Untethered

Creating Connected Families, Schools, and Communities to Raise a Resilient Generation

De: Doug Bolton PhD

Narrado por: Doug Bolton Ph.D.

An essential guide to restoring our children’s behavioral health and wellbeing

Over the past decade, children’s mental health challenges have reached epidemic levels—stress, anxiety, childhood depression, and suicide are at unprecedented high rates. Amid high-stakes pressure for kids to succeed, parents and teachers have never needed a road map to healthy child development more urgently. And as psychologist and educator Doug Bolton explains in this eye-opening and powerful guide, underlying our modern-day stresses is an even more pervasive problem: We’re relying on practices that are not in line with what science tells us about how to truly motivate children and help them thrive.

As Bolton persuasively argues, we need to step away from parenting and teaching based on controlling our children with incentives and punishments—they focus on short-term compliance at the cost of health development. Instead, creating healthy and strongly bonded communities for our children, both in our own families and in our schools, is key to their emotional well-being, and their success in life. Untethered offers tools to help us create these communities so our kids develop healthy attachments and learn emotional regulation, helping them feel more connected, less anxious, more included, less shamed, and more securely grounded. The power of communities is not only that they enhance our wellness—they buffer us from the impact of trauma and can be a guiding force in helping kids develop resilience.

Weaving in Bolton’s own experiences as a former principal at a therapeutic school and as a father, Untethered is a deeply empathetic and powerful guide to combating the isolation we see in this generation today, leading them toward a healthier, more interconnected future.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of relevant images from the book

©2025 Doug Bolton (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“In the 25 years I have been working with young people, I have rarely read a more honest, accurate, compassionate, and clear call to action to support the emotional and physical health of our children and repair our relationships with them. I will be recommending Untethered to all the schools and parents I work with, and I dearly hope they integrate Bolton’s advice. We would all be better off for it.”—Rosalind Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of Queen Bees and Wannabes

“Dr. Bolton trains a nuanced, humane, empathic lens on one of the most pressing issues of our time: the state of our young people’s mental health. His prescription for protecting our children from a world that can be harsh and unrelenting, and is rapidly becoming more so, is simple but too often devalued: human connection—through conflict, through setbacks, through triumphs, through time. As a pediatric surgeon, as a social scientist, and importantly, as a mother, Untethered is among the best books I’ve read on the subject of human development.”—Dana Suskind, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Parent Nation

“Doug Bolton masterfully blends his personal experience with scientific research to offer a transformative road map for healthy child development. His emphasis on the power of community is a refreshing and much-needed perspective in today’s overwhelming and high-pressure world.”—Jennifer Breheny Wallace, New York Times bestselling author of Never Enough