1. The danger of self-soothing through social media: Trevin Wax warns, “Just as perusing WebMD engenders false confidence when we quickly diagnose ourselves or our family members after a cursory look at medical symptoms, we’ve become overly trusting of the self-help gurus and self-proclaimed therapists online who give advice about various psychological maladies.”

2. The epidemic of 2012 before the pandemic of 2020: Eric Geiger, “There has been a lot of talk about the pandemic’s impact on mental health deterioration. Stay at home orders and social distancing reduced both time with others and physical exercise, which adversely impacted mental health. The decline in mental health as a result of the response to the pandemic has been well-documented and discussed. But according to Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and professor at NYU, children and adolescents were already facing an epidemic of mental health challenges before the Covid pandemic.”

3. Dancing in an empty theater: Brianna Lambert wonders, “I think about the striped caterpillar on the stalk of a branch that no child will shriek and marvel at. I wonder at the deep blue indigo bunting who flits from branch to branch in isolation.”

4. Is ‘gentle parenting’ biblical? I appreciated Bernard Howard’s response to a growing movement of parenting. “If gentle parenting were just a mood board for solving parenting difficulties in nonconfrontational ways, I’d have nothing to say against it. But when you dig more deeply into the underlying concepts of gentle parenting, you find at least two that stand opposed to the Bible’s teaching about parenting.”

5. Why millennials are moving back home: The national average is 15.8% of those currently aged 28-43.

Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash