Browsing all posts in "Children".

Sensitive or Capable?

Years of pop psychology have convinced us that the goal of a parent is to raise a sensitive child. We want empathy, sympathy, caring. We are told that children who display these gifts are endearing, fun, interesting.
And as long as their environment is totally stable, apparently, they do just great.
But a new study shows that [...]

Why Kids Believe Weird Things

Near the end of Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things,” a book well worth reading as we confront the issue of critical thinking skills and how they affect science education, I ran into one of the weirdest things of them all. If it weren’t backed up by tons of evidence, I might think Shermer [...]

Helpful Test-Taking Strategies for Parents

Not kidding. THIS was the title of the article in the Chronicle yesterday morning (You can read the whole article on the MomHouston blog). I was wondering when they were going to institute a parental competency exam. I can certainly think of a few women who should not, ever, have had kids. But that doesn’t [...]

Saturday Night Rules

Saturday night is date night. Not just for hubby and I, but for a large percentage of the world.
Date night is a habit we got into long ago, when our lives were hectic and the kids were small. It was often just mom-isn’t-going-to-cook night, if we couldn’t get a sitter. We would put the kids [...]

You Can Take the Girl out of the City

One of the things we parents do to our kids is attempt to force down their throats foster a sense of appreciation for nature.
To that end, then, we took Stretch out into the vast wilderness (sorta) with a two day trip to a local park. He was working on some scout stuff, and we were [...]

Two Hours Later–I Get It–So Why Didn’t You?

Getting rid of a kid for a week during the holidays? Priceless.
Actually, $60 and a two-hour orientation. The $60 was worth every penny. The two hours I can never get back.
Normally, I avoid command performances more carefully than the plague. The plague I can cure. But there has never been a two hour orientation that [...]

Happy Birthday!

Today isn’t just Christmas. Today marks the birthdate of the greatest intellect in history. On December 25, 1642, Isaac Newton was born.
When Newton was 25, he published the Principia, which laid out the laws of force and motion, gravity, and planetary motion. Newton invented calculus, proved that light is made up of a spectrum of [...]

My Children’s Education Has Been Sadly Neglected (By ME)

I can’t blame anyone else, since I homeschool. And since it’s Christmas, I guess I’m doubly guilty.
Here’s the story:
Last week, I talked about working memory and a little cognitive theory. You all now know as much about it as I do, since I’m neither a psychologist or a neurobiologist. However, some time ago I read [...]

I’ll Be Home for Christmas (When I Wander In…)

My eldest drives home from college for the winter (Christmas? Hanukkah? Solstice? Mithra’s Birthday?) break. It’s a fifteen hour drive, as long as he avoids rush hours in any of the big cities he must drive through, and as long as they haven’t prepared in advance for all that holiday traffic by taking the ship [...]

The Mother’s Holiday Gift Guide for All Ages

Everybody and their dog is writing holiday gift guides. Not to be outdone, I have come up with my own (which my dog did not help write. But she did complain about dinner while I was writing it, which sorta counts).
Ages 0-1:
There’s a fire sale on Baby Einstein videos right now. So what if [...]