Jarrod Partridge

Can a step parent spank a child? It is one of the most common and most loaded questions in blended families, and the honest answer has two parts. Legally, it depends heavily on your state and on whether the child’s biological parent has given you that authority. Practically, almost every child development expert recommends that

If you have searched for creative punishments for 15-year-olds, you are probably standing in a familiar spot. The grounding that worked when your child was 10 now gets a shrug. Taking the phone for a week sets off a cold war that punishes the whole house. You want something new, something that actually lands. Here

You find candy wrappers under the bed. The cereal box is half empty in the morning even though no one remembers eating it. You catch your child in the kitchen at 11 p.m., or you notice food disappearing overnight. If your child has ADHD and keeps sneaking food at night, you are not dealing with

If your child cries when a tag scratches their neck, melts down at a loud birthday party, or takes a stern look from a teacher to heart for days, you may have wondered whether you need to toughen them up so the world does not knock them around. It is a fair worry. You want

If timeouts have stopped working in your house, or never really worked in the first place, you are not doing anything wrong. Plenty of parents reach a point where the timeout chair turns into a wrestling match, or where their child seems to come out angrier than they went in. The good news is that

If you have ever watched your two year old belt out the alphabet song and wondered whether that means they actually know their letters, you are asking a smart question. Singing the ABCs and recognizing the letter B on a cereal box are two very different skills, and they show up at different ages. Knowing

If you are trying to figure out at what age do kids start going to school, the short answer is that most American children begin kindergarten at age 5, with first grade following at 6. The longer answer is messier, because the United States has no single national starting age. Every state sets its own

If your child is old enough to tap a screen, they are old enough to meet a stranger online. That reality can feel unsettling, but it does not have to be frightening. Teaching kids about stranger danger online is less about scaring them and more about giving them a few clear habits and the confidence

For years, conversations about why families change schools centered on academics, test scores, and the search for a better fit. A new national poll suggests the real driver has shifted. According to EdChoice’s June 2026 survey of American parents, conducted with Morning Consult, bullying is now the top reason parents pull their child out of

A new analysis of more than 50,000 American children has put a number on something many parents already sensed: there appears to be a tipping point where screen time and a child’s mental health collide. Kids who spent four or more hours a day on screens had markedly higher odds of anxiety and depression than

When a family is going through separation, the right story at bedtime can do what no adult explanation quite manages. Kids’ books about divorce give children a character who feels what they feel, words for emotions they cannot name yet, and quiet reassurance that the split is not their fault and that they are still

If you have caught your child in a lie and wondered whether it runs in the family, you are not alone. Plenty of parents ask whether lying is something a child is born with or something they pick up along the way. The short answer is reassuring: lying is mostly a learned, developmental behavior, not