In a piece about how stone-cold geniuses like Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, and physicist John von Neumann spent their childhoods (hint: lots of free time, and homeschooling, often also by geniuses),...
Why I’m Not Excited By That “Overprotected Kids Die Younger” Study
A very long study of about 1,000 British and Brazilian Boomers looked at whether their upbringing impacted their longevity. Among other things, the researchers found that folks who'd grown up...
Making It Legal to Play Outside: “Reasonable Childhood Independence” Bills Update
Let Grow's goal is to make it easy, normal and legal to give kids some old-fashioned independence. When it comes to that "legal" part, we help states pass Reasonable Childhood...
Erika Christakis, early childhood expert and author of The Importance of Being Little, NAILS IT in her Atlantic essay on sleepovers. Noting that sleepovers have gone from age-old activity to yet another thing...
What Do Parents in The Happiest Country in the World Do that We Don’t?
Just loved this snappy piece on the CNBC website, "I'm a psychology expert in Finland, the No. 1 happiest country in the world -- here are 3 things we never...
What a fantastic study: Research just published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that when people are prompted to talk to a stranger, surprising things happen: They start...
Well, Golllly! “Free-Range Parenting is NOT Crazy”
Take a look at this lovely little clip, below, from FoxNews last week. While the caption on screen says, "Critics Warn of Parenting Style's Possible Consequences," that's not the direction...
The Sorrow and the Fear: Athena Strand’s Murder, and Us
Sorrow and anger rage in our hearts. A child has been murdered. Athena Strand, 7, was abducted and murdered last week in her Texas town of Paradise. (The irony hurts,...
Thoughts on the Mom Handcuffed for Having Son, 8, Walk Half a Mile Home
Perhaps you have already heard about Heather Wallace, a Texas mom of three, arrested for having her son walk home half a mile after he was bothering his younger brothers...
A Girl in China Cries About Homework and It Resonates Around the World
This little girl in China is going viral, thanks to her desperation for some time off from homework: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEyVqA-DVwg Poignant! Powerful! Over here, we appreciate this video...and hope it was...
What are kids today desperate for? The graph says it all: It's from an elementary school in a middle class neighborhood that offers all sorts of afterschool activities -- music,...
