what the research honestly says about whether any of it lasts

The fair question, at the end of a week like this one — does daily feeling-work simply evaporate?

In 2017, researchers pooled 82 school-based programs, involving some 97,000 students, and looked not at the finish line but far past it — six months to eighteen years later. Thirty-eight of the programs were outside the United States.

The honest answer: the benefits persisted. Smaller than the immediate effects, but present — in skills, in attitudes, in wellbeing — and similar across children's backgrounds and geographies. The strongest predictor of a child's later wellbeing was the skill actually built during the program, not the program's label or length.

Modest and durable, in some studies, when done well — that is the calibrated sentence, and it is enough. Like oil in a hinge: nobody sees it, and years later the door still turns quietly.