Parents of young kids obsess over a lot. Experts say this is what they should actually focus on.

“We shouldn’t think of kids who are 0 to 3 as impervious to major stressors in the family,” said Dr. Jamie Howard, a senior clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute. “The diagnostic criteria for something like a depressive disorder of early childhood is going to be based much more on behavior and observable characteristics because young children can’t tell us, ‘Yeah, I’m having feelings of worthlessness. They have no metacognition, which is the ability to think about their thoughts. So it’s very, very behavioral.”