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.

My closest connection to the Girl Scouts institution has been eating their cookies. Ironically, that is exactly where I have found my most recent parenting failure.

Between my personal record of failed New Year’s resolutions and years of a day job in behavior change, I no longer believe in New Year’s resolutions and I don’t believe in them for anyone else.

I’m here to bring balance and common-sense to the discipline debate, before we abandon the good parts of discipline in irrational fear we are emotionally harming our children.

You think you will remember. But you don’t. It all becomes hazy, the crisp edges of the present blurring as the present becomes the past, as time moves faster each year.

It’s actually tempting at times to believe we don’t matter. What a relief it would be to stop overanalyzing every decision and interaction. On the other hand, this is really hard emotional and physical work no matter what, and it’s demoralizing to feel like it’s for nothing.

Maybe we don’t even know anymore why we do it, year after year. It’s just what we do.

But what if we all worked together to take the bar down a few notches?

A widely circulated New York Times article trumpeted that yelling at our children means we are weak. It shamed parents. It misused research. I’m here to talk back to it, and to all the other voices making our jobs as parents harder every day.

I will tell you that based on my years working with dying, death, and grief in children, I almost always recommend that kids go to a funeral for a loved one. Here’s why and how.

In my years as a pediatric palliative care psychologist, I had hundreds of conversations about death with parents and children. It never got easier. I got better about knowing the words and what to expect, but I came to accept there was no way for this to feel like an “easy” or “good” conversation.

It’s not that I don’t think I should have corrected her behavior, it’s the way I FELT that bothered me: out of control and impulsive.

As cute as it is that his new slogan for everything is “I don’t love that,” it’s not cute when he throws a tantrum at the sight of his plate at every dinner.

I have felt a double whammy as a child psychologist acutely aware of the real trauma implications for these kids, and as a mom who can’t even bear the thought of forced separation from my children.

The best test of my progress in mindful parenting: “working” at home with a “sick” 3-year-old.

It is an emblem of our modern parenthood that these ways to parent would even elicit the word, “lazy.”

There is not a “right” or “wrong” way to grieve. My kids didn’t have to “act” sad to be sad. In fact, I think they were taking care of us on that day.

Being Mom is remembering all the things for all the people all the time. Being Mom is leaving our keys in the door and our wallet at the store.

Of course we are probably all dealing with overwhelming stress and high emotions at times, and may not fully think out what we impulsively type into the universe in the flash of a “post” click. But one of the comments I heard repeatedly was what makes a good group great is “assuming good intentions.”

10:07: Turn off my light and go to sleep.

11:22: Wake up to blood-curdling screams from the 3-year-old, who has instantaneously appeared in our room, like a horror film apparition.

In our world of news from remote towns that would never have reached the rest of us before the expanse of the internet, it can feel like threat and danger lurk on every street corner, no matter how insulated our particular street corner seems.