Kat Stoeffel

Sep 19, 2024 | romper.com | Evie Ebert |Anna Maltby |L'Oreal Thompson Payton |Kat Stoeffel

Last year, a letter in the medical journal Pediatrics argued that the frightening decline in mental health among American kids can be partly explained by a lack of independent play. When kids don’t get to solve their own problems, the researchers wrote, they develop a belief that they have no control over what happens to them, stoking depression and anxiety. Effectively, the prescription was: send them outside, without phones, to find other kids to play with. Easier said than done.

Jul 1, 2024 | romper.com | Kat Stoeffel

This is only my second rodeo, but, best I can tell, parenting in the first year of a child’s life is a succession of preoccupations that are as all-consuming as they are fleeting. Latch, supply, weight gain, suspected intolerance (?)4, wake windows, back-to-stomach rolling, sleep regression, solids. It’s hard to overstate how important these things feel, or how briefly they feel important. A friend who gave birth just six months earlier is no help. She is in the throes of a subsequent fixation.

Jan 8, 2024 | romper.com | Kat Stoeffel

We had some child-free friends over for dinner the other night. My husband had done most of the cooking during nap time, so we could be social. We persuaded my 2-year-old, who likes to imagine himself at the center of a very tame crisis, that he needed to gather all the cloth napkins in the house and put them at the feet of our guests, on the living room floor. “They’re in the KITCHEN,” he screamed. “I’m on my way!”And then we were just four adults, having alcohol and cheese and talking.

Nov 8, 2023 | romper.com | Kat Stoeffel

In the overheated world of parenting advice, the pediatrician is a moderating voice. If your relatives say sleep training is cruel or a TikToker claims day care causes behavioral issues, you can usually count on your pediatrician to assure you, Your kid is fine and you can tell your mother in law I said so.

Aug 7, 2023 | bustle.com | Kat Stoeffel

Lydia Kiesling’s first book, National Book Award 5 Under 35 pick The Golden State, breathed new life into the road trip novel by giving its narrator, Daphne, a demanding passenger in Honey, her toddler daughter. To write her second book, Mobility (out now), Kiesling had to re-enact the road trip but leave the kids — she has two — at home.