Sarah (Maraniss) Vander Schaaff is a freelance writer with an interest in mental health, parenting, and culture. Her writing appears in The Washington Post’s Health and Science Section, their popular blogs on education and parenting, The Answer Sheet & On Parenting.

She also hosts a regular blog and Facebook live interviews for the Manhattan Mental Health Association of NYC and is a regular contributor to Broadway World. She finds (some) time to muse on her personal blog, Lunch Box Mom. 

A sampling of recent work: 

The Washington Post's Health and Science 

• There's a shortage of child psychiatrists and kids are hurting
• My college reunion made me think of my own mortality: Nine of us were dead

For The WP's The Answer Sheet

• She foresaw disaster when her young son threw a computer at his teacher. How she helped him and other mentally ill kids

• What obsessive-compulsive disorder does to a young mind when it grows unchecked

For the WP's On Parenting blog,

• The College Roommate Paring isn’t So Random Anymore
• What my daughter taught me when she gave a spider a name

Shortly after the disappearance Malaysian flight 370, Sarah had an Op-Ed in The Post: How Should Parents Discuss World Catastrophes with their Children?

Sarah has been featured on the The Weather Channel’s morning show AMHQ, a guest on HuffPost Live’s program with Nancy Redd, and was a regular guest on NBC Philadelphia's program, Sandwich Moms. Last spring, she spoke with host Bill Ritter of New York's ABC7 on his popular weekend program, sharing her personal commitment to mental health awareness. 

As a mother of two, she wrote about her experience with sleep--or lack of it--in two pieces featured in The New York Times Motherlode blog with Lisa Belkin When a Child Does Not Sleep; (Finally) Getting Some Sleep. Years later, she still hears from moms who find her articles in the wee hours of a sleepless night. 

Sarah cut her journalism teeth at CBS News/48 Hours before a career in teaching, motherhood and writing. She has an BS from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Alabama, where she studied theatre with a focus on Shakespeare. 

Sarah comes from a family of journalists, from her grandfather, an original "newspaper man" to her brother and father, the Pulitzer prize winning journalist, David Maraniss. 

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About Me

Work Featured In: 

Praise for Sarah

“Sarah’s insights into parenting have been a big plus to the On Parenting blog. I look forward to everything she writes. Her essays are often nuanced, funny and thought-provoking.”
-Amy Joyce, Washington Post On Parenting, Editor & Writer

"Sarah has contributed multiple blogs for our parenting series, Smart Parents, which have been featured on GettingSmart.com and The Huffington Post. Her writing is highly engaging and honest and she has able to connect deeply with our readers (something we know based on the number of shares and page views her blogs have received on our site). We are also delighted to feature two of her stories in our upcoming book, Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning which publishes this August."
-Bonnie Lathram, learner experience manager + contributing author, Getting Smart