Bullying is something we hope won’t happen to our kids — or if it does, that they’ll come to us right away. But sometimes kids don’t tell us. Before acting, it’s important to know that not every unkind moment is bullying. The three defining features of bullying: It’s intentional, it’s repeated, and there’s a power imbalance — meaning the child doing the bullying has more social, physical, or emotional power. If your gut tells you something is going on with your child, there are things you can look out for and do:

Pathological demand avoidance (PDA) is a pattern seen most often in autistic kids, where even simple, everyday asks — putting on shoes, sitting down for dinner, starting homework — can trigger extreme resistance. Not because a kid can't do the task, but because the demand itself feels overwhelming. This article breaks down what PDA looks like, what's actually driving it, why confrontation tends to backfire, and how to find what motivates a child to open the door to real progress.

“How are you feeling?" is a hard question for a kid to answer. Naming an emotion takes vocabulary and a bit of distance, and neither one is easy in the middle of the feeling. Check-in charts like this ask two simple things instead of one big one: is the feeling pleasant or unpleasant, and is the energy high or low? Each quadrant has a color, so a kid can say "I'm in the yellow zone" and be understood. Sara Guttentag, PsyD, a psychologist in our Mood Disorders Center, walks through how she uses a check-in-chart at the start of a session, and what the conversation looks like after that. Get our free guides for talking with your kid about emotions, including printable activity sheets by age:

For resources on supporting LGBTQ+ youth: childmind.org/topics/gender-…

There are ways to teach kids about their emotions at every life stage – from elementary school to the teenage years. We created guides for teaching just that, and four other mental health fitness skills: childmind.org/resources/ment…