It seems like every morning, I'm being recommended readings on children, youth and anxiety. And I guess I'm not surprised to see so much research now about the links between smartphone use, anxiety and depression in our youth. My daughter (and avid smartphone aficionado) and I have good breakfast conversations about the other factors that may be a part of this phenomenon (standardized testing, parents' technology use, media influences, etc.) but I think we need at least to ex

A father I was chatting with recently pointed out the irony of my web-based-recommendation that we unplug and go outside more. I get it. The screens in front of us are important, critical tools in how we engage professionally, economically, civically. That's true and it's not changing. But as more and more research points us to the ways in which those same tools are interfering with who we want to be and the relationships we want to maintain, we need to talk about when, how a

It seems like every morning, I'm being recommended readings on children, youth and anxiety. And I guess I'm not surprised to see so much research now about the links between smartphone use, anxiety and depression in our youth. My daughter (and avid smartphone aficionado) and I have good breakfast conversations about the other factors that may be a part of this phenomenon (standardized testing, parents' technology use, media influences, etc.) but I think we need at least to ex

Stop what you’re doing right now. Look around. Count the number of digital screens around you. There’s the one right in front of you. Your phone. Your TV. Your partner’s phone. Your iPad. Your desktop computer. Our lives are filled with screens, big and small. While we may remember the days before the inundation of digital stimuli, our children have only known a world in which digital entertainment is as close as mom or dad’s pocket. Screen time is a constant temptation for p

It seems like every morning, I'm being recommended readings on children, youth and anxiety. And I guess I'm not surprised to see so much research now about the links between smartphone use, anxiety and depression in our youth. My daughter (and avid smartphone aficionado) and I have good breakfast conversations about the other factors that may be a part of this phenomenon (standardized testing, parents' technology use, media influences, etc.) but I think we need at least to ex

A father I was chatting with recently pointed out the irony of my web-based-recommendation that we unplug and go outside more. I get it. The screens in front of us are important, critical tools in how we engage professionally, economically, civically. That's true and it's not changing. But as more and more research points us to the ways in which those same tools are interfering with who we want to be and the relationships we want to maintain, we need to talk about when, how a

It seems like every morning, I'm being recommended readings on children, youth and anxiety. And I guess I'm not surprised to see so much research now about the links between smartphone use, anxiety and depression in our youth. My daughter (and avid smartphone aficionado) and I have good breakfast conversations about the other factors that may be a part of this phenomenon (standardized testing, parents' technology use, media influences, etc.) but I think we need at least to ex

For even the most stoic of us, the news cycle seems more challenging then ever. It challenges our understanding of leadership. It challenges our faith in peace and humanitarian balance across the globe. It challenges our identities as citizens of individual countries, and our accountability as stewards of the earth. Your children need to understand the world in which they live. Younger children need to feel like the world is a predictable place (at least in things like physic

It is the seventh week of the new year, and the US today endures the eighth school shooting in as many weeks, in a country that buries over a thousand children every year to gun violence. While Montessorians look forward to a peaceful future, in which no one's children are hurt at school, in which no one's children grow up to find solace in a gun, until that day, it falls to each of us to help comfort and protect the children in our care in the meantime. First, tend to your o

Stop what you’re doing right now. Look around. Count the number of digital screens around you. There’s the one right in front of you. Your phone. Your TV. Your partner’s phone. Your iPad. Your desktop computer. Our lives are filled with screens, big and small. While we may remember the days before the inundation of digital stimuli, our children have only known a world in which digital entertainment is as close as mom or dad’s pocket. Screen time is a constant temptation for p