John's Articles
‘Gentle Parenting’ Appeals to Emotion, Not Reason
Posted 2 days ago
Q: My husband and I recently visited our son’s family. We live two thousand miles apart and with the pandemic and all, hadn’t seen one another in several years. We were appalled to...
Read MoreChild Mental Health Therapy: Any Proof It Does Any Good?
Posted on 8/30/2022
In a 6 – 3 decision, the Killingly, CT, school board recently said “no” to establishing a mental health center at its high school. I imagine most folks, upon hearing that, would be dismayed,...
Read More'Parenting' vs. Child-Rearing
Posted on 8/23/2022
“The goal of parenting is not to control, coerce or punish children into being ‘good.’ The goal of parenting is to grow children who can feel all of their feelings and become empathic...
Read MoreWhy Parenting Slot Machine Theory Is Wrong
Posted on 7/27/2022
Some parents, I have discovered, believe in the parenting slot machine theory. They hold fast to the notion that some parents are simply lucky, meaning that chance, and chance alone, determines...
Read More'Equal' vs. 'Fair'
Posted on 7/19/2022
Q: How can I explain to my kids, ages 6 and 9, that “fair” and “equally” are not the same. They complain constantly that I’m not fair. What they mean is I don’t treat them the same. A: ...
Read MoreResearch on Ultrasounds Is Murky
Posted on 7/5/2022
Correlation does not prove cause, drummed my grad school statistics professor. For example, a rise in the rate of American children who regularly consume lox and a concurrent rise in Type 1...
Read MoreThe Ideal Time Spacing Between Children
Posted on 6/14/2022
Q: My husband and I have one child, age two. We’d like to have at least one more. What is the optimal spacing between children? A: Research puts ideal sibling spacing at three to four years....
Read MoreToday’s Kids Have No Idea What They’re Missing
Posted on 5/24/2022
I grew up in the “You’re Making a Mountain of a Molehill” Era, also known as the Age of “Children Are Starving in (fill in the blank with some remote place)," and by golly, I’m a better person for...
Read MoreThe Age of Parenting Enlightenment
Posted on 4/26/2022
America entered what I call the Age of Parenting Enlightenment around 1970. That was the year, or thereabouts, when parents stopped listening to their elders when it came to childrearing matters...
Read MoreKids Need Parents Who Are Authentic Adults
Posted on 3/22/2022
The contemporary parenting ideal consists of equal parts fixer, go-fer, and friend, which is why, when it is encountered in the flesh by someone of my ancient age, the new definition of a “good...
Read MoreMoving From ‘Gentle Parenting’ to ‘Insistent Parenting’
Posted on 12/7/2021
My previous column concerned so-called “gentle parenting,” which is naught but a retreading of the parenting propaganda that has gushed relentlessly from the mental health professional community...
Read MoreNo New Tricks To Raising Kids
Posted on 11/30/2021
What is “gentle parenting”? It did not take much investigation for me to conclude that it is merely a rebranding of the same old, same old parenting babble America’s mental health establishment...
Read MoreThe Problem With ‘I Feel Your Pain'
Posted on 11/23/2021
“I feel your pain” passes as a virtue, but it is anything but. However well-intentioned, it is the gist of codependency. When someone else is in a state of emotional pain, it is one...
Read MoreFixing Our 'Parent-View'
Posted on 9/28/2021
Most of the problems today’s parents are experiencing in the course of raising children are due to a faulty “parent-view.” Just as one’s worldview consists of attitudes, values, and expectations...
Read MoreWhy? Because I Said So
Posted on 9/22/2021
When I was a graduate student, one of the parenting memes then emerging from within the mental health professional community had it that “children deserved explanations.” The flip side of that...
Read MoreHow To Help Your Child Get More Grit
Posted on 9/7/2021
It’s all over the web, that “grit” thing. Seems like every day, I get some promo for a webinar on how to get more grit, project more grit, or get in touch with your inner grit. So, allow me to...
Read MoreWith Parenting Young Adult Children, Less Is More
Posted on 8/3/2021
It seems to be generally true that as one gets older, the habit of reminiscing develops. Looking back seems to be a function of getting closer to the final curtain. The closer the latter, the more...
Read MoreHow To Stop Kids From Living Out Soap Operas
Posted on 7/6/2021
Will my profession, psychology, ever get it? Beginning in the 1960s, the psychological mainstream asserted that nearly all child mental health problems were caused by parents who...
Read MoreKids Don’t Need Curing, They Need Correcting
Posted on 5/18/2021
No small number of today’s parents view their children through psychological lenses, especially when it comes to misbehavior. Instead of regarding a given misbehavior as simply an error that needs...
Read MoreThe Futility of Reasoning With Children
Posted on 5/4/2021
Many if not most if not almost all of today’s parents believe in magic words. They do so because the mental health professional community has for fifty years or so told them that children can be...
Read MoreBe the Best Father by Being the Best Husband You Can Be
Posted on 4/27/2021
Guys! Guys! Look, your wives, bless their hearts, are having enough trouble putting their children and priorities into proper perspective without you adding to the muddle. Keep it straight,...
Read MoreThe Drama of a Child's Feelings
Posted on 4/20/2021
One of the more unfortunate consequences of relying on advice from mental health “experts” concerning parenting matters has been a one-dimensional understanding of child discipline. Because of the...
Read MoreMom, Stop Checking Kid’s Homework
Posted on 4/6/2021
Many times have I warned parents of the pitfalls of micromanaging their children’s academic responsibilities lest said children deduce that the responsibilities in question are not theirs at all...
Read MoreMicromanagers Are Their Own Worst Enemies
Posted on 3/30/2021
To most folks, micromanagement has to do with tasks or performance. The micromanaging parent, for example, is generally thought of as one who hovers over a child’s homework or academics in...
Read MoreWhat Is COVID Parenting?
Posted on 3/2/2021
What, pray tell, is COVID parenting? I need to know because over the past few months, several journalists have asked if I have any COVID-parenting suggestions. I went online and, sure enough, a...
Read MoreThe More You Try To Make Child Happy, the More Unhappy They Will Be
Posted on 1/19/2021
Making children happy became a parenting goal in the early 1970s. The paradox, as everyone with a modicum of commonsense knows, is that the more effort parents put into making a child happy, the...
Read MoreAfter 45 Years, Still Advocating for Old-Fashioned Parenting
Posted on 1/12/2021
2021 marks the forty-fifth year I’ve been writing this column. I’ve been told it is the longest-running syndicated column written continuously by one author. That takes “Dear Abby” out of...
Read MoreToday’s Kids Suffer a Lack of Common Sense in Their Lives
Posted on 12/22/2020
A journalist asks, “What is the biggest challenge facing today’s children?” “The real world,” I said. For the last fifty years or so, good parenting has been defined...
Read More'Hand in Hand' Parenting is Pure Psychobabble
Posted on 12/8/2020
“Hand in Hand” parenting is the latest iteration of progressive (nouveau, unverified) childrearing. I became aware of HIH several weeks ago, courtesy of a grandmother whose daughter and son-in-law...
Read MoreDon't Be Afraid of Your Children
Posted on 12/1/2020
“Are you afraid of your child/children?” I query folks who testify to children who frequently engage in flagrant antisocial behavior – tantrums, brazen disrespect, and belligerent disobedience...
Read MoreParents Can Recover From Not Getting Over the 'Hump of Parenting'
Posted on 10/20/2020
Q: In a recent column, you identified toddlerhood as “the hump of parenting.” As a grandmother who managed to raise five kids who were out of the house in their early twenties and are responsible...
Read MoreDon't Ask Them, Tell Them
Posted on 9/8/2020
A grandmother in Arkansas says her adult children have great difficulty telling their children what to do. They turn instructions – more accurately, what they think are instructions – into...
Read MoreWhere We All Went Wrong
Posted on 8/25/2020
My profession, psychology, began demonizing traditional childrearing in the late 1960s. I was in graduate school at the time and on fire for the promise that the proper use of psychological...
Read MoreForgive Today's Parents, for They Know Not What They Do
Posted on 7/28/2020
I recently received a paean to my generation – the so-called “boomers” – that has been circulating on the Internet for some time now. It recalls and celebrates the freedom we enjoyed as children...
Read MoreAre Parents Responsible for the How Their Kids Turn Out?
Posted on 7/7/2020
Are parents responsible for the sort of people their children become? That’s this week’s question, and the answer is no, albeit equivocally. Several parents have recently written me...
Read MoreIs There a Child and Teen Mental Health Crisis?
Posted on 6/30/2020
I have long maintained that the significant per-capita increase in child and adolescent mental health problems since the 1960s – a ten-fold increase in suicide, for example – is due to the...
Read MoreAppreciate the Odd Among Us
Posted on 5/26/2020
I have come up with a new psychological diagnosis, one that I won’t, however, be submitting for approval to the powers that be: simply, odd. My “odd” is to be distinguished from ODD, the acronym...
Read MoreKeep It Simple With Your Kids During Quarantine
Posted on 4/14/2020
One website is titled “How to Cope with Kids During Coronavirus.” Another, featuring a staged photo of an obviously frazzled mom with a toddler on her lap, tells the reader that “Parents are...
Read MoreThe Problem With 'Parenting'
Posted on 4/7/2020
I am convinced that “parenting” causes otherwise rational people – people whose thought processes are not typically driven by emotion – to lose their minds. If that is not the case, then why, ever...
Read MoreKeep Calm and Carry On
Posted on 3/24/2020
Vital to a child’s sense of well-being are parents who act competent to provide adequate provision and protection under any and all circumstances. I often refer to that obligation...
Read MoreProper Discipline of a Child Is an Act of Love for One’s Neighbor
Posted on 3/10/2020
I’ve learned a new word! My daughter informs me that according to some mothers I am guilty of “mom-shaming” and should be ashamed of myself. I am an unashamed mom-shamer because I happen to...
Read MoreWhen It Comes to Phases, Don't Make Mountains out of Molehills
Posted on 2/25/2020
Q: Our daughter, our first and only, is just short of three-and-one-half. She has recently started coming into our room in the middle of the night and making a request of one sort or another. She...
Read MoreThe Biggest Mistakes Parents Make (and How to Stop Making Them!) - Part 2
Posted on 2/11/2020
This is the second in a series of three columns on the Biggest Mistakes Parents Make (and How to Stop Making Them!). Last week, I identified giving children explanations for parental instructions,...
Read MoreThe Biggest Mistakes Parents Make (and How to Stop Making Them!) - Part 1
Posted on 2/4/2020
One of the “secrets” to a happy, healthy emotional life is to identify one’s bad, nonproductive habits and replace them with habits – slowly built – that are functional. That same principle is of...
Read MoreCommon Sense Comes From Heart, Not Head
Posted on 1/28/2020
Q: I’m new to reading you, but it appears that you don’t have much in common with other psychologists. You don’t agree much with their approach to children and parenting. Correct? A: ...
Read MorePunishing Children for Bad Behavior Is Not Bad Parenting
Posted on 1/7/2020
This is the last (for a while, anyway) of three columns in which I take on the absurd notion that punishing children for bad behavior is bad parenting. There is commonsense and there is nonsense...
Read MorePunishment Does Not Cause Mental Health Issues
Posted on 12/31/2019
This is the second in a series on “parent-babble,” as in the same-old, same-old nonsense the mental health industry has been passing off as sound parenting advice since the late 1960s. ...
Read MoreMindful Parenting Is Nothing More Than Postmodern Psychobabble
Posted on 12/24/2019
I am often asked how long I intend to keep this up, as in writing this column, writing books, and speaking on childrearing and family matters. My answer: As long as they keep it up; “it” being the...
Read MoreMr. Rogers Epitomized Adult Who Wants to Be Friend to Children
Posted on 12/17/2019
With the release of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” inquiring minds want to know: What did I think of Mr. Rogers? I never met the man, but in the early days of my...
Read More"The Doctor" Is the Tool Every Parent Needs
Posted on 10/15/2019
I have good news for parents: You do not need more than a few tools in your disciplinary tool-bag. One especially valuable tool, one that belongs in every modern home, is the “Doctor.” The Doctor...
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