I couldn’t see the look on my face just after this happened because my face is on my face, but I imagine it conveyed confusion, surprise, and a pinch of dismay. This is a woman who went to a finishing school. This is a woman possessed of a well-worn copy of Emily Post’s rules of etiquette (she referenced it so often when we were dating that I was certain she would leave me for a butler)....

Here’s an example: Several years ago, I was sitting in my office talking to a particularly lovely couple, let’s call them Lucy and John. They deeply respected and cared for each other and yet argued all the time. And in those moments it seemed like they didn’t respect or care for each other at all. The trigger could be something as small as seeing a sock left on the step, a light bulb that hadn’t yet been changed, or a call that needed to be made to the doctor....

“In terms of a general guideline, it’s like talking to a kid about anything else that has the potential to frighten them or overwhelm them in some way, whether it’s sex or terrorism or any of these potentially frightening occurrences,” says Dr. Daniel Blake, a clinical psychologist based in Michigan. Blake adds that, when approaching the subject, it’s extremely important for parents to weigh how sensitive a child is. Some children won’t blink if you tell them every gritty detail of meat production....

“It depends on the safety of the environment that you’ve set up. It’s really easy to leave a non-mobile infant — who can’t go anywhere — for ten minutes at a time, as long as they are entertained, they are not upset, and they are happy,” says Dr. Claire Vallotton, Associate Professor in the Human Development and Family Studies department of Michigan State University. “With a toddler, it’s harder because they’re mobile....

“In-person birthday parties that include people outside of your house are not a good idea at all right now,” says Dr. Susan Coffin, an epidemiologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The general public needs to understand it’s these exact events that cause outbreaks. They’re leading to asymptomatic infections among a group of people that then go back into their own bubbles. And because we all have like a couple of bubbles we move in and out of, all of a sudden you have 20 different bubbles and 50 different people, all infected from a single five-person birthday party....

RELATED: How To Teach Your Kids to Stop Interrupting You So Much Interruption is a tried and true way of asserting dominance in a conversation. And, per a rather wide array of social science research, men are the main interruptors. Whether intentionally or not, interruptions happen in regular conversations all the time. But the habit is particularly present when men speak to women. In fact, a 2014 study published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology found that men interrupt women an average of 2....

In this particular session they were arguing about an issue that’s quite common in my office: Who does more for our family? The day before our session, one of their children had gotten sick at school. The school called Darron who didn’t pick up his phone and then Eunice who did —someone needed to pick up their kid. Eunice left work and grabbed their 4-year-old daughter and brought her home....

My Bad Dream De-escalator role grows out of the comforting ability I’ve always had with the kids. Something about my great, hairy, hulking body and rumbly deep voice soothed them as squalling infants, and it soothes them now when they wake, panicked, and confused, crying out as some unsettling dream fades from their minds. What causes bad dreams? Ask a sleep expert. That’s not my area. But I do know how to stop nightmares from lurking in my kid’s subconscious....

1917 Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Original Screenplay A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Nomination: Best Supporting Actor (Tom Hanks) Bombshell Nominations: Best Actress (Charlize Theron), Best Supporting Actress (Margot Robbie) Ford v. Ferrari Nomination: Best Picture Harriet Nomination: Best Actress (Cynthia Erivo) The Irishman Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino, Joe Pesci) Streaming on: Netflix (free with subscription)...

And custody battles. And a lot of very real, very painful, and very conflicting, emotions. It is not a decision to take lightly, or a statement that should be made without thoughtfulness. Here’s how to ask for a divorce. Telling someone you want a divorce comes with great responsibility. But if you’re ready to say those words, ideally, it should mean that you’ve tried to solve the problems plaguing your marriage, you’ve sought outside help, you’ve done the work....

Adjust Your Mindset There’s no way around it: Scanning a list of all tasks you need to complete is a bummer and, let’s face it, a bit soul-suffocating. One of the most important things to do, then, is to structure your to-do lists to make them less so. “The key is not having a to-do list, but rather to find what makes completing these tasks meaningful and worth your time,” says Kyle Talbert, MA, LPCC, NCC....

Instead of syndication like normal episodes of the show, this “primetime event” is being broadcast on ABC. That means you can watch it live for free using just a digital antenna, but if you’re trying to catch up (the first episode aired last night) you’ll need to be a bit more clever. If you have a cable subscription You can simply use the credentials you use to pay your bill online to log into abc....

If you’ve been on the internet this week, you might have been one of the 2.5 million people to see this: That’s me. I wish it wasn’t. I wish I was one of the now 2,500,001 million people who watched this and saw a man making a fool of himself. But I’m not. I’m the guy in the clip and I’m embarrassed. My mortification is a shame not only because I’m carrying regret around like a weight, but because this is fifteen seconds of internet perfection....

As I read up on French parenting, it became clear that there were two main tactics I would have to utilize to Gallicize my offspring: Not letting them be the center of attention and speaking to them as if they were adults fully capable of grasping the nuance of social interactions. I do not naturally do either of these things and it’s worth noting that there’s a reason why. Not all research supports the idea that this arms-length approach to caretaking results in well-adjusted adults....

A deep, unsettling fear that your wife secretly hates you probably isn’t as unusual as you might think. Redditors suspect it, memes lampoon it. Hundreds of thousands of TikToks poke fun at the notion because, a joke or not, every relationship While a lot of men might look to the Internet for advice, plugging such direct queries as “I think my wife hates me” or “Does my wife hate me?...

Over the past 14 years, I’ve made a conscious choice not to get a smartphone. The current flip phone I have is just a year old — I just got it — but the prior one was 13 years old. I’m fairly frugal, so there was probably a little bit of that when I considered which phone to get. But the bigger reason was that I felt I was actually more productive without a smartphone....

READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Sleep Caffeine Comes in Many Forms You probably know that alcohol and caffeine do not good bedfellows make. But wait, you say, my kid isn’t boozing or pounding Red Bulls? We’ll take your word on the Jack Daniels, but the odds are your child is still getting more caffeine than you realize. “It’s not only in coffee and tea,” says Kristen Knutson, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and a member of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health Center at the University of Chicago....

For years now, parents and lawmakers have been urging Meta to increase protections to keep teenagers safe, particularly because the terms of service allow anyone 13 years and older to sign up for an account. Now, finally, the company is rolling out enhanced parental controls in something it’s calling the “Family Center.” What is Meta’s new parental control “Family Center”? The Family Center is Meta’s answer to bringing more tools to families and their teens that use the company’s products....

For many, My Home Office is just a little too real: Having our lives reflected back to us by kids using pretend devices and tasks may be…unsettling. Aimed at preschoolers, the eight-piece set includes a laptop with four fabric “apps” that attach to the screen, so Pams and Jims can tackle different projects. There’s a pretend smartphone, because of course there is, and a headset that “lets kids take all their important business calls,” while slugging back coffee....

Last week, Copney was charged with felony involuntary manslaughter and felony child endangerment. The charges were filed after he admitted to having been warned by the child’s mother not to do to exactly what he did. The case is a terrible reminder that sleeping with an infant on your chest — as many exhausted fathers are seen doing on social media — can lead to tragedy. Dads might be forgiven for thinking that sleeping with a baby on their chest is an acceptable option....