Leading adolescent health expert Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg is soon to release LIGHTHOUSE PARENTING: Raising Your Child with Loving Guidance for a Lifelong Bond (American Academy of Pediatrics; March 2025)
Guiding kids and tweens through their formative years has always been a delicate balancing act, filled both with the joys and the challenges of their growing independence. But today’s parents face unique hurdles: the ever-present screens, the negative impact of social media, the looming threat of climate change, and fears around school violence. In LIGHTHOUSE PARENTING, Ginsburg offers a practical and compassionate approach to navigating this uncertain moment while also setting the foundation for lifelong relationships.
Dr. Ginsburg, the Founding Director of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, presents the metaphor of a lighthouse—steady, reliable, and guiding without being overbearing. This framework provides a balanced alternative to extreme parenting trends, equipping families to raise emotionally healthy kids who thrive academically, build resilience, and maintain lifelong connections with their parents. Packed with evidence-based strategies and actionable advice, LIGHTHOUSE PARENTING empowers parents to foster open communication, mutual respect, and clear expectations while nurturing their child’s emotional well-being.
You can learn more in this interview.
Every couple of years there's a new parenting style that gets a lot of attention. Whether it's helicopter parents, free range parenting, tiger moms, they've all had their moment. In LIGHTHOUSE PARENTING, you present something different, an action plan for putting balanced parenting into place. How does this approach differ from past trends?
Lighthouse parenting isn't a trend. Trends are temporary fascinations that often react to prior ones–like you mentioned, helicopter parenting arose and in response free-range parenting emerged. Trends are fueled by popular opinion and therefore swing like pendulums. In contrast, lighthouse parenting is based on decades of scientific studies on how to best balance the key elements in parenting: being loving, responding to your child’s needs, and setting clear and fair boundaries for their safety.
Why do you think the lighthouse is such a powerful metaphor in explaining how to raise a child with love and a sense of balance?
Like a lighthouse, this kind of parent is a guide for their children–one that is always there, even when it’s hard to see and especially when the waters get choppy. Lighthouse parents’ love is a landmark that their children, who are always steering their own ships, can nevertheless refer to and rely on for direction and support. The beam of a lighthouse is periodic, unlike a searchlight or a spotlight, and this constant yet dynamic presence encourages a healthy balance between a child’s blossoming sense of independence and grounding sense of security.
The lighthouse metaphor also imparts more concrete guidelines to parents: Send your signals clearly. Be aware of dangers and particularly those that may only be visible to you. Understand that for your child to thrive they must learn how to sail the waves by themselves, and accept you are on the shore. Always extend a safe harbor for them.
Kids today are faced with a host of issues that their parents never had to deal with, from the ubiquity of social media and cyberbullying to the fear of school shootings or other disturbing news events. Do you think these factors change how people should parent or are the fundamentals still the same?
The fundamentals never change. The best protection for a child or teen is the knowledge that the person who knows them the best–with all their strengths and challenges–loves them. That there will always be someone who will stand by them, support them, and guide them no matter the circumstances. This is the most essential element of parenting.
To this end, parenting centered on these fundamentals cultivates relationships that will last beyond the teen years far into the future. Our children will grow into adults and in addition to guiding them we’ll want to become more interdependent. The key to that is not being controlling, respecting their need to become independent, and serving as a guide. Think of it from their perspective: If someone tries to control you, you want to get away from them. When someone guides you, you want them involved in your life forever.
Throughout the book, you urge parents to consider their child at the age of 35. Why?
When we parent for the adult, we look at success differently than when we parent for the child. As children, we overemphasize their immediate happiness, their academics, and we forget what else matters. When we think about the 35-year-old we're setting up for success, happiness–for example–takes on a different meaning. Happiness means having a sense of meaning and purpose. It means being able to collaborate, to communicate, and to resolve conflicts with others. Happiness means having resilience, tenacity, humility. Keeping both the 5- and 35-year-old in mind allows us to focus on what matters most across a whole lifetime–and to realize most of this comes into play later. Taking the long view takes some of the pressure off us now.
It is incredibly hard for parents to see their child of any age struggling. So, why is it so important to let children fail sometimes? And what happens if a parent doesn't allow it? How much failure is too much, and might it cause a child to lose confidence?
We never want our children to fail in a way that puts them in direct danger. You didn't let your child put their hands on the stove when they were two and you shouldn’t let them get into a car unprepared to drive safely at 16. We have to set limits beyond which we do not allow failure–and then allow experimentation and learning within those limits. Childhood and adolescence are the times to learn who you are and how to recover when you stumble. If we don't allow our children to stumble, they're not going to learn how to get back up when they fall.
So now is the time—they're under your watchful eyes. If you protect them from learning life's lessons early on, they're going to learn later when you're not close by, and the consequences are going to be much higher. We all want our children to thrive–and failure should be seen as an opportunity for growth. We allow failure now so that they learn how to improve, how to recover, and how to make the most of second chances.
Very few parents can say, “I have an abundance of time, and I'd like to spend it reading another parenting book.” So, what does LIGHTHOUSE PARENTING offer that other books about raising kids don't?
In the book I explain how parents can be steady rather than stifling guides for their children, which promotes a successful parent-child relationship that spans every life stage. Lighthouse Parenting is an investment in the future— it offers not only a smoother adolescence, but a mutually reliant, healthy relationship with your adult child far into the future.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg (MD, FAAP, FSAHM) practices Adolescent Medicine at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has worked with youth enduring homelessness for over 30 years and directs Health Services at Covenant House Pennsylvania. His focus is on supporting adults to be the kind of people young people deserve in their lives. He is the Founding Director of The Center for Parent and Teen Communication, which empowers parents with the strategies and skill-sets that will strengthen their family connections and position them to guide their teens to become their best selves. His books include Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings and Raising Kids to Thrive: Balancing Love with Expectations and Protection with Trust.
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