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Back-to-school articles

Best Back-to-School Articles for Parents: 2024

Back-to-school is always a time when parents and teachers revisit what is important for children and how to best support their positive development. This popular list of back-to-school articles, started in 2012, has been updated for the 2024-25 school year. Most articles bring you the latest thinking and research on […]

Compass-Inspired
positive parenting

Positive Parenting: Powerful Ways to Raise Healthy Kids

The term positive parenting has become more widespread as the practice of parenting becomes influenced by research in the new scientific field of positive psychology. What is positive parenting? Positive parenting focuses on parenting practices that nurture the development of children’s core internal strengths. Rather than focusing on kids’ weaknesses […]

Compass-Inspired
Role models influence youth

How Role Models Influence Youth Strategies for Success

As teenagers grow to young adulthood, who are their role models? Who do they emulate? Why? One of the most popular articles at Roots of Action is What is a Role Model? Five Qualities that Matter to Teens. Collected from my research on highly successfully, civically-engaged young people, it describes […]

Resourcefulness
Kindness: How You Can Teach Children to Care for Others, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell, PhD

Kindness: How You Can Teach Children to Care for Others

Martin Richard lost his life when the second of two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. This 8-year-old boy believed in peace and kindness, values he proudly displayed on a poster he made at school. How do we honor Martin’s wish for a more […]

Empathy
Science Experiments for Kids: Making Learning Fun, by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Science Experiments for Kids: Making Learning Fun

If you’re looking for creative science experiments for kids, we’ve got some great resources for you! Whether or not you have a budding ecologist, neuroscientist, or engineer, all children gain important abilities when parents support and encourage doing at-home, easy science experiments. For kids of all ages, the benefits are […]

Resourcefulness
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
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
Is Your Child Prepared for Lifelong Learning? by Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD

Is Your Child Prepared for Lifelong Learning?

Lifelong learning is a buzzword in 21st century education. And for good reason. Becoming a seeker of lifelong learning is critical in today’s fast-changing world. Learning is not only a matter of absorbing information but a process of developing many other internal skills, like curiosity, perseverance, and the ability to […]

Curiosity