GIVING KIDS THE CHILDHOOD THEY DESERVE
Uniting Caring Adults to Champion the Emotional Health of Children
Access the Latest Discoveries
Be in Connection with Others
Take Inspired Action
Create and Build Community
If you’re an adult who cares about kids, you probably get a sense that something’s just not quite right about how they are growing up.
Children live in worlds created by adults. Yet, the very information that could often help us improve the experience of childhood is far removed from our daily lives. The solutions that exist remain out of our reach.
Walden Wise is a new community dedicated to bringing caring adults closer to each other and what works on behalf of children. We refer to our community members as CoCreators – caring adults who want to improve the lives of children by attending to their emotional health.
Please join us as we share valuable resources, connections and experiences to help you nurture the emotional health of the kids in your life.
Our supportive and inquiring community empowers every adult who influences the lives of kids to take inspired action.
We Are CoCreators
At Walden Wise, we describe the adult members of our community as CoCreators. CoCreators proudly accept the awesome responsibility they have over children’s lives, carry out their roles with intention and arm themselves with knowledge about what is best for children.
Your commitment to a child’s emotional well-being has the power to shape the very essence of their development. It's where you sow the seeds of security, stability, and purpose. By prioritizing emotional health in childhood, you lay the foundation for a future filled with strong hearts, focused minds, and purposeful lives.
As a CoCreator member, you'll receive everything you need to develop your personal practice. Our science-powered approach, centered around three guiding practices, offers accessible and actionable insight. These practices empower you to make a tangible impact through your daily choices, small conversations, and steadfast dedication to children's emotional health.
What kind of CoCreator are you?
Parents, caregivers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles
Teachers, coaches, mentors
Researchers, scientists, academics
Advocates, policymakers, legislators
Physicians, clinicians, and other child-serving professional
Our Guiding Practices
As CoCreators, we organize our efforts to foster emotionally-healthy childhoods around three, research-informed guiding practices.
By nature, practice is every evolving and practicing honors the journey our community is undertaking. Our supportive and inquiring community of CoCreators is actively pursuing scientific and practical knowledge surrounding childhood emotional health that empowers us to take inspired action.
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We believe every child should be celebrated for their unique personality and combination of social identities that influence their experience of the world.
Cocreators embrace how children’s identities shape their everyday lives. Cocreators actively engage with their child’s identities, helping them grasp the meanings behind those identities by exploring history and current events. Cocreators recognize and name identity-based inequalities, prepare their children to navigate discrimination, and empower them to build a more just society—one that embraces all children as much as their caregivers do
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We believe every child benefits from many types of relationships where they experience belonging and learn to show care and sustain a sense of connection and community.
Cocreators encourage children to become caring, thoughtful community members, who reflect on how their actions affect others and the kind of person they choose to be. With Cocreators’ support, children support others in feeling safe and valued, instead of seeking personal power or popularity. Cocreators help children honor and appreciate the importance of every life and the profound impacts we have on each other.
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We believe every child is capable of navigating their emotional worlds and learning to foster their own well-being throughout their lives.
Cocreators are critical to scaffolding children’s emotional skills. Cocreators learn about and model emotional skills in their children. At the same time, they communicate to children—through nurturing and emotional validation—that an adult is always “in their corner” when they go through “big” emotions. Finally, cocreators balance active support for children with giving children space to practice and master emotional skills for themselves.
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![Headshot of Mitch Prinstein Ph.D.]()
“It’s time for a new approach in how we help youth become their most emotionally healthy, resilient, and best selves. Walden Wise is using science to change how we care for children in today’s world.”
Mitch Prinstein, Ph.D., ABPP
Parent, Scientist & Author CoCreator, Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Join the Walden Wise Community
1
Sign Up &
Get Connected
Let us know you’re interested. If you care about the emotional health of kids, we want you to be part of our community.
2
Help Us Shape &
Grow the Community
Begin engaging with other caring adults. We will keep you connected about highlights and happenings.
3
Get Inspired &
Empowered to Help Kids
No matter how you influence the lives of kids, you will be a part of creating a culture of emotional health.
Our kids deserve a childhood where caring adults foster their emotional health
In a society where we are more connected than ever, why is valuable knowledge out of reach?
Why aren’t there shared opportunities to influence and expand research that will help kids?
Why is there no place for those who are supporting kids to get support for themselves?
Childhood has become hurried, externally focused, and preoccupied with perfection, competition, and achievement. The most well-meaning adults struggle to understand what they can do to truly improve kids’ lives.
Parents, teachers, and other child-serving adults want to know what will make a difference, yet have little access to cutting-edge research and when they do it is not prepared for them. Researchers want their findings to impact those who are the focus of their work, yet operate in systems that do not promote or reward the broad sharing of their findings.
Privileged information is staying behind walls while those who could put it to use have no access. Parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, mentors, researchers, and advocates are all struggling to support the emotional health of children in a multitude of ways in an increasingly complicated, and ever-changing world.
It can all make caring adults want to throw their hands up in frustration. It’s just not fair.