January/February 2021

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Editor's Note

Livia Kent

Part of honoring our founder and longtime editor, Rich Simon, who passed away in November, has been to complete this issue, which explores how our current pandemic reality is affecting kids and their caregivers. As we crafted this issue together throughout the fall, we often wondered whether the challenges of 2020 would still feel relevant as 2021 arrived. Sadly, many of the questions our authors explore have become even more pressing now. 


Will the crisis we’re grappling with spur us to develop new approaches for supporting anxious kids, underserved kids, and overwhelmed schools and parents? Can we create more effective ways to help families? These challenges might seem overwhelming, but as Rich regularly reminded us, we don’t need to come up with all the answers: what’s important is that we keep asking the questions.
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A mother holds her head in her hands as her children jump on the couch behind her

Families Under Pressure

Helping Relieve Today’s Parents & Kids

Lauren Dockett

The pandemic has created an emotional petri dish for kids and parents who are stuck in place, terribly stressed, and feeling alone. How are families supposed to survive—much less thrive—under these unprecedented, pressure-cooker conditions? Read More
Two teachers speak with a mother and her daughter

Bridging the Gap

School–Therapy Collaboration in Trying Times

Mary Eno

Although it’s never been easy to take oh-so-familiar systems principles and put them to work in real life, the devastating sweep of the pandemic has made collaboration between schools and therapists more important than ever. Read More
A mother and her two children

A Turning Point for Caregivers

Discussing the Hidden Impacts of the Pandemic

Meaghan Winter

Our current caregiving crisis is a societal failure, not the result of one family’s shortcomings. Read More
A young Black boy sitting with his arms on his knees

The Black Youth Suicide Epidemic

Confronting Misconceptions and Inequities

Araya Baker

Self-harm is not a culturally specific phenomenon, but it’s often misunderstood and overlooked in Black children by a society that forces them to grow up faster than white children. Read More
A Field Day for OCD?

A Field Day for OCD?

Helping Kids Stay Grounded

Lynn Lyons

In this genuinely hazardous COVID-19 environment, how can therapists help kids and families reject their OCD safety rituals? Read More
A teen girl angrily looks at the camera

Reaching “Unreachable” Teens & Tweens

12 Tips to Get You in the Side Door

Kate Sample

Building a relationship with heavily armored, developmentally regressed, profoundly sad adolescents is no small feat. They don’t exactly let you in the front door. Read More

Extra Feature

An illustration of a man with a thunderstorm inside of him

IFS and Chronic Pain

Listening to Inner Parts that Hold the Hurt

Richard Schwartz Ronald Siegel Howard Schubiner

If most chronic pain is maintained by complex mind–body interactions, how can therapists help treat it? Read More

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