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Summer is just around the corner, and our kids are counting down how they'll spend three months free from homework, standardized tests, and hours in the classroom. While most parents don't have the same break as their kids, it's still a great opportunity to get to know your child and help them transition into the new season. 

Just whistle while your work. Or ask your smart speaker to crank up the tunes while you clean. Music not only gets adults in the right headspace to focus on a task, but kids as well. Next time your child is prepping for a big test, encourage them to turn on some background music to boost their brain function. Research shows that music can impact emotions and thought processes, which can help lower stress before a test and contribute to focus. 

It's a step better than a paper check, but cash is rare these days. A lot of people rely on cash apps, like Venmo and PayPal, to pay their babysitters and dog walkers. 

Growing up in a homeschool household, my parents had two approaches for giving us kids a phone. One, getting a really old outdated flip phone, or two, no phone at all. I chose no phone over a flip phone because I didn’t want to stand out amongst my friends with a weird device. Was this a good decision by my parents to give me no phone, was it a bad one? Here are the top things I think every homeschool parent should know before giving their kid a phone.

Research finds parenting with tech causes anxiety, but Pinwheel offers the solution.

Do you feel like screen time makes parenting harder?  If so, you’re not alone. A Pew Research study launched in 2020 found that the majority of parents think that parenting is harder today than it was two decades ago. And many parents say that technology is to blame. 

Pinwheel named as a kid's top alternative to smartphones. The Wall Street Journal featured Pinwheel as one of the best ways for parents to keep in touch with their young students.

It was a stormy night in December and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my Dad eating soup. I was anxiously awaiting him to finish so I could play with his first Apple phone, called an iPhone, which had buttons on the screen. As we sat down together, we laboriously pushed the buttons on the screen, wondering if iPhones would stick around.

It's so hard to choose the dinner table over the content that Marvel is releasing! After a long days of school, work and extracurriculars, it's easier to turn to She-Hulk's plucky story than engage with each other over dinner. Well, research shows that the easy option isn't the best. Again.