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Parenting Advice From ‘America’s Worst Mom’
The New York Times: Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mother of two, earned the sobriquet “America’s Worst Mom” after reporting in a newspaper column that she had allowed her younger son, then 9, to ride the subway alone. The damning criticism she endured, including a threat of arrest for child endangerment, intensified her desire to encourage anxious parents to give their children the freedom they need to develop the self-confidence and resilience to cope effectively with life’s many challenges.
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“It’s the right thing to do.”
In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama urged the Congress to take action on paid sick leave for American workers. Forty-three million workers currently have no paid sick leave, the President noted, forcing many to make “the gut-wrenching choice between a paycheck and a sick kid at home.” Rectify this situation, he told the lawmakers: “It’s the right thing to do.” “It’s the right thing to do.” This is a familiar refrain by now, six years into Obama’s presidency. If not paid sick leave, it’s health care reform, or the Dream Act, or tax credits for clean energy, or tuition assistance or gay rights.
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Sounding out speech
The Harvard Gazette: Just about all parents would agree — infants undergo a nearly magical transformation from 3 to 6 months. Seemingly overnight, they can smile and laugh, and they squeal with delight when tickled. They babble, have “conversations” with those around them, and start to respond to their own names. A new Harvard study adds one more item to the list — solving the invariance problem. Among the thorniest challenges in the study of speech perception, the invariance problem was first identified in the 1950s, when scientists began using instruments to analyze spoken language.
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Cheerful tweets may mean a healthier heart
CBS News: Crowd-sourcing through social media has quickly become one of the most powerful tools for public health. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Yelp have been used to track influenza, HIV, food poisoning and other ailments. Now, a new report shows that Twitter can also help predict rates of heart disease on a hyper-local level. According to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Sciences, simply tracking the expression of negative emotions, including anger, stress and fatigue, may produce an accurate picture of which communities are most likely to have high incidences of heart disease.
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The Guilt-Prone Can Hold Back the Team
The New York Times: Do you constantly feel guilty? Here’s some good news: Research has found that guilt-prone people make excellent colleagues and leaders because they contribute more than their fair share, and they don’t free-ride on others’ contributions. But there’s a catch, of course: Guilt-ridden workers are so afraid of letting people down that they’re reluctant to take on challenging assignments with others, a new study finds. In the process, they may hinder not only their own advancement, but also that of colleagues and their organization. There. Don’t you feel guilty now? The research was conducted by two assistant business professors, Scott S.
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Mothers’ “Baby Talk” Is Less Clear Than Their Adult Speech
People tend to have a distinctive way of talking to babies and small children: We speak more slowly, using a sing-song voice, and tend to use cutesy words like “tummy”. While we might be inclined to think that this kind of “baby talk” is easier for children to understand, new research findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that mothers may actually speak less clearly to their infants than they do to adults.
