Understanding Child Development

Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a child or adolescent therapist near me

Children's brains develop through experience, not through protection from experience.

The freedom to be wrong without adult intervention builds architecture that AI cannot.

Policing screen time addresses the symptom while ignoring what should replace it.

My daughter was riding one of those little green/yellow plastic bikes around the room and she got stuck between the coffee table and the couch. "Daddy, I'm stuck. Help."

My first instinct was to push the table out of the way. It would have taken three seconds and the problem would have been solved and she'd continue riding around the room. That was the easy move, and it was the one I usually make and almost made again.

But I did have other options. I could have walked out of the room and let her figure it out alone or I could have stayed in the room but refused to move the table. I took the third one and said, "Just figure it out," and I stayed where I was. Three seconds later she lifted the bike, turned it around, and went the other way.

I am not telling this story because I knew what I was doing. I am telling it because the choice I almost made, pushing the table, is the choice I and many parents make a hundred times a day without thinking about it. And it is this choice that, multiplied across years, affects a child's capacity to solve problems independently.

Why Restriction Alone Is Not Enough

The conversations about children and technology almost always start with restriction. Let's........

© Psychology Today