Author: Nola Jones

Early in 2023, there was a particularly memorable moment. Standing in a dark green Alexander McQueen coat inside a Leeds market, Kate Middleton, recently crowned Princess of Wales, is laughing with strangers while promoting a campaign that most people were unaware of. Days before, Shaping Us had debuted at BAFTA with a speech about brain development and a Claymation movie. At the time, it seemed like the kind of modest royal initiative that receives courteous praise but little action. It’s possible that a lot of people believed that. After three years, it appears more and more incorrect. The campaign, which…

A certain type of anxiety lurks like a shadow over contemporary parenting. Are we doing enough? You see it at the playground, in pediatrician waiting rooms, and in the frantic Google searches at two in the morning. Enough reading, conversation, and stimulation. Over the course of two or three decades, the enrichment industry has subtly persuaded a whole generation of caregivers that a child’s brain needs constant, urgent input. flashcards. bilingual applications. Baby yoga. bins for senses. The underlying premise is that greater stimulation leads to improved development. It’s an interesting concept. Additionally, it seems to be seriously misinterpreting the…

Approximately 32% of teenagers in the United States fit the description of an anxiety disorder. Nobody outside of the clinical psychology community has given much thought to that figure, which has been sitting in the research literature for years. However, the American Psychological Association has begun to make a stronger statement that breaks through the typical academic hedging: what’s happening to American children today isn’t a phase that will pass, something they’ll outgrow, or a problem that families and schools can discreetly handle on their own. A federal response is required. Whether Washington is truly paying attention is the question.…

There was a faint smell of wet clay and tempera paint in the classroom. Every wall was covered in drawings, which were expansive and ambitious rather than the tidy, teacher-directed artwork you would anticipate from five-year-olds. The school parking lot as seen by a child. An attempt was made by someone else to map the cafeteria from memory. Principal Diana Morales appeared to be genuinely impressed by what her students had created rather than an administrator conducting a walkthrough as she stood in the middle of it all. By all accounts, this specific kindergarten wing at her Miami-Dade elementary school…

You notice things when you stroll through any underfunded preschool in rural Idaho or the lower parts of Montana. Alphabet-lettered wall borders are peeling off. classrooms that occasionally serve as storage spaces. teachers who are genuinely concerned but are overworked. It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the kids seated in those areas are getting a slower, quieter start in life due to their birthplace rather than any personal fault. While the youngest students—the three and four-year-olds who may require the most deliberate investment—remain an afterthought in half of the states, America has spent years debating education reform at the…

Researchers have been sitting quietly in a conference room somewhere in Yale’s Child Study Center with a conclusion that most parents aren’t prepared to hear. Your child’s first smartphone purchase wasn’t the beginning of the mental health epidemic affecting American teenagers. It didn’t start during the awkward violence of puberty or middle school. Researchers like Linda Mayes, MD, chair of the Yale Child Study Center, claim that the groundwork for what eventually manifests as teen depression, anxiety, and social collapse is being laid far, far earlier. Perhaps even before your child was able to construct a sentence. A well-known statistic…

Almost no one is aware of a particular type of government program that performs remarkably well. It doesn’t make news. Politicians don’t discuss it in speeches. And yet, somewhere between June and August, thousands of children line up at parks, churches, and school buildings across New Mexico to collect a free, nutritious meal — no paperwork, no income verification, no questions about where they come from or what their parents earn. Just food. New Mexico’s Summer Food Service Program, now administered by the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, is doing something that sounds almost too simple to be interesting:…

What most American cities have only debated in budget meetings and stalled legislation, New York City has accomplished. Earlier this year, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani united to announce 2-Care, a program that provides free child care seats for two-year-olds throughout the city. Children were present at the press conference. Cardi B participated in a jingle competition. Then, astonishingly, there was Barack Obama, who gave the kind of informal endorsement that usually spreads: “This is what we need.” This promise at least came with funding, which is a welcome change for a city used to big promises that…

A restless toddler in a grocery store, a meltdown developing at a restaurant, or a lengthy sideways car ride are moments that most parents can relate to. The phone is produced. The cartoon begins. The sobbing ceases. It seems to be a lifeline. Additionally, almost half of American parents reach for that lifeline on a daily basis, using screens to control behavior that is just too taxing to deal with in any other way. They are not judged for it. However, pediatricians have been silently observing for a considerable amount of time. They have also recently ceased to be silent.…

In a Head Start classroom on Chicago’s West Side, there is a specific type of noise: the scraping of plastic chairs, fights over crayons, and a child sobbing by the window for an unidentified reason. For the majority of onlookers, it appears to be typical chaos. It is information to a qualified mental health consultant who is standing silently in the corner. That consultant, who is composed, perceptive, and taking notes, is a part of an initiative Chicago has been quietly developing for years: an attempt to bring mental health support right into the room where four-year-olds spend their days,…