By now, most of us have heard the statistics about youth mental health. The numbers are hard to ignore. According to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey in 2023, [40% of teenagers experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year]. Nearly a third reported poor mental health in the past month. Stanford found that three-quarters of high school students and half of middle schoolers reported feeling stressed by their schoolwork “often or always.”
And yet, most parents worry more about their child’s math grade than their emotional health.
Here is what I know from my combined experience in schools with my sister and co-founder Nancy: the families who raise emotionally healthy kids are not doing anything magical. They are being intentional about something most families leave to chance.
The Families That Stood Out
Throughout our careers, certain families stood out. These families shared close bonds, lived by aligned values, and exhibited notable well-being. They were not perfect families. But they were grounded ones. Their kids demonstrated strong character and clarity about what mattered to them.
What did they have in common? A clearly defined family culture rooted in shared values, and the daily habit of practicing those values together.
I have also seen the other side. I interviewed a young woman named Emmy Huffner on my podcast, Experience Matters, Episode 8, A Letter to My Younger Self. On paper, she was golden. Beautiful transcript. Acceptance to Brandeis University. But by the end of high school, she was so anxious, so depressed, and so lonely that inside herself she was broken. Her story is not unique. It is increasingly common.
The problem is too large for reactive solutions. We cannot therapy our way out of this. And we should not wait for our kids to suffer before we take action.
Start With Yourself
Before we talk about what to do for your kids, we need to address something most parenting advice skips over: it’s difficult to give your children something you do not have yourself.
This is not a criticism. It is an invitation.
Nancy spent 34 years as a middle school counselor, and one of the things she taught me is the concept of co-regulation. Students would come to her office mid-class, still wound up, muttering under their breath about a teacher or a conflict with a classmate. If she jumped in while they were escalating, she would have gotten nowhere. So she would sit down across from them, sometimes close her eyes, and start breathing deeply without saying a word. No instructions. No lecture about calming down. Just modeling what regulation actually looks like. More often than not, the student’s nervous system would follow.
You can do this at home. When you are frustrated, name it out loud and show your children what you do with it. “I’m really frustrated right now. I’m going to step away and take a few deep breaths before we talk about this.” When you are anxious, let your kids see you use a coping strategy. Not because it is performative, but because they are watching you constantly, learning how to be human by observing how you handle being human.
Your children do not need you to be perfectly regulated. They need to see that feeling angry does not mean you become cruel. Feeling anxious does not mean you become paralyzed. Feeling sad does not mean you cannot still function.
Make It Safe to Feel Things
One of the most powerful things you can do for your child’s emotional health is also one of the simplest: make it safe to express feelings in your home.
Many families inadvertently communicate the opposite. We say things like “you’re fine” or “don’t cry” or “stop being so sensitive.” The intention is usually good. We want resilient kids, not kids who wallow. But what we actually teach is that certain feelings are unacceptable and should be hidden, not shared. Masked, not felt.
There is a significant difference between “I can see you’re really angry. It’s okay to feel that, but it’s not okay to hit your sister” and “stop hitting your sister.” The first acknowledges the emotion as valid while setting a clear boundary on the behavior. The second teaches a child to suppress the emotion rather than manage it.
Start having regular conversations about emotions as part of daily life, not just when something goes wrong. “What was the hardest part of your day?” “When did you feel most proud of yourself?” These questions teach children to notice and name their emotional experiences. That skill will serve them for life.
Modeling Resilience, Not Just Teaching It
Kids do not learn resilience from lectures about staying strong. They learn it by watching the adults in their lives handle hard things.
When my daughter Rachel was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at four years old, it was a gut punch to me and my wife, Susan. And while it took time to navigate through heavy emotions, our family did not retreat into fear. We rallied. We called our friends, our neighbors, our community. Over the next decade, we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Breakthrough T1D (formally JDRF) diabetes research. We were not going to get knocked off course. We were going to bounce back and take action.
When Nancy’s kids were three and six years old, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was terrified. But she made a decision about what she would demonstrate to her children. She followed her doctors’ recommendations. She spoke honestly and age-appropriately with them. She embraced her baldness, threw on hats, and showed up when she felt well. She modeled the behavior she wanted her kids to internalize: when something hard hits, you do what is necessary to take care of yourself and your people. And, you are gracious when others show up to lend support.
Those were not small moments. Those were acts that defined our families’ cultures. And here is the thing: your children are building their understanding of what it means to face adversity by watching how you face yours.
One practical way to reinforce this at home: when a challenge arises, resist the urge to solve it immediately for your child. Instead, ask “What do you think you could do about this?” Even young children can generate solutions. Your role is not to have all the answers. It is to build their confidence that they can figure things out. And that it’s ok to ask for help when they are stuck. Learning how to handle challenges from a young age is critical to managing them as an adult.
Building a Family Culture That Lasts
After Nancy and I left our careers in schools, we kept returning to the same question: what did families with grounded, emotionally healthy kids actually have in common?
The answer was always culture. Not a particular parenting style. Not a specific set of rules. Rather, each of the successful families had a clearly defined set of values that were named, practiced, and lived out loud.
That insight led us to build Our Family Culture. Working alongside culture-building expert David J. Friedman, author of Culture by Design, we adapted his proven organizational system for families. The concept is straightforward: families, like organizations, thrive when they have clear guiding principles, consistent practice, and shared language.
We have developed more than 44 family Fundamentals, ideas like “Bounce Back,” “Listen Generously,” and “Do the Right Thing,” that translate abstract values into specific, teachable behaviors. Families choose 13 to 20 Fundamentals that reflect what matters most to them, and they practice one per week. Not to master it in seven days. But to begin embedding it into the family’s DNA. Month after month, year after year, the repetition makes it stick. The language becomes who your family is.
My kids know they are Shapiros, and Nancy’s kids know they are Rapports. They bounce back. That is not something we told them once. It is something Nancy and I have lived in front of our kids, over and over again, every time a challenge hits.
When to Seek Support
Seeking support is not an admission of failure. It is a recognition that sometimes we need help to do our most important work well.
If your child is experiencing persistent anxiety that interferes with daily life, showing signs of depression that last more than a couple of weeks, or has experienced trauma, consult with a licensed therapist or counselor who works with children and adolescents.
But there is another kind of support worth considering: parent coaching. Sometimes the challenge is not that your child needs therapy. It is that you need a thought partner to help you understand your own patterns and develop new approaches that align with the kind of parent you want to be.
Through Our Family Culture, we offer one-on-one coaching, a five-session Parenting Master Class, and monthly Community Coaching calls for parents who want to grow alongside others doing this work. You can learn more and schedule a free 20-minute exploratory call at OurFamilyCulture.org.
What You Can Do Starting Today
You do not need a perfect plan. You need a starting point. Here are five things you can do this week, none of which require extra time, only more intention with the time you already have.
Name your own emotions out loud. When you are frustrated, anxious, or overwhelmed, say so in front of your kids and tell them what you are doing about it. “I’m feeling really stressed right now. I’m going to take a few deep breaths before we figure this out together.” You are not complaining. You are teaching.
Create space for hard feelings. The next time your child is upset, resist the urge to fix it or minimize it. Instead, name what you observe and validate it. “You seem really disappointed about that. That makes sense.” Then pause. Let the feeling exist before moving on.
Ask better questions. Swap “how was school?” for something more specific. “What was the hardest part of your day?” or “When did you feel proud of yourself today?” or “What made you laugh today?” These questions teach kids to notice and name their emotional experience, which is a skill they will use for the rest of their lives.
Ask before you solve. When your child faces a challenge, try asking “What do you think you could do about this?” before jumping in with answers. Even young children can generate solutions. Your job is to build their confidence that they can figure things out, not to prove that you already have.
Find the low-pressure moments. If your middle schooler shuts down face-to-face, try the car. Try cooking together. Try a walk. Connection does not require a formal conversation. It requires proximity and a little patience.
If you want a practical resource to help you put these ideas into action with your family, Download our Emotional Vocabulary Starters.
What This Actually Requires
I hear parents say all the time that they do not have enough time for this. I understand that. Between work and household responsibilities and everything else competing for your energy, adding intentional family culture-building to the list can feel impossible.
But here is the truth: you are already spending time with your kids. You are already having interactions throughout the day. The shift is not about adding hours to your schedule. It is about being more intentional with the time you already have.
The work of raising emotionally healthy kids does not happen in grand gestures. It happens in ordinary moments. It happens when you notice your child is upset and stop to acknowledge it rather than rush past. It happens when you take a breath before reacting. It happens when you name your own emotions out loud so your children can see how it is done.
Family culture usually forms by default, not by design. The emotional health your children will carry into adulthood is being shaped by what is happening in your home today.What kind of culture are you building? The character of your future adult kids will be shaped by the choices you make today
