and behavior modification for every different circumstance. When the child does THIS, they counter with THAT, for every new behavior. But this can lead to a Cat-and-Mouse Game. This parenting sets up a contest or puzzle for the child: How can the child get what they want? How can they find a loophole i

When I was raising my kids, I read (and applied) a study showing the number one predictor of academic performance was whether a father asked at dinner about a child’s day at school. Let’s unpack the assumptions in that statement. First, it assumes the family eats dinner together. Families are typically on the run after school lets out. A parent’s job may get in the way of sitting down together for the evening meal, or kids’ extracurricular activities may interfere with dinner