Childhood is not a happy place for all children, the process of raising them not always intuitive or straightforward for their parents. If one were to be honest about strengths and weaknesses, some parents are ill-equipped or have few resources for the task of child-rearing.
Sometimes, its more direct and deliberate than that and children can grow up in abusive, painful, dangerous situations.
But among all the parents that I know and thats most of the people I know these days even those who seem to be the most adept at the task of raising kids have questions, encounter new situations theyre not sure how to handle or simply could benefit from some sound advice and the experience of other moms and dads.
Child Trends just ushered in the new year with a look at the blogs and reports that got the most traffic in 2015, a sort of thermometer to measure what was hot when it came to parenting studies and advice. The kid-centered organization, which focuses on family life and the challenges and policies that impact children, noted that some of its most popular reports and blogs had been around awhile. Its a simple truth that different parents face some of the same issues, and its pretty rare to chart totally new territory when it comes to living. It's likely that someone else has probably been there, done that.
To look at the list is to recognize some of the challenges that families are trying at any given moment to overcome.
The most-read article of 2015 on the site was a 2-year-old study titled A Troubling Combination: Depression, Poverty and Parenting. That's not a challenge that all parents face, but major depression is more likely to impact low-income parents, especially single moms. The article says that while fewer than 7 percent of American adults overall have had a major depressive episode, in Maryland, for example, more than half of the single-parent moms they considered had experienced such depression in the past year.
The No. 2 report looked at what schools can do to foster resilience in kids, offering suggestions that ranged from promoting and valuing strong social connections, teaching by example and helping youths learn to solve problems, to bringing families and communities together to craft strong support systems, among others. Resilience is a hot topic when it comes to helping children. Its why some kids can bounce back from tragedy or setbacks, while others flounder and may not get back on track. And it's an ingredient that caring adults really want for young people.
Many headlines in recent years have focused on the challenges when young people try to enter the workforce a workforce that has changed drastically and probably permanently in the last generation with outsourcing, fewer decent-wage jobs for low-skill workers, competition between teens and older workers for even mediocre jobs and more. Child Trends and allies published a study identifying the so-called soft skills that will lead young people to success, including communication skills, ability to do higher order thinking like working through problems, self-confidence and self-control.
The fourth-most-popular piece challenges what people think they know with a list of startling myths about child maltreatment. People think they can look at risk factors and predict whether a child will be abused. They cant. They think they always spot abuse. They dont. They think only bad parents lose it and hurt their children. Wrong again. But the biggest myths are perhaps that in abusive families parents and children dont love each other and that a child is always going to be better off if hes taken out of that abusive home. Truth is, we dont even know how many children are abused.
To see the entire list and to view the array of research or to check out resources geared to understanding the challenges children face, visit ChildTrends.org. It's informative and sobering.
Sometimes, its more direct and deliberate than that and children can grow up in abusive, painful, dangerous situations.
But among all the parents that I know and thats most of the people I know these days even those who seem to be the most adept at the task of raising kids have questions, encounter new situations theyre not sure how to handle or simply could benefit from some sound advice and the experience of other moms and dads.
Child Trends just ushered in the new year with a look at the blogs and reports that got the most traffic in 2015, a sort of thermometer to measure what was hot when it came to parenting studies and advice. The kid-centered organization, which focuses on family life and the challenges and policies that impact children, noted that some of its most popular reports and blogs had been around awhile. Its a simple truth that different parents face some of the same issues, and its pretty rare to chart totally new territory when it comes to living. It's likely that someone else has probably been there, done that.
To look at the list is to recognize some of the challenges that families are trying at any given moment to overcome.
The most-read article of 2015 on the site was a 2-year-old study titled A Troubling Combination: Depression, Poverty and Parenting. That's not a challenge that all parents face, but major depression is more likely to impact low-income parents, especially single moms. The article says that while fewer than 7 percent of American adults overall have had a major depressive episode, in Maryland, for example, more than half of the single-parent moms they considered had experienced such depression in the past year.
The No. 2 report looked at what schools can do to foster resilience in kids, offering suggestions that ranged from promoting and valuing strong social connections, teaching by example and helping youths learn to solve problems, to bringing families and communities together to craft strong support systems, among others. Resilience is a hot topic when it comes to helping children. Its why some kids can bounce back from tragedy or setbacks, while others flounder and may not get back on track. And it's an ingredient that caring adults really want for young people.
Many headlines in recent years have focused on the challenges when young people try to enter the workforce a workforce that has changed drastically and probably permanently in the last generation with outsourcing, fewer decent-wage jobs for low-skill workers, competition between teens and older workers for even mediocre jobs and more. Child Trends and allies published a study identifying the so-called soft skills that will lead young people to success, including communication skills, ability to do higher order thinking like working through problems, self-confidence and self-control.
The fourth-most-popular piece challenges what people think they know with a list of startling myths about child maltreatment. People think they can look at risk factors and predict whether a child will be abused. They cant. They think they always spot abuse. They dont. They think only bad parents lose it and hurt their children. Wrong again. But the biggest myths are perhaps that in abusive families parents and children dont love each other and that a child is always going to be better off if hes taken out of that abusive home. Truth is, we dont even know how many children are abused.
To see the entire list and to view the array of research or to check out resources geared to understanding the challenges children face, visit ChildTrends.org. It's informative and sobering.
