Three weeks into summer, you start to notice things. The kid who has eight school friends suddenly does not have anyone to text. The one who is great at recess looks lost at the neighborhood pool. The bubbly one comes home from a playdate quiet, and you can tell something happened but you cannot get it out of them. This is the part of summer no one warns you about. School ends, and so does a lot of the structure that holds your kid’s friendships together. Recess. Lunch tables

Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching teens how to do everyday things in public. I do not think it was on purpose. A lot of parents assumed school would handle the small stuff. Or that kids would just pick it up from watching us. But the way teens move through the world has shifted. They text instead of call. They scroll instead of ask. They wait for someone else to handle the awkward moment. So when a teen walks up to a hostess stand and freezes, or holds out a card w

Family travel is hard. I am not going to pretend otherwise. You are hauling humans through airports, parking lots, hotel hallways, and rest stop bathrooms. Everyone is tired. Someone is always hungry. Someone always has to pee at the worst possible moment. So before we even get into travel manners for kids, let me say this. I am not here to tell you your kid needs to be perfect. They are not going to be. They are going to whine. They are going to drop crackers on the plane. T

I grew up in Florida. The beach is my happy place. The pool is my second happy place. If there is water, sun, and a good chair in the shade, I am home. Which means I have seen things. Last summer I was on a trip and a group of kids no older than fourteen were at the pool with no adult in sight. They had a Bluetooth speaker going. They were loud and splashing everyone and everything. They were cursing loud enough that the older couple two chairs down packed up their things and

Most people get Memorial Day wrong. Not because they mean to. Not because they do not care. But because no one ever taught them the difference, and the difference matters. Every year, my inbox starts filling up with cheerful “Happy Memorial Day!” messages. Sale emails plastered with American flags. Beach photos with red, white, and blue captions. And while I know every single one of those messages comes from a kind place, none of them quite fit the day they are honoring. So t

If you have been thinking, “My kid really needs help with social skills next year,” you are not the only one. I am hearing this from parents in my DMs every single week right now. Teachers are telling me the same thing in private. So are school administrators. The kids are struggling, and everyone can see it. May and June are the planning windows. Whether you homeschool, send your child to private school, are eyeing a curriculum change for your classroom, or are an administra

A few years ago, I had a fifth grader join my class mid-year. Let’s call her Maya. Her family had just moved from another state, and she walked in on a Tuesday morning in February, which is possibly the worst time to join a new class. Friendships were already set. Lunch tables were already claimed. She sat at her desk that first week and barely spoke to anyone. Her mom emailed me by Friday. She was worried Maya was depressed. She had stopped eating breakfast. She said her sto

Every May 4th, the internet becomes one giant Star Wars meme. “May the 4th be with you” rolls through every feed, every group chat, every coffee shop whiteboard. And I love it. Because underneath the lightsabers and the Baby Yoda GIFs, there is actually something surprisingly relevant about the Jedi way of life. I come by my love for Star Wars honestly. My dad is a lifelong fan, the kind who can quote every Yoda line and still tears up at the end of Return of the Jedi. Growin

Kids Don’t Need Perfection—They Need Practice. Spring has a way of making us want to reset things. We clean closets. Open the windows. Reorganize spaces that have gotten a little messy over the winter. But spring is also a great time to reset something else: Social habits. Kids, like all of us, can fall into habits that don’t always serve them well socially. These habits often develop slowly and quietly over time. Sometimes they come from frustration, sometimes from imitation