Thriving Kids

Our relationships with our siblings can shape who we become, influencing everything from our personalities and sense of belonging to how we handle conflict, build relationships, and navigate family responsibilities as adults. But why do some sibling relationships grow stronger over time while others remain complicated?
In this episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson sits down with psychotherapist and author Minaa B. to explore the complex dynamics of sibling relationships and how childhood experiences can influence our emotional well-being throughout life.
Drawing from her experience growing up in a blended family of 13 siblings and her upcoming book, Siblinghood: How to Resolve Conflict, Heal Resentment, and Find Peace in Your Adult Sibling Relationships, Minaa introduces her Siblinghood Theory and explains how family roles, competition, perceived favoritism, and childhood experiences shape the connections we develop with our brothers and sisters.
In this episode, they cover:
• How sibling relationships influence personality, identity, and emotional development
• Why competition, favoritism, and unequal parental attention can create lasting sibling tensions
• What parentification means and how childhood caregiving responsibilities can affect adult relationships
• How family roles, including caretaker, mediator, and peacemaker, can become difficult to escape
• Practical ways to establish boundaries, resolve conflict, and strengthen sibling bonds
Key takeaways
• Sibling relationships shape us throughout life. Early experiences with competition, belonging, and family expectations can influence how we navigate friendships, romantic relationships, and conflict as adults.
• Childhood roles don’t have to define adulthood. Children who become caretakers or mediators may carry those responsibilities into adulthood. Recognizing these patterns can help people establish healthier boundaries.
• Siblings can experience the same family differently. Understanding and validating each other’s perspectives, rather than debating whose childhood was more difficult, can help reduce resentment and strengthen relationships.
• Healthy boundaries can improve family relationships. Changing long-standing family roles doesn’t require abandoning responsibilities. Small adjustments, clearer communication, and shared expectations can create healthier dynamics.
• Every child needs to feel valued and included. Parents can strengthen sibling bonds by recognizing each child’s individual needs, avoiding favoritism, and encouraging cooperation, particularly in blended families.
Further reading
Siblinghood: How to Resolve Conflict, Heal Resentment, and Find Peace in Your Adult Sibling Relationships – Minaa B.
How to Help Siblings Get Along
When Siblings Won’t Stop Fighting
Tips for Blended Families
About Thriving Kids
Thriving Kids is a podcast from the Child Mind Institute, hosted by clinical psychologist Dr. Dave Anderson, featuring expert conversations and practical, evidence-based advice to help children and families thrive. Submit questions at: podcast@childmind.org

Every child worries sometimes, but how can parents tell when it has become something more? In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson is joined by Dr. Theresa Welles, Shapiro Family Director of the Bubrick Center for Pediatric OCD at the Child Mind Institute, to answer listener questions about anxiety in children and teens. Dr. Welles explains why anxiety is a normal and even helpful emotion. She also covers signs that a child’s anxiety has become a problem, like when their world gets smaller because they're avoiding school, friends, or activities they used to enjoy.
In this episode, Dr. Dave and Dr. Welles cover:
·       How to tell the difference between normal worries and an anxiety disorder
·       Less obvious signs of anxiety in teens, including anger, procrastination, and saying they "don't care"
·       Why stomachaches and headaches before school can be signs of anxiety, and how to respond
·       How to help a child who avoids activities because they're afraid of failing, without pushing too hard
·       How to help an anxious child without accidentally reinforcing their anxiety
·       When to seek professional help, including when family routines start to revolve around a child's anxiety
·       What good treatment for child and teen anxiety looks like, and signs that it isn't working
·       How OCD differs from anxiety, and how exposure and response prevention (ERP) helps kids break the cycle
Further Reading
·       How Anxiety Affects Teenagers
·       Anxious Stomachaches and Headaches
·       What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
·       What Does OCD Look Like in Kids?

Why do some kids keep trying when something is difficult while others quickly give up? In this episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson sits down with Yale University researcher Dr. Julia Leonard to explore the science of motivation, persistence, and learning — and the important role parents and other adults can play in helping kids decide which challenges are worth pursuing.
In this episode, they cover:
• How children develop beliefs about what they’re capable of
• Why stepping in too quickly can unintentionally discourage independence
• How modeling your own hard work can help kids learn to keep trying
• Why giving kids opportunities to struggle and improve can build confidence
Key takeaways
• Kids learn about effort through relationships. When children face a difficult task, they look to parents, teachers, and other adults for clues about whether the challenge is worth pursuing and whether they’re capable of succeeding.
• Resist the urge to immediately take over. When a task is developmentally appropriate, giving kids room to try, struggle, and problem-solve can help them build independence and confidence.
• Let kids see your hard work. Adults often make everyday tasks look effortless, while doing their own difficult work out of sight. Showing kids that adults struggle, practice, make mistakes, and eventually improve helps make effort visible.
• Praise the process, not just the person. With younger children, highlighting effort, strategies, persistence, and progress can be more motivating than simply telling them they’re smart, talented, or “the best.”
• Keep praise authentic. Over-the-top praise can backfire, and as kids get older, they become increasingly sensitive to praise that doesn’t match their own assessment of how they performed.
• Create opportunities for kids to improve. Whether at home or in school, feedback, second chances, and opportunities to revise work send kids the message that learning is a process — not a single judgment of their ability.
Further reading
How to Help Kids Learn to Fail
Helping Kids With Flexible Thinking
Does It Matter How I Praise My Child?

When a child refuses to go to school, it can be easy to assume they’re unmotivated, being defiant, or simply trying to skip class. But school avoidance is often driven by anxiety — and understanding what’s behind it is an important first step toward helping kids get back to school.
In this Q&A episode of Thriving Kids, Dr. Dave Anderson is joined by Alana Cooperman, LCSW, a senior social worker in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute, to answer parents’ questions about school anxiety, avoidance, and refusal.
Cooperman explains how school avoidance can look different across ages, from crying and clinging to parents in younger children to stomachaches, sleep problems, irritability, frequent trips to the nurse, or repeated requests to come home in older kids and teens. She and Dr. Dave also discuss how ADHD, learning difficulties, autism, peer problems, academic pressure, and embarrassing experiences at school can contribute to avoidance.
In this episode, they cover:

• Common reasons kids may avoid school
• How bullying, peer conflict, tests, teachers, bathrooms, and lunchrooms can become triggers
• How ADHD, executive functioning challenges, learning disorders, and autism can contribute
• How to validate anxiety without validating avoidance
• Why staying home shouldn’t become more rewarding than going to school
• How gradual exposure can help kids build tolerance for anxiety
• When professional help may be needed
• Why progress isn’t always linear — and why effort matters
Further reading
When Kids Refuse to Go to School
How Anxiety Affects Kids in School
Anxious Stomachaches and Headaches
Have a question you’d like Dr. Dave and a Child Mind Institute expert to answer in a future episode? Send it through the Child Mind Institute’s social channels or email podcast@childmind.org.

Journalist, author, and podcast host Molly Jong-Fast got sober at 19 — and nearly three decades later, she continues to speak candidly about her experience with alcoholism and recovery. In this episode of Thriving Kids, she joins Dr. Dave Anderson for a conversation about recognizing addiction in adolescence, overcoming stigma, and why young people struggling with substance use need to know that recovery is possible.
In this episode, they cover:
• Why addiction can look different from typical adolescent experimentation
• Why family history can be an important part of conversations about substance use
• How parents can talk openly with kids about addiction without relying on shame
• What parents should know about marijuana and the developing adolescent brain
• Why lasting recovery involves more than simply removing access to a substance
• How schools and colleges can better support young people who choose sobriety
Key takeaways
• Addiction can begin early. Jong-Fast describes recognizing during adolescence that she had difficulty controlling her substance use and that her experience looked different from that of many of her peers.
• Pay attention to patterns, not just individual incidents. Repeated inability to stop, dramatic changes in behavior, escalating use, or repeatedly trying and failing to cut back may signal that a young person needs additional support.
• Talk honestly about family history. When addiction runs in a family, age-appropriate conversations can help kids understand that they may have increased vulnerability without framing their future as inevitable.
• Shame isn’t treatment. Families can establish clear boundaries around substance use while continuing to communicate love, connection, and a willingness to help.
• Legal doesn’t mean harmless. Alcohol and marijuana may be legal for adults, but that doesn’t eliminate the potential risks associated with adolescent use.
• Young people need spaces that support sobriety. Substance-free housing, recovery communities, treatment programs, and supportive peers can help young people build lives that don’t revolve around alcohol or drugs.
• Recovery can open up possibilities rather than close them down. Jong-Fast describes sobriety as what allowed her to build a life in which alcohol and drugs did not dictate her decisions.
Further reading
Complete Guide to Substance Use and Mental Health
How to Talk to Your Teen About Substance Use