Child Spacing

Via Freakonomics: Want Smarter Kids? Space Them (At Least) Two Years Apart

The hypothesis is the older kids get more of their parents time before the second sibling comes along. However, based on my observations I would hypothesize that the role the older child plays in teaching their younger sibling skills they already have (such as reading) is what leads to better test scores.

Practicing Free Throws

I never did homework in high school but I did practice my free throws. Not that I was an excellent basketball player, I underachieved in academics and basketball, but I always liked the repetition of free throws.

However, it was only in graduate school when I learned to apply myself academically, and that was by thinking of complex math and chemistry formulas as shooting free throws.

I saw that doing these equations over and over was the only way to get better at them, and it definitely worked for me.

OvercomingBias mentions a study similar to what I found about math work: Only Do Math Homework

...we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.

Confirmation Of The Praise Paradox

If you are not familiar with the downside of too much praise for your child then stop what you're doing because I'm going to ruin what you used to know.

First read at NYMag: How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The inverse power of praise.

Via TheAtlantic comes confirmation from an extensive study: Be Wary of Calling Kids 'Gifted'

Smart Is As Smart Does

Via PhysOrg: Educate yourself to boost achievement in kids

"If you want your kids to do well in school, then the amount of education you get yourself is important," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "This may mean that parents need to go back to school.

"A growing number of large-scale, long-term studies now show that increasing parental education beyond high school is strongly linked to increasing language ability in children. Even after controlling for parental income, marital status and a host of other factors, we find that the impact of parental education remains significant."

Redshirting First Grade

Yesterday morning NPR had a story about teenage football kickers. The boy they interviewed was 15. But he was in the 8th grade!

I was 17 when I graduated from high school. I was always one of the youngest kids in my class. I never found it to be an academic deterrent. It was an athletic challenge - a challenge until I was 16 and in my junior year that is. At that time my body caught up to the lessons and skills I had developed from always competing against more physically mature opponents. In the end I saw it as an advantage.

But it seems there is a trend of more parents delaying their child's entry into school in order to provide an advantage that an extra year of development provides.

See Federal Reserve Bank Of Boston Working Paper: The Lengthening of Childhood

there is little evidence that being older than your classmates has any long-term, positive effect on adult outcomes such as IQ, earnings, or educational attainment. By contrast, there is substantial evidence that entering school later reduces educational attainment (by increasing high school dropout rates) and depresses lifetime earnings (by delaying entry into the labor market)

I also read a recent book review of 'The Nurture Assumption' (See sp!ked: It’s time to move beyond the nature/nurture divide). This book makes the argument that parents have very little to do with how their child turns out. And in fact, genes and peer groups are the most important determiners.

‘The experts are wrong: parental nurturing is not what determines how a child turns out'

This relates to this idea of redshirting because many parents believe that they can improves their child's self-esteem if they give them an advantage to succeed. However, as the book argues:

Contrary to the current orthodoxy, Harris argues that self-esteem is based on what we do, not on how we are encouraged to feel.

Looking at this from my own standpoint as someone who was young but had a best friend in elementary school who was redshirted (held back in first grade actually), there is no doubt that he had higher self-esteem for a long time and I wondered what was wrong with me. However, over the long term the advantage I gained of besting older kids prepared me better for the real world than the short-term artificial advantage provided to the kids who were held back.

But in the end, the parent is right. If a parent feels that their child is not ready for school then they must trust that instinct. However, they must also keep in mind if their decision is based on what they want or what their child needs.

Intelligence Is A Muscle

And it is important to get kids started early (like in a Montessori program)

At the NYT: How to Raise Our I.Q.

Professor Nisbett provides suggestions for transforming your own urchins into geniuses — praise effort more than achievement, teach delayed gratification, limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity...
Good schooling correlates particularly closely to higher I.Q.’s. One indication of the importance of school is that children’s I.Q.’s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don’t inflict books or summer programs on them).

Professor Nisbett strongly advocates intensive early childhood education because of its proven ability to raise I.Q. and improve long-term outcomes.

This story reminded me of what I consider must-reading for all parents at NYMag: How Not to Talk to Your Kids

That Teenage Feeling

USNews: How to Deploy the Amazing Power of the Teen Brain

...experts now are realizing that the popular parental response—to coddle teens in an attempt to shield them from every harm—actually may be counterproductive.

This is why I call my parenting style "boundaries for failure".

A Chemistry Kit For Christmas?

A generation ago all the kids had chemistry sets. Today they're thought to be too dangerous by most parents.

Not to worry though, MAKE has released The Chemistry gift guide.

The Best Way To Study

Once again it is shown that cramming does not work.

See: Researchers report on the smart way to study

The results suggest, Pashler said, the optimal amount of time over which learning should take place depends upon how long the information needs to be retained: "If you want to remember information for just a week, it is probably best if study sessions are spaced out over a day or two. On the other hand, if you want to remember information for a year, it is best for learning to be spaced out over about a month."

Extrapolating from the results, he added, "it seems plausible that whenever the goal is for someone to remember information over a lifetime, it is probably best for them to be re-exposed to it over a number of years."

"The results imply," said Pashler, "that instruction that packs a lot of learning into a short period is likely to be extremely inefficient, at least for remembering factual information."