Lerner Child Development Blog
Open access to my full library of over 150 blogs is now available by becoming a member of Lerner Child Development (LCD). Scroll through thumbnails below or see the button to explore all the blogs by topic.
This subscription service enables me to continue to provide in-depth, reality-based content drawn from more than three decades of helping families solve their most vexing childrearing challenges.
In addition to access to my blogs, subscription to LCD includes several new interactive learning opportunities with me each month: a live, open Q&A and quarterly webinars on key topics. Members are also entered for two monthly drawings for a free 30-min consultation.
Note that I have made some of my most popular blogs available for free.
Blogs By Categories
- All Most Popular Blogs
- Big Reactors
- Building Resilience
- Challenging behaviors
- Cooperation
- Emotional Regulation
- Food Challenges
- Highly Sensitive Children
- Limit-Setting With Love
- Low Frustration Tolerance
- Mealtime
- No Power Struggles
- Parental Self Awareness
- Parental Self Regulation
- Physical Aggression
- Positive Discipline
- Potty Learning
- Regression
- School Related Issues
- Separation and Divorce
- Sibling Issues
- Sleep
- Social challenges
- challenging behaviors
- lying
- masking
- positive parenting
- separation anxiety
- social emotional development
- stress
Masking or Adapting?
I was so happy to hear from my child's teacher that he was doing so great at school—cooperative, empathetic, a leader—even though I was totally confused by this. At home he is defiant, bosses us around, is mean to his brother all the time.
Then, I started reading that this is called "masking" and is a really bad thing and is harmful to kids—that they are faking it to conform, to be accepted—and not able to be their true selves. Now I don't know what to think or do about this.
Being much better behaved at school than at home is a very common phenomenon for the kids in my practice. Why does this happen?