In a study titled “Stress in America,” commissioned by the American Psychological Association, it was found that 30 percent of teens reported feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or sad as a result of stress. Almost 25 percent said they skipped meals because of stress. Almost one-third of teens say that stress often brings them to the verge of tears...

By the time they are teenagers, more than two-thirds of young people are not doing enough physical activity. Teenagers spend an average of eight hours every day sitting, with 11 to 15-year-olds watching nearly three hours of television.

A stagnant nation, despairing over the death of education . . . by the Great Cat, why? Have we not learned that school kills? The nation ought to be raving joyful for the death of its failed system of diplomas and degrees, raving delighted at the greening of this grand new culture, the Passionate Self-Educated.

Recent research suggests success is partly driven by character skills. “Grit,” for example, or perseverance and passion for long-term goals, seems to be a better predictor of success than IQ in school and beyond.

“Racist and anti-immigration views held by children,” warned a recent headline in The Guardian, reporting the results of a survey of nearly 6,000 British schoolchildren conducted by the charity Show Racism the Red Card.

A colleague related the following story: while running errands with her 11- and 7-year-old daughters, a back seat battle began to rage. My colleague’s attempts to diffuse the situation only led to a shouting match about who was to blame for the skirmish. Finally the 11-year-old proclaimed to her sister, “You started it the day you were born and took away Mom’s love!”

A couple of years ago, I taught an afterschool class at a Seattle nonprofit, the Technology Access Foundation (TAF), which provides STEM education (science, technology, engineering, math) to children from less-privileged backgrounds. My students were 8-11 years old, and it was the first time that I had taught elementary school students.

A new study is the first in more than 20 years to look at long-term outcomes after early intensive autism intervention. Therapy began when children were 18 to 30 months old and involved therapists and parents working with children at home for more than 15 hours each week for two years.

Some parents think it’s their job to make their children happy and to think for them – but this is not true. It’s not the parents’ job to think for their children or to make them happy. It’s impossible for one human being to think for another human being or to make another human being happy.

In March 2015, San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland shocked football fans when he announced his decision to retire after just one season in the NFL. He explained that he was concerned over the long-term health hazards of football-related head trauma, and journalists and media personalities covered the story extensively.

On asking six-year-olds why water flows down a mountain, one of the responses I received was, “because then we don’t have to walk up the mountain to get it”. Children of this age often conceptualise the world’s physical attributes as being divined for the service of humans, or even just for them.

At the end of the school year, districts often send stacks of books home with their students in the hopes of combating the “summer slide” in reading skills. This type of literacy loss hits low-income students particularly hard.

We have been hearing stories about academic cheating: from students caught cheating on homework assignments as well as college entrance exams to teachers being caught in cheating scandals, such as the ones in Atlanta, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio.

Research has shown that children of poorer parents display substantially worse math and reading skills by the time they start grade school. Other studies have revealed that these wide gaps in pre-school skills persist into adulthood and help explain low educational attainment and lifetime earnings.

When we think of reading for our children, we are often misled into thinking that we need to focus on one type of book, such as picture books or novels in order to practise specific, reading-related skills. However, this narrowly-focused approach to reading instruction can often have undesirable benefits, such as turning kids off reading altogether.

Narcissistic children feel superior to others, believe they are entitled to privileges and crave admiration from others. When they don’t get the admiration they want, they may lash out aggressively. Why do some children become narcissistic, whereas others develop more modest views of themselves?

A lot of previous research has suggested that young people living in single-mother households are at an educational disadvantage. But our new study looking at the lives of 10,000 teenagers suggests that this is not true. A stable family, even if it is a lone-parent one, is the best place to grow up.

Many parents are moving towards “gentle parenting”, where they choose not to use rewards (sticker charts, lollies, chocolates, TV time as “bribes”) and punishments (taking away “privileges”, time-out, smacking) to encourage good behaviour, but encourage good behaviour for the sake of doing the right thing.

Antipsychotic medications, such as Risperdal, Seroquel and Abilify, were developed to treat adults with major mental illnesses including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But in recent years, their use has extended to treat conditions such as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents.

Children learn to lie from about the age of two. The first lies children learn to tell are denials of wrongdoing. From the age of three they also learn to tell “white” lies. But what can we do to encourage children to tell the truth?

Why does a four-year-old play when a 14-year-old creates? It’s often argued that play is central to the lives of young children. Yet the play of older children and adults is often seen as leisure, escapism or even deviance. But there should not be such a binary division between what is educational and what is frivolous.

As a family therapist, I often have the impulse to tell families to go home and have dinner together rather than spending an hour with me. And 20 years of research in North America, Europe and Australia back up my enthusiasm for family dinners. It turns out that sitting down for a nightly meal is great for the brain, the body and the spirit.

A new study finds a link between a good night’s sleep for school-aged kids and better performance in math and languages specifically—subjects that are powerful predictors of later learning and academic success.