Child Development

Inhibitory Control

October 28, 2012 – 4:06 PM

John Wayne in True Grit

I recently gave a pre­sen­ta­tion at New Orelean’s Bar Camp, an un-conference host­ing by the New Orleans tech and small busi­ness start-up com­mu­nity.  This year I spoke about a char­ac­ter­is­tic that is more impor­tant for aca­d­e­mic suc­cess than I.Q.- inhibitory control.

Inhibitory con­trol is the abil­ity to resist temp­ta­tion or impulse. Basi­cally, its self-control and focus. Inhibitory con­trol came on the scene with a now-classic exper­i­ment called the Marsh­mal­low Test. The test gave preschool-aged chil­dren the option to eat one marsh­mal­low when­ever they wanted or two marsh­mal­lows if they could wait 15 min­utes. They timed how long the chil­dren could wait and com­pared those times to how they fared in many other things through­out their lives. read more »

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Food

Smoothie Summer: Purple Blackberry Basil

August 7, 2012 – 11:07 AM

An impor­tant smoothie dis­claimer is that 14 grams of sugar is 14 grams of sugar, even if it comes from fruit. (High fruc­tose corn syrup might be an excep­tion.) “Nat­ural fruit sugar” acts the same in your body as the sugar in that slice of cookie cake.

The dif­fer­ence between eat­ing fruit and eat­ing other things that con­tain sugar is that when you eat fruit, you also get nutri­ents and fiber. That fiber slows your diges­tion of the food and causes the sugar to be released more slowly into your blood­stream, keep­ing your blood-sugar level more steady. On the con­trary, some­thing like a cup­cake causes a spike in your blood-sugar level. Avoid­ing spikes in your blood-sugar reduces crav­ings and drowsi­ness. A steady blood-sugar lev­els is what helps peo­ple on the Atkins diet lose weight, even if they are still clog­ging their arter­ies with bacon fat (mmm… bacon). read more »

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Child Development

Parenting in Other Cultures: Oh, the Things We Could Learn

August 1, 2012 – 12:20 PM

I recently wrote an arti­cle that claimed that chil­dren in some other cul­tures are more capa­ble and respon­si­ble than Amer­i­can chil­dren because they are trusted with more respon­si­bil­ity at a younger age.

My expe­ri­ences abroad sup­port the idea the chil­dren in other places are given rel­a­tively more chores, trusted with more  respon­si­bil­ity and allowed to do more dan­ger­ous things. Traveling and work­ing with chil­dren in China, I saw girls as young as five car­ry­ing their infant sib­lings on their backs as they accom­pa­nied their moth­ers in the mar­ket. From what I have seen, chil­dren in Istan­bul, Turkey are also trusted with more respon­si­bil­ity. Young school chil­dren take the city buses to school every­day with­out adult chaperon.

Of course, the dif­fer­ences in other culture’s child-rearing prac­tices extend far beyond mat­ters of respon­si­bil­ity and chores. From how babies are car­ried, to what chil­dren are fed, to how they are rewarded and pun­ished, it is fas­ci­nat­ing to see the dif­fer­ences. (For a fun glimpse at these dif­fer­ences from your own liv­ing room, I highly rec­om­mend the movie Babies.) In fact, it was the cross-cultural dif­fer­ences in par­ent­ing that I observed abroad and learned about as an anthro­pol­ogy stu­dent that first piqued my inter­est in child devel­op­ment and set me down the path of mak­ing it a career. read more »

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Child Development

Could American Children be More Capable and Responsible?

July 26, 2012 – 5:14 AM

The use of machetes by three-year-olds may develop skills and inde­pen­dence. Pic­ture from Viet­nam, 2004

I rec­om­mend the arti­cle Spoiled Rot­ten: Why do kids rule the roost?  The author reports that chil­dren in some other cul­tures are far bet­ter behaved, more skilled, more self-motivated and harder work­ing than Amer­i­can children. Among a cer­tain tribe liv­ing in the Peru­vian Ama­zon, chil­dren are able to care for them­selves and pre­form all the nec­es­sary skills for sur­vival in their cul­ture by the time the reach puberty. read more »

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Food

Smoothie Summer: Pineapple Green Tea

July 22, 2012 – 1:31 PM

There is a cur­rent trend in cook­ing for chil­dren of hid­ing beets in chicken nuggets and spinach in brown­ies. I see the appeal (remem­ber Avo­cado Brown­ies.) I like get­ting nutri­ents into chil­dren, even if it is coated in cheese. My con­cern is that these dishes give chil­dren the false expec­ta­tion that its OK to eat only mac and cheese and hot dogs, when what they need to do is work towards acquir­ing a taste for healthy foods. read more »

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Child Development

Can Kids Teach Themselves To Read?

July 19, 2012 – 7:29 PM

This is talk by Nicholas Negro­ponte, the founder of the One Lap­top per Child ini­tia­tive, about solu­tions for edu­cat­ing some of the poor­est chil­dren in the world. About 11 min­utes in, he describes his lat­est project to teach kids to read using tech­nol­ogy. He is send­ing tablets to vil­lages where no one is lit­er­ate and see­ing if the chil­dren will learn how to read with only the books, pro­grams, and games on the tablet. Its an ambi­tious project that has impli­ca­tions for edu­ca­tion the world over. read more »

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Child Development

Memory Game

July 15, 2012 – 3:33 PM

Mem­ory card match­ing games improve cog­ni­tive abilities.

One day in my 3 year old class­room, I intro­duced a mem­ory game. I had 5 pairs of Easter egg pic­ture cards (that I made myself using two copies of a col­or­ing sheet). I laid them out face down and had the play­ers take turns try­ing to find matches.

Games like these exer­cise “work­ing mem­ory.” Work­ing mem­ory turns out to be cor­re­lated with IQ and with other cog­ni­tive skills such as read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, prob­lem solv­ing and even one’s abil­ity to focus. Play­ing games that require work­ing mem­ory can actu­ally improve work­ing memory.

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Child Development

Scoring the Grit Scale

July 14, 2012 – 8:43 AM

For ques­tions 1, 4, 6, 9, 10 and 12 assign the fol­low­ing points:

5 = a. Very much like me
4 = b. Mostly like me
3 = c. Some­what like me
2 = d. Not much like me
1 = e. Not like me at all

 

For ques­tions 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 11 assign the fol­low­ing points:

1 = a. Very much like me
2 = b. Mostly like me
3 = c. Some­what like me
4 = d. Not much like me
5 = e. Not like me at all

Add up all the points and divide by 12. The max­i­mum score on this scale is 5 (extremely gritty), and the low­est scale on this scale is 1 (not at all gritty).  read more »

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Food

Smoothie Summer: Yellow Pineapple and Pepper

July 8, 2012 – 7:45 PM

This is the sec­ond post in a series in which I pro­vide a smoothie recipe for every color. Last week I started with red.  Today, yellow.

 

My smooth­ies are usu­ally just fruits and veg­eta­bles, some­times with some dairy or soy milk. I like to think of them as nutri­ent bombs. I gen­er­ally avoid the smooth­ies you can order at cof­fee shops and ice cream stores because they often have a lot of sugar and arti­fi­cial fla­vor­ing. If I’m going down that road I just assume order ice cream.

Here is my yel­low smoothie recipe. It uses an entire yel­low bell pep­per, and its quite refresh­ing: read more »

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Food

Key Lime Pie Jello Shots

July 5, 2012 – 10:04 PM

Jello shot tech­nol­ogy has sky­rock­eted in recent years. No longer must we con­tent our­selves with super-sweet arti­fi­cial fruity fla­vored Jello shots in lit­tle plas­tic cups. Using unsweet­ened unfla­vored gelatin, any alco­holic con­coc­tion can be jello. With a ratio of 1 cup alco­hol to 1 cup non-alcoholic liq­uid to 2 packs gelatin, we can dream up all kinds of treats. Here my recipe for Key Lime Pie Jello Shots, fea­tured in an episode of The Drink Show in which I demon­strate how to make them.

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