writing

Can We Talk About the Mental Load?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Can we talk about the mental load?

This is not a new topic.

Women have been talking about this, in one form or another, for years.

  • Honey, do we have more diapers?
  • Sweetie, where are his clean outfits?
  • Hey, have you arranged the baby’s play date/doctor’s appointment/preschool visit yet?
  • And even worse, (substitute your name here), what are we having for dinner?

These questions make women grind their teeth, develop sudden headaches, and retreat to their bathrooms for a moment to calm down…when they don’t cause them to blow in frustration on the spot.

Mothers, especially working mothers, are feeling that they are carrying the bulk of the work of thinking ahead and anticipating their family’s needs as well as doing the actual work of making their households function.

In my parent groups and in my individual sessions with mothers, this comes up all the time.

A U.N. report defines the mental load as the invisible mental and emotional labor behind handling life’s never-ending to-do lists, including caring for others, managing a household, and delegating tasks. It’s the energy we spend thinking about and anticipating everyone’s needs.

Women tend to carry more of the mental load than men, even when they work and, surprisingly, even when they are the primary wage earners in the family.

The excuse men give for is their is their idea that the women in their lives are better multitaskers than they are. Men will often say that they are glad to be of help if only the women will tell them what to do. Of course, this is a catch-22, as delegating tasks is a central part of the mental load. Having to think of what someone else needs to do and to tell them in enough detail that they can understand how to get it done is exhausting in and of itself.

And this excuse does not hold up. Studies show that when fathers are the primary caretakers for children, there is no appreciable difference in the quality of care given to the children when compared with families where the mother is the primary caretaker (Jones et al., 2022). Men can do it, multitasking or not.

Leah Ruppanner, a professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and author of the book Drained, explains that there is not one form of mental load, but eight different types. While many men are definitely taking on more at home than in previous generations, women are still overwhelmingly burdened by this hidden work, which can often result in burnout. Rupanner lists the eight forms of mental load as: life organization, emotional support, relationship hygeine, magic making (establishing traditions and making magical moments for the family at holidays, birthdays, and other special times), dream building (helping family members get involved in what interests them, signing them up for sports and clubs and hobbies), individual upkeep (keeping healthy, eating well, presenting a good enough image to the outside world), safety, and meta-care (thinking about how the family is doing, what should change, and what can stay the same)

So, what can parents do to start to put an end to this mental load gender gap?

First of all, women have to give up a certain amount of control. When they tell their partner that they need them to do certain things, it can be hard, especially at first, to see these things done differently (read “not as well”). Many moms give up and decide to go back to doing these things themselves. But this is not a sustainable solution and inevitably results in further resentment and burnout. Accepting that some things will be done differently is important.

Another suggestion, coming from Leah Ruppanner, is that women stop thinking that it is their job to keep everyone in the family happy and stop taking responsibility for everyone else’s feelings.

And UN Women suggests:

  • Toss out the gender stereotypes. Catch and question the assumptions you make about whose role it is to provide care, make plans, and manage responsibilities.
  • Make the invisible work visible and verbal. Talk openly in your family about what needs to get done and what goes into doing it.
  • Encourage children, including boys, to learn household tasks and care skills early.
  • Plan and discuss needs together.
  • Advocate for better caregiving policies with your employer. Talk to your boss and work through your union or human resources department for policies that support caregivers, including parental and family leave policies.
  • Use your vote during elections to support candidates who support more and better family leave policies and legislation supporting young children and families.

References

Jones, C., Foley, S., & Golombok, S. (2022). Parenting and child adjustment in families with primary caregiver fathers. Journal of Family Psychology, 36(3), 406–415. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000915

Ruppanner, L. (2026). Drained: Reduce your mental load to do less and be more. Avery.

UN Women, Care work and the mental load, June 24, 2026. https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/why-are-women-so-exhauste…

Has Gentle Parenting Gone Too Far?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment


Parenting is an exhausting adventure under any circumstances. Most parents have to both work and keep up with childcare. But on top of this, there is also Gentle Parenting, and its close cousin, Positive Parenting*. Both of these child-rearing philosophies demand that a parent provide empathy at all times for a child’s feelings, put those feelings into words, and negotiate with the child regarding whether or not the child will do what the parent asks.

And, if you ask me, this is too much to expect from parents….and it is not helpful to children.

Both Gentle Parenting and Positive Parenting are outgrowths of something that started in the 1950’s with Dr. Benjamin Spock’s first book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. Spock revolutionized parenting practices by urging mothers and fathers to trust their instincts and reject rigid, authoritarian rules.

Prior to Spock, parenting tended to be entirely top-down and authoritarian, with parents establishing rules and children being expected to follow them. Harsh punishment for infractions was common. My own mother, for example, born in 1912, had to sit in front of her meal until she ate it all. This sometimes lasted hours, and she was not allowed to get up from the table until she had done what was required.

Since my mother’s time, expectations of children have done a 180. Child-centered, or child-led parenting, has evolved, and here we are, immersed in Gentle Parenting. Children can do pretty much what they want, and parents are not to raise their voices or punish. They are left on their own to wonder how to get their children out the door in the morning or to get them to bed at night.

This subject was discussed in an article in The New York Times entitled, “Did American-Style ‘Gentle Parenting’ Spoil French Children?” The writer, Madeline Schwartz, reports on what she calls a vitriolic debate within French society about the extent to which children should be catered to and empathized with. She comments that each side of the debate has large groups of professionals behind it. And while this same debate exists in the United States, I would say that there are fewer professionals, and people in general, on the side of setting more limits for children.

In France, the center of the debate is psychologist Caroline Goldman, who advocates time-outs for children when they misbehave. She feels that the introduction of Gentle Parenting into French culture has yielded a new generation of parents who do not know how or when or why to set limits. In her book, Go To Your Room (currently only available in French), she lists behaviors that should be forbidden. These include complaining and making too much noise. But her detractors say that time-out is a form of psychological violence and that Goldman is encouraging parents to mistreat their children.

So what is a parent to do — whether in France or in the US — when even experts disagree?

As a psychologist and psychoanalyst with over forty years of experience, you will not be surprised to hear me say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the debate.

Prior to about 2015, the French were known for having well-behaved children. Pamela Druckerman’s book, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, was a sensation, and many American parents envied the strict French parents she described who seemed to have the secret of how to bring up children while also having time to themselves. Since that time, French parents have begun to adopt Gentle Parenting, and they have also begun to experience the same problems American parents have.

So — how do we begin to sort out the issue of which kind of parenting is best for children and which works best for parents?

Let’s take a broad look at history: For thousands of years, adherence to rules and strict behavioral codes was a matter of survival for children around the globe. After all, if a child felt like running into the meadow when the lioness was hunting, that was the end of the child. Certain rules have existed over time to maintain the safety and survival of children.

Now we no longer live amongst wild animals and we have the luxury of allowing all sorts of behavior in our children wihout worrying they will be eaten. Parents also have the time, and often the inclination, to consider their children’s feelings, which of course, is important. The capacity to think about how our children feel, that is, to mentalize, is an important aspect of parenting.

But does considering how our our children feel translate into always catering to these feelings? Never telling them to do something they don’t want to do and never insisting they do it?

This is where Gentle Parenting goes wrong.

Starting in infancy, babies need parents to help them to navigate the world. They need parents to provide love, nurture and care. They need parents to soothe them when they are upset or tired, and they also need parents to be clear about what they should and should not do – for their own safety and to learn how to live within a family and a society of other people.

When an eight-month-old bites on the electrical cord leading to a lamp, the parent says “NO!”, picks the baby up, and takes them away. When the two-year-old hits his sister, the parent says, “We do not hit” and, if necessary, picks him up and takes him away. When the three-year-old runs toward the street, the parent says, “NO. You must wait for me before going close to the street”. Rules and clear expectations are needed throughout infancy and childhood. They are needed to help the infant and the child to tame their own impulses. Toddlers and young children internalize these rules and gradually learn how to restrain themselves from doing purely what gives them pleasure.

Yes, of course, it is also important to talk about feelings, to help children name them and understand them. We can say, “You felt angry because your sister took your truck, so you hit her” but we must also say. “And hitting is not OK. It hurts your sister”. And if the toddler or the young child persists, we must have a consequence at the ready. We can hold the child’s hands so he cannot hit, or we can pick the child up and say, “Since you kept hitting, you cannot play with your sister right now” – but the expectation AND the consequence should be clear.

Punishment has become a dirty word. Neither Gentle Parenting nor Positive Parenting philosophies endorse punishment. But we need to acknowledge that children must learn what behaviors are acceptable and which are not, and talking alone doesn’t always get the job done. Children will need consequences and even small punishments in order to really learn that they are not to do certain things. They may even need to be just a little afraid of these consequences and small punishments.

This is an unpopular and perhaps old-fashioned sounding idea, but the fact is that we live within the hierarchy of society in which there are certain expectations, and the place your child learns about such hierarchies starts at home. You are the parent, and it is OK for your child to understand that you make the rules and that there will be consistent consequences if they break the rules. If we want our children to be prepared for the teachers, coaches and bosses of their futures, we must teach them how to control themselves and follow instructions while they are growing up.


*Positive parenting is an approach that focuses on building a strong, nurturing parent-child relationship rather than relying on punishment.

References

Druckerman, P. (2012). Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

Schwartz, M. “Did American-Style ‘Gentle Parenting’ Spoil French Children?”, NYT, 7/13/26 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/magazine/american-parenting-french-c…

Spock, B. (1946). The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.

We Are in an Educational Crisis!

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Have you wondered if your children or grandchildren are getting the education they need? Do you wonder if they are really learning what they need to learn and whether it will prepare them for college…or for life? Do you ever wish that schools would ban phones from classrooms or that the United States would ban social media for kids under 16 so that your children could pay better attention to learning, sports, hobbies or even their friends?

I have worried about all of these things. And I have also wondered whether the recent popularity of theories backed not by science but by TikTok proclamations may be a result of the failure of our educational system to teach people how to evaluate ideas and to think for themselves.

We are in an era where opinion trumps science, where scrolling social media is preferred to reading books, where facts are no longer respected, and where screens win out over socializing in person. Whatever your politics, these trends do not bode well for our children learning how to relate to other people, to separate truth from opinion, to evaluate ideas for themselves, and to make cogent, fact-based arguments.

And because of our kids’ habitual use of phones and screens, attention to classroom teaching and homework is suffering.

David Bailey reported on just this in a recent article in Math Scholar. He said that we are experiencing a crisis in education—and he cited plenty of evidence:

  1. U.S. educational test scores are in a generation-long decline: From 2015 to 2025, 83 percent of school districts lost ground in reading, and 70 percent of districts lost ground in mathematics (Bailey, 2026).
  2. Twelfth-grade U.S. reading scores have dropped to the lowest level since 2005. Sadly, the declines have been greatest for those students from lower socioeconomic environments (Bailey, 2026).
  3. A working group at the University of California, San Diego, found that 900 of the latest incoming freshman class had mathematics skills below high-school level, and most of those did not even fully meet middle-school standards. Nationwide, college professors teaching mathematics and computer science courses report growing numbers of incoming students unable to do basic algebra or solve simple word problems (Bailey, 2026).
  4. Even at elite U.S. universities, professors report difficulties getting students to engage with full-length literature texts; in many cases, students have never read such “lengthy” works (Bailey 2026).
  5. Grade inflation is rampant at all levels. At Harvard University, the percentage of A grades soared from 24 percent of all grades in 2005 to 60 percent in 2025 (Bailey, 2026).

In this article, Bailey said that these changes in student performance are concurrent with the rise of smartphones, increased use of social media, and rising student absenteeism.

So it seems my concerns—and possibly your own—are justified.

While many people believe that this trend started during the COVID-19 pandemic—and while it is true that this period severely worsened the downward trajectory of student test scores—recent data from the Stanford Educational Opportunity Project shows that a “learning recession” actually began around 2013 (Miller et al., 2026). This report says that almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers did a decade ago. The term, “learning recession” was coined by the Education Scorecard, a joint project of Sean Reardon at the Stanford group, Thomas Kane at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, and Douglas Staiger at Dartmouth (Miller et al., 2026).

In a recent New York Times article, Nat Malkus, a senior fellow studying educational policy at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “I cannot be more emphatic: This is an enormous problem that’s not getting enough attention” (Miller et al., 2026).

Students’ ever-present screens are potent sources of distraction. According to The Pew Research Center, nearly half of American teens say that they are online “almost constantly” compared with under a quarter who said the same thing a decade ago (Miller et al., 2026).

Moreover, schools are expecting less and less of kids. Students are required to read entire books far less often than in previous years. And their attentional abilities have also declined, resulting in less attention paid in the classroom and to longer homework assignments.

So parents, I hate to say it, but it is time to worry. And it is also time to do something.

Here are my suggestions:

  1. Make sure your child goes to school every day. This may seem obvious, but regular school attendance and a commitment to school are important for kids.
  2. Start going to the public library on a weekly basis when your children are around age 2. Take out the books they want and read them to them at home. When they are older, let them take out the books they want to read themselves.
  3. Model reading print books and magazines at home. Make sure your children see you reading books or magazines and enjoying it.
  4. Encourage your school-aged child to read for at least 10 minutes before going to sleep. This is a good, relaxing habit. And make sure their cell phone is not in the bedroom.
  5. During homework time, insist on cell phones being put in another room.
  6. Have your kids do their homework in a community space in the house where you can monitor what they are doing on their computers, making sure it is homework and not YouTube.
  7. Monitor your children’s curriculum. If you have concerns about it, or if you think it is not rigorous enough, speak up. Schedule a face-to-face meeting. Talk to the school principal. Demand more challenging work for your child.
  8. Monitor your children’s learning. If you do not think they are keeping up in reading or math or any of the other subjects, talk to the teacher. If the problem persists, ask for a formal assessment of your child’s learning and learning ability. Once a parent requests this, all public schools are required to set up an evaluation by the school psychologist.
  9. If you would prefer that phones—or even screens—not be used in the classroom, again, speak up. Talk to the teacher and the principal. Don’t be afraid to attend school board and PTA meetings and be vocal.

Parents, it is up to you to monitor your children’s education and to advocate for better services and policies if you do not think your children are getting the education they need. It is also up to you to instill good study habits—starting early—to help your children build their attentional capacities and to prepare them for the later school years and college.

References

Bailey, David (2026). The Great Dumbing Down of America, Math Scholar. https://mathscholar.org/2026/07/the-great-dumbing-down-of-society/

Miller, C., Paris, F., and Dervosh, S. Why U.S. Test Scores are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline.’ The New York Times, May 13, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-…

The Most Amazing Thing She Had Ever Seen

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

By Tejal Toprani

Tejal is a social worker, therapist and mom living in Arizona.

I recently recommended the book The Amazing Generation to my ten-year-old son, Avyaan. Surprisingly, he took it to school. And finished it in one day. This does make sense, however as his school limits “technology” to a basic computer skills class three times a week, and he has plenty of time to read there. And he actually forgets to charge or even wear the communication watch we got him for drop-offs and events.

Which honestly says two things:

  1. The book is incredibly readable.
  2. My child is not yet screen addicted
  3. And my child may already be concerned about the collapse of civilization.

And so am I: A few months ago, I went to a supper club where guests played one of those “get to know you” icebreaker games. You walk around with a sheet of questions, trying to make meaningful human connection while balancing a cocktail and pretending this doesn’t feel like corporate team-building with better lighting.

One of the questions was:
“What is the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen?”

I asked this of a woman in her seventies. Now, from what I later learned about her, she had lived:

She had traveled extensively.
Raised a family.
Spent time with adult children and grandchildren.
Ran a thriving family-owned restaurant.
Built a career outside the home.
Experienced actual life in all its messy, textured, analog glory.

But do you know what she told me the most amazing thing she had ever seen was?  “A Facebook video.” The most amazing thing she had ever seen was a Facebook video –

Not childbirth.
Not Paris.
Not falling in love.
Not watching her children grow up.

A Facebook video. The video involved a woman getting pulled over by the police for holding her phone while driving. The twist — and apparently the hook — was that the woman did not actually have a right hand. The woman at my table leaned in while telling me this story. There was going to be a “trial,” apparently, because both sides insisted their version of events was true. 

She was riveted. I smiled politely and said, “Wow, that’s crazy.” But internally? I was haunted.

Because this woman had lived a full human life, and somehow the most amazing thing she could think of was content specifically engineered to keep her watching. Not living. Watching other people live. And I say this without judgment because honestly? We are all vulnerable to it.

I fall into that strange microgeneration sometimes called Xennials — old enough to remember life before smartphones, but young enough to have fully merged with technology like reluctant cyborgs.

We remember:

  • house phones
  • getting lost without GPS
  • boredom
  • waiting
  • silence
  • not being reachable every second of the day

Our children do not. For them, technology is not an invention. It’s oxygen.

And that’s why I gave my son the book. And it’s also what makes The Amazing Generation feel less like a parenting book and more like a cultural intervention. The author, Jonathan Haidt, argues that we accidentally traded a “play-based childhood” for a “phone-based childhood.” And once you see this, you cannot unsee it. 

Kids are safer physically than ever before. But emotionally? Many are struggling more than ever. Anxious. Lonely. Disconnected. Chronically stimulated but somehow undernourished. As a therapist and a parent, I see this constantly.

Children are losing opportunities to:

  • tolerate discomfort
  • navigate conflict independently
  • develop confidence through real-world experiences
  • experience boredom without immediately anesthetizing it

And adults are not immune either. We are all being trained, little by little, to confuse stimulation with meaning. To confuse consuming with connecting. To confuse watching life with living it. The thing is, if you ask people about their favorite memories, almost nobody says:

“Honestly? Probably that seven-hour scroll session I had in 2023.”

They talk about:

  • road trips
  • summers
  • inside jokes
  • heartbreak
  • friendships
  • sports teams
  • campfires
  • college roommates
  • babies
  • terrible apartments
  • laughter so hard you couldn’t breathe

Real life.

The uncurated kind. And this is where I think parenting gets complicated. Because we are raising children inside an environment that even we do not fully understand yet. We hand kids devices because everyone else has them. Because we’re tired. Because we need to make dinner. Because modern parenting is exhausting and relentless and occasionally you just need someone to watch YouTube so you can send one coherent email.

I get it. But I also think many of us feel a quiet unease. Like maybe something sacred is being slowly traded away. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just one scroll at a time. One less conversation. One less bike ride. One less moment of boredom that could have turned into imagination. One less fully lived day.

I’m not anti-technology. I use it constantly. I am literally writing this on a computer while probably ignoring three texts and an unread email from Costco. But I do think we need to ask ourselves harder questions about what kind of childhood we are protecting. And what kind of adulthood are we drifting toward? Because I don’t want the most amazing thing my children ever see to be content optimized for engagement.

I want it to be their actual lives.

The Amazing Generation makes a compelling case that our society has shifted from a “play-based childhood” to a “phone-based childhood” and as a result, has directly contributed to the rising rates of anxiety and loneliness in children. As both a therapist and a parent, I felt it was vital for my ten-year-old son, Avyaan, to read this book; I wanted him to understand that good memories are made through living in the present, off-screen, and true resilience and emotional strength aren’t found in a digital interface, but are built through the messy, unpredictable experiences of the real world.

The most powerful outcome of his reading the book, however, wasn’t just his understanding of the theory, but his immediate application of it: he asked to play a board game together as a family when he came home from school the day I gave him the book. This was a small, uncurated moment—a simple step back into the “oxygen” of real life that the book advocates for, one that gave him deep, quiet contentment and a sense of happiness with himself, who he is, and who we are as a family – even while surrounded by peers with greater tech access.

Winners aren’t people who don’t lose, they are people who keep trying: a personal essay

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

When I was a child I never won anything. I mean never. I went to an academically competitive school and while I suppose I was smart, evidently I wasn’t smart enough to win any awards.

This was in an era, long ago, when it had not yet come into vogue to tell children they were doing a good job. My school was big on telling children they were not trying hard enough.

Often, my parents were told that I was not living up to my potential. And once, my mother was told that I always sat in the back row – and this was in a classroom that only had two rows. This kind of feedback was crushing to my self-esteem, not to mention other aspects of my self-confidence. 

It made me feel badly about myself. And you could easily think that this was destructive. However, what actually happened is that it made me mad, really, really mad. And I decided to show them. In high school, I got interested in psychology and in theories of education. I decided I could understand and help children in a way that I had not felt helped or understood. I went to a college that was as different from my high school as possible. It was a wonderful antidote. And then it went bankrupt. I had to find another college. And then I had to convince that new college to accept the credits from my beloved and highly non-traditional, now defunct, former school. Then I decided to go to graduate school to get a doctorate, something the director of studies at my high school would not have predicted. I didn’t succeed the first year. I didn’t succeed the second year. I had to try three years running to get into a program I wanted to go to.

If I wasn’t as “smart” as the kids who had won the awards early in my school career, at least I had perseverance. 

And then, at a time when psychologists were not allowed to enter clinical psychoanalytic training at most institutes, I decided I wanted to become a psychoanalyst. Of course. 

I say all this for a purpose. Telling kids they are doing a good job is now in fashion. Shielding children from criticism, protecting them from failure and helping them to feel they have succeeded is something parents routinely do. But it is important to keep in mind that motivation and drive do not necessarily come from a lifetime of success. And success is not defined by always succeeding, or by a life lived without suffering.

Henri Parens, a child psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor, revamped the psychoanalytic theory of aggression. He wrote that aggression comes from an overabundance of frustration. But he also said that there are two kinds of aggression: hostile, destructive and non-hostile, non-destructive. And, it turns out that this latter type of aggression is what motivates us to move forward in life. We need SOME aggression to motivate us. And we need SOME frustration, in addition to our inborn, natural aggressive impulses, to generate that motivation.

So, frustration is necessary for children. Some frustration can lead to a feeling of wanting to do better next time. Shielding children from experiences of frustration and even occasional failure is not beneficial. And telling kids that they have done a good job when they actually have not is not helpful. Kids need to feel motivated by not doing well sometimes and the frustration that comes from that in order to want to try again and try harder.

If you have any doubt about this, read Ernst Papanek’s Out ofthe Fire about the hundreds of children he housed and educated during the early days of World War II in France. These children were separated from their families; some walked across Europe, some went from hiding to hiding until they reached one of Papanek’s homes for children. And what did those who survived become? They became lawyers and doctors and writers and professors. 

Winners are not people who do not lose – or suffer – they are people who keep trying.

Holiday Re-Do

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to start thinking about…the holidays. 

Next year.

How do you want to do it differently? What didn’t work? What do you WANT your holidays to look like from here on out?

These are the things many of the young parents in my practice and in my parenting groups are talking about.

The first topic was presents. So many of the parents felt that their way of doing presents wasn’t working. Their children were disappointed, or overwhelmed or both. One mother described it this way: “everybody opened everything all at once. It was chaos…and I had a headache.”

The second topic was relatives: when they came, how long they stayed and how many presents they gave. One mother with three small children had tried to control the overwhelm by having everyone come to her house instead of having to travel. That too was chaos.

So what’s a parent to do?

Perhaps now is the time to sit down with your partner and talk about how you want the holidays to look next year – and to start to prepare family members for any changes you intend to make.

One mother in our group who has older children said she wanted Christmas Eve and Christmas morning just for her own nuclear family. But she was afraid to tell her parents and her in-laws for fear of causing hurt feelings. 

Another mother talked about how “bratty” her children were around gifts. She had not wanted them to expect a gift every night of Hannuka, but when there was a night without gifts, her kids whined and complained. 

The discussions we had around these issues were really fruitful. The mother with three children told everyone that after numerous years of overwhelming holidays, she finally told her relatives that her family would celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas morning on their own and that she would then have an open house on Christmas afternoon….and to her surprise, everyone was fine with it. 

And as for presents? We discussed how important it is to tell children ahead of time what to expect in regard to presents. If you decide you are just going to give each of your children one big gift for the holidays and you are going to let the relatives give the other gifts, tell your children well in advance. If you are going to give a gift every other night of Hannuka, tell your children ahead of time and let them know which nights will be the present nights. You may also want to talk about other things, for example, the meaning of the holiday, and for that matter, the meaning of gifts. You might want to emphasize the good feeling derived from giving, the importance of generosity, the importance of the children giving as well as receiving, and the importance of graciousness when receiving a gift. Your children may not be able to quell their disappointment when they don’t get what they want or when they don’t get as much as they want, but the topics of meaning, gratitude, generosity and graciousness can be discussed repeatedly over the years.

And as for the other disappointments of the holidays? Well, one mother told us her solution: radical acceptance. She said she assumes there will be some disappointment around presents and she also assumes someone – or several people – will get sick over the holidays….and she just accepts it.

What Happens When AI Does the Writing?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Recently, The Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most prestigious journals in medicine, published an opinion piece on the use of AI in scientific writing. The author, John Steiner, discussed the perils involved. 

He talks about how tempting it is for scientists to use AI when they write, given that many of them do not enjoy or feel competent at writing. He mentions that they have been trained in science, not in the humanities, and many have received no formal training in writing….since high school.

The problem is that scientists become successful partially by virtue of the number of papers they get published. Overwhelmed as they are by their other responsibilities – teaching, research, grant writing, etc. – AI becomes particularly attractive as a way to shortcut the writing process. 

But, Steiner says, it is amid these pressures that an important matter is forgotten: scientific writing is a creative act.

And here is where we get to my point in writing this post: this is not the case only with scientific writing. Just about any kind of writing is a creative act – and this is as true in fifth grade or seventh grade as it is at the postgraduate level. If children and teens farm out their writing to AI, they too miss out on the creative act of writing. They miss the opportunity to choose words and, indeed, ideas, carefully and consciously. They miss out on the chance to figure out how to best express their own thoughts.

Steiner quotes the writer, Ted Chang, who pithily said,  “The task that generative AI has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and
of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning.”

The creative act of writing involves struggle. It isn’t easy to express ones ideas clearly, to choose the words that convey our ideas best and that sound the most pleasing. But the question is, what happens to people – scientists, or kids – if they do not engage in this sort of mental exercise? What happens to their creativity? And what happens to their feeings about themselves when they submit an article or hand in homework on which they didn’t really work very hard because they used AI to do their writing? What happens to the development of their ability to withstand the frustration inherent in doing intellectual work?

In the end, Steiner comes to this conclusion: “We should not protect young researchers from that struggle, and they should not protect themselves by relying too heavily on AI tools.” And I would say the same of kids. Let’s do all we can to discourage AI use in writing – at home and at school. Yes, AI is good for correcting grammar and spelling mistakes, for finding citations, and even for summarizing the content of articles. But beyond that? Let’s try to help kids (and scientists) to do the writing on their own.

References

Steiner, John F., JAMA. Scientific Writing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, November 17, 2025.
doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.6078

Chiang T. Why AI isn’t going to make art. New
Yorker. Published on August 31, 2024. Accessed
May 19, 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/
the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art

Talking to Your Kids About Porn

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment
kid-620_620x350_61477990834

Dr. Corinne Masur

It’s time to recycle and update this post from 2018.

But – you aren’t going to want to read this, even though you need to.

Kids and porn – it’s a difficult subject.

Parents don’t want to believe that their kids are watching porn. 

But…your kids are probably watching porn.

Common Sense Media reports that by 13 – 17, a majority of kids have watched porn.

And I’ve had patients as young as seven who admitted that they had gone to a porn site and watched “sex.”  This was accompanied by giggling and embarrassment.  But behind the giggling was confusion over what sex is and why people are all watching this stuff.

Older kids, from ages 10 through adolescence, may understand more about the meaning of the word sex and why people watch porn – but don’t assume that they have accurate ideas about either.

A teacher at Philadelphia’s Friends Central School, Al Vernaccio, teaches sexual literacy starting in elementary school.  He begins by talking about puberty to the 4th and 5th graders, continues with discussions about romantic crushes with the middle school kids, and in high school, he talks about the question: what is sex? 

Surprisingly, he finds, there is confusion over the answer.  He allows his students to ask questions anonymously at the beginning of every class by submitting written messages to him. He answers these questions and then continues his classes by talking about a range of issues: the meaning of sex, the meaning of consent, the misinformation gained from watching pornography, etc.

Is this novel? Does this happen at your child’s school? Would you want it to?

Surprisingly, says Vernaccio, parents of his students are asking kids if they can read what he assigns for homework.  The parents are hungry for information about how to talk to their children, as well as how to have relevant conversations about an online world in which everything is accessible.

Vernaccio was raised Roman Catholic, attended parochial school and St. Joseph’s University, and obtained a degree in theology. Strange that he would have a career in teaching that involves teaching sexual literacy? Not so much.  When Vernaccio was 19 he told his parents that he was gay and, unable to talk about it themselves, they told him to talk to their priest. He’s quoted in Philadelphia Magazine as saying that his parents missed out on a huge portion of his life because they didn’t know how to talk with him about his sexual identity. This is one reason that Al Vernaccio teaches sex education today; he wants to help other kids and parents to be able to talk together about what he and his parents were unable to talk about.

This man is on a mission to help kids to learn about the multiple meanings of the word “sex,” to learn about the use and misuse of power in sexual relationships, and to understand some very basic things about themselves as sexual beings. When defining the word “sex,” he uses the analogy of pizza (and his classroom is filled with pizza posters, bumper stickers about pizza, etc). He says that sex is more than one act; instead, it’s like choosing toppings for your pizza. There are lots of options and each person participating should have a say in which options are chosen.

Ultimately, Vernacchio’s approach to sex education is simple: If we can talk about sex, we can make smart choices about sex. Yet it feels revolutionary in a society that has largely failed to initiate the conversation.

So if you think your child may have watched pornography online, or if you think they might, or even if you’re still convinced they haven’t – it’s time to start the conversation with your child or teen. And before you do, it’s important to know that many kids and teens feel guilty and ashamed about watching porn. So when you bring it up, do two things: normalize watching porn and generalize about watching porn. And what I mean by this is that you can say, “A lot of kids your age have watched porn. And most kids your age are curious about bodies and sex and they think porn is a good way to find out about this stuff.” But then you can go on to tell them that what’s available online can be confusing and that what they see when they watch porn is not like real life. The bodies shown in porn are not like average, everyday bodies and some of the things done in porn videos are not the things regular people expect to do. Discuss how movie or porn sex can be very different from “real-life sex”. Tell them that porn sets up unrealistic expectations for what sex is really like.

Encourage your kids to ask you questions about sex and identify trusted online sources of information for them. And talk about how to think critically about pornography, whether it is realistic or not, whether it is really helpful or not and whether it represents what people really want when they share intimacy together.

According to Common Sense Media, while less than half (43%) of the teens in their research reported that they had conversations about pornography with a trusted adult, most who did have these conversations said it encouraged them to find other ways to explore their sexuality besides pornography.

And the Common Sense Media report concludes by saying, “Educating kids and teens to be discerning about all content they see online is an important aspect of digital literacy, and that’s certainly true with pornography. When it comes to learning about sexuality, kids and teens need to see healthy, realistic, and age-appropriate storylines about relationships, attraction, and sex. Parents, educators, and industry leaders can help guide kids to higher-quality content and put the right protections in place to allow kids to explore the digital world safely.”

For additional information:

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/kids-action/articles/teens-are-watching-pornography-and-its-time-to-talk-about-it

https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/blog/growing-up-with-pornography-advice-for-parents-and-schools/#:~:text=By%20age%20nine%2C%2010%25%20had,self%2Desteem%20as%20young%20adults.

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2018/06/01/al-vernacchio-friends-central-school-sex-education

Does Your Kid Need a Luxurious Dorm Room?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Photo by Alethea Jay

Evidently there is a TikToc trend where people post photos of luxe dorm rooms. 

And evidently kids heading off to college soon see these and want them.

Or, some kids do.

According to The Washington Post, some almost college-students are having their dorm rooms wallpapered, they are getting luxury linens, bed skirts, curtains and framed wall art. And, once they arrive at college, their parents are spending hours putting these rooms together.

Some families are even creating registries so that friends and relatives can give luxury items for the dorm room in advance.

What happened to posters put up with tape and sheets and a comforter you didn’t have to worry about?

Or, for my generation, an old camp blanket, the worst sheets in the house and a trunk for the rest of your stuff?

Not anymore.

Some parents are spending $5 -10,000.

So, I wonder…what does this trend mean?

What is it kids are looking for when they insist on outfitting their rooms this way?

And how do the kids who can’t afford these luxuries feel when they see these rooms? 

This leads to a related question:

What are kids and parents trying to accomplish with these rooms?

One designer suggested that custom outfitted rooms would be cozier and prevent homesickness. 

Let’s reflect. The idea that the nicer the dorm room is, the less a teen will miss home is interesting. Is what kids miss when they go to college the comfort of home, or even the luxury of home (when they come from luxurious homes)? Well, perhaps this is some of what they miss. 

But also, homesickness is part of the college experience. It is part of the point of college. At 17 or 18, at least in our culture, many kids leave home in order to go to college to continue their education – but also to continue the separation-individuation process. They go to college to learn more about how to be independent, to broaden their persepectives, to figure out what they think and what they want for their own lives. 

Being homesick is part of leaving. It is part of separating. Missing what was is a necessary part of creating a self that is different from the former self. Missing parents and comforts and familiar friends is a part of mourning the life of childhood.

So, parents, when you send your child off to college, or when you take them to college, think about what message you are sending: if you move everything in for them, if you supply them with lots of new stuff for their dorm room, even lots of luxurious stuff – what are you communicating? Might you be telling them you don’t think they came make the move on their own? Might you be telling them they don’t REALLY have to leave home? Might you be communicating that they can just take home with them? Might you be telling them that they still need you and what you can provide?

Of course, in some ways, your kids DO still need you when they go to college. But you want to encourage them to not need you in all the ways they used to when they were younger. You want to communicate that you have faith in their abilities – even if they don’t have that faith yet.

And remember to check your own feelings as you make those pre-college purchases. Are you giving in to too many requests out of your own feeling of sadness at their going? Or your own anxiety about their going? Or your own fear regarding their ability to separate successfully? Or might you be feeling guilty because you are looking forward to a little more peace and quiet?

Think about it.

For more:

The Over-the-top World of Dorm Decorating, Jenny Singer, The Washington Post, Aug. 19, 2025.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2025/08/19/luxury-dorm-decorating/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F443dc6d%2F68a4a32985d30e1ccc076beb%2F63caa51aa2ddf36a686dd4c3%2F14%2F66%2F68a4a32985d30e1ccc076beb

IS ChatGPT Taking Over Your Children’s Brains?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Everyone is using AI. My patients use it to ask for help with personal issues in between sessions with me. People are using it to ask for help with work problems and to answer random questions. Teachers are using it to write their curriculum and professors are using it to write their lectures.

But how do you feel about your kids using it? Is it Ok for them to use AI to do their homework? on exams? Or to answer questions about how to handle problems with their friends and significant others?

A recent Pew Research Center study found that 26% of teens are using AI to help with schoolwork. (And I just used AI to find that out!)(1)

Black and Hispanic teens (31% each) are even more likely than White teens (22%) to say they have used ChatGPT for their schoolwork, and teens in 11th and 12th grade (31%) are more likely than seventh and eighth graders to use ChatGPT to do their work (1).


54% of teens surveyed said it was acceptable to use ChatGPT to do research and 29% said it was OK to use it to do math problems. But not all teens know about ChatGPT. For those who do, the percentages of those who use it are even larger. As many as 79% of teens who knew about ChapGPT said it was acceptable to use it for research on school projects (1).


And even more college students are using AI, with 86% using it – and many of them using it daily.


Here is the breakdown of how they are using AI according to one study (2):

  • (69%) Search for information
  • (42%) Check grammar
  • (33%) Summarize documents
  • (28%) Paraphrase a document
  • (24%) Create a first draft


So, how do you feel about this?


Is using AI on assignments and exams cheating? Will it get in the way of learning math or grammar skills? Will kids learn how to do their own research if they use AI to do it for them? And what about their using it to create the first draft of a paper or to figure out how to manage a difficult interpersonal issue?


This last one is the part I worry about the most. To me, teens using AI to write a paper or to manage an issue with a friend is a way of getting AI to do their thinking for them. I worry that doing this will curtail their ability to figure out how to negotiate with friends or to build a logical and convincing argument. I worry that it will get in the way of their learning how to express themselves well. I worry that they will not have to do the hard work of THINKING for themselves. These are all important skills. What will happen to our kids’ ability to use critical thinking and to write well if these tasks are farmed out to AI?


Or – is AI the wave of the future and are kids just early adopters, using it in the ways they will continue to use it for the rest of their lives? Will the lawyers of the future (or maybe the present…) use AI to write their briefs and their oral arguments?


After all, AI is already available to doctors at some hospitals to write their patient notes.


Do you want to talk to your kids to see what they think about using AI? Or do you want to establish rules in your house about how much AI your kids are allowed to use when doing schoolwork?


Think about it.

References

1

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/15/about-a-quarter-of-u…-

2

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2024/08/28/survey-86-of-students-….