A Parent’s Guide to Online Safety, Plagiarism, Privacy, and Responsible AI Use Artificial intelligence has arrived in your child’s life — whether or not you have introduced it, whether or not their school has a policy, and whether or not you fully understand how it works. It is in their homework tools, their tutoring platforms, the recommendation algorithms shaping what they watch and read, and the chatbots some of them are quietly turning to for emotional support. A 2024 Bar

Why two behaviors that look almost identical need completely different responses... and how to tell them apart. Your child is on the floor of the grocery store, screaming, and you have about four seconds to decide what's happening. Is this a kid testing limits because the checkout line is boring and whining has worked before? Or is this a kid whose nervous system has genuinely gone offline, who can't hear you, and who isn't choosing this? Those two situations can look almost

Separating the science from the social-media oversimplification “Dopamine” has become one of the most talked-about words in ADHD conversations across parenting forums, social media, and dinner-table debates about screens, motivation, and “five more minutes.” Parents hear it used to explain everything from why a child can’t start homework to why bedtime turns into a negotiation. But the popular version of the dopamine story, that ADHD simply means a child has “too little” of t

Understanding the Link Between Worry and Organization By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC You've probably noticed it: your child seems smart and capable one moment, then completely falls apart trying to organize homework, start a big project, or remember multi-step instructions. If your child also describes feeling worried, anxious, or overwhelmed, you might be wondering if these challenges are connected. The short answer: yes. Anxiety

By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC Picture a child who can explain the lifecycle of a star but can't organize her backpack. Or a boy who reads three grade levels ahead yet melts down at the sound of the cafeteria. Or a teenager who scores in the gifted range on every reasoning measure but hasn't turned in a homework assignment in weeks. These children are not lazy, disorganized, or tempermental. They are twice-exceptional. Twice-except

Independent Play, Boredom, and Why “Underparenting” Might Be Exactly What Your Child Needs By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC If you have ever felt guilty for not playing with your child, for letting them sit in their boredom a little too long, or for wishing they could just (for once) entertain themselves for twenty minutes while you finish something: this article is for you. There is a growing movement in child development research a

By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC Writing is hard. Most parents know this instinctively when they watch their child stare at a blank page, lose their grip on a pencil, or spend 20 minutes producing three sentences that their classmates wrote in five. What parents often don’t know is that this struggle usually has a clear, identifiable cause...and that research-backed strategies exist to address it. A study recently published in The Re

By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC Your child's teacher has flagged concerns about focus. Maybe your child is shutting down during tests, avoiding social situations, or struggling to finish anything at home. You've Googled "signs of ADHD" and checked most of the boxes...but something feels off. Could it be anxiety? Could it be both? You're not overthinking this. Anxiety and ADHD are genuinely difficult to tell apart in children, and ev

What the Research Says...and What to Actually Do About It By Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall, PhD, LP, NCSP | Minds in Progress, LLC It’s become a familiar summer scene: kids sprawled on the couch, phone in hand, the afternoon disappearing into a scroll. Parents know something is off...but between working, managing the house, and the sheer exhaustion of summer logistics, it’s easy to let screens absorb the hours that feel hardest to fill. You’re not imagining it, and you’re

Understanding Test & End-of-Year Anxiety Across All Ages Something shifts in the air at this time of year. Backpacks get heavier, sleep gets shorter, and the phrase "I have a test" takes on a new weight. Whether your child is in third grade worried about a reading assessment, a tenth grader bracing for some of their first cumulative exams, or a college sophomore facing final exams, the end of the school year brings a particular kind of pressure...one that is very real, very c

Understanding the function of behavior using the SEAT Framework by Dr. Mckinzie Duesenberg-Marshall You’ve been through the homework meltdown. The tantrum in the grocery store. The child who suddenly “can’t” do anything the moment it’s time to leave the playground. You’ve tried calm, you’ve tried firm, you’ve tried ignoring it, you’ve tried everything — and still, the behavior keeps coming back. Here’s what most behavior advice misses: behavior doesn’t happen randomly. Every

And the questions you should ask before committing to one. You've done the research. You've made the calls. You've probably waited weeks for an opening. And when the evaluation report finally arrives — thick, formal, and full of terms like 'processing speed index' and 'confidence interval' — you sit down to read it and realize you can barely understand what it says about your own child. You're not alone, and you're not the problem. A peer-reviewed study published this year in

I recently co-authored a chapter on progress monitoring for a newly published educational textbook—a project I'm genuinely excited about! Progress monitoring is an incredibly powerful tool that helps educators figure out if an intervention is actually working or if it needs tweaking. In my work as a school psychologist, I’ve found that while schools share this data with families, parents often have deeper questions about what it means and how to use it to advocate for their c

What the Study Found: Your research tested a simple but powerful reading strategy called "partner reading with paragraph shrinking" with eighth-grade students in their regular science and social studies classes. The intervention, which lasted just three weeks, led to significantly improved oral reading fluency and higher comprehension scores in both science and social studies content. One of the most encouraging findings is that the positive effects occurred regardless of whe

Quick Research Summary: Dr. McKinzie Duesenberg-Marshall co-authored a peer-reviewed study examining reading interventions across more than 1,500 students. The research found that students who received targeted interventions had significantly higher reading growth than those who received typical school interventions — and performed similarly to students who were already proficient readers. This is huge! It means when reading help is matched to what a child actually needs, str