Jessica's Parenting Journal

  My daughter handed me a drawing when she was six. A house, a tree, a sun, four stick figures — completely standard stuff. Except one of the figures had no arms. I stared at it for a solid minute, wondering if I was supposed to know what that meant. Turns out, psychologists have been wondering the same thing — and studying it — for over seventy years.   Children draw before they can write, before they can articulate complex feelings, and long before they understand that their art might be communicating something beyond the image itself. What they put on paper — how they put it there, where, how large, how dark — has fascinated developmental psychologists for decades. The science is real. It's also more nuanced than any internet checklist will tell you.   The Test That Started It All In 1948, American psychologist John Buck published the House-Tree-Person (HTP) test — a structured assessment that asked people to draw exactly those three things, then asked them q...

  I finished watching Adolescence on a Tuesday evening and couldn't sleep. Not because it was scary — though it's deeply unsettling — but because of one line the father says near the end. He's a good man. He was paying attention. And he still didn't see it.   If you haven't watched the Netflix limited series yet, here's the premise: a 13-year-old boy from a normal English family is arrested for the murder of his female classmate. The show isn't really about the crime. It's about the question underneath it — how does a child from a loving home end up there? And why didn't anyone see the signs? The show won eight Emmy Awards and became one of Netflix's most-watched series ever, reaching 96.7 million views in its first three weeks across 93 countries. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer watched it with his teenage children and called it essential viewing. British secondary schools were given free access to stream it. Whatever else you think about i...

  I was having my morning coffee when the notification came through: Australia had just banned social media for everyone under 16. World first. Effective immediately. I put down my cup and read it twice.   Whatever you think about government intervention in parenting, this is the biggest children's digital policy story in history — and it didn't stop at Australia's border. Within weeks, Denmark, France, Spain, the UK, Malaysia, Portugal, and several others announced they were developing similar legislation. The global conversation about what social media is doing to our children has shifted permanently. As parents, we need to understand what that means.   Quick Answer: What Is Australia's Social Media Ban? Australia's ban came into force on 10 December 2025. It prohibits children under 16 from holding accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick. Platforms face fines of up to AU$49.5 mill...

  I used to think I was a pretty consistent parent. Firm when I needed to be, warm when I could be. Then my oldest hit 13 and I started paying closer attention to my patterns — and what I found was uncomfortable. Half the time I was laying down the law with no explanation. The other half I was so tired of conflict that I’d let things slide I knew I shouldn’t. I wasn’t the parent I thought I was. And my relationship with my daughter was showing it.   Why Your Parenting Style Matters More in the Teen Years Most parenting style research has traditionally focused on early childhood. But the stakes are arguably higher during adolescence. The parenting approach you bring to the teen years directly affects: •        How much your teenager confides in you •        Whether they’re more or less likely to engage in risky behaviors •        How they handle conflict, pressure, and failure ...

  A few years ago, a friend called me in tears. Her 16-year-old son had been struggling for months — pulling away from friends, sleeping most of the day, quitting the soccer team he’d played on since he was eight. She’d chalked it up to “teenage laziness.” By the time she realized something more serious was happening, he’d been in crisis for almost a year. “I just didn’t know what I was looking at,” she told me. “I kept thinking he’d snap out of it.”   The Numbers Are Hard to Ignore Nearly 1 in 3 teenagers will experience an anxiety disorder during their teen years. Roughly 1 in 5 will experience a major depressive episode before adulthood. Suicide is currently the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10–34, according to the CDC. These aren’t fringe statistics. They’re happening in ordinary homes, to kids who seem fine on the surface — kids who go to school, have friends, and smile at the dinner table. The challenge for parents is that mental health st...