Tag Archive for: Parenting Tips

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Overwhelm, Accountability and Relationships That Matter 

Several people have told me lately that May feels less like spring and more like “May-cember.” It’s the December of the school year. 

There are graduations, field days, awards ceremonies, end-of-school parties, teacher gifts, final projects, Mother’s Day plans, Memorial Day travel, sports banquets, recitals, class celebrations, field trips, summer camp registrations and approximately 427 emails from school that all require a response, payment, permission slip or costume. 

May arrives with sunshine and flowers, but it can feel like it is wearing December’s calendar. 

And just like the holiday season, this month can leave people over-scheduled, overwhelmed and running on empty. We may be showing up everywhere, but not really present anywhere. We may be getting things done, but not actually doing well. We may be surrounded by people and still feel unseen. 

That kind of pace does not just affect our schedules. It affects our relationships. 

When we are exhausted, we often become less patient, less curious and less emotionally available. We snap at the people we love. We withdraw. We stop asking good questions. We forget to eat well, sleep well, listen well and love well. We confuse survival mode with normal life. 

This is why we need relationships deep enough to hold both vulnerability and accountability. 

Without vulnerability, people may be near us but not really know us. Without accountability, people may love us but never help us come back to ourselves. And where both are missing, relationships may remain pleasant, busy and functional, but shallow. 

Research continues to affirm what many of us know by experience: the quality of our relationships matters deeply. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has said one of the study’s clearest findings is that relationships help keep people both happy and healthy. The lesson is not simply “be around people.” It is that meaningful, reliable connection shapes our well-being over time.

But meaningful connection requires honesty. 

It requires being able to say, “I am not doing well.” Or, “I am stretched too thin.” Or, “I know I said yes, but I should have said no.” Or, “I don’t like who I become when I am this tired.” 

Brené Brown describes vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. She also writes that “vulnerability is not weakness, but part of courage and connection.” Vulnerability is not telling everyone everything. It is letting the right people see what is true. 

And when vulnerability is met with care, relationships deepen. 

Relationship researchers have described intimacy as a process that involves self-disclosure and a caring response. One important concept is “perceived partner responsiveness,” which means we feel that another person understands us, validates us and cares for us. Research has identified this kind of responsiveness as central to intimacy and healthy connection. 

That means one of the most loving things we can do for someone in a chaotic season is notice them. 

Not just their schedule. Not just their productivity. Them. 

“You don’t seem like yourself lately.” 

“You sound exhausted.” 

“You have been carrying a lot.” 

“Have you eaten?” 

“Have you slept?” 

“What can I take off your plate?” 

“Is this pace sustainable?” 

Those questions are not intrusive when they come from love, humility and trust. They are a form of care. 

But the other half of a deep relationship is accountability.

Accountability has a bad reputation because many of us have experienced it as control, criticism or shame. But healthy accountability is not someone trying to manage your life. It is someone helping you live in alignment with your values. 

It sounds like: “I know you want to be a patient parent, and I can see how depleted you are.” It sounds like: “You are saying yes to everyone, but it seems like you are disappearing from yourself.” 

It sounds like: “You don’t have to keep this pace just because you can.” 

It sounds like: “This may be a season to move through, but it cannot become a lifestyle you maintain.” 

That kind of honesty can be uncomfortable. It can also be a gift. 

John Gottman’s research on couple relationships emphasizes the importance of repair, the ability to take responsibility, soften, reconnect and come back to one another after tension or disconnection. Healthy relationships are not conflict-free. They are marked by the willingness to repair and re-engage. 

The same principle applies beyond marriage. Strong relationships require people who can tell the truth with kindness and receive the truth with humility. 

So how do we know whether vulnerability and accountability are present in our relationships? 

Ask yourself: Do I have people who know when I am not myself? Can I admit when I am overwhelmed without being dismissed, mocked or immediately fixed? Can someone lovingly challenge me without me assuming they are attacking me? Do the people closest to me remind me of who I want to be, not just what I need to get done? 

Then turn the questions around. 

Am I safe for other people to be honest with? Do I listen without rushing to correct? Do I ask before giving advice? Do I notice when someone I love is running on empty? Do I have the courage to gently name what I see? 

If vulnerability is missing, start small. Tell a trusted person something true: “I am overwhelmed.” “I need help.” “I am not sleeping.” “I feel like I am failing at everything.” Depth is built through small moments of honesty met with care.

If accountability is missing, invite it. Say to a friend, spouse, sibling or mentor, “When I get too busy, I lose sight of myself. Will you help me notice when that’s happening?” Or, “If you see me slipping into a pattern that is hurting me or the people I love, I want you to say something.” 

And when someone gives you permission to speak honestly into their life, treat that permission as sacred. Be gentle. Be specific. Be humble. The goal is not to win, diagnose or control. The goal is to help someone remember who they are. 

“May-cember” may be a funny word, but the exhaustion behind it is real. Many families are limping toward summer with full calendars and empty tanks. And in seasons like this, we need more than another productivity hack or color-coded calendar. 

We need people. 

People who can see past our busyness. People who notice when our pace is costing us something. People who can offer help without judgment and honesty without harshness. People who remind us that our worth is not measured by how many events we attend, how many tasks we complete or how well we hold everything together. 

And we need to be those people for others. 

Because deep relationships are not built by pretending everyone is fine. They are built when love becomes brave enough to tell the truth and safe enough to receive it. 

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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What It Means to Put First Things First

First Things First is in the middle of a rebrand.

Same name. Same mission. Deeper alignment.

And as part of that process, I’ve had the privilege of sitting across from some of the founders of the organization and key stakeholders who prompted this work decades ago. I’ve asked them questions that sound simple until you try to answer them out loud.

What does it mean to put first things first? Why did we name the organization that? What does it look like in relationships?

What does it look like on a Tuesday afternoon when the laundry is loud, the inbox is louder and everyone in your house needs something at the exact same time?

Again and again, the answer pointed back to Stephen Covey’s 1990s book, First Things First. Covey wrote about the difference between living by urgency and living by importance. In other words, there are things that scream for our attention, and there are things that quietly shape our lives.

The problem is, the screaming things usually win.

The text message. The deadline. The appointment. The sports schedule. The dishes. The bill. The group chat. The thing we forgot to sign. The thing we said yes to when we should have said, “Let me check my calendar.”

Urgency is not always bad. Children do need to be picked up from school. Bills do need to be paid. Work matters. Dinner, in some form, should probably happen.

But urgency becomes a problem when it consistently outruns importance.

And importance is where relationships live.

Putting first things first means deciding, on purpose, what matters most before life decides for us. It means we do not simply ask, “What needs to get done today?” We also ask, “Who needs to feel loved today?” “What kind of person do I want to be in this moment?” “What kind of family are we building?”

And here’s where the idea of “steps” matters.

Putting first things first will not look the same for every person or every family. We are all in different seasons, carrying different responsibilities, pressures, resources and rhythms. The young couple trying to build trust after a hard season may have a different next step than the parents of toddlers who are just trying to survive dinner without someone crying into a chicken nugget. The empty nesters learning how to reconnect may have a different next step than the single parent who feels like every plate in life is spinning at once.

That is why putting first things first is not about doing everything at once. It is about taking the next right step.

For one person, the next right step may be asking for help. For another, it may be putting the phone away at dinner. For someone else, it may be making the counseling appointment, apologizing first, setting a boundary, joining a community, creating a bedtime routine or simply sitting still long enough to remember what matters.

The step may be small, but small does not mean insignificant. A step in the right direction is still movement. And enough small steps, taken with intention, begin to shape a life.

For individuals, putting first things first may look like taking care of your health before your body forces you to. It may mean choosing rest without guilt. It may mean making time for prayer, reflection, counseling, recovery or friendship before you reach the point of crisis. It may mean having the hard conversation you keep avoiding because peacekeeping has started to look a lot like resentment.

For couples, it may mean remembering that the relationship cannot survive on logistics alone. A marriage or partnership can become a very efficient small business if we are not careful. Who is paying the bill? Who is picking up groceries? Who forgot picture day?

These things matter. But they are not the whole relationship.

Putting first things first in a relationship means making room for eye contact, affection, repair and honest conversation. It means saying, “I’m sorry,” before pride builds a wall. It means asking, “How are we doing?” not just, “What’s on the calendar?” It means treating your spouse or partner as someone to cherish, not simply someone to coordinate with.

For families, putting first things first means understanding that children are not just being raised by what we say. They are being raised by what we prioritize.

If we say family matters but never have time for each other, they notice.

If we say kindness matters but speak harshly under stress, they notice.

If we say faith, character, service or connection matter but every margin of our lives is consumed by achievement, entertainment or exhaustion, they notice that too.

Children do not need perfect parents. Thank goodness, because that ship sailed for most of us somewhere between the missing shoe and the spilled applesauce.

But they do need parents and caregivers who are willing to pause and realign. They need adults who can say, “This is not working. We need to reset.” They need families who understand that busy is not the same as healthy, and full calendars are not the same as full hearts.

On a practical level, putting first things first does not require a complete life overhaul. Most of us cannot quit our jobs, cancel every activity and move to a quiet cabin where no one ever asks what is for dinner.

It starts smaller.

Sit down once a week and ask, “What matters most this week?” Not just what is due, but what is important. Protect one meal, walk, bedtime routine or conversation from the chaos. Put the phone down when someone you love is talking. Say no to something good so you can say yes to something better. Apologize faster. Ask for help sooner. Make space for the people and values you say matter most.

And when you get it wrong, because you will, begin again.

That may be the most hopeful part of putting first things first. It is not a one-time decision. It is a daily practice. Sometimes an hourly one. Sometimes a “take a deep breath in the driveway before walking into the house” one.

So here is the invitation: look at your calendar, your spending, your conversations, your energy and your habits. Not with shame. With curiosity. Ask yourself, “Do my choices reflect what I say matters most?”

If they do, keep going. If they do not, take one step.

Because if individuals put first things first, we would see healthier people. If couples put first things first, we would see stronger relationships. If families put first things first, we would see children growing up with a clearer sense of love, stability and belonging.

And if enough of us did that, our communities would change too.

We would be less reactive and more rooted. Less distracted and more connected. Less consumed by the urgent and more committed to the important.

We may not fix everything overnight.

But we can begin building a world where people matter more than pressure, relationships matter more than busyness, and love is not something we squeeze in after everything else.

It becomes the first thing.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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What Will This Generation Not Hear from Their Parents?

A friend recently posed a question to me that I have not been able to shake. He said that for many Boomers, the phrase they rarely heard growing up was, “I love you.” For many Gen Xers and older millennials, the missing phrase was often, “I’m sorry.”

Then he asked: What will this generation say they did not hear from their parents?

It is such a smart question because every generation tends to correct the mistakes of the one before it. And, being human, every generation also manages to create a few fresh ones of its own.

In many families, earlier generations were not especially verbal with affection. Love was often present, but it was shown through sacrifice, duty, provision and perseverance more than spoken aloud. Then many of us came along determined to become more emotionally fluent. We wanted our children to know they were loved. We wanted them to identify their feelings, name their struggles and feel seen.

That is not a bad correction. In many ways, it is a very good one.

But I wonder if the phrase this generation may not hear enough is this: I believe in you.

Maybe even more fully: I believe in you, and I will support you while you do hard things.

Parents today hear a great deal about helping children identify and process emotions, and that matters. Children should absolutely learn to recognize fear, disappointment, anger, embarrassment and anxiety. They should know that feelings are real and that they are not shameful. But somewhere along the way, many families seem to have absorbed a second message that is less helpful: that feeling uncomfortable is itself a reason not to proceed.

It is not.

A friend told me recently about a family vacation where her 8-year-old son (a rambunctious, brave, beautifully wild little boy in most settings) froze at the idea of doing a high ropes course. He got scared and immediately said, “I’m not doing it.” His mom, to her credit, did not instantly rescue him from the challenge. She told him he could choose the ropes course or the rock wall, but one way or another, he was going to face a fear that day.

He protested. He resisted. He did not feel ready.

But what mattered most was not simply that she pushed him. It was that she stood beside him with the clear message: I believe in you. She was not mocking his fear, dismissing his feelings or throwing him to the wolves. She was supporting him through something difficult and telling him, in word and deed, that he was capable of more than his fear was telling him in that moment.

And he did it.

That is such an important message for children to hear.

Because emotions are important, but they are not dictators.

Fear can be real without being right. Anxiety can be loud without being wise. Discomfort can be intense without being dangerous. Children need help learning that they are not helpless in the presence of strong feelings. They can feel afraid and still move forward. They can feel embarrassed and still try. They can feel unsure and still begin.

Usually, they do that best when a steady adult is nearby saying, “I believe in you.”

That is how resilience is built. Not by shaming children for being afraid, and not by removing every obstacle before they have to face it, but by helping them discover that they can survive challenges and come out stronger on the other side.

Of course, this takes wisdom. Parenting is not about pushing children harshly, humiliating them or ignoring genuine limits. It is about refusing to let a child’s first impulse of fear become the final authority. It is about teaching them that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act in spite of it, especially when someone loving is there to help steady them.

Maybe that is one of the great parenting assignments of this era: to care deeply about our children’s emotional lives without raising them to believe that their emotions should run their lives.

Yes, help them name their feelings. Yes, sit with them in their struggles. Yes, be a safe place.

But also tell them the truth: I believe in you. You can be scared and still be brave. You can feel deeply without being ruled completely. You can try, fail, recover and try again. And I will be here to support you as you do.

That may be one of the most loving things a parent can say.

Because what children need is not just protection from hard things. They need a parent who believes they are capable of facing them.

And in a world increasingly tempted to treat discomfort as danger, that may be one of the most necessary messages of all.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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When Your Adult Child Hasn’t Launched

There is a particular ache in parenting adult children: they are old enough to vote, drive, and ignore your excellent advice, yet sometimes not quite old enough to stop making decisions that make you want to stare at the ceiling and reconsider every permissive moment since preschool.

The job has changed, but the love has not.

Psychologists call this season “emerging adulthood,” a stretch of life, often from the late teens through the twenties, marked by freedom, instability, and uneven progress. Temple University psychologist Dr. Laurence Steinberg has noted that the path to adulthood now takes longer than it once did, and that many parents and grown children are trying to build a new relationship while the old one is still rattling around in the trunk.

That helps explain why so many parents feel confused. We were trained for bedtime, broccoli, and booster seats. Nobody really prepared us for a 22-year-old with a fully formed opinion, a half-formed plan, and a habit of making choices that leave the family group text one message away from combustion.

The research is surprisingly clear on one point: love helps, but over-control does not.

In a 2016 study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, Kayla Reed and colleagues found that helicopter parenting was linked indirectly to worse outcomes for emerging adults through lower self-efficacy, while autonomy-supportive parenting was linked to better life satisfaction and physical health. A newer review in Youth likewise found that parents still matter a great deal in this stage, but the healthiest approach balances warmth, expectations, and autonomy support.

The more troubling findings involve psychological control, using guilt, intrusion and manipulation tactics, or treating a grown child’s mind like it is still your rental property. Developmental psychologist Brian Barber famously described psychological control as parenting that “constrains, invalidates, and manipulates” a child’s emotional and psychological experience. In real life, it sounds like: “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” or “If you loved this family, you wouldn’t do this,” or “I guess you just don’t care about us anymore.” The key difference is this: behavioral guidance says, “If you live here, you need to follow these rules.” Psychological control says, “I will make you feel guilty until you think and feel what I want.” Research has long distinguished those two forms of control because psychological control is more strongly tied to internal distress, while healthy behavioral limits are a separate thing altogether.

That distinction matters when an adult child has not launched well, or is making decisions that are harmful to themselves or others. Parents are still allowed to have standards. In fact, they need them. But a boundary is not a guilt trip in pearls. “You may not live here rent-free if you are using drugs,” is a boundary. “You are breaking your mother’s heart, and good children do not do this,” is emotional pressure wearing a church hat.

If you are in this season, the research points toward a hard but hopeful middle path: support without rescuing, honesty without humiliation, and love without emotional takeover.

Bowen family systems theory, developed by psychiatrist Murray Bowen, warns that in anxious families, the person who does the most accommodating can end up absorbing everybody else’s anxiety. That is a helpful reminder for parents who have become full-time fixers, financiers, or emotional paramedics. Steinberg makes a similar point in gentler language: the task is not to dominate your adult child, but to learn how to resolve conflict and build a strong adult relationship.

Which is another way of saying: your grown child may still be on the runway, but you do not help the plane take off by tying yourself to the landing gear, screaming directions along the way.

Love them dearly. Tell the truth calmly. Set boundaries you can actually keep. Refuse to confuse rescuing with helping.

That is not giving up on your child. It is making room for them to become an adult, which, in the end, was the assignment all along.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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The Long Shadow of Harsh Parenting

Most parents have had that moment.

You are tired, running late, already stretched thin, and your child does the very thing you asked them not to do. Again. The milk spills. The attitude appears. The shoes are still not on. And suddenly, before you can even catch it, your voice is louder than you meant for it to be. Your words are sharper. Your patience is gone.

Most of us know what it feels like to parent from frustration instead of wisdom.

That does not make someone a bad parent. It makes them human. But it is also worth asking an uncomfortable question: when does discipline stop being correction and start becoming harm?

That question matters because there is a real difference between raising children with strong boundaries and raising them with strong fear. One builds character. The other can quietly chip away at it.

Researchers generally define harsh parenting as discipline that relies on fear, pain, shame, or intimidation. That can include physical punishment like spanking, hitting, or grabbing, but it also includes verbal and emotional aggression: yelling, threatening, insulting, humiliating, or regularly tearing a child down. In simpler terms, it is parenting that tries to control behavior by overpowering the child rather than guiding the child.

That is not the same thing as being firm. It is not the same thing as setting rules, following through on consequences, or expecting respect. Healthy parenting can absolutely be strong. It can be clear, steady, and unmoving when it needs to be. But it does not require cruelty to be effective.

That distinction is important because decades of peer-reviewed research show that harsh parenting is linked to poorer outcomes later in life, especially in the areas of mental health and substance abuse.

Large reviews of the research have found that children exposed to harsh parenting are more likely later to struggle with anxiety, depression, aggression, and difficulty regulating emotions. That makes sense when you think about what children are learning at home. A child’s earliest lessons about love, safety, authority, and belonging are not learned in a classroom or from a podcast. They are learned in the living room, at the dinner table, and in the moments when something has gone wrong.

When discipline is consistently wrapped in fear or humiliation, the lesson may not simply be, “I made a bad choice.” The lesson can become, “I am a bad kid,” or “The people I trust most can turn on me when I fail.”

That message has staying power.

Child development experts have long noted that repeated harsh treatment can shape how children respond to stress. Kids raised in tense, explosive, or emotionally unsafe homes may become overly alert to conflict. They may struggle to calm themselves, trust others, or manage strong feelings. In childhood, those patterns may look like acting out, shutting down, or living constantly on edge. In adulthood, they may show up as anxiety, depression, anger, or unstable relationships.

In other words, what starts as survival can later become suffering.

This is one reason harsh parenting is connected to later mental health struggles. A child who grows up bracing for criticism may become an adult who expects rejection. A child who is constantly shamed may carry that shame into friendships, marriage, work, and parenting. Sometimes the wounds are loud and visible. Sometimes they are quiet and buried under achievement, busyness, or a good sense of humor. But hidden pain is still pain.

Research also shows a connection between harmful childhood environments and later substance use risk. That does not mean every child from a harsh home will struggle with addiction. It does mean the odds are higher. And honestly, that is not hard to understand. Alcohol and drugs often offer what wounded people have been needing all along: relief. Relief from anxiety. Relief from shame. Relief from emotional pain that never had a safe place to go.

For someone who never learned how to calm distress in healthy ways, a substance can feel like help before it becomes harmful.

That is one of the heartbreaks here. A child who needs comfort may grow into an adult who goes looking for comfort in dangerous places.

None of this is meant to heap shame on parents. Parenting is hard, and many mothers and fathers are trying to raise children while carrying their own exhaustion, wounds, and family histories. Some are repeating what they were shown because it is the only model they ever had. But love alone does not cancel impact. Good intentions are important, but they are not the same as good outcomes.

The hopeful news is that families are not stuck.

Parents can learn to correct without crushing. They can hold boundaries without humiliation. They can lead without threats. They can apologize when they get it wrong, repair what has been damaged, and create a home where truth and grace live together. That is not weak parenting. That is deeply strong parenting.

Strong families are not built on fear. They are built on trust, consistency, accountability, repentance, forgiveness, and love that knows how to stay calm. Children need rules, yes. They also need dignity. They need guidance, but they also need safety.

Because in the end, the goal is not just a well-behaved child at the moment. The goal is to become a healthy adult later on.

And that kind of future is shaped, in part, by what kind of home we build now.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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When “I Don’t Want to Parent” Goes Viral, Kids Still Have to Live There

Every few weeks, social media serves up a new kind of honesty: parents saying they love their kids… and also don’t want to be around them.

Not “I need a break,” but “I only have about 10–15 minutes in me a day,” or “I don’t want to play,” or “My kids irritate me nonstop.”

I believe parents should be able to say out loud: This is hard. We should be able to confess the parts that feel boring, repetitive, loud, sticky, and mentally exhausting. We should be able to admit that sometimes we do not want to build the Lego city, host the 17th tea party, or hear one more dramatic retelling of a playground injustice.

But here’s the line I don’t want us to cross: normalizing the feeling is healthy. Normalizing the withdrawal is not.

Because kids don’t experience our disengagement as a trendy hot take. They experience it as their home.

And right now, families are carrying a lot. In 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory focused on parents’ mental health and well-being, pointing to high stress levels among parents and calling for stronger support systems. That doesn’t surprise anyone who has ever tried to answer work emails while cutting grapes into legally safe sizes.

That same advisory highlights something else that matters: many parents are not just tired, they’re lonely. When you parent in isolation, every normal challenge feels like a personal failure. And when parenting starts to feel like constant failure, emotional distancing can start to feel like relief.

Psychologists even have a name for a pattern that includes this kind of chronic exhaustion and “backing away” emotionally: parental burnout. Researchers describe it as intense exhaustion related to parenting, emotional distancing from your children, and feeling like you’re not the parent you used to be. And here’s the part that should sober all of us: studies have linked parental burnout with higher risks of neglectful and harmful parenting behaviors, not because most parents want to hurt their kids, but because overwhelm can erode self-control and compassion. 

So when the internet shrugs and says, “It’s fine to check out,” I want to say, gently but clearly: it may be common, but it’s not harmless.

Now, about that “10 minutes a day” idea.

Focused time matters. A short window of undistracted attention, phone down, eyes up, child-led, can be powerful. But it’s not a magic spell that covers the other 23 hours and 50 minutes.

Even research on parent-child time tends to land in a nuanced place: quantity of time isn’t the only ingredient. In some studies, the amount of time moms spend with children isn’t strongly tied to every outcome people assume it is, especially once you account for the bigger picture of resources and family context.

But nuance is not the same as permission to disappear.

Kids don’t only need “connection time.” They also need availability through a parent who is emotionally reachable enough to notice, respond, repair, and guide. In early childhood especially, Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child describes “serve and return” interactions (those back-and-forth exchanges between a child and a caring adult) as a key building block for healthy brain development. 

That doesn’t require you to be Mary Poppins all day. It does mean your child should not feel like they have to audition for your attention.

So what do we normalize instead?

Let’s normalize saying: “I’m maxed out.”
Let’s normalize saying: “I feel irritated.”
Let’s normalize saying: “I need help.”
And then let’s normalize doing the next part, the part social media rarely films:

Finding a safe place to tell the truth without making your child pay for it.

Sometimes that safe place is a friend who won’t judge you. Sometimes it’s a parenting group, a faith community, a coach, a therapist, or a support circle where people can say, “Me too,” and then move toward skills and support, not just venting and resignation.

Because here’s what worries me: we are raising kids in a culture that already preaches individualism like a religion. “Protect your peace.” “Choose yourself.” “Do what’s best for you.” Some of that language has helped people escape truly toxic situations. But applied carelessly to parenting, it can turn into something ugly: My comfort is the highest good, even when I’m the adult and you’re the child.

Parenthood changes your identity. Not because you stop being you, but because you become you-with-responsibility. Love isn’t only a feeling; it’s a practice. And kids can’t thrive on a practice we only do when we feel like it.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I relate a little too much,” I’m not here to shame you. I’m here to name what might be true: you may be depleted, depressed, anxious, unsupported, or burned out. And you deserve help.

But your child deserves something too: a parent who doesn’t just normalize the urge to check out, who learns how to come back.

Not perfect. Not performing. Just present.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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Why Mattering Matters, Especially for Children

Most of us learned “basic needs” as a short list: food, water, shelter, safety. Useful, yes. Complete? Not really.

Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child is asking us to widen the list with something that sounds soft but works like a load-bearing wall: mattering. In their working paper Mattering in Early Childhood, they define mattering as the feeling that we are valued and that we have value to add. Put simply: “I’m important to you, and what I do makes a difference here.”

What caught my attention is how direct they are: mattering isn’t a “nice extra.” It’s an essential human need. That doesn’t replace food or housing; it explains why some kids can have the basics and still feel shaky inside. A child can have a full fridge and still quietly wonder, Would anyone notice if I wasn’t here?

Harvard also clarifies a common mix-up. Belonging is about fitting in. Mattering is about significance. You can belong to a family, classroom, or team and still not feel valued. And you can feel loved but never trusted to contribute, which also chips away at mattering. Their paper keeps returning to the two parts: feeling valued and adding value.

This connects to the Center’s long-standing “serve and return” concept: the back-and-forth exchanges between a child and a caring adult. When a baby coos and you respond, when a toddler points and you name what they see, when a child is upset and you help them settle, those moments shape brain architecture and build early language and social skills.

Mattering grows in those ordinary, repeated returns: I see you. I’m with you.

It also helps explain why chronic stress hits kids so hard. Harvard defines toxic stress as prolonged activation of stress response systems, especially when a child lacks supportive relationships to buffer that stress. Support doesn’t erase hardship, but it helps a child’s body return to calm, again and again, which supports resilience.

That’s why “mattering” is so important for kids in vulnerable neighborhoods, or in families with chaos, conflict, untreated mental illness, or substance use. In those settings, mattering can be the first thing to slip, even when adults love their children. When life is unpredictable, kids often stop asking, “Do you love me?” and start asking, “Do I count? Will anyone show up consistently?” The Center’s resilience paper notes that children who do well despite serious hardship often have had at least one stable, committed relationship with a supportive adult. 

So what do we do on a normal Tuesday? Start small on the “valued” side. Make eye contact. Put the phone down for one minute. Notice what they’re trying to tell you beneath the behavior. Comfort first, correct second. That’s serve and return in real life. 

Then build the “value to add” side. It’s faster to do everything yourself, but kids need real chances to contribute. Harvard notes that welcoming a child’s contributions helps build mattering. Let them set out napkins, feed the pet, carry in groceries, sweep after dinner, read to a sibling, and say the quiet part out loud: “That helped our family. You made a difference.”

If you’re tired reading this, you’re not disqualified. Mattering doesn’t require perfect parenting. It requires consistent signals, some warmth, some attention, and some real opportunities to help, until kids believe something sturdy: My presence counts, and I can do good here.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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What High Vs. Low Effort Looks Like in Families

“Low effort family” is a new term trending across social media. With therapists, researchers and relationship enthusiasts weighing in and providing different definitions of what a “low effort family” looks like, I had to do my own research.

Some families run on “auto-pilot.” Plans are last minute. Rules change depending on who’s tired. Conversations are mostly logistics (“Where’s your backpack?”). Conflict either blows up or gets buried.

Other families aren’t perfect, but they’re more intentional. They follow through. They build a few steady routines. They repair after hard moments.

That’s what I mean by “low effort” vs. “high effort” families.

These aren’t official research labels. But they describe real, research-backed family processes that shape how kids and adults do over time.

A “low effort” family often isn’t lazy. It’s usually low bandwidth. Stress, long work hours, money pressure, anxiety or depression, and lack of support can drain a family’s capacity. When you’re running on fumes, you react instead of plan. Limits get inconsistent. Connection gets replaced by correction. And the hard conversations keep getting pushed down the road.

A “high effort” family isn’t a “perfect family.” It’s a family that puts energy into a few basics: predictable routines, warmth plus limits, direct communication, and real repair. Family therapist and researcher Froma Walsh, PhD, describes family resilience as learnable processes—how families organize, communicate, and make meaning under stress. In other words, “high effort” is a set of skills you can build, not a personality you either have or don’t.

Why does any of this matter? Because small, repeated patterns add up. For example, routines aren’t just nice, they’re protective. A large systematic review of family routines (spanning decades of studies) found that routines are linked with positive child outcomes and can be especially helpful in high-risk settings. When a home is predictable in a few key ways, like sleep, meals, school rhythm, kids tend to feel safer and more steady.

Follow-through matters too, especially as kids get older.

A 2025 meta-analysis that pulled together 571 studies with more than two million participants found parental monitoring and behavioral control are associated with lower substance use in adolescents and emerging adults. That’s a research way of saying: when parents pay attention, set limits, and stay engaged, risk goes down.

And the emotional climate matters. A systematic review and meta-analysis found parenting behaviors are meaningfully related to internalizing problems in kids and teens, things like anxiety and depression. Kids don’t need parents who never mess up. They need parents who are present, responsive, and willing to repair.

If you’re wondering where your family falls right now, don’t overthink it. Just look at the past two weeks. Have you had two or three predictable routines most days? Have you followed through on limits more often than not? Have you had any daily connection with your kids that wasn’t correction or logistics, even ten minutes? And when there’s conflict, does it get repaired within a day or so? If you’re answering “not really,” that’s a sign you might be in a low-effort season.

Here’s the good news: moving toward “high effort” doesn’t mean doing everything. It means doing one thing consistently. Pick one routine that causes the most chaos, such as bedtime, mornings, dinner, homework, and simplify it until it’s repeatable.

The goal is not a Pinterest routine. It’s predictability.

Or choose one repair habit and practice it like a script: “I didn’t handle that well. I’m sorry. I hear you. Let’s try again.” That one sentence can change the emotional temperature of a whole house.

And if your home feels stuck with constant conflict, ongoing shutdowns, or mental health concerns, getting support is not a sign you failed. It’s a high-effort move. A licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), psychologist (PhD/PsyD), or psychiatrist (MD) can help you build skills and lower stress.

Naming the difference between low effort and high effort matters because it turns “We’re struggling” into something you can actually work with: specific, changeable habits. And families don’t transform in one big dramatic moment.

They change through small choices, repeated often, that make home feel steadier and more connected.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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