NewsTrust - Parenting - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

How to raise African-American boys like Trayvon Martin to be careful, not paranoid

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman has opened a dialogue on broader issues. One is the unique challenge parents face in teaching African-American children to be safe but not fearful.

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Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - Being bilingual makes you smarter and can have a profound effect on your brain. Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

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Pass the Books. Hold the Oil.

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - Mar. 10 (Opinion) - Education is a better economic driver than a country’s natural resources.

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Opinion: Parents, don't dress your girls like tramps

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By LZ Granderson - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - I saw someone at the airport the other day who really caught my eye...Yeah, that 8-year-old girl was something to see all right... I hope her parents are proud. Their daughter was the sexiest girl in the terminal, and she's not even in middle school yet.

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Fixes: Mothers-to-Be Are Getting the Message

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 18:53:57 -0800

New York Times - By By DAVID BORNSTEIN - Feb. 07 (Opinion) - A free service, text4baby, delivers crucial health advice via text message to pregnant women and new mothers.

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In Defense of the Western Mom

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Ayelet Waldman - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - Here are some of the things that my four children of a Jewish mother were always allowed to do: • Quit the piano and the violin, especially if their defeatist attitude coincided with a recital, thus saving me from the torture of listening to other people's precious children soldier through hackneyed pieces of the juvenile repertoire, plink after ever more unbearable plonk. • Sleep over at their friends' houses, especially on New Year's Eve or our anniversary, thus saving us the cost of a babysitter. • Play on the computer and surf the Internet, so long as they paid for their Neopet Usuki dolls and World of Warcraft abomination cleavers out of their own allowances. • Participate in any extracurricular activity they wanted, so long as I was never required to drive farther than 10 minutes to get them there, or to sit on a field in a folding chair in anything but the balmiest weather for any longer than 60 minutes. • Quit said extracurricular activities, especially if their quitting coincided with league finals that might have demanded participation on my part exceeding the requirements stated above. In the days since this newspaper published Amy Chua's simultaneously entertaining and infuriating excerpt from her new book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," my two elder children, 16 and 13, have devoted a remarkable amount of time to raging against the essay and crafting compelling and bombastic rebuttals to be delivered to Ms. Chua herself, should they ever encounter her.

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Personal Health: From Birth, Engage Your Child With Talk

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jane E. Brody - Sep. 29 - All too often, mothers and nannies are tuned in to their cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPods, not their young children.

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Op-Ed Columnist - Bristol Palin’s New Gig

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gail Collins - May. 07 (Opinion) - But when a teenager goes out on this kind of mission, you have to wonder where her parents’ heads were. What does this say about Sarah Palin’s judgment? Although we’ve sort of answered that question before

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Octuplets mom wants $2 million for story. And a TV show? | The Dish Rag

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By elizabeth Snead - Feb. 03 (Editorial) - The mother of 14 kids is asking for $2 million for her octuplets story. Oh, and she would also like a TV career as a child-care expert. Wow. How about scam artist instead? The divorced working mom lives in her parents' three-bedroom house in Whittier, Calif.

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Click and Jane

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Virginia Heffernan - Feb. 01 (Comment) - “Did you like this book?” asks the computer. It’s a customer-satisfaction question, but it seems more profound than that. We hesitate. Ben, my 3-year-old son, shoots me a puzzled look. The answer should be yes. Ben enjoys what’s on the screen right now: Starfall, an online medley of free learn-to-read activities. But he doesn’t like the question. “It’s not a book,” he explains, emphatically, to the laptop. “It’s more like a movie or a video.” Oh, God. I knew it.

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A little reality

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Kennedy - Dec. 02 (Opinion) - We are under no illusions about the challenges Becky faces. She's four-foot-one, and, at 16-years-old, is about as tall as she's going to get. Her arms are disproportionately short. She waddles. But though her genome is imperfect, she, Becky, is perfect just the way she is.

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Tempering Toddler Tantrums Now May Prevent Aggression Later

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - By Stefanie Reinberger - Nov. 01 (Review) - * Occasional tantrums are normal for children during the first three years of life, as increasing independence collides with emotional and verbal immaturity. * Frequent rage attacks, together with unusually aggressive or self-destructive behavior, however, may augur more serious behavior issues, including a propensity toward violence. * Genetic factors play a role in overly aggressive behavior in toddlers as do language delays, smoking during pregnancy, socioeconomic factors and certain parenting styles. Countering such contributors may help curtail the number of youths who become chronically violent.

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Gifted Children: How to Bring Out Their Potential

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - Highly gifted children solve the most varied thought problems faster and more thoroughly than those with more average aptitudes do. Because these children speed through the regular curriculum for their grade, they need additional intellectual stimulation while they wait for the rest of the kids to learn the basics. Two central approaches are used to satisfy the educational needs of such children: acceleration and enrichment. Acceleration means studying material that is part of the standard curriculum for older students. Enrichment involves learning information that falls outside the usual curriculum--say, investigating a topic in greater depth or finding out about new topics.

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The Beijing she knew is gone; in its place, the Beijing she loves

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Ching-Ching Ni - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - I was born in a Beijing that has vanished. The way my mother tells it, I forced my way into the world a month early so my birthday would forever be associated with the biggest political festival of the year. ... It was the early autumn of 1968, and as revelers shouted "Long live Chairman Mao," my parents raced to a hospital during a massive parade commemorating the birth of communist China. As my mother screamed in pain, fireworks lighted the sky over Tiananmen Square.

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Family Planning: Striking Plan B

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Jul. 16 (Editorial) - The Bush administration continues its fight to prevent women from accessing birth control. According to The New York Times, a new proposal would require that clinics and hospitals receiving government aid under health programs "certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and (emphasis ours) even certain types of birth control." The proposal also takes issue with state laws forcing hospitals to provide rape victims with emergency contraception, a form of birth control also known by its brand name, Plan B.

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Obama's call for parenting

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - "You and I know how true this is in the African American community," Obama said, speaking at a Chicago church more theologically conservative than the Trinity United Church of Christ he recently left. "We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled - doubled - since we were children."

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Why Children Curse

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - By Allison Aubrey - Mar. 27 (Review) - No one expects a 3-year-old who loves to dress like a princess to swear like a sailor. But early exposure is not so uncommon. Who's to blame? Well, there's a pretty apt quote from a 1970 Pogo cartoon: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." The "us" are parents. A few weeks ago, I put a question out to hundreds of mothers on a local list-serv asking for anecdotes about the first time they heard their children use inappropriate words.

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Reading is fundamental -- to democracy

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Marsha Mercer - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - Of the three leading presidential candidates, Obama most senses the public's appetite for a concerted national effort to help Americans believe they can write their own destiny. "Investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper," he said.

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The Amazing Shrinking Room : Childrens' use of Symbols

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

ScienceBlogs.com - By Steve Higgins - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - If you have kids you might have seen them make some very funny errors early in their lives. They do things like try to sit on miniature chairs, try to climb into small houses, or drive toy cars. Why in the world do children make these scale errors?! Can't they see that the small versions only represent the real larger versions? Research by Judy DeLoache and colleagues has given us some great insights into this problem as well as one of the most entertaining methods for a psychology study ever.

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This Essay Will Help Your Kid Get Ahead

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 15:59:26 -0700

Time - By Michelle Cottle - Aug. 27 (Opinion) - Aqua, pink, lilac, yellow -- the cheery-hued "program curriculum" updates arrive every month, shoved into my 2-year-old son's day-care cubby by his gymnastics teacher. But far from simply imparting fun facts about how my toddler spends his exercise time, the summaries detail the invaluable physical, social and cognitive development occurring each time he attacks the mini-trampoline like an overcaffeinated kangaroo. Among the class "goals": to "build confidence while having fun in a safe and positive environment by practicing and applying the use of listening skills, imaginations and following directions." Which prompts me to greet each new missive with the thought, How many parents are impressed by this mumbo jumbo?

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