Jessica's Parenting Journal

  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...

  Every parent has had that moment of doubt — staring at a child who’s been crying for the third day in a row, or watching a kid who used to love school suddenly refuse to get out of bed. Is this just a phase? Or is something really wrong? The Question I Kept Getting Wrong For years, I thought mental health was binary: either a child was fine, or they had a diagnosable condition. Either you called a therapist, or you chalked it up to “just being a kid.” It wasn’t until I started researching childhood mental wellness for my book Positive Minds that I realized how wrong that framing was. And how much damage it does. Mental health, for children just as for adults, exists on a spectrum. And understanding where your child falls on that spectrum — on any given week, in any given season — is one of the most valuable skills a parent can develop. What the Spectrum Actually Looks Like Picture a long horizontal line. On the far left: thriving. A child who is sleeping well, connecti...

  I have to be honest with you: in 2019, my answer would have been no.   I thought we were a close family. We had dinner together most nights, we talked about our days, and I genuinely knew my kids. But when the pandemic hit and our world collapsed into four walls, I discovered how many invisible supports had been holding us up — and how quickly they disappeared. School routines. Playdates. Sports practice. The neighbor kids. The school counselor my daughter saw twice a month without me fully realizing how much she needed it. Gone, almost overnight. What I didn't have — what most of us didn't have — was a mental health foundation built to survive that kind of disruption. And we are all still feeling the effects. A 2025 systematic review of 21 studies involving 87,486 children across 10 countries confirmed what many parents already sense: the long-term decline in children's psychological wellbeing didn't end when restrictions lifted. For many kids, it is still go...

  I stumbled across a photo that made me question everything about preschool safety. Four-year-olds in Germany cooking lunch over a fire they built themselves. With real knives. In the rain. And instead of lawsuits, these schools have years-long waiting lists. The Photo That Stopped Me Cold I’m scrolling through early childhood education research when I see something that stops me cold: small children huddled around a campfire in a forest, completely absorbed in whittling sticks with actual kitchen knives. My first thought: “Someone’s getting sued.” My second thought: “This is an actual educational approach?” That’s how I discovered Waldkindergarten – German forest kindergartens that would terrify American helicopter parents. The shocking part? Research shows these “dangerous” outdoor preschools produce kids who dramatically outperform traditional preschoolers academically. What Are German Forest Kindergartens? The Radical Concept Taking Europe by Storm Imagine drop...