Should We Tell Our Kids The Truth About the World?

Exciting news!!! My new book, What To Do When It’s Time To Calm Down, is coming out in only a few short weeks and you can pre-order it on Amazon and other common retailers! This book helps children to learn and practice concrete skills for regulating their big feelings. If you enjoy these newsletters and my previous books, pre-ordering my book is an incredible way to support my mission of getting research into the hands of parents. As you may know, pre-orders make a HUGE difference— they help books hit bestseller lists, boost visibility through algorithms, and signal to retailers to stock more copies. Thank you so much for your continued support — and for helping to get these books into the little hands that need them. 💛

More so now than ever, it seems like the world is full of bad news and heavy realities. As parents, it can feel nearly impossible to be present with our kids and share in their joy when our minds are preoccupied by all of the bad things— whether it is upsetting events from the news, overwhelming financial or work stress, or a trauma that still triggers us to this day. Of course, we all want our children to stay innocent for as long as possible and we want to protect them from information that even we, as adults, struggle to understand and process. Yet, at the same time, it can feel deeply wrong to pretend like everything is “fine” when it is anything but fine, particularly when we know that our children may be sensing our stress or may find out the truth from peers, the media, or other less reliable sources.

Over the past few decades, expert guidance on how much “bad news” to share with children has really shifted as research has improved our understanding of the parent-child relationship and societal views of children have changed. In the 1950s, it was widely recommended that parents shield children from upsetting or distressing information whenever possible. As the children’s rights movement gained momentum, this perspective began to change, with experts increasingly emphasizing that children have a right to know information that directly affects them. Today, most experts advocate for a balanced, developmentally sensitive approach: neither complete shielding nor full disclosure.

This leaves many parents asking: How do we talk to children about heavy realities