Adults Fear Leisure Because They Lose Control of the Cult...

In part, adults feared youth leisure because it symbolized rapid change and the inability of parents to control the culture of their o1spring, which seemed to be dominated by commercial entertainment. Commercialized youth leisure grew impressively during and after World War II. Parents away as soldiers or o1 at work lost control over their o1spring, and increased afluence encouraged commercialized play. In the 1950s, new technologies like the 45 rpm record and the transistor radio were quickl...

 Variable Ratio Schedule for Getting Kids Addicted to Boar...

In light of the above, here’s a solid Variable Ratio Schedule for playing board games with your kid: the first time you play a particular game, let the kid win. thereafter, let the kid win some of the time. 60% of the time is good to start (you can dial it down slowly as the kid improves if you want). make the sequence of wins and losses as random as possible. critically, make the outcome as close as you can every time, especially when the kid loses. She should always feel like she bare...

 Children Learn What They Live

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive. If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves. If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy. If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy. If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty. If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence. If children live with toleranc...

 Specific Family Characteristics and IQ

When we look at individual families, watch the ways in which they interact with their infants or young chil¬ dren, and then follow the children over time to see which ones later have high or low IQs, we can begin to get some sense of the kinds of specific family Ltei of this type has led me to the following list of five general characteristics of families whose children achieve higher IQ scores: They provide an interesting and complex physical environment for the child, in¬ eluding play m...

 The Authoritative Parenting Style

The most influential proposal about such styles has come from Diana Baumrind (1972), who has looked at combinations of four of the dimensions I've just described: (1) warmth or nurturance, (2) level of expectations, which she describes in terms of "maturity demands," (3) the clarity and consistency of rules, and (4) communication between parent and child. Baumrind saw three specific combinations of these characteristics: • The authoritarian parental style is high in control and maturity d...

 Having Kids Makes One Cognizant of the Brevity of Life

Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter ...

 With Educational Games, Even if the Kids Don't Get It, Yo...

...where does probability theory come from? What is its source? Clearly, like many other sciences, like arithmetic itself, probability theory emerged from observations of certain real-world phenomena, namely, random, unpredictable phenomena. And it is exactly these kinds of observations—fundamental to the formation of science—which are worth making together with kids. Well, not all of them, of course, just the simplest ones. Besides, kids are making them on their own; e.g., when they play...

 Adult Participation in Children's Worldplay

In The Brightening Glance: Imagination and Childhood (2006), the art theorist Ellen Handler Spitz argues that "[t]he topic of adult participation in children's play is delicate, complex, and controversial," largely due to the overwhelming influence a parent or a teacher or even adult-generated entertainment media can have. Adults must work hard not to impose their owti interests, methods, or judgments upon play activity. The act of modeling and encouraging can, indeed, be fi-aught with miss...

 Negative Attention is Better Than No Attention at All

To give and receive attention is a fundamental human need. In the 13th century, King Frederick II of Sicily wanted to find out what language children would naturally grow up to speak if they were never spoken to. He took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were strictly forbidden to either speak to or touch them. The babies, as it turned out, didn’t grow up to speak any language, as they all died of attention deprivation within a fortnight of the sta...

 Children's Art Has Its Own Logic

Even simple scribbles are meaningful. While it was once thought that kids only scribbled to experience the physical sensation of moving their arm along the page, “now it’s been shown that when children are scribbling … they’re representing through action, not through pictures,” said Boston College’s Winner. “For example, a child might draw a truck by making a line fast across the page and going ‘zoom, zoom,’ and so it doesn’t look like a truck when the child is done, but i...