Making the most of summer break: Taking stock, enjoying and resetting resilience

Happy summer. Enjoy. Let go wherever you are able of excessive thinking and ongoing planning and any striving. Come back to whatever feels best for your family. Relax, recharge, and reset your priorities. As parents, letting go does not have to mean ignoring reality. We can use these times of relative relaxation to reconnect with our own common-sense wisdom. Under…

How Children Thrive: Prioritizing What Matters Most

Excerpted from HOW CHILDREN THRIVE: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids, by Mark Bertin, MD. Sounds True, May 2018. Reprinted with permission. The day ends and you pull into your driveway. You open the mailbox and, groaning, take out a two-inch pile of mail, 90 percent junk, but needing to be sorted. Riffling through it as…

From Hurricanes to Hate Crimes

It seems that after any disaster or tragedy, be it a horror of human making, or the aftermath of nature’s wrath, be it across the oceans or around the corner, we are inundated with images of suffering across our TV screens and social media feeds. We witness faces contorted with fear, mouths gaping in disbelief, bodies crouched, crying uncontrollably. In…

Reading, Resilience, Mindfulness and More

As part of our “Garrison Talks at the JCC” event series, Dr. Perri Klass, Dr. Mark Bertin, and Dr. Chris Willard discussed strategies for fostering happy, successful children. In the podcast below, they explore their professional experience with children as well as with both established and cutting-edge research, emphasizing practical approaches to real life. Key questions: What is executive function, and how does…