Every parent hopes their child will grow up and still want a close relationship with them. But close bonds don’t happen by accident — they are built through small, everyday interactions that make a child feel safe, seen and valued.

As a conscious parenting researcher and coach, I’ve studied over 200 families. I’ve found that the way you respond to your children from the day they’re born determines how strong your relationship with them is when they’re adults.

If you want your kids to always trust, respect and want to be around you, no matter how old they are, start doing these seven things early on.

Children need to feel safe and comfortable sharing their feelings. But when they hear “you’re fine” or “it’s not a big deal,” they start believing that their feelings aren’t important and eventually stop sharing them.

Instead of dismissing emotions, acknowledge them. To help them feel heard, say things like: “That sounds frustrating” or “I see you’re upset.” Emotional safety isn’t about fixing problems — it’s about making sure they feel understood.

Parenting based on fear, punishment or constant correction creates distance. Kids will then learn to hide parts of themselves to avoid disappointing you.

Parents who remain close with their children don’t demand obedience. Instead, they prioritize building trust. Simple moments — laughing together, listening without judgment, showing empathy — help children feel safe.

When kids feel emotionally secure, they continue seeking your support well into adulthood.

When parents make all the decisions, kids start to think: My actions don’t matter anyway, so why have an opinion on anything?

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Instead of deciding everything for them, ask “What do you think?” or “What feels right to you?” Let them make small, age-appropriate choices, like picking their clothes, hobbies or what to eat.

Parents expect respect from their kids, but they don’t always model it themselves.

Apologizing teaches kids that respect goes both ways. Saying, “I overreacted earlier, and I’m sorry” shows them that relationships aren’t about power, but mutual understanding.

Children raised in homes where accountability is the norm don’t fear making mistakes. Instead of hiding their struggles, they trust they can come to you without shame.

A strong relationship isn’t built in one big conversation — it’s created through small, consistent moments.

What shapes your bond isn’t just the time you spend together, but how often your child feels prioritized. Sharing a meal, reading at bedtime or simply checking in about their day strengthens the bond.

Kids who feel valued in small ways will naturally stay close to you later in life.

If a child feels constantly compared or judged, they start shrinking themselves to fit in. Over time, they learn to hide their real thoughts, interests and struggles.

Helping kids accept themselves starts with how you respond to them. Instead of pointing out flaws, celebrate their uniqueness. Encouraging their interests, even when they don’t align with your expectations, lets them know that you love them exactly as they are.

When kids grow up feeling accepted, they won’t have to choose between being themselves and staying close to you.

There will be moments when you and your child don’t see eye to eye. If you always push to be “right” at the cost of connection, they will learn your approval is conditional. They may comply in childhood, but will distance themselves in adulthood.

Instead of proving a point, focus on understanding. If your child disagrees with you, resist the urge to shut them down. Respond with curiosity: “Tell me more about why you feel that way.”

When kids know they can express themselves and still be loved and respected, they grow into adults who trust the relationship rather than fear it.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting, a certified coach and the creator of BOUND — the groundbreaking parent-child connection journal designed to nurture emotional intelligence, self-worth and lifelong trust. She is widely recognized for her work in children’s emotional safety and strengthening the parent-child bond. Follow her on Instagram.

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As a leadership consultant who studies workplace psychology, I’ve spent 30 years working with high performers across all industries. Again and again, one truth keeps proving itself: Being artistic in some way can transform you.

Even Steve Jobs agreed when he was interviewed for the PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds” in 1995: “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”

Of all the artistic fields, I’ve found that mastering a musical instrument is the most powerful for rewiring the brain for greatness. Playing an instrument — whether it’s the piano, trumpet or guitar — activates nearly every part of your brain: motor control, pattern recognition, emotional regulation, creativity and stamina.

That’s why I believe parents should encourage their kids to learn an instrument as early as possible. Studies have consistently found that children who learn music are more likely to have increased IQ scores and better language development.

Plus, it encourages their brain to operate at full capacity, building the neural foundation for mastery in pretty much everything. Here’s why:

1. You make visualizing success second nature

Musicians don’t just practice, they fantasize. They see the stage, hear the notes and feel the outcome long before it happens. Hence, musicians build skill while just visualizing playing. That ability to rehearse and mentally simulate outcomes is a superpower: You learn not just react to reality, but to create it.

2. You develop a sacred relationship with time

When you practice an instrument, time stops being abstract. You feel in real-time the cost of distraction and the miracle of being fully focused.

Over time, you become fiercely time-conscious — not in a stressed way, but in a sacred one. You don’t want to rush, you want to make it count. This discipline shapes everything, from how you run meetings to how you build relationships.

3. You stop running from discomfort

Every musician has to face the parts of the music they hate and struggle with. There’s no shortcut. You can’t outsource it, nor avoid it. You have to lean in until the failure becomes fluency.

While most people avoid uncomfortable moments in life, playing an instrument teaches you to seek those moments. You no longer panic at pain; you see it as a sign of growth.

4. You learn that emotions are designable

Music isn’t just output. It’s a way of regulating your inner world by changing your emotional state with sound, breath, rhythm and in how you prepare.

It becomes an invaluable skill you carry into everything, like before a stressful conversation or during a conflict. You don’t just express emotions anymore — you direct them.

5. You realize boredom is just feedback

Musicians don’t just play scales mindlessly. They know what they’re aiming to improve: precision, control, phrasing. Without that goal, their attention drifts, and practice becomes boring.

We often think stuff we do is boring, but boredom is feedback. It’s your brain telling you: “Show me what this is building toward.” The insight that boredom is the absence of a goal changes everything. Instead of labeling tasks as boring or dull, you ask, “What’s my goal here?”

This makes you sharper, more engaged and harder to distract in any setting.

6. You turn being stuck into invention

Sometimes you can’t play it right. Your hand won’t stretch. Your fingers trip. So, you try it a different way. You improvise, rearrange, compose. Suddenly, the failure becomes fuel. This teaches you a profound lesson: When you can’t follow the map, draw a new one. Innovation isn’t a gift; it’s a response to friction.

7. Your standards rise and stay high

Once you’ve heard the difference between “okay” and “exceptional,” you can’t unhear it. Once you’ve experienced how moments of excellence feels, mediocrity becomes unbearable. Music teaches you to expect more from yourself and others, not out of perfectionism but out of respect for what’s possible.

8. You learn to create for others, not just yourself

When you’re playing an instrument, you can’t help imagining an audience, maybe to impress but mostly to move someone, to say something without words. That habit reshapes how you approach everything.

Your work becomes an expression of your standards, your values, your imagination. It forces you to ask: Is this good enough to matter to someone else? Will this make them think, feel, grow?

Your brain’s plasticity and ability to learn allows you to pick up a new instrument at almost any age, so it’s never too late if you didn’t learn to play music as a kid.

1. Pick the one that sparks emotion. You don’t need logic here. What’s an instrument that moves you? That makes you feel something? Piano, guitar, trumpet — follow the spark.

2. Practice for at least 20 minutes a day. Studies show that 20 to 30 minutes of focused practice can induce measurable brain changes, particularly in areas tied to motor skills and attention.

3. Celebrate improvement, not performance. Don’t worry about being good. Track what you can do today that you couldn’t do yesterday. Mastery is just small progress, compounded with love.

Stefan Falk is an internationally-recognized executive coach, workplace psychology expert, and author of “Intrinsic Motivation: Learn to Love Your Work and Succeed as Never Before.” A McKinsey & Company alumnus, he has trained over 4,000 leaders across more than 60 organizations and helped drive transformations valued in excess of $2 billion. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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The multitrillion-dollar tax and spending package House Republicans passed last month is heading to the Senate, with lawmakers hoping to pass a finalized bill by July 4.

If passed in its current form, the bill — dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — would, among other measures, make President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent and add new tax breaks for tipped and overtime workers as well as older Americans.

The bill’s critics are hoping it may see some change’s in Congress’s upper house. Those include six Nobel-prize winning economists, who this week penned an open letter published through the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

“As economists who have devoted our careers to researching how economies can grow and how the benefits of this growth can be translated into broadly shared prosperity and security, we have grave concerns about the budget reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22, 2025,” the letter says.

The economists’ main issue: cuts to Medicaid (the federal and state health-care program for low-income and disabled Americans) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps), which they see as essential for American families.

The House version of the bill would cut Medicaid spending by $700 billion and slash SNAP by $300 billion — the largest cut in either program’s history.

“These steep cuts to the social safety net are being undertaken to defray the staggering cost of the tax cuts included in the House bill, including the hidden cost of preserving the large corporate income tax cut passed in the 2017 tax law,” the letter says. “But even these sharp spending cuts will pay for far less than half of the tax cuts (not even including the cost of maintaining the corporate income tax cuts of the 2017 law).”

These and other critics of the bill cite research that estimates the law will add to the national deficit — to tune of about $3 trillion to $5 trillion over the next decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — while failing to lift up low-income Americans.

“Given how much this bill adds to the U.S. debt, it is shocking that it still imposes absolute losses on the bottom 40% of U.S. households,” the letter says.

It remains to be seen if spending cuts will remain in the bill as-is.

“Overall, the [Senate] bill is not going to be that much different,” Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, recently told CNBC, but added that he expects “a lot of debate” about the Medicaid provision in particular.

One set of provisions — making the tax rates and brackets from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent — would maintain the status quo for taxpayers. That law’s tax cuts, which were set to expire at the end of the year, included a major hike to the standard deduction, which “greatly simplified the tax code for millions of taxpayers,” say analysts at the Tax Foundation.

Proponents of the bill say these and other tax cuts will spark U.S. economic growth and laud the administration for delivering on several campaign trail promises.

When it comes to cutting spending on social programs, Trump sees the reductions as an exercise in government efficiency. “We don’t want any waste, fraud or abuse,” he said in a recent Newsmax interview. “Other than that, we’re leaving it.”

The economic Nobelists don’t see it that way.

“The House bill addresses none of the nation’s key economic challenges usefully and exacerbates many of them,” they write. “The Senate should refuse to pass this bill and start over from scratch on the budget.”

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Ten years ago, my wife, daughter and I relocated from the Washington, DC area to Lisbon, Portugal. Living here has been one of the best experiences of our lives, so we’re not surprised that it’s the country Americans want to move to the most.

But once we arrived, we soon learned that some of our expectations before the move were unrealistic. For example, we thought we could fully integrate simply by mastering the language and making a lot of Portuguese friends. Ten years later, we still feel just as culturally “American” as we did when we first landed.

Now that we’ve fully settled in, our friends back home often ask about what living and retiring abroad is really like. Here are the top three myths about leaving the U.S.:

“Laid-back” and “low-stress” aren’t necessarily the same things, especially if you’re used to efficiency and attentive customer service.

It may take minutes to open a bank account in the U.S., but it could take weeks or longer for an American expat to do it in a country like Portugal, where banks require significant documentation and review periods before opening an account. 

And if you’re worried about American politics, moving abroad won’t stop the news cycle. In fact, without the reassuring familiarity of being “home,” moving abroad might make you even more stressed.

So if your motivation for relocating overseas is to leave your worries behind, you may become disillusioned with life in a foreign country. But if your goal is to pursue excitement, novelty and the great unknown, then you’ll have an easier time overcoming the unwelcome surprises that exist in even the most laid-back countries. 

The cost of living in a country like Portugal might be lower than comparable lifestyles in the U.S., but Americans often face extra administrative steps when they live abroad that can result in added costs.

For example, you may need to hire both a U.S. accountant for your U.S. income taxes, plus a local accountant to file your taxes for your country of residence.

Depending on which country you move to, you should consider the volatile nature of currency exchange rates. For example, the euro rose from about $1.03 early this year to nearly $1.14 today, so most things that my family buys in Portugal now cost us over 10% more than they did a few months ago. 

Most importantly, don’t overlook the value of your time. A medical prescription in Portugal might cost a fifth of what it costs in the U.S., but can take five times longer to fill.

If one of your goals for moving abroad is to lower your living expenses, I suggest doing three things:

1. Create a budget of your current spending.
2. Create a projected budget for your ideal life abroad. This way, you can compare costs and see whether (and where) you can save money by moving abroad.
3. The costs of things are never fixed. Ask yourself: Are some costs more or less likely to change over time? If so, how would those changes impact your projected cost savings?    

In Lisbon, there’s a huge number of expat-focused group activities. There are co-working spaces that cater to expat communities and language schools. But as welcoming and friendly as Portugal tends to be, you may struggle to make new connections if you’re based in more rural parts of the country. 

So how can you meet new friends and colleagues? If you’re traveling with school-age children, does the school organize parent activities? Do you have hobbies you can pursue in a group setting, especially groups that meet regularly so you’ll start to see the same faces over and over again?

Also important: What about your “helper” network? If you face a sudden need to take a return trip to the U.S., for example, who will care for your pets while you’re gone? If you get into an accident, who will notify your family back home if you’re unable to do so? 

My best advice is to have a written contingency plan, complete with names and phone numbers for who will stand in for you if necessary. It’s okay if there are blanks in your contingency plan — you can fill those in as you develop new relationships in your new country. 

As for the one belief about moving abroad that actually is true? “You’ll love living near the ocean on a glorious, sunny day.” A picture tells a thousand words.

Alex Trias is a retired attorney. He and his wife and daughter have been living in Portugal since 2015. He is the author of the “Investment Pancake” series on SeekingAlpha.com and has published nearly 500 articles about tax planning, investing, early retirement, and where to find the best meals in Lisbon.

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A master’s degree may not lead to better job performance, but employers are still willing to pay extra for employees who have one, according to a new survey.

In a survey of 1,000 hiring managers in the U.S., Resume Genius found that 62% of hiring managers say that employees with master’s degrees perform the same — or worse — at work as employees with a bachelor’s degree and two years of experience.

Despite this, 72% of hiring managers still say they would offer higher salaries to a job candidate with a master’s degree than one without.

Of those hiring managers, 64% would offer a 10% salary increase, 20% would offer a 15% increase, and 23% would offer a 20% or higher salary increase.

So why does a master’s degree still command a higher salary?

“I think we’re in a transition where the symbolic value of degrees still affects salary decisions, even if employers don’t actually think the performance of master’s degree holders matched the credentials,” says Eva Chan, senior PR expert at Resume Genius.

According to Chan, having a master’s degree is often perceived as a sign of potential by hiring managers.

“Even if it doesn’t guarantee better performance, it can show that you’re very driven, you’re disciplined, you’re committed, and that you’ve given your time, money and effort into accomplishing a goal,” she says.

However, she says, the survey results demonstrated that “more and more employers are realizing experience can show a lot of these same qualities.”

Skills-based hiring has become increasingly common: JP Morgan Chase has eliminated degree requirements for most jobs at the bank, prioritizing work experience over credentials. Walmart is also moving towards skills-based hiring for their corporate roles by adjusting job descriptions to “factor in the skills people possess, alongside any degrees they hold.”

Chan says that she and her team were surprised to find that Gen Z hiring managers were twice as likely as Boomer hiring managers to perceive master’s degree holders as stronger performers.

In her view, this could be because Gen Z may be more familiar with the school system than the workplace.

“Some younger managers may still be fresh from school, or they just finished their degree so it’s fresh in their minds,” she says. “Maybe they view advanced degrees as more relevant or even aspirational.”

Around 25 million American adults hold master’s degrees, according to statistics from the Education Data Initiative, and the number of people pursuing a master’s degree doubled between 2000 and 2019.

In addition to higher salaries, having a master’s degree can provide several potential benefits for employees, such as opportunities career advancement.

However, those boosts come at a hefty price: on average, getting a master’s degree costs more than $62,000, and the average federal loan debt balance for graduate students is over $94,000.

According to Chan, whether or not a master’s degree will help your career depends on your individual situation.

Having a master’s degree can be helpful in professions like education and urban planning that are “heavily tied to pay scales, promotions or credentials,” Chan says.

However, for fast-moving industries such as tech, media and marketing, prioritizing real-world experience may be a better choice.

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