I have been flooded with requests from working moms for strategies to sustain their own well-being while trying to keep their children from slipping into depression and their careers afloat.

“I’m grateful to be working from home, but I’ve taken on way more of the housework and homeschooling than my husband has,” a client recently complained to me. “And I’m the one my kids come to to have their meltdowns. I’ve never been so exhausted. Or angry with my husband.”

Read More

Modern society has precious few rituals and rites of passage to mark kids’ journey through adolescence. The ceremonies and celebrations we do have are often in the spring. Performances and proms, championships and final projects all showcase growth and learning and accomplishment. And, of course, there is graduation.Our children’s sadness and frustration—indeed their loss—has been hard for us to witness. Here are some things that we parents can do.

Read more

People keep asking me for “best practices” for sheltering-in-place. My honest answer: We don’t know what the best practices are. We’ve never been through this before. We’re all just making it up as we go along. We’re all just doing the best that we can.In that spirit, I offer this video, an interview with Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan about parenting during this global pandemic. You’ll see in the Facebook comments that I’m already revising my advice as we learn more and figure this thing out. Once we know better, we can do better.

Read more

Are you following along with our daily routine make-over? (In other words: Are you trying to keep everything from going to hell in a handbasket?)

Most of us are feeling like our routines have all been upended by the school closures and by working at home. But this could be an amazing opportunity to establish new happiness habits, and to extinguish the habits we have that detract from our wellbeing. This is an on-going series about how to do that (in less than 5 minutes a day). 

Read more

Here are three ways to cope while sheltering in place.

As our kids figure out how to learn online, we can retool in our families, too. Here are three practical ways families can cope—and even thrive—despite school closures, event cancellations, and a whole lot more time at home with the kids.

Read more

Teens are not made for isolation, which makes COVID-19 especially hard on them. Here’s how to help your teenager to see the bigger picture.

Parents everywhere are struggling to get their teenagers and college students to “shelter-in-place.” Teens are not made for isolation, which makes COVID-19 especially hard on them—and it makes them difficult to control.

Read more