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Parenting

Negativity and Your Child's Brain: How to Help Kids Stay Positive, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Negativity and Your Child’s Brain: How to Help Kids Stay Positive

How does negativity affect your child’s healthy development? It’s likely no surprise to learn that all of us have inner voices, private conversations we have with ourselves. Neuroscientists have discovered that those voices are naturally more negative than positive in tone. Unfortunately, children’s inner voices are particularly negative, usually driven […]

Self-Awareness
50 Gifts that Grow Happy Kids, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

50 Gifts That Grow Happy Kids

Don’t you love the excitement an unexpected gift brings to a child? I remember the way my daughter eagerly anticipated the arrival of Santa Claus and how each gift brought joy to her face. Some toys or stuffed animals became favorites for many years to come. But most gifts brought […]

Compass-Inspired
Self-Awareness in a World of Constant Chatter, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Self-Awareness in a World of Constant Chatter

Technology and self-awareness can seem incompatible. In fact, mobile devices often prevent us from seeing what’s right before our eyes. YouTube is filled with hilarious and sometimes scary videos of people unexpectedly falling into water fountains, walking into walls, or tripping off curbs. On a recent trip to the shopping […]

Self-Awareness
Middle School: When Coming-of-Age Stories Begin, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Middle School: When Coming-of-Age Stories Begin

Middle school is often linked to that awkward stage of development when young people start to question their confidence and abilities. This occurs as they gain awareness of the world around them and as they compare themselves to friends and classmates. Middle school is also a time of accelerated learning […]

Self-Awareness
Raffi: Advocate for Children, Earth and Music, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Raffi: Advocate for Children, Earth and Music

Many of our cherished memories are tied to childhood and music. Today, neuroscience is beginning to understand how music heals the body, influences our emotions, sparks creativity, and even connects us with nature. From infancy onward, I tried to fill my daughter’s life with melody – from classical to folk […]

Compass-Inspired
Psychology Today Articles: 10 Essential Reads for Parents, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Top Psychology Today Articles for Parents

Some of the best psychologists and educators in the world author Psychology Today articles in a variety of fields, including child development, parenting, autism, happiness, intelligence, and resilience. In the same spirit that I publish and update my list of the Best Back-to-School Articles for Parents in late summer, this […]

Compass-Inspired
Teaching Children Perseverance and the Value of Work, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Teaching Children Perseverance and the Value of Work

America Rice, age 11, recently expressed her views about hard work and perseverance: “If you want something,” she said, “you have to earn it. Everything is not going to come to you just when you want it.” How do children grow up to think and feel like America Rice? How […]

Resilience
Why Risk-Taking May Increase Teen Happiness, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Why Risk-Taking May Increase Teen Happiness

One of the first things you might associate with teenagers is their risk-taking behavior. And most of the time, those associations are negative. Right? That’s because we are deluged with stories of troubled youth whose risk-taking actions got out of hand —sometimes with tragic results. But what if there was […]

Resilience
All Children Have Special Needs, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

All Children Have Special Needs

Do you parent, teach, or mentor a child with special needs? Of course you do! As you know, the term special needs is most often associated with disabilities. It usually refers to a child who needs special assistance or accommodations for medical, psychological, or learning deficits. But have we allowed […]

Self-Awareness