Even though the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates twice this year, 30-year fixed mortgage rates are still floating above 6% — where they’ve been stuck since February 2023.

Rates currently sit at an average of 6.37%, per Mortgage News Daily, well above the level where 40% of would-be buyers say they’d feel comfortable purchasing a home, according to a Bankrate survey from early 2025.

Why aren’t mortgage rates falling faster? They follow long-term Treasury yields more closely than the Fed’s benchmark interest rate. And right now, those yields remain elevated.

Mortgage rates usually sit one to two percentage points above the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasurys, which serve as a benchmark for mortgage pricing.

Over the past few years, that gap — known as the spread — has ranged between 2 and 3 percentage points and now sits around 2.12%, according to HousingWire. While it has narrowed, it’s still wider than normal, keeping mortgage rates relatively elevated.

Part of the reason the spread remains wide is that Treasury yields have stayed elevated. Uncertainty around inflation, new tariffs, the government shutdown and the growing federal deficit has pushed investors to demand higher returns to hold long-term U.S. debt, says Melissa Cohn, regional vice president at William Raveis Mortgage.

Because mortgage rates track the 10-year Treasury yield, not the Fed’s benchmark interest rate, those elevated yields have kept average 30-year mortgage rates above 6% even after two Fed rate cuts.

“In order for [30-year mortgage] rates to get to 5.5%, then the 10-year bond yield would have to go to 3.5% if the spread is still 2%,” says Cohn. That scenario isn’t reflected in current outlooks.

Most forecasts don’t expect rates to fall much further. “There is not a lot of evidence that we’ll see rates go much lower in the near term,” Cohn says.

Here’s where recent forecasts see the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate in 2026:

• Mortgage Bankers Association: 6.4% by the end of 2026  
• National Association of Home Builders: average of 6.23% in 2026 
• National Association of Realtors: average of 6% in 2026
• Fannie Mae: 5.9% by the end of 2026

These projections could shift downward if the economy slows, since weaker conditions typically pull investors into safer assets and push down yields. A complicating factor is the government shutdown, which has made reliable economic data harder to come by.

Even so, Cohn says recent labor-market data points to a slowing economy. But so far, it hasn’t pushed mortgage rates down.

“Bond yields would have to drop significantly in order to see a drop in mortgage rates [below 6%],” she says.

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I’ve spent seven years studying achievement culture and interviewing hundreds of high-performing kids and their families. One issue that comes up again and again for parents and teens is how much the high-stakes world of college admissions affects their relationships.

Amid a competitive, expensive and uncertain process, it’s easy to understand a parent’s temptation to micromanage every detail. But this can often lead to fights and resentment.

Having observed the strain that the college admissions arms race can have on family life, I have a non-negotiable parenting rule: with my three teens, we don’t talk about post-high school plans until the spring of their junior year.

Once spring of junior year rolls around, we confine college conversations to an hour each weekend at a time our child chooses, usually Sunday afternoon. These boundaries keep the topic contained and our relationship from being consumed by it.

That one guardrail has been transformative. It stops the anxious parent drip — the constant stream of “Did you finish that supplement? Did you ask your teacher for a recommendation?” — from seeping into every car ride and family dinner.

Instead, my husband and I collect our questions and save them for Sunday, leaving the rest of the week open for all the other things my teenagers have on their minds.

We want to protect this time and provide space for their developing selves, for interests and curiosities that aren’t constantly filtered through the lens of what a college admissions officer might be looking for.

Of course, my kids know they can always talk to us. But by containing our anxious parenting questions, we’re doing what we can to reduce the already immense pressure they might be feeling. 

Growing research finds that students in “high-achieving schools” (those with strong test scores, diverse extracurriculars, and graduates bound for top colleges) are now experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and substance use compared with national norms.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine classified youth in these high-achieving schools as an “at-risk group,” alongside children living in poverty, in foster care, or with incarcerated parents. 

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reached a similar conclusion, identifying “excessive pressure to excel” as one of the top environmental threats to adolescent wellness, right next to poverty and trauma.

It may sound counterintuitive to put kids who attend well-resourced, high pressure schools in the same category as our country’s most vulnerable youth. But the data show that both groups experience chronic, unrelenting stress that can undermine mental and physical health. 

“Mattering,” or the deep human need to feel valued and to add value, is a powerful protective factor for youth mental health.

Young people learn that they matter through the messages they receive at home. One of the most effective ways to do that is to make unconditional worth visible. 

One mother I interviewed told me about a metaphor she used to demonstrate this. She held up a $20 bill and asked her child how much it was worth. Then she wrinkled it, stepped on it, even dunked it in a glass of water. “Now how much is it worth?” she asked. The answer, of course, was the same. 

Like that $20 bill, our children’s value doesn’t diminish when they bomb a test, get cut from a team, or aren’t invited to a party. Our job is to remind them that their worth will never change, no matter what.

So much of parenting is spent getting through endless to-do lists that our kids don’t always see the delight we take in being their parents. Try greeting them once a day the way the family dog does, with total joy.

Small, consistent reminders that our love isn’t conditional can shift the entire atmosphere at home. They tell our kids that their value isn’t tied to their performance. 

In our family, this became the inspiration for the “one-hour-a-week” rule. It was one way to put mattering research into practice. It’s our reminder that home should be the one place where you never have to prove your worth.

When kids aren’t performing to earn our approval, they’re free to pursue goals that actually mean something to them.

So this year, as my daughter goes through the admissions process herself, I’m holding firm to our Sunday rule. Because the relationship I’m building with my children matters far more than any acceptance letter ever could.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller ”Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It.” She lives in New York City with her husband and three teens. You can follow her on Instagram @jenniferbrehenywallace. 

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When Taylor Capuano and her twin sister Casey Sarai each took $5,000 from their personal savings to start a side hustle in 2022, they had no inkling it would soon become their full-time jobs.

“We didn’t expect it to really turn into anything,” says Capuano, 33. “We just knew: ‘This is a simple solution that is helping us. I wonder if other people will find it useful.’”

Sarai and Capuano are the co-founders of Cakes Body, which makes silicone nipple covers for customers to wear under their clothing — meant to prevent chafing or avoid visible bra lines. Both sisters knew the embarrassment of experiencing a wardrobe malfunction while wearing poorly-fitted undergarments or cheap nipple covers that were uncomfortable or unflattering, Capuano says.

Helped by a December 2023 appearance on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” Cakes Body has amassed nearly a half of a million social media followers across TikTok and Instagram. Customers frequently tout the “grippy” silicone “boob solutions” for being more effective and of better quality than many other covers on the market.

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After topping $1 million in revenue in its first full year of business, Cakes Body brought in roughly $95 million in net sales in its most recent fiscal year, which ended in June. Initially bootstrapped, the business has been profitable since 2022, according to a company spokesperson.

Its only outside investment to date, according to Capuano: the deal the sisters struck on “Shark Tank” with Skims and Good American co-founder Emma Grede, $300,000 in funding for 10% of the company. The investment, which valued Cakes Body at $3 million, closed in December 2023, Capuano says.

“We just knew: ‘This is a simple solution that is helping us. I wonder if other people will find it useful,’” says Capuano, the company’s chief creative officer. Sarai is Cakes Body’s CEO.

Cakes Body was born from “desperation,” says Capuano.

In 2022, she and Sarai — marketing managers at apparel brand Life is Good and spirits company Pernod Ricard, respectively — both found themselves looking for new jobs. Pandemic-era layoffs had dwindled the size of Sarai’s team, and the birth of Capuano’s first child left her looking for flexibility that her job didn’t afford her, she says.

Both sisters “desperately needed a path” and, unable to find new jobs, “there was really nothing to lose,” says Capuano.

They brainstormed business ideas around specific pain points from their own lives. They’d both used silicone nipple covers — which use the body’s heat to adhere to skin, without any sticky substances — that they found unflattering and ineffective, Capuano says. A higher-quality, better-designed option could fit more seamlessly under clothing and solve a frustrating problem for women like them, they reasoned.

The sisters researched silicone manufacturers — doing “a lot of Googling,” Capuano says — chose one and ordered a batch of prototypes. With little design experience of their own, the sisters went “back and forth a handful of times” with the manufacturer to make sure the prototypes covered enough surface area, could stick to bare skin without adhesive and had tapered edges to fit seamlessly under clothing, says Capuano.

Once the prototypes were ready, the sisters wore them “every single day,” Capuano says. The result: “It was making our lives better. [And] if it’s solving a problem for us, it will be solving a problem for other people.”

In total, the sisters each spent $5,000 to launch Cakes Body, which included ordering prototypes, buying their first 500 units, buying social media advertisements and setting up an online store through Shopify, says Capuano.

Still in their full-time jobs, both sisters worked on their side hustle in their limited free time. The name Cakes Body came from a previous entrepreneurial idea: Sarai had wanted to start a baking business, but never got it off the ground, says Capuano.

Sarai fulfilled orders from her kitchen while Capuano focused on building Cakes Body’s online following, making up to 100 TikTok videos featuring their products each month. Five months after launching, Cakes had its first viral moment, generating over 1 million views from one TikTok post and selling out their entire initial stock.

“It was very exciting and it gave [us] the first glimmer of hope,” says Capuano. But the co-founders remained reluctant to quit their day jobs, in case they couldn’t sustain a single moment of viral success.

A few more viral posts later — roughly one per month, each leading to sold-out stock — both sisters decided to focus on the business full-time. Capuano quit her job in June 2022, followed by Sarai in August.

Cakes Body unabashedly advertises quality over affordability: Its price, $33 per pair, is two-to-three times more expensive than most preexisting cheaper options. It faces competition from other pricey brands that make similar products, from startups Gatherall and ThirdLove to lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret.

The Cakes Body strategy for competition includes future international expansion, Capuano says, and a network of more than 25,000 affiliate content creators who regularly share social content about the company. The business took its first step into brick-and-mortar retail in August: a partnership with cosmetics giant Ulta Beauty that put Cakes Body products in 1,000 stores across the U.S.

Despite her initial fear that Cakes Body’s success wouldn’t last, Capuano now tells other first-time business founders to just get started turning a good idea into a viable business. If you have a product that solves a problem in a market that’s big enough to support your business, with “enough margin for you to make your financial goals happen,” then it’s worth plowing ahead, she says.

“There is a moment where you have to take a leap of faith of either ordering the inventory or putting out the first Instagram post,” says Capuano.

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When your kid is in the middle of a tantrum, logic and lectures don’t work.

I’ve studied over 200 kids and worked with hundreds of families, and one thing is clear: Tantrums aren’t about defiance. Research shows that during emotional overwhelm, a child’s prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for reasoning and language) essentially goes offline. It’s why “use your words” falls flat when they’re screaming.

What they need in that moment is connection. These seven magic phrases work with your child’s nervous system by calming the storm, restoring safety, and teaching emotional regulation — the real skill behind resilience.

When your child is mid-meltdown, your instinct is to make it stop… fast. You want the screaming to end, the tears to dry, the chaos to pass. So you start talking: “Calm down,” “Use your words,” “Tell me what’s wrong.”

But often, the fastest way to end a tantrum is silence. When your child’s body is in full distress, every word you add is like oxygen to a fire. Their “thinking brain” has shut down. Words simply can’t land. But your nervous system can reach them instantly.

Sit close. Stay relaxed. Saying nothing essentially communicates an important phrase: “You’re safe, and I can handle this.” Once their breathing slows and the peak has passed, that’s when your spoken words can start to land.

This short phrase is a lifeline. You’re not walking away, threatening consequences, or trying to reason. You’re anchoring them back into connection.

A tantrum often triggers a primal fear: Am I still loved when I’m out of control? Your calm presence answers that question instantly. Connection regulates the stress response faster than correction ever can. Emotional safety quiets the body’s alarm system.

Instead of minimizing their emotions or rushing them through it, this phrase acknowledges the size of the feeling. It helps kids see what’s happening inside rather than being consumed by it.

Validation activates the brain’s calming pathways. When children feel seen, their bodies release tension. And that’s the first step toward emotional awareness.

Parents often swing between being too permissive or too harsh. This phrase strikes the balance. You’re separating the feeling from the behavior, and validating the emotion while holding the boundary.

Consistent limits paired with emotional acceptance build impulse control — the foundation of self-discipline.

Sometimes, a “time-in” works better than a “time-out.” This phrase teaches your child to regulate with you. Invite them to sit, breathe, or just be still until the storm passes. Proximity restores safety faster than isolation ever could.

When children are dysregulated, they need your nervous system to co-regulate theirs. Your calm is contagious.

This phrase helps acknowledge the emotion underneath your child’s behavior: disappointment, frustration, or longing. When kids feel seen, they don’t need to keep screaming to prove their feelings are real.

Validation lowers the brain’s threat response. Once a child feels understood, their nervous system begins to settle — and the tantrum ends naturally, without punishment or bribes.

Unconditional safety is what every child needs most. Tantrums often test an unspoken question: “Will you still love me when I’m not lovable?”

This phrase answers it clearly and teaches emotional security for life. It also rewires the shame response. Children learn that love isn’t withdrawn for imperfection, and that’s the beginning of self-worth.

Reem Raouda is a leading voice in conscious parenting and the creator of FOUNDATIONS, a step-by-step guide that helps parents heal and become emotionally safe. She is widely recognized for her expertise in children’s emotional safety and for redefining what it means to raise emotionally healthy kids. Connect with her on Instagram.

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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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