There’s been some buzz around the blogosphere today about moms who are either bored by their children, or (less controversially) by the domestic tasks accompanying motherhood. Both Blogging Baby and MotherTalkers already have good comment threads going on the subject (and opinions are strong), so I thought I’d take a different approach, and share some […]
Today, I’m happy to provide a field report for all you new lesbian moms out there. I now have proof positive that it is not necessary to have a father in the home to teach one’s son to pee standing up. Despite the assertion of the New York Court of Appeals that “a child benefits
Researchers have just announced results of the first long-term study of girls with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The scientists noted that although an estimated 4.4 million American children have ADHD, it has often been under-diagnosed in girls because their behavior tends to be less disruptive than that of boys with the disorder. The effects of
More states around the country are boosting funding for preschool programs, Stateline.org reports. California and Illinois are even considering universal preschool, following the footsteps of Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma. At first glance, this seems like a good thing. Others, including California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, say the money would be better targeted at “high-risk” preschoolers or
The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) has released new results on students in science. The news is mixed. The good part is that the gap between whites and non-whites has shrunk since 2000. (The fact that it still exists, is, of course, a problem.) Of concern to some, however, is that eighth-graders showed almost
An extensive study titled “The Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers and Their Parents,” by the Kaiser Family Foundation, looks at television use among families with children six months to six years old. Among the findings: One third of children under six have a TV in their bedrooms. This rises
Are children today exposed to too much media, too young? A group of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health discussed the matter today, and came to no firm conclusions. Most seemed to agree that content, limited quantity, and parental involvement were central in ensuring children get the most out of any TV or
The World Health Organization is revising its 20-year-old guidelines for infant birth weights to take into account the increasing number of breast-fed children. Infants fed formula gain weight faster than those who are breast fed, so breast-fed infants would incorrectly appear underweight in the old charts. Of course, if you feed your child formula, for
Recent brain research has found that teenagers’ brains undergo an “extensive renovation” from a burst of growth in brain synapses, a process that may last until the mid-20s. Scientists involved in the research say this may help explain emotional swings and why teens are more likely than those of other ages to crash a car,
Scientists at Temple University have shown experimentally for the first time that children as young as ten months can associate a word with an object, even though it has to be an object in which they have previously shown an interest. Older children can associate words with both objects that interest them and those that
