There are some research findings that should not make parents panic, but they should make us pay attention. In the study we discussed on the Celebrate Kids Podcast, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine and Princeton University examined how severe early life stress can produce lasting molecular changes in brain cells. The researchers described these changes as a kind of biological “scar,” affecting the way stress related systems may respond later in life. That is sobering. Abuse, domestic violence, household dysfunction, chronic fear, and other traumatic experiences do not simply disappear because a child gets older. The body remembers more than we once understood.

There are seasons of parenting when attentiveness feels like an unreasonable request. A newborn wakes up again. A toddler has apparently decided that every object in the house needs to be investigated with his mouth. Somebody needs lunch. Somebody else is crying. Your phone buzzes. The soup is on the stove. And just when you sit down, a small child begins telling a story that contains thirty seven unnecessary details and absolutely no recognizable ending. Being attentive sounds beautiful until you actually have children. Then you realize attention costs something.

Every once in a while, new research comes along and makes parents feel as though somebody moved the floor beneath them. For years, many of us have heard a fairly simple story about screens: more is worse. Then a study comes along suggesting that greater screen time throughout childhood and adolescence is associated with better cognitive processing in teenagers, as measured by attention and working memory. Before anybody runs out to buy an eight year old a tablet for Christmas, the broader research remains much more complicated. Other studies discussed in the podcast have associated heavy or early screen exposure with attention problems, anxiety, altered brain development, emotional regulation concerns, and other negative outcomes. Maybe the lesson is not that everything we knew was wrong. Maybe the lesson is that “screen time” was always too blunt a category.