Education of Children

By Valerie Strauss September 30th, 2015 In 1995, the now famous Hart/Risley study was published on the impact of language on young children, revealing that  low-income children are exposed to 30 million fewer words than their higher-income peers before age 3. The study, and others that followed, found connections between poor early literacy skills and lifelong academic, social and income disparities, leading to a number of initiatives to help low-income parents understand the importance of language. Here is an article adapted from the recently published book “ Thirty Million Words: Building A Child’s Brain .” The book, by Dana Suskind, is an extension of the research program she founded and directs at the University of Chicago called the Thirty Million Words ®  Initiative, which is dedicated to helping close the achievement gap by helping parents improve their home language environmentthrough the power of parent language. Suskind is also a professor of surg...

Honesty and dishonesty are learned in the home. Parents are often concerned when their child or adolescent lies. Lying that is probably not a serious problem: Young children (ages 4-5) often make up stories and tell tall tales. This is normal activity because they enjoy hearing stories and making up stories for fun. These young children may blur the distinction between reality and fantasy. An older child or adolescent may tell a lie to be self-serving (e.g. avoid doing something or deny responsibility for their actions). Parents should respond to isolated instances of lying by talking with the youngster about the importance of truthfulness, honesty and trust. Some adolescents discover that lying may be considered acceptable in certain situations such as not telling a boyfriend or girlfriend the real reasons for breaking up because they don't want to hurt their feelings. Other adolescents may lie to protect their privacy or to help them feel psychologically separate and independent...

With the advancements in technology, various forms of entertainment were produced, one of the most popular one amongst all ages is video gaming. About 90 percent of U.S. kids ages 8 to 16 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing so (more if you’re a boy).   Various studies suggest that young kids that play violent video games tend to display an increase in more aggressive behavior in real life. Violent video games can alter children’s personality, whether it is short-term or not, the violence portrayed in video games can immensely effect children, especially at an early age when trying to find their place in the world.  Children absorb much of the information they are exposed to when they are young, one can even say their brain is like a sponge. According to this fact, violent video games can have an influence on the way young children think and act after being exposed to them. People believe that these types of games don’t have an influence on them, perh...

People have been searching for the cause of autism for decades. For most of this time, autism was looked at as an affliction—something that is acquired, as a disease would be. But autism isn’t something that you catch, like influenza. Rather, it is something that you are, like tall or left-handed or female.  Autistic people were born that way. They will die that way, after living an autistic life. It is a characteristic of who they are. Having said that, there is no single expression of autism. More than a spectrum, autism is a varied landscape. Stop looking for poisons in the environment, or something that is eaten or injected, as the cause for autism. Autism isn’t something that can be washed away or flushed out of a person.  People have caused a lot of harm by trying that—often using other poisons, ironically.  Some parents and caregivers clutch to these dangerous therapies—attempts to “cure”—because they don’t understand the true cause of autism. If this is you, or ...