The bottom line is if we want to raise children who feel autonomous in the world – a strong sense of self and self-worth, living by their values – we need to be less controlling. When we control less, our children experience more freedom to explore the why of behaviors, internalizing the purpose and meaning of doing what we want them to (like be on time) instead of learning to do a behavior just to please us or avoid punishment.

In regular person language, “supporting autonomy” means raising our children to understand their authentic selves, including developing self-respect, self-worth, behaving by values, the ability to self-govern, and feeling a sense of volition, or control over choices and actions. The goal is to parent without oppressing our child’s authentic sense of self. Sounds good, right? But how does it work?

Be assured that the only parenting books to make this list include relatable, compassionate, non-judgmental, thoughtful, useful, practical, and -- super important to me – science-backed guidance.

Let’s add some calm, confidence, and reason back into our angst by answering these questions: 1. What do we really know from parenting science? 2. How do we spot the “fake parenting news?” 3. What’s true for my child and family?

This year, our brains, which unfortunately work like magnets for the negative input (fear, worries, the one bad interaction in an otherwise good day) are likely heavily focusing on dire and doom. “Winter Is Coming” has never felt so viscerally full of dread. Exactly all of this builds the case for why our brains need gratitude this Thanksgiving 2020 more than ever. It feels so hard because we need it so much. To persuade you, I offer a breakdown of the science of gratitude and strategies to make it simple. We have enough hard right now, but trust me, this can be really easy with big benefits to get us through the next few months.

 A reward system has dug my kids out of many a behavioral rut in our almost decade of parenting. That’s why reading the recent warnings about using rewards with children has simply confused me. I looked more deeply into what was going on, and I found the exact problem I set out to take on as the Art and Science of Mom – a well-intentioned misunderstanding of research findings.

The careful and artful application of behavior plans can accomplish even more than making our lives easier. It helps teach our children to master important skills for life, building their confidence that they can in fact do something that seemed difficult or overwhelming.

Allowance is just one more parenting area where I have great aspirations, but the execution has lagged far behind. After doing the research, I concluded it’s time to change that. Now.  

The science is clear: chores have huge benefits for kids. So how do we bridge this gap between what we know is best for our kids and doing it?

COVID-19 has changed everything. We can’t fix this. We can’t stop our children’s worlds from being flipped upside down. We have to just sit next to them while they cry and rage, without a way to make it better. This may be the best thing to happen to parenting in a long time. We are being forced into a situation to host our children through the process of building resilience.

Now is the perfect time for kids to be bored, and for them to bother us that they’re bored. There are great reasons for us to encourage and celebrate this boredom so we no longer have to carry that burden of figuring out “what to do.”

Feeding our children sounds as basic and instinctual to parenting as loving them. But from the often surprising struggles with breastfeeding, to the mixed messages around how to be “healthy,” feeding our children has become another land mine of parenting anxiety. Balancing experts and science with reality, I offer ways we can all nurture our children’s bodies without losing our minds.

So what does it take as parents to raise our children to not only authentically care about the world outside of themselves, but also feel empowered to act on it? I share what scientists know about empathy, and common-sense ways we can nurture our children to translate that empathy into action.

Data suggests we have gone backwards as parents, and are fostering financial independence less than we used to. So what do we actually DO? It’s simple: Make our kids earn money, and give away money.