Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Children of Color Experience Racism in German Schools by Sonya Faber, Ph.D., and Monnica Williams, Ph.D., ABPP I am an African American who has lived in Germany for many years and my multi-citizenship children have attended rigorous international IB schools in Berlin. These venues are international but unfortunately still suffer from American ideas about race […]

How Educators Use the Environment to Help Students Thrive To escape the polio outbreaks so rampant in the U.S. through the 1950s, my mother Nancy and her cousin Bev left the city to spend their childhood summers in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We visited recently and stopped by their first home, which their grandfather designed […]

Transforming School Is Key to Ending the Youth Mental Health Crisis “Supporting the mental health of children and youth will require a whole-of-society effort.”—Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, 2021 Advisory on Youth Mental Health In December, when United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy made a rare public advisory on the mental health emergency […]

3 Tips for Parenting to Promote Boys’ Positive Body Image What is body image? Body image is the perception of one’s body and related thoughts and beliefs. Below, I discuss this topic, particularly how it relates to boys, with Charlotte Markey—a Psychology Today blogger, author, professor of psychology, and founding director of the health sciences […]

4 Ways to Help Highly Sensitive Children Manage Big Emotions I recently wrote a post on 10 habits of highly sensitive (HS) children, and have been overwhelmed with responses from parents. They are desperate for help to better understand what makes their kids tick and for tools to respond to them in the most loving […]

How Can We ID the Wannabe Serial Killer? In Germany, “Sarah M” stabbed a man in the neck as she enacted her plan to become a serial killer. Just 19, she was obsessed with Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, and Richard Ramirez. She thought the uncaught Ripper had been a woman—her role model. Sarah arranged […]

How Does Learning Change as We Age? Learning is essential in everyday life. Whenever we make a choice, we need to know whether to repeat it or to try a different course of action. But what makes us learn or prevents us from learning? A key is whether our choices lead to rewards—good outcomes, such […]

I’m Not Raising a Wilting Flower This pandemic has challenged every single one of us. Children, teens, adults: we all have had to balance an extra set of life demands that have been outside the scope of any other life experience we have had thus far. I often pose a question to help us realize […]