Family psychologist Dr. Christina Cohen spends most of her time telling parents to stop focusing on all these benchmarks of “normalcy,” and start paying attention to your kid as a unique person. “Generally when you’re working towards perfection, you’re not seeing your kid, you’re basing it off of a book, or a neighbor. That’s the greatest disservice you can do,” she says. So while you think that because your kid was moonwalking at 11-months you should probably apply early decision to Harvard, maturation doesn’t work like that....

What causes smart kids to underachieve and underperform? Whenever you’re reading or thinking about “underachieving” kids, please keep in mind that children: Kids may not be aware that they have a specific difficulty (they can see the effects — something is hard to do, or other kids make fun of them, or adults get mad, but figuring out the cause is another story)Kids often do not know how to express the problems that they’re having (heck, how many adults do you know who can’t express the problems they’re having?...

Not exactly. Parents and caregivers wield those Bradbury flamethrowers all the time when we decide we’re not going to read a book out loud to kids anymore. Sometimes it’s because the books just outright suck. I mean, I wish I had Guy Montag’s flamethrower for a few books in my house, such as Paw Patrol’s Potty Patrol. Seeing that book in flames would bring me a lot of pleasure, and I’m not sure the civil liberties of the Paw Patrol pups would be infringed....

Here’s what you need to know about why the IRS is behind, when you’ll get your money, and how you can check on it in the meantime. Why are tax refunds delayed? A combination of years of underfunding, pandemic-motivated office closures, calculating and distributing stimulus payments, and the passage of the American Rescue Plan—which contained changes to the tax code—after millions of returns had already been filed has put the agency behind schedule on this year’s returns....

Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated big-screen take on the seminal novel by Frank Herbert is following in the footsteps of so many other would-be movie theater saviors – such as Black Widow, No Time to Die, and West Side Story — and shifting to 2021. As it stands, the sandworms won’t turn and the spice won’t flow until October 1, 2021. But, should that be the case? Universal chose to mostly bypass theaters with Trolls World Tour, though it did play at a modest number of drive-ins, and the film grossed more than $100 million in PVOD in just a few weeks....

From mid-February to mid-March, prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications rose by about 19 percent and 34 percent, respectively, according to a report from pharmaceutical company Express Scripts. People who managed depression and anxiety with therapy before COVID-19 may need a new tactic in the face of the pandemic. And those with no history of mental illness may benefit from treatment now. “It’s very hard to figure out what is a normal reaction to what’s going on and what is a treatable mental health condition that needs medication,” says Jessica Gold, a psychiatry professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St....

On Sunday, a new trailer for the live-action Aladdin aired during the Grammys. I’ll spare the reader jokes about the term “live action,” since a huge portion of the film will be enhanced by computer-generated effects and perhaps, actual dark magic. The point is, while many are still excited about the film, nearly everyone hates the new Will Smith version of the Genie. Criticism of the new design centered mostly on references to the Blue Man Group and the Scorpion King....

Well, friends, that day is now. Because at Toy Fair we witnessed the release of a bona fide cheek squeak cannon. That’s right, WowWee toys, maker of the beloved (and also fart-capable) Fingerlings and the newly released Butt Heads, announced the Fart Launcher. What a time to be alive. The WowWee Fart Launcher is intended for children aged eight and older. And it’s, well, exactly what you imagine. Resembling a fat-barreled Nerf gun, it has a trigger and a wide barrel....

It’s a little startling when you first see the photos from the upcoming Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey film. The stills show a demonic Pooh with Piglet as they get ready to attack a young woman who is just chilling in her hot tub. The internet was confused – was this real? Is this weird fan fiction? Well, yes, and yes. In January of this year, the A.A. Milne’s original Winnie the Pooh stories entered the public domain which opened the door for someone to take on a different twist....

But, just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re a little confused as to what the heck is going on with the X-Men movies. If you have no idea which movie is which, that state of bewilderment is understandable. It’s been a whopping 20 years (this month) since the first X-Men movie debuted in the year 2000. That’s right, you think the superhero movie explosion was ushered-in by Tobey Maguire the first Spider-Man in 2002, but really, it was Oscar winners Halle Berry and Anna Paquin slumming-it with Hugh Jackman, and some dudes named Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan....

cognitive decline as we age, according to a new study.People with higher levels of extroversion and conscientiousness are less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those with higher levels of mood instability, according to the study, which was published earlier this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.“Personality traits reflect relatively enduring patterns of thinking and behaving, which may cumulatively affect engagement in healthy and unhealthy behaviors and thought patterns across the lifespan,” Tomiko Yoneda, Ph....

Set in the San Fernando Valley where Daniel is now a successful car salesman and Johnny is… less so, the 1980s machismo and cultural appropriation is rife throughout the first couple of seasons of the show, in particular, which is told from Johnny’s ignorant perspective and is certainly A Choice. As many cultural commentators have surmised, this is likely baked into the nostalgic franchise helmed both behind and in front of the camera by white men, despite it being about a sport that has deep roots in Asia....

First, a refresher. 2007’s Enchanted was a live-action Disney movie about a young maiden, Giselle (Amy Adams), who is banished from the animated kingdom of Andalasia and lands in the gritty reality of New York City where she falls in love with an emotionally reserved divorce attorney named Robert (Patrick Dempsey) a single dad to a six-ish-year-old girl. Giselle wows Robert with her fairy tale dreams, love breaks the shackles of normal life and they get together, happily ever after....

And the reason it’s fine is that these toys aren’t for kids. Like the scarce Dune toys of 1984, the new action figures for Dune are clearly aimed at people like me: dads (and moms!) in their 30s or 40s who just really want a sick-ass action figure of Jason Mamoa as Duncan Idaho sitting on my desk, daring me to be more of a badass on a daily basis....

We also recently participated in a roundtable with Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Fran Drescher, Keegan-Michael Key, and David Spade. Here are seven frightful, amusing, and emotional takeaways from the conversation.

Mild spoilers for Joker ahead. So, if you’ve seen Joker, then you know Joaquin Phoenix’s version of the character actually meets Bruce Wayne when Bruce is a little kid and Arthur Fleck (the Joker) is like in his late 30s. This puts a huge age gap between Batman and the Joker, assuming this version of little Bruce grows up to be the caped crusader. (And the ending of Joker certainly suggests that could and will happen....

“It’s a very apt time for our show to be coming out. It seems like almost every day there’s another reported case of a hate crime. I can only imagine how difficult it is for my coworkers,” says Stenhouse. “It’s heartbreaking what’s happening. I don’t know what the answer is to address this situation. Representation is a small step in the right direction. It helps to mitigate this sense of otherness....

Putting kids on TV is always a risk because they are generally either too self-conscious or not self-conscious enough. This risk is compounded by the meta-textual fuzziness of reality television, which depicts organic emotions by inorganically triggering them. Kids, as a species, want attention so they are prone to tying themselves in knots on camera. What Ramsay does, which is genuinely impressive, is give them enough attention that they stop and just focus on cooking....

The protagonist of Monument Valley 2 is Ro. In most ways, she’s similar to Ida, the path-wandering protagonist from the original. There is, however, one crucial difference: Ro has a daughter. Ro’s daughter is not given a name or much in terms of personality, but players will subtly notice her growth as the game progresses. At the start, Ro’s every step is imitated by her daughter, but as time goes on, they must separate to complete the game....

What makes absolutely no sense — besides not casting Matthew Lillard as Shaggy — is the final trailer for the digitally animated movie. It was released mere hours ago, and since then I’ve watched it several times in an attempt to understand just what the hell the movie is going to be about. I still don’t know. The trailer opens with Shaggy—now played by Will Forte—and Scooby in a spaceship belonging to Blue Falcon, a Hanna-Barbera character that dates back to the 1970s series Dynomutt....