Sublime

It was in middle school that he became conscious of the fact that he was not a happy person. Depression took many forms, and his was of the low-level, simmering kind. “I think in general when people are depressed they know they are depressed,” he said. “My form of it was not out-of-control negative. My form of it was lack of positive.” He had a fau

We’re doing it for someone else—an audience: our teachers and our parents, and their substitutes in adult life. Make us proud. You have to shine. We’ve given you so much. What matters is the performance, not any inner sense of satisfaction. Authority figures are benign, wanting what is good for us and speaking on behalf of our long-term interests.

In Sum

Having seen so many students go through my classrooms, I’ve come to know that a lot of parents don’t realize the power of their words. Depending on a child’s age and sense of self, an offhand comment from Mom or Dad can feel like a shove from a bulldozer. I’m not even sure I should have made the reference to Logan growing up to be social chair of a

When the social and psychological discourse on Quarterlife development emphasizes only external markers of achievement—college, job, marriage, house, children, financial safety—and not the fundamental process of becoming oneself, a great deal is lost. Lives are reduced to the ups and downs of successes and failures. But the search for oneself is a

Soberingly, despite all our advances in technology and material resources, we are not much more advanced in the art of delivering emotionally healthy childhoods than generations before us. The number of breakdowns, inauthentic lives and broken souls shows no marked signs of decline. We are failing to offer one another tolerable childhoods not becau

Our definition of neglect has stretched to prevent parents from determining when their children are ready for even a modest amount of autonomy, and sacrifices developmentally appropriate skill building to fears of the unknown. While we might write off the Japanese as crazy, our American insistence on children being observed and accompanied at all t