Letters Remain

Tag: parenting

  • The Benefits of Child Bilingualism

    Outside of the UK, bilingualism (or even trilingualism+) is the norm in Europe and, in some countries and/or regions, even expected. With that said, The Economist takes a look at the effect bilingualism has on a child’s brain. Monitoring languages and keeping them separate is part of the brain’s executive function, so these findings suggest that…

  • Child Well Being in Biological and High-Conflict Familes

    With the timing and sequence of ‘young adult transitions’ bearing importance for successes in later life, this news about these transitions and their occurrence in ‘high-conflict’ families shows that staying together for the sake of the kids doesn’t necessarily help: Compared with children in low-conflict families, children from high-conflict families are more likely to drop…

  • The Infant Brain, Redux

    An interesting follow-up if you enjoyed reading about the development of the infant brain last week: Seed Magazine interviews Alison Gopnik, asking about her research and “why everything we think we know about babies is wrong“. Seed: You describe children as being “useless on purpose.” What do you mean by that? AG: It’s related to…

  • Development of the Infant Brain

    Looking primarily at the research of Alison Gopnik, Jonah Lehrer looks at the development of the infant brain. Gopnik argues that, in many respects, babies are more conscious than adults. She compares the experience of being a baby with that of watching a riveting movie, or being a tourist in a foreign city, where even…

  • Raising Bill Gates

    While the article lacks in certain places, this brief look at Bill Gates Sr. and his relationship with his son is an interesting read with a few amusing anecdotes about the mostly elusive Gates family. [Bill Gates Sr.] and Mary brought their son to a therapist. “I’m at war with my parents over who is in…

  • Children Exposed to ‘Dirt’, Healthier

    From the ‘Science proves mum right’ and ‘Obvious, but still needs to be stated’ file comes the news that children who are exposed to bacteria, viruses, worms, and dirt have healthier immune systems. Public health measures like cleaning up contaminated water and food have saved the lives of countless children, but they “also eliminated exposure…

  • How To Destroy a Marriage

    In response to Dr Rob Dobrenski’s article on why marriages fail (linked previously), The Last Psychiatrist looks at various “post-marriage accelerators of divorce”—things you can do today to destroy your marriage (limited time offer): Be contemptuous Bring your work home (emotionally) Rush through your ‘family life’ in order to spend time with yourself Be painfully honest with friends/colleagues…

  • Talk to Strangers

    In an article discussing collaborative spam filtering and the Tor project, Bruce Schneier offers some refreshing advice: telling children not to talk to strangers isn’t strictly the best advice: When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: “don’t talk to strangers.” Strangers might be bad, we were told, so it’s prudent to steer clear…

  • Leaving Infants in Cars

    A child is accidentally left in the back seat of a car and dies from hyperthermia: a parent’s worst nightmare, I imagine, and something many believe wouldn’t happen to them (itself a big part of the problem). In an article debating the legal ramifications of such an accident, The Washington Post presents not only a…

  • Paternal Age and Child Development

    Advanced paternal age at conception has previously been shown to affect the resulting child’s health in many ways. Now, advanced paternal age has also been associated with impaired neurocognitive abilities (“the ability to think and reason, including concentration, memory, learning, understanding, speaking, and reading”). Advanced paternal age showed significant associations with poorer scores on all of…