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04/11/2026

Sometimes, grieving people need to take a break from their grief. While it’s important to work through the feelings and pain of loss, they can become overwhelming at times. This is especially true for kids, who don’t have the capacity that adults do to handle lots of emotional pain all at once.

When a loved one dies, children may feel like nothing is fun or worth doing anymore. It’s common for kids to retreat from hobbies, extracurriculars, or social events they used to enjoy. Over time, this can lead to feelings of depression, which makes it even harder for a child to get out and enjoy life. A vicious cycle can form where the longer a child self-isolates, the worse they feel.

We can support children in taking breaks from their grief by setting aside time each week for activities that are fun, social, or creative. Tasks that give you a sense of accomplishment when you finish them are great, too. Playdates with friends, a family board game or craft night, gardening, or committing to visiting a new place in your town each week are all ways to help your child stay socially connected even when it feels hard to do.

04/05/2026

The “age 13” limit for social media is a legal one rather than a developmental one. So parents need to look for signs that their child is ready for social media. One big factor is being able to consider cause and effect.

As adults, we are painfully aware that anything we put on the internet is pretty much there forever. We’re able to think abstractly and play out different possibilities in our heads, and we know that our actions have consequences. Embarrassing selfies or flame wars with strangers in a Facebook group doesn’t just exist in a vacuum: they could come back to haunt us in a job interview someday.

When children are young, they tend to live in the here-and-now, and use the information they have in a given moment to make decisions. It is harder for them to play out hypothetical situations in their minds, especially when those things could occur far off in the future. It’s totally normal and healthy for kids to think this way, but it makes it harder to appreciate some of the risks of social media.

Some kids develop their abstract thinking abilities earlier than others. If your child is able to consider problems from different angles, plan ahead for different scenarios, and improvise solutions to problems, she’s likely reached this point in her development. If you are considering allowing your child to get on social media, check in about her ability to visualize different situations she might encounter online. If she’s able to understand cause and effect and anticipate possible issues, it will be easier to make safe choices!

04/04/2026

Dealing with grief as a child is difficult, but there are coping skills you can equip them with to get through. For example, reading a story together is a great way to gently introduce the subject of grief and loss to your child. Often, kids don’t have a strong understanding of death before it personally affects them. As hard as it is for adults to cope with a loss, it can be even tougher for children who aren’t sure what exactly is happening. Books about grief provide age-appropriate information that isn’t too overwhelming.

Young children may worry about what has happened to their loved one who died: Are they in pain? Are they scared? Older kids may worry about the thoughts and feelings they’re having in response to grief, and whether or not they’re normal. Children of any age may feel intense guilt about how they treated their loved one, and may even wonder if they somehow did something to cause the death.
When children are better informed, they’re less likely to struggle with worries like these. Seeing how characters grieve in stories gives children examples of the many ways grief can look and feel. This can reassure children that no matter how they respond to grief, there is no wrong way to feel.

03/29/2026

When I think about kids struggling with dark intrusive thoughts, a quote from famous psychiatrist Dan Siegel comes to mind: “Name it to tame it.” Dr. Siegel came up with this phrase, and it’s since been adopted by many therapists to describe a simple process that makes strong feelings more bearable. “Name it to tame it” is exactly what it sounds like. Often, the simple act of labeling our thoughts and feelings as we have them can make them feel better. This is because naming something requires us to take a step back and go into observing mode, rather than being totally absorbed and overwhelmed by our feelings.

You can help your child practice saying one of these phrases (or something similar) the next time an intrusive thought strikes:
💬“My brain is giving me one of those garbage thoughts again.”
💬“I’m having an intrusive thought right now.”
💬“This seems like one of those thoughts I don’t need to listen to.”

Once the thought has been named, don’t dwell! We can just let the thought pass by. The more a child resists having intrusive thoughts, the more likely they are to pop up again. It may sound counterintuitive, but accepting intrusive thoughts can actually reduce how often they happen. By naming the dark thought and moving on, your child is teaching herself that they’re nothing to be afraid of.

03/28/2026

Even though it’s super common, it’s undeniably risky for kids’ mental health and safety to have unrestricted social media access. But you may be surprised to learn that I think social media—when used in moderation—can be beneficial to kids’ mental health.

🎨 First, social media can be an amazing creative outlet for kids. Many of my child clients primarily use social media to share fanfiction and fan art that they’ve created based on their favorite TV shows. Aspiring makeup artists, photographers, and fashion designers can also find an outlet for their passion online. I could write a whole blog post on the possible mental health benefits of this kind of creative expression. It’s meaningful, positive social interaction that helps kids build real-life skills. Especially during times when kids are stuck at home, positive and creative experiences like these can reduce their risk of depression.

🌍 Second, social media can open a child’s eyes to a bigger, more diverse world. If you live in an area where everybody looks the same, this is an opportunity to provide racial windows for your child that give her a peek into another culture or way of life. Did you know there’s a big Indigenous and Native American community on TikTok performing dances and teaching about their culture? I didn’t until this year, and now I love watching their content.

♿ Finally, social media is a godsend for anyone living with a disability or chronic illness. A child who lives with a medical condition may be the only person at their school with that diagnosis. However, social media can connect him to tons of other people who get exactly what he’s going through. It can be a source of moral support, positive role models, and even advice. Being different can be isolating, and social media can make a child feel less alone.

03/25/2026

Have you ever knocked on wood to keep something bad from happening? Or worn your “lucky shirt” on game day to help your team win? If so, you’ve experienced magical thinking. Magical thinking is the belief that our private thoughts and behaviors influence what happens in the outside world.
Magical thinking is really common in children, especially younger kids. It’s usually most noticeable from the toddler years through about age 7. If you think back to your own childhood, you’ll probably discover magical thinking everywhere: cootie shots, lucky charms, and “step on a crack, break your mama’s back” are all examples of magical thinking that are fun for kids.

However, there can be a dark side to magical thinking, too. Children often believe that their thoughts can cause things to happen in the world around them. If a child worries their thoughts are responsible for something bad happening, this can cause terrible fear and guilt. It’s easy to imagine how a child who gets intrusive thoughts about violence or crime could begin to worry about accidentally hurting others.
Help your child understand that having bad thoughts does not make you a bad person. It’s our actions and choices—not our thoughts and feelings—that help us to be “good people.” Next, reassure your child that thinking angry or scary thoughts about a person can’t hurt them or cause something bad to happen. Even if they feel bad to us, thoughts are not that powerful.

03/22/2026

We have all heard horror stories about internet predators at this point. Fear-mongering news stories aside, it’s absolutely true that there are people out there who try to victimize kids online. Even if you’re in a “child-friendly” corner of the internet, or talking to someone who appears to be a fellow teen, you never really know who you’re dealing with.

Even though most kids are very aware of “stranger danger”, predators know what to say and do to earn trust. This is called “grooming”, and it lowers a child’s defenses and makes them more vulnerable to being financially or sexually exploited. Because being online feels so anonymous, it’s really easy to accidentally overshare personal information. Younger children tend to be impulsive, and they have a hard time considering the long-term consequences of their decisions. This can (incorrectly) make it feel less dangerous to send photos through apps like Snapchat, where they’re seemingly only available for a short period of time.

03/21/2026

Things always feel scarier when we don’t understand them. Teaching children about intrusive thoughts takes away some of their power. When you tell children that many people have these bad thoughts and they aren’t alone, you alleviate their shame. Reducing fear and shame not only helps your child feel better; it can also reduce her intrusive thoughts over time.

Try explaining this to your child: “Our brains are always thinking, and always looking for ways to keep us safe.” Giving us these “bad thoughts” is sort of like the brain showing us a flashing danger sign. The only problem is, the brain isn’t always right! Sometimes, the more we try to ignore these bad thoughts, the more our brain pushes the thoughts back. These thoughts can be really weird, or scary, or even be about things we’d never want to do in real life. As weird as they seem, most people have them sometimes and they are totally normal.

03/15/2026

Imagine your 13-year-old past self for a moment. Think about how important your friends’ approval was to you. Remember how awful it felt when someone made a snarky comment about you? Multiply that by ten, one hundred, even a thousand, and that’s what tweens and teens are exposed to on social media.

Our brains were not designed to deal with social acceptance or rejection on such a large scale. Getting “likes” activates the pleasure centers of the brain and can become addictive. Kids on social media aren’t just comparing themselves to other students at school, but to professionally styled, heavily filtered influencers on TikTok and Instagram. This can really do a number on a child’s self-esteem. Research shows that depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts are all more common among teens who frequently use social media.

03/14/2026

There’s a lot you can do as a parent to support a child struggling with intrusive thoughts. You hold a powerful role in your child’s life. Your child looks to you as a guide to decide how she should think and feel about things, so your responses carry a lot of weight. By responding calmly and compassionately, you can help your child self-soothe and take the power away from overly dark or negative thoughts. You can help teens and children understand that their bad thoughts are normal, and not something to be afraid of. These steps can go a long way toward helping kids handle disturbing thoughts with less worry and stress, and we’ll be looking into them more on this feed.

03/08/2026

Instagram, TikTok, Discord, Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook all require users to be 13 or older to join. If only life were so simple. Sure, Instagram says you have to be 13 to join, but Instagram doesn’t have a tween daughter begging for an account, claiming she’s the last person in her class who is without one. As far as I can tell, the age limit has very little to do with kids’ readiness to be on social media. Nobody consulted with a child psychologist or child development expert to come up with this magic number. Instead, it has more to do with big media companies not being allowed to collect data on little kids.

One of the reasons social media apps remain free is because they’re collecting data on us all the time, so that they can target advertisements to us. I guess that, somehow, it’s deemed okay to do this once a child turns 13. What does this mean for parents? I think we should all be taking this age guideline with a grain of salt, because it’s a little bit arbitrary. Depending on their maturity level, some kids may be ready for social media at 13. Many others may need to hold off until they are older, or have a lot of parental supervision to make sure they stay safe.

03/07/2026

This number is particularly surprising when you consider that most kids with intrusive thoughts feel like the odd one out. They may worry they’re the only ones who have ever had thoughts like this, and that it means they’re bad or weird. Most adults with intrusive thoughts don’t talk about them with other people, either because they quickly disregard them or because it would feel odd to mention in casual conversation. No wonder kids feel so alone!

So, intrusive thoughts are normal — but we know that they can still cause problems for kids. But those issues aren’t caused by the thoughts themselves. Problems arise when the thoughts are very frequent or intense, or when kids have a hard time dismissing them.

Source: https://www.medicaldaily.com/ocd-symptoms-more-widespread-you-think-94-people-have-intrusive-thoughts-275440

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