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1 week ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
Note: There is no audio version of this post because I left my microphone at home! I’m writing from a hotel room in Mount Vernon, Washington, after giving a talk near Camano Island last night. A reader emailed me earlier this month, asking a question that I’m sure many families have wondered:I thought of you this weekend as I despaired over the state of boyhood in America. My son is almost 10.
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1 week ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
I write a monthly column for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest newspaper. My most recent one was titled, “Is your kid 18? Here are 11 life skills they should have mastered by now.” My editor was pleased by how well it did. The concept clearly struck a chord with many parents across the country.
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2 weeks ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
It is both delightful and infuriating when another writer comes up with a succinct term to describe something I’ve thought about many times before. Inevitably, it makes me wish that I’d had the foresight to create the term that now seems so glaringly obvious, but I remind myself that I should just be grateful it now exists, because it helps to clarify my own thinking. One such example is Cal Newport’s distinction between the primary and secondary harms of smartphones.
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2 weeks ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
“You had to be there.” It is a phrase we have all heard, used when trying to describe the particular feeling of a situation to others who did not witness it directly.
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3 weeks ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
If you have ever wondered how a vocal proponent of digital minimalism manages screen time in her own home, now is your chance to see what goes on behind the scenes at my house! My three sons are 10, 13, and 15, spanning elementary, middle, and high school, so I am in the thick of it, witnessing firsthand how the technological takeover of childhood is affecting their friends, peers, and broader generation, while also dealing with their strong opinions about not having smartphones when most of...
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1 month ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
For Christmas one year, my brother gave my husband a book called Poems That Make Grown Men Cry. My husband has never shown the least bit of interest in poetry, but I suspect my brother was stumped for a gift and saw this at the bookstore. “Plus, I want to see if the title is true,” he added. My husband dutifully read a few of the poems, but I never saw him moved to tears. Fast forward to last weekend, when I was reorganizing the bookshelves in the living room and came across this book.
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1 month ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
Several weeks ago, I spoke to a large group of elementary students in grades 4 to 6. One teacher had asked her class to prepare questions in advance, which were written on pieces of paper and handed to me at the front of the room. I did my best to get through them but ran out of time. I stuffed the rest of the questions into my bag. Back home, I found myself flipping through them—there’s something irresistibly cute about children’s handwriting—and one question jumped out at me.
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1 month ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
There is a story in Julie Lythcott-Haims’ 2014 book, How to Raise an Adult, that I often think of. She describes a Seattle mother named Catharine Jacobsen, who once called her own mother to complain about being cold and wet while watching her child’s soccer game. Catharine’s mother was unsympathetic. I have no idea why you’re standing out there. You aren’t showing your kids anything.
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1 month ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
Why do we scroll on our phones so compulsively? I've heard many explanations, from accessibility to abundance to boredom to addictive design, all of which are likely true. But recently, I heard another intriguing explanation. It came from Dr. Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation.
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1 month ago | 
katherinemartinko.substack.com | Katherine Martinko
I told someone the story about my 10-year-old son riding his bike alone to Walmart, two kilometres from our house. He wanted to buy a Beyblade toy with his own money. I didn’t have time to take him, so he begged to go on his own. He had to cross four lanes of traffic (at a stoplight), navigate a busy parking lot, lock up his bike, find the toy, do the transaction. It seemed to take forever, but finally he came home, far more delighted by his independent outing than by the toy itself.