Teacher Presents + Parental Self-Regulation + Tanfluencers

Parenting IRL

“Does your school do personal gifts for teachers at the end of the school year, or do you collect money and buy a gift from the class/grade? What kind of gifts are appropriate/appreciated? I’m doing this for the first time, and I need ideas please!”

Both approaches are fairly common, and both can land well depending on your school’s culture and how organized the parent community is.

Class/grade collections tend to work better for bigger gifts (a spa gift card, a restaurant certificate, a contribution to a classroom wish list), while personal gifts are a nice option if your kid has a close relationship with a specific teacher. A handwritten note from your student — even a short one — is almost universally appreciated and often more memorable than the gift itself.

As for what teachers actually want: gift cards to Amazon, Target, or local restaurants are reliable. Teachers routinely spend their own money on classroom supplies, so anything that offsets that tends to be genuinely useful. Things like nice candles, chocolates, or a bottle of wine are safe bets if you know the teacher’s vibe.

What to avoid: mugs, apple-themed anything, and generic lotion sets — most teachers have enough of those to last a lifetime.

Do you have other thoughts? Keep the conversation going!

But seriously...

Keep It Cool for Your Kid

Kids can drive us crazy — that’s nothing new. But the more you react strongly (yelling, scolding, or physical discipline), the worse they are at handling stress in their own lives. 

Researchers at Penn State University measured something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a non-invasive indicator of how the heart and breathing respond to stress, in 30-second intervals during a challenging task. In a nutshell, they found a mother’s physiological state in one interval directly predicted her child’s in the next.

So in lower-risk households, the parental influence naturally decreased as preschoolers aged from three to four — the healthy sign of a child learning to self-regulate. But in households with harsh parenting, the pattern reversed entirely. Those children grew more dependent on external regulation over time, not less, and their stress responses became more rigid: once triggered, their elevated state took significantly longer to return to baseline.

The lead researcher’s practical takeaway is worth posting on the refrigerator: ‘If you take a moment to regulate yourself — maybe even just pausing and taking a few deep breaths before responding to your child — there’s an important benefit in your child learning how to regulate themselves.’ 

So, bottom line: Take a deep breath before reacting. It’s good for everyone.

Take It Slow on Fast Fashion

There’s an excellent SNL skit about how people will wear fast fashion even if they know it’s bad for them.  

That subject became a little less funny in light of recent research, which found that the fabric in some fast-fashion kids clothes contains lead (that’s bad). 

Researchers at Marian University tested 11 shirts from four fast-fashion and discount retailers, and found that every single one exceeded the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s 100 parts-per-million lead limit. That’s right: all of them. 

Brightly colored fabrics — reds and yellows especially — showed the highest concentrations, likely because manufacturers use lead-based compounds as a cheaper way to make dyes stick and stay vibrant.

The presence of lead is bad enough, but consider how often kids chew on their sleeves. The researchers actually modeled this, simulating stomach digestion to estimate how much lead a child could absorb through normal mouthing behavior — sucking, holding, chewing on fabric, etc. Their estimates suggest that even brief exposure could push kids past the FDA’s daily lead ingestion limit. 

So here’s what that means: favor muted colors over bright reds and yellows, wash new clothes before wearing them, and maybe skip the $8 neon tee.

Note: This research was presented at the American Chemical Society’s spring meeting in March and has not yet been through formal peer review. So the work is continuing, but keep an eye on this story. 

FYI: Your Kid’s Feed Is Full of Tanfluencers

Dermatologists are sounding the alarm about a surprisingly stubborn trend: tanning is getting more popular among the young.

Only 25 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds surveyed by the American Academy of Dermatology said they were concerned about developing skin cancer, compared to 39 percent of the general population, according to a recent New York Times piece. One in five said getting a tan was more important than preventing it.

Sure, your middle schooler isn’t in that survey, but they’re in the same social media ecosystem where ‘tanfluencers’ are posting about ‘tanmaxxing.’ Viral TikToks are pushing the claim that sunscreen causes cancer (it doesn’t). A 19-year-old with 71,000 views posted from inside a tanning bed with the caption: “The lioness does not concern herself with ‘skin cancer.’” 

Umm, the lioness should.

The actual guidance from dermatologists remains straightforward: SPF 30 or higher daily, limit direct sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., get an annual skin check. The problem, as one doctor put it, is that “those recommendations are not what’s going viral.”

Might be worth a low-key conversation before summer gets going in earnest.

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