-PhysOrg: Study: paid family leave leads to positive economic outcomes
-MedicalXPress: New study confirms that mom's love good for child's brain
School-age children whose mothers nurtured them early in life have brains with a larger hippocampus, a key structure important to learning, memory and response to stress.-TheAtlantic: The Long-Term Effects of Spanking
Depression, aggression, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, drug and alcohol use, and "general psychological maladjustment." were among the problems seen in children who were spanked. As children who have been spanked become adults, they are more likely to become aggressive themselves since they have seen adults solving problems aggressively. According to the authors, "...virtually without exception, these studies found that physical punishment was associated with higher levels of aggression against parents, siblings, peers, and spouses."-Wired: Does Preschool Matter?
-IEEE Spectrum: Cell Phone Radiation Leads to Hyperactive Offspring in Mice
-TIME: Study: Could Cell-Phone Use in Pregnancy Affect Kids’ Behavior?
-EurekaAlert: Nearly half of preschool children not taken outside to play by parents on a daily basis
-TheAtlantic: Impatient Parents Tend to Bring Up Unruly Toddlers
"Parents' ability to regulate themselves and to remain firm, confident, and not overreact is a key way they can help their children to modify their behavior-TheAtlantic: The Benefits of Breastfeeding
The risk of being hospitalized for a lower respiratory track infection (pneumonia, bronchitis) is reduced by 72 percent in infants who are breastfed exclusively for more than four months. The risk of ear infections is decreased by 50 percent in infants who breastfeed for more than three months, and by 63 percent in infants who breastfed exclusively for six months. Breastfeeding reduced the incidence of gastrointestinal infections by 64 percent, with the protection lasting for two months after breastfeeding is discontinued. Breastfeeding confers a 38 percent reduction in the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) that is independent of the sleeping position of the infant. When infants are breastfed exclusively for three to four months, they have a 27 percent decrease in the development of asthma, atopic dermatitis, and eczema. This protection increases to 42 percent in infants with a positive family history for these allergic conditions. If infants are being breastfed at the time of their first exposure to gluten, there is a 52 percent reduction in the risk of developing celiac disease. There is a 31 percent reduction in the development of inflammatory bowel disease in breastfed children. When breastfeeding of any duration had occurred, there was a 15 to 30 percent decrease in adolescent and adult obesity; the longer the breastfeeding, the more the reduction in overweight. Infants who were exclusively breastfed for at least three months with no exposure to cows milk protein had up to a 30 percent decrease in type 1 diabetes and a reduction of 40 percent in the incidence of type 2 diabetes. A reduction of 20 percent in the risk of acute lymphocytic leukemia and 15 percent in the risk of acute myeloid leukemia has been seen in infants breastfed for six months or longer.-Outside: Breaking the Rules: Doing Right Means Sometimes Ignoring the Law
[teaching a moral life without dictating it. Freedom is about making the right choices]
-TheAtlantic: An Easy Trick That Helps Preschoolers Learn to Read: Point to the Words
-NatGeo: Teenage Brains
...risk-friendly weighing of cost versus reward has been selected for because, over the course of human evolution, the willingness to take risks during this period of life has granted an adaptive edge. Succeeding often requires moving out of the home and into less secure situations. "The more you seek novelty and take risks," says Baird, "the better you do." This responsiveness to reward thus works like the desire for new sensation: It gets you out of the house and into new turf.
