Thriving Kids

In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson answers parents’ questions about violent video games, including Grand Theft Auto, and what research tells us about gaming, aggression, attention, and addiction. He also explains how parents can set realistic limits considering a child’s age, maturity, behavior, and overall well-being.

In this episode, Dr. Dave covers:

• How parents can decide whether mature video game content is appropriate for their child
• What research does (and doesn’t) say about violent video games and real-world violence
• Why some kids can play video games for hours but struggle to focus on homework
• Signs that a child’s gaming may be becoming problematic
• How to handle kids’ big reactions when it’s time to stop playing

Key takeaways

• Consider the whole child. Age ratings matter, but maturity, existing mental health or behavioral challenges, and a child’s ability to balance gaming with everyday responsibilities matter too.
• Violence and aggression aren’t the same thing. Dr. Dave explains that research does not support a strong link between playing violent games and committing violent acts, although violent content may contribute to aggressive thoughts or behavior, particularly for some vulnerable kids.
• Look for balance. Gaming becomes more concerning when it consistently crowds out sleep, schoolwork, friendships, nutrition, physical activity, or other important parts of a child’s development.

Further reading and resources

• Video Game Addiction: What Is Internet Gaming Disorder? – Child Mind Institute
• Healthy Limits on Video Games – Child Mind Institute

About Thriving Kids

Thriving Kids is a podcast from the Child Mind Institute offering practical, evidence-based guidance to help parents and caregivers support children’s mental health and development.

Have a question you’d like Dr. Dave to answer in a future Q&A episode? Email [email protected].

Our relationships with our siblings can shape who we become, influencing everything from our personalities and sense of belonging to how we handle conflict, build relationships, and navigate family responsibilities as adults. But why do some sibling relationships grow stronger over time while others remain complicated?

In this episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson sits down with psychotherapist and author Minaa B. to explore the complex dynamics of sibling relationships and how childhood experiences can influence our emotional well-being throughout life.

Drawing from her experience growing up in a blended family of 13 siblings and her upcoming book, Siblinghood: How to Resolve Conflict, Heal Resentment, and Find Peace in Your Adult Sibling Relationships, Minaa introduces her Siblinghood Theory and explains how family roles, competition, perceived favoritism, and childhood experiences shape the connections we develop with our brothers and sisters.

In this episode, they cover:

• How sibling relationships influence personality, identity, and emotional development
• Why competition, favoritism, and unequal parental attention can create lasting sibling tensions
• What parentification means and how childhood caregiving responsibilities can affect adult relationships
• How family roles, including caretaker, mediator, and peacemaker, can become difficult to escape
• Practical ways to establish boundaries, resolve conflict, and strengthen sibling bonds

Key takeaways

• Sibling relationships shape us throughout life. Early experiences with competition, belonging, and family expectations can influence how we navigate friendships, romantic relationships, and conflict as adults.

• Childhood roles don’t have to define adulthood. Children who become caretakers or mediators may carry those responsibilities into adulthood. Recognizing these patterns can help people establish healthier boundaries.

• Siblings can experience the same family differently. Understanding and validating each other’s perspectives, rather than debating whose childhood was more difficult, can help reduce resentment and strengthen relationships.

• Healthy boundaries can improve family relationships. Changing long-standing family roles doesn’t require abandoning responsibilities. Small adjustments, clearer communication, and shared expectations can create healthier dynamics.

• Every child needs to feel valued and included. Parents can strengthen sibling bonds by recognizing each child’s individual needs, avoiding favoritism, and encouraging cooperation, particularly in blended families.

Further reading

Siblinghood: How to Resolve Conflict, Heal Resentment, and Find Peace in Your Adult Sibling Relationships – Minaa B.

How to Help Siblings Get Along

When Siblings Won’t Stop Fighting

Tips for Blended Families

About Thriving Kids

Thriving Kids is a podcast from the Child Mind Institute, hosted by clinical psychologist Dr. Dave Anderson, featuring expert conversations and practical, evidence-based advice to help children and families thrive. Submit questions at: [email protected]

Every child worries sometimes, but how can parents tell when it has become something more? In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson is joined by Dr. Theresa Welles, Shapiro Family Director of the Bubrick Center for Pediatric OCD at the Child Mind Institute, to answer listener questions about anxiety in children and teens. Dr. Welles explains why anxiety is a normal and even helpful emotion. She also covers signs that a child’s anxiety has become a problem, like when their world gets smaller because they're avoiding school, friends, or activities they used to enjoy.

In this episode, Dr. Dave and Dr. Welles cover:

·       How to tell the difference between normal worries and an anxiety disorder

·       Less obvious signs of anxiety in teens, including anger, procrastination, and saying they "don't care"

·       Why stomachaches and headaches before school can be signs of anxiety, and how to respond

·       How to help a child who avoids activities because they're afraid of failing, without pushing too hard

·       How to help an anxious child without accidentally reinforcing their anxiety

·       When to seek professional help, including when family routines start to revolve around a child's anxiety

·       What good treatment for child and teen anxiety looks like, and signs that it isn't working

·       How OCD differs from anxiety, and how exposure and response prevention (ERP) helps kids break the cycle

Further Reading

·       How Anxiety Affects Teenagers

·       Anxious Stomachaches and Headaches

·       What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious

·       What Does OCD Look Like in Kids?

Why do some kids keep trying when something is difficult while others quickly give up? In this episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson sits down with Yale University researcher Dr. Julia Leonard to explore the science of motivation, persistence, and learning — and the important role parents and other adults can play in helping kids decide which challenges are worth pursuing.

In this episode, they cover:

• How children develop beliefs about what they’re capable of
• Why stepping in too quickly can unintentionally discourage independence
• How modeling your own hard work can help kids learn to keep trying
• Why giving kids opportunities to struggle and improve can build confidence
Key takeaways

• Kids learn about effort through relationships. When children face a difficult task, they look to parents, teachers, and other adults for clues about whether the challenge is worth pursuing and whether they’re capable of succeeding.

• Resist the urge to immediately take over. When a task is developmentally appropriate, giving kids room to try, struggle, and problem-solve can help them build independence and confidence.

• Let kids see your hard work. Adults often make everyday tasks look effortless, while doing their own difficult work out of sight. Showing kids that adults struggle, practice, make mistakes, and eventually improve helps make effort visible.

• Praise the process, not just the person. With younger children, highlighting effort, strategies, persistence, and progress can be more motivating than simply telling them they’re smart, talented, or “the best.”

• Keep praise authentic. Over-the-top praise can backfire, and as kids get older, they become increasingly sensitive to praise that doesn’t match their own assessment of how they performed.

• Create opportunities for kids to improve. Whether at home or in school, feedback, second chances, and opportunities to revise work send kids the message that learning is a process — not a single judgment of their ability.

Further reading

How to Help Kids Learn to Fail

Helping Kids With Flexible Thinking

Does It Matter How I Praise My Child?

When a child refuses to go to school, it can be easy to assume they’re unmotivated, being defiant, or simply trying to skip class. But school avoidance is often driven by anxiety — and understanding what’s behind it is an important first step toward helping kids get back to school.

In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson is joined by Alana Cooperman, LCSW, a senior social worker in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute, to answer parents’ questions about school anxiety, avoidance, and refusal.

Cooperman explains how school avoidance can look different across ages, from crying and clinging to parents in younger children to stomachaches, sleep problems, irritability, frequent trips to the nurse, or repeated requests to come home in older kids and teens. She and Dr. Dave also discuss how ADHD, learning difficulties, autism, peer problems, academic pressure, and embarrassing experiences at school can contribute to avoidance.

In this episode, they cover:

• Common reasons kids may avoid school
• How bullying, peer conflict, tests, teachers, bathrooms, and lunchrooms can become triggers
• How ADHD, executive functioning challenges, learning disorders, and autism can contribute
• How to validate anxiety without validating avoidance
• Why staying home shouldn’t become more rewarding than going to school
• How gradual exposure can help kids build tolerance for anxiety
• When professional help may be needed
• Why progress isn’t always linear — and why effort matters

Further reading

When Kids Refuse to Go to School

How Anxiety Affects Kids in School

Anxious Stomachaches and Headaches

Have a question you’d like Dr. Dave and a Child Mind Institute expert to answer in a future episode? Send it through the Child Mind Institute’s social channels or email [email protected].

Journalist, author, and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast got sober at 19 — and nearly three decades later, she continues to speak candidly about her experience with alcoholism and recovery. In this episode of Thriving Kids, she joins Dr. Dave Anderson for a conversation about recognizing addiction in adolescence, overcoming stigma, and why young people struggling with substance use need to know that recovery is possible.

In this episode, they cover:

• Why addiction can look different from typical adolescent experimentation
• Why family history can be an important part of conversations about substance use
• How parents can talk openly with kids about addiction without relying on shame
• What parents should know about marijuana and the developing adolescent brain
• Why lasting recovery involves more than simply removing access to a substance
• How schools and colleges can better support young people who choose sobriety
Key takeaways

• Addiction can begin early. Jong-Fast describes recognizing during adolescence that she had difficulty controlling her substance use and that her experience looked different from that of many of her peers.

• Pay attention to patterns, not just individual incidents. Repeated inability to stop, dramatic changes in behavior, escalating use, or repeatedly trying and failing to cut back may signal that a young person needs additional support.

• Talk honestly about family history. When addiction runs in a family, age-appropriate conversations can help kids understand that they may have increased vulnerability without framing their future as inevitable.

• Shame isn’t treatment. Families can establish clear boundaries around substance use while continuing to communicate love, connection, and a willingness to help.

• Legal doesn’t mean harmless. Alcohol and marijuana may be legal for adults, but that doesn’t eliminate the potential risks associated with adolescent use.

• Young people need spaces that support sobriety. Substance-free housing, recovery communities, treatment programs, and supportive peers can help young people build lives that don’t revolve around alcohol or drugs.

• Recovery can open up possibilities rather than close them down. Jong-Fast describes sobriety as what allowed her to build a life in which alcohol and drugs did not dictate her decisions.

Further reading
Complete Guide to Substance Use and Mental Health

How to Talk to Your Teen About Substance Use

Attention problems can be frustrating for kids and parents. In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson answers nine parent questions about attention and focus, including when difficulties may point to ADHD.

Dr. Dave explains why ADHD can make boring or repetitive tasks especially difficult and shares practical strategies for strengthening study, organization, and attention skills.

In this episode, Dr. Dave covers:
• How to distinguish attention problems from lack of motivation
• Strategies for kids with attention difficulties
• How phones, gaming, and social media may affect attention
• Why ADHD can look different in girls and boys
• Helping kids start homework & stay focused
• When to seek a professional ADHD evaluation

Key takeaways

• ADHD is not simply a lack of effort. Kids may struggle most with tasks that feel boring.
• Attention problems don’t always mean ADHD. Anxiety, depression, trauma, learning disorders and other factors can also affect focus.
• ADHD strategies can help even without a diagnosis. Routines, reinforcement and organization systems can make tasks easier.
• Planners, calendars, distraction-free workspaces, technology impacts and more.
Further reading

How to Get an ADHD Diagnosis

How to Tell if Your Daughter Has ADHD

How Girls With ADHD Are Different

How to Help Yourself Get Organized

Side Effects of ADHD Medication
Not All Attention Problems Are ADHD

Books mentioned in the episode

All About ADHD: The Complete Practical Guide for Classroom Teachers — Linda J. Pfiffner

Taking Charge of ADHD: The Complete, Authoritative Guide for Parents — Russell A. Barkley

Managing ADHD in School — Russell A. Barkley

The Everyday Parenting Toolkit — Dr. Alan E. Kazdin

Organizational Skills Training for Children with ADHD: An Empirically Supported Treatment — Richard Gallagher, Howard B. Abikoff, and Elana G. Spira

Additional Resources

ADDitude

CHADD

Experimenting with alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, and other substances isn’t uncommon during adolescence — but that doesn’t mean that parents don’t, or shouldn’t, have concerns about it. On this episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson is joined by two experts from Partnerships to End Addiction, clinical psychologist Dr. Aaron Hogue and licensed clinical social worker Molly Bobek, for a practical conversation about preventing teen substance use, recognizing the warning signs of substance use problem, and helping young people make safer decisions.

They explain why the relationship parents build with their kids may be one of their most powerful prevention tools. And they discuss how to talk about drugs and alcohol without exaggerating the risks or losing credibility, what parents should know about the connection between substance use and mental health, and how to respond when a teenager comes home after drinking or doing drugs. They also offer guidance on when to seek treatment, what effective treatment should look like, and why it’s important for families to be involved in the recovery process.

In this episode, they cover:

• How to distinguish typical experimentation from more concerning patterns of substance use
• Why mental health challenges can make teens more vulnerable to misusing substances
• How parents can balance family values, consequences, safety, and open communication

Key takeaways

• Relationships are a powerful prevention tool. Staying calm, curious, and connected — Dr. Hogue’s “three C’s” — can offer teens somewhere to turn when they encounter substances or difficult situations.

• Don’t feel like you have to exaggerate the risks of substances to be heard. Scare tactics can backfire, undermining parents’ credibility. Accurate, age-appropriate information can help teens understand real risks while preserving trust.

• Think in terms of many small conversations, as opposed to one “big talk” about drinking and drugs. You can create an ongoing dialogue about peer pressure, family values, mental health, and safety.

• Prioritize safety when something happens. If your teen has used a substance, beginning with curiosity about what happened and whether they’re safe preserves an open line of communication that can help them make better decisions in the future.

• If a teen does need treatment, it should be framed as a form of support, not a punishment. Parents can approach counseling as something the family can work on together rather than evidence that the teen has failed or needs to be “fixed.”

• Effective treatment should address the whole child. For adolescents, that often means addressing co-occurring mental health challenges and meaningfully involving parents and families in care.

Further reading

• How to Talk to Your Teen About Substance Use  – Child Mind Institute
• Complete Guide to Substance Use + Mental Health – Child Mind Institute

In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson answers eight parent questions about some of the most common — and challenging — behaviors families face. From aggression and ADHD to lying, motivation, OCD, and big emotions, Dr. Dave explains what may drive these behaviors and offers practical, evidence-based strategies parents can use to respond.

In this episode, Dr. Dave covers:

• Why is my three-year-old so angry and aggressive?
• How can I help a child with ADHD without medication?
• My child is out of control. Where can I send him?
• How do I motivate a “lazy” child?
• How do I explain OCD to a child?
• Why does my child lie about everything?
• Why won’t my child listen unless I yell?
• Why is my child so sensitive?

Key takeaways

• Anger and aggression in young children can stem from temperament, development, family stress, and other factors. Behavioral parent training can help parents combine warmth with clear expectations and consistent consequences.

• Medication is not the only evidence-based ADHD treatment. Parent training, classroom support, organizational skills, and help with peer relationships can all be effective but require consistent adult involvement.

• Even when behavior feels out of control, behavioral and family interventions can help. Families may also consider school-based services, therapeutic programs, residential treatment, or hospitalization when safety is a concern.

• What looks like “laziness” may reflect depression, ADHD, learning challenges, or other difficulties. Parents can build motivation through meaningful rewards and opportunities for success.

• OCD involves intrusive thoughts and/or repetitive behaviors a person feels driven to perform. Treatment, including exposure and response prevention (ERP), can help kids tolerate anxiety without compulsions.

• Lying is common in childhood. Parents can emphasize honesty, reinforce truth-telling — especially when it’s difficult — and use calm, proportionate consequences when needed.

• If kids only listen after a parent yells, the family may be in a coercive cycle. Calm directions and predictable consequences can break the pattern and show that yelling isn’t what makes a direction matter.

• Some children experience emotions more intensely. Parents can help them identify feelings, build coping skills, and learn to move forward after difficult moments.

Further Reading

Angry Kids: Dealing With Explosive Behavior

Behavioral Treatments for Kids With ADHD

Behavioral Parent Training

School Success Kit for Kids With ADHD

Complete Guide to ADHD

Why Kids Lie and What Parents Can Do About It

How to Give Kids Effective Instructions

Healthy Minds, Thriving Kids

Becoming a father doesn’t just change your life, research suggests it can actually change your brain. In this episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson sits down with psychologist and researcher Dr. Darby Saxbe, author of Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives, to explore the emerging science of what happens to men’s brains, hormones, relationships, and sense of identity when they become fathers.

Dr. Saxbe explains why some of the brain changes associated with fatherhood may help dads become more attuned to their children, how testosterone levels can shift as men move into caregiving roles, and why becoming a parent can bring both psychological vulnerability and long-term neurological benefits. They also discuss paternal mental health, loneliness, and social connection among men, the pressures created by online messages about masculinity, and how being an engaged father can offer men a powerful source of connection and purpose.

In this episode, they cover:

• How men’s brains can change during the transition to fatherhood
• Why some brain changes may help fathers become more responsive to their babies
• What researchers are learning about paternal postpartum depression and anxiety
• Why the popular idea that “higher testosterone is always better” misses what the research actually shows
• How relationships and social connection contribute to men’s long-term health
• How fatherhood can encourage healthier behaviors in men

Key takeaways

• Fathers’ brains change, too. Research suggests that becoming a father is associated with changes in brain structure and function, including areas involved in understanding and responding to other people’s thoughts and emotions.

• Those changes can bring both opportunity and vulnerability. In Dr. Saxbe’s research, some of the brain changes associated with stronger bonding and greater caregiving involvement were also associated with more symptoms of anxiety, depression, psychological distress, and sleep problems.

• Fathers’ mental health deserves attention. Becoming a parent is a major physical, emotional, and social transition for all parents, yet fathers are often overlooked in conversations about postpartum well-being.

• Testosterone isn’t simply a “more is better” hormone. Testosterone can naturally change as men transition into caregiving roles, and Dr. Saxbe argues that flexibility — rather than maximizing testosterone — is a more useful way to understand these changes.

• Fatherhood can encourage healthier habits. Research suggests fathers may be more likely to engage in protective health behaviors and less likely to engage in some risky behaviors once they become responsible for a child.

• Great parents are made, not born. One of Dr. Saxbe’s central messages is that good parenting isn’t innate. Investment, motivation, practice, and experience help parents develop the skills they need.

Further reading

10 Tips to Help Dads and Daughters Stay Close – Child Mind Institute

https://childmind.org/article/parenting-through-depression/Parenting Through Depression – Child Mind Institute

Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives by Dr. Darby Saxbe