Last week, we looked at the mirror parents hold up to their children: the names, the jokes, and the unhealed adult pain that can quietly teach a child they are not enough. This week, we turn to the shield. What does self-love actually protect our teenagers from? And why can’t we teach it with words
Every parent wants to protect their child. We lock the doors, get to know their friends, and worry about what they are doing on their phones. But one of the most important protections we can give our children isn’t a rule or a restriction. It’s a belief, planted early and deep, that they are worthy
Stop Creating Trauma Vessels: How Your Words Shape Your Teen’s Self-Worth Read More »
Every parent wants to protect their child. We lock the doors, get to know their friends, and worry about what they are doing on their phones. But one of the most important protections we can give our children isn’t a rule or a restriction. It’s a belief, planted early and deep, that they are worthy
Stop Creating Trauma Vessels: How Your Words Shape Your Teen’s Self-Worth Read More »
What happened this week? On 8 September 2026, a 27-year-old researcher named Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and posted a public thread explaining why. He had spent three years on pretraining research, first at OpenAI and then at Anthropic. His conclusion was that neither company was behaving responsibly and that both were, in his words,
AI Researchers Are Quitting Over Safety Fears — What Parents Actually Need to Know Read More »
In March 2026, at an infrastructure summit in Washington, the chief executive of OpenAI, Sam Altman, described his vision of the future to the room. Intelligence, he said, would be a utility — like electricity, like water — and people would buy it from his company on a meter. Read that again, slowly. Not a
Raise a Thinker, Not a Prompter Read More »
In late 2010, a New York Times reporter named Nick Bilton was on the phone with Steve Jobs. Jobs had called to complain about something Bilton had written. Trying to change the subject, Bilton asked what seemed like a safe question: your children must love the iPad? Jobs told him they hadn’t used it. The
The People Who Built It Are the Most Careful With It Read More »
The sentence most parents cannot say The 10th of September is World Suicide Prevention Day. This year’s theme is Changing the Narrative on Suicide — moving from silence and stigma towards openness and support. I want to bring that theme down from the level of policy to the level of a kitchen. Because the narrative
How to Ask Your Teenager About Suicide — And Why Silence Never Protects Them Read More »
The vote that most parents missed On Friday, 4 September 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution called “Correct the Map”. It was introduced by Togo on behalf of the African Group—all 54 African member states—and co-sponsored by the Bahamas, with the backing of the African Union. It passed by 164 votes to
Why September is different Every parent I coach has tried to change their teenager’s phone habits at some point. Very few have tried it in the first fortnight of a school year. That timing matters more than the rule itself. A new term is one of the few moments when a young person’s whole routine
Back to School Phone Rules for Teenagers: Why September Is the Only Month That Works Read More »
