How to Talk to Kids about Anything

A Q&A with psychologist and author Robyn Silverman.

Greetings, everyone, from Boulder, Colorado. I’m at the annual conference for the National Association of Science Writers, where, funnily enough, I just served on a panel about newsletter writing. On the panel with me was the head of newsletters at the Wall Street Journal as well as the newsletter editors for Science magazine and Nature magazine. It was very cool to be in such esteemed company.

My entire family has been here for the conference — my husband is a science journalist, too, so we came and brought our kiddos, which we’ve never done before. It’s super fun but also a bit weird to be so overtly mixing work + family life. Like, oh, hey, there’s my 9-year-old in a stained T-shirt, standing in line for the bathroom behind Slate’s features editor. Okay.

Today in my newsletter I’m thrilled to be running a Q&A with psychologist Robyn Silverman. You’ve probably seen Robyn’s name here before — she’s been a source for several newsletters — and today is publication day for her amazing new book, How to Talk to Kids about Anything. It’s a deeply-researched and fantastic resource for parents who want to know how to talk to their kids about, yes, literally anything.

Her book is one of the books I’m giving away this month, along with Mom Rage by Minna Dubin (I’ll be interviewing Minna here next week). If you’re a paid subscriber, enter my October giveaway to win:

For today’s Q&A, I talked with Robyn about why it’s so important to talk to kids about uncomfortable topics and how to approach those conversations. Then I asked her to weigh on two specific topics: Talking to kids about taking responsibility, and talking to kids about pornography. But I recommend you read the entire book — it’s so helpful.

Robyn, why is it so important for us to discuss difficult topics — sex, racism, death, war, etc — with our kids?