An essential guide to restoring our children’s behavioral health and wellbeing

Over the past decade, children’s mental health challenges have reached epidemic levels—stress, anxiety, childhood depression, and suicide are at unprecedented high rates. Amid high-stakes pressure for kids to succeed, parents and teachers have never needed a road map to healthy child development more urgently. And as psychologist and educator Doug Bolton explains in this eye-opening and powerful guide, underlying our modern-day stresses is an even more pervasive problem: We’re relying on practices that are not in line with what science tells us about how to truly motivate children and help them thrive.

As Bolton persuasively argues, we need to step away from parenting and teaching based on controlling our children with incentives and punishments—they focus on short-term compliance at the cost of health development. Instead, creating healthy and strongly bonded communities for our children, both in our own families and in our schools, is key to their emotional well-being, and their success in life. Untethered offers tools to help us create these communities so our kids develop healthy attachments and learn emotional regulation, helping them feel more connected, less anxious, more included, less shamed, and more securely grounded. The power of communities is not only that they enhance our wellness—they buffer us from the impact of trauma and can be a guiding force in helping kids develop resilience.

Weaving in Bolton’s own experiences as a former principal at a therapeutic school and as a father, Untethered is a deeply empathetic and powerful guide to combating the isolation we see in this generation today, leading them toward a healthier, more interconnected future.