Category Archives: neurodevelopment

the stress of abundance

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Kia ora te whānau.  What’s up?

This time of the year is achingly beautiful … clear, calm blue skies and leaves just beginning to colour.  But holy ravioli I feel the pressure to make good use of the masses of fruit and produce.  Corn, beets, peaches, apples, beans, tomatoes, pears, zucchini (aka courgettes).  All that.  I’m cooking and gifting and breathing deep.

The gorgeousness is tinged with the awareness that winter is gearing up, which makes these indoor jobs more difficult.  Office – as much as I love you, I just long to be pottering outside with the sun on my back!  Weeding, watering, hanging washing.  Whatever.

Soon enough, self.  Soon enough.

Meanwhile, let me throw some links your way.  See what speaks to you, where your head’s at.  Mine has been expanding – creaking and groaning as I ask it to perform new and different tasks.  After years perfecting speedy task-switching (tending to the interruptions of childhood and honing skills of responding to everchanging needs) I’ve been attempting to sit quietly and think deeply.  IT IS HAAAAAAARD.

So what a treat to end this posting moment with a flurry of quick thoughts (this is a comfy place!)

First up – I don’t think I’ve shared this yet.  It is excellent viewing, well worth your time.  It’s another webinar from the fine folk at the Children’s Screen Time Action Network, this one calling attention to the way that the burden of tech overuse seems to sit disproportionately on the shoulders of families at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.  OUCH.

Now an article from the Washington Post urging us to stop spreading Math Anxiety.  Speak your love numbers and all the dances they perform!

This is interesting, from MIT.  It’s an indepth look at language development and the researchers use brain scans to draw attention to the ways that interactional back-and-forth is the true gold, in terms of early development and trajectory setting, it’s not just the number of words a kid hears.  We’ve spent years admiring that important research re: word count, and this adds nicely to it.  Cool.

A little family of alarming tech things, now.  First, a piece from Richard Freed about the tech industry’s psychological war on kids, next an expansion on one of the ideas therein, about the science of persuasion in app design, and finally an article from Stuff to put it all in a real-life, actual-human context (thanks Stats Geek).

And I end with a massive gift – the coolest and most inspiring thing I’ve read in a while, about a longitudinal adult health study at Harvard.  “Good genes are nice, but joy is better”.  Oh, hell yes!!  x x x

joy. ease.

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Kia Ora geeks.

Those are my words du semain … the concepts I’m looking for in decisions great and small.  How do I increase joy?  And can I find ease in this?  Amazing what it does to a day.

I will increase joy if I can share some links with y’all before cooking a nutritious dinner for my peeps.  So here they come …

First, from the Atlantic, an article about the complex lives of babies.  Blank slates they are not!  Next, from Slate, a review of a book which encourages parents to consider a more German method of parenting (ie, let them roam!).  I appreciate that the review acknowledges the conundrum for folk who consider a parenting method which sits well outside of their own cultural norms.  Ouchie.

Here is a 20 minute interview from RNZ National’s Jessie Mulligan, about the science of perfect timing.  INTERESTING.  And HOORAY for the rise of the ol’ fashioned board game!  I’m in!

This is cool, from Harvard Medical School.  “Nature, meet nurture!”.

And an excellent perspective from the NY Times about teens and sexuality and pressure and sexism and the need to talk to both boys and girls, instead of just holding the girls responsible.  It’d be easier for girls to resist sending nude pictures if boys didn’t ask in the first place!  Right on!

new year, new links

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Image result for felt nz bubbles

Highlight of the summer thus far: giant bubbles.  (thanks, Bubbleon)

Sisters!  Brothers!  Geeks of all breadths and hues … welcome.

This geek has been attempting something akin to a holiday … a staycation, in the modern vernacular.  I’d like to pretend it’s been all drinks-with-umbrellas and joyful laughter, but the truth is much crunchier than that.  I’d love to be a fly on the wall of other homes, to see what happens when nobody’s watching.  Are other mothers as grouchy as I?  Do other husbands retreat to their devices as quickly as mine?  Are other 5 year olds as swift to dissolve into rage as my daughter is?  And what of the other teens?  Are their eyerolls as accomplished?

I do believe that it’s too easy for us to imagine the best of others and the worst of ourselves, when the more useful thing would be to offer the same compassion to ourselves (and our spouses, our children, heck … even our slow-to-mature potato plants!) that we routinely offer to others.

You know what helps me?  Yoga.  January means 30 days of yoga with Adriene.  I’ve done 3 of these challenges before, and they are DIVINE.  This year is no exception.  Check ‘er out here. LOVE YOU, ADRIENE kiss kiss x x x   I’m up to day 12 and finding such joy.

Anyway, alongside my attempts at holidaying, the year thus far has been a time to work on getting ducks in a row for the new year.  I have study in my future, research to do, issues that I’d like to sit and stare at.  I need to think deeply for weeks at a time.  The trickiness emerges when us mamas have hopes for our lives beyond parenting (be it work, advocacy, study, training of one kind or another) and then parenting rises up – daily, repeatedly, at least a half dozen times already during this itty bitty post.

The constancy of interruption in my life is one of the consistencies thereof.  Irony!  Hi!  How’s it going?

And listen: the fight for our own attention is one of the reasons I continue to oxygenate the battle against the dominance of the screens, especially with regards to our kids.  Please: behold this webinar “Screen Time & Family Relationships“, brought to you by the Children’s Screen Time Action Network, and starring Dr. Richard Freed.   I watched it live (ok, I put some laundry away as well …I’m still working to break the multitasking habit, oK?) but watch it NOW!  And join the Network, it’s free.

Other links, then I’m off down the river with my peeps.

The same beautiful peeps who challenge and berate and INTERRUPT me.  I will try to find something new in each of them, today.  Esther Perel  would insist!

This is from Zero to Three, and it’s some sobering data about how little most people report to know about early brain development.  Still got work to do, homies.  Speaking of work to do, this is one take on the early childhood education scene in NZ at the mo.  Factory Farms.  Sigh.

Here is a link from Mothering, describing Pope Francis and his healthy attitude to breastfeeding.  And this is a link to an article I wrote for OHbaby! a while back.   Did I tell yiz about the most recent issue and the work I did in there?  Might have to share that laters.  That is a special magazine, y’know.  The calibre of editors is second to none!

As we put the final shovels of earth onto the grave of 2017, I must acknowledge the beauty of this writing by Emily Writes for the Spinoff (so good) on the subject of parenting at Christmas time.  I tried to create a similar type of comradery the previous Christmas, just with different words y’know.  And as January chugs along, I once again wish to raise a toast to the kin keepers, because we are sorting school uniforms, assessing the state of the 1B4’s (how many can be reused?  How many must be bought?) and sniffing lunchboxes.  Repairing zips on backpacks, stocking up on socks.  Unseen.  Undervalued.

Is it any wonder we can get a bit worn down and cynical, hmmm?

If you ain’t feeling the new year, check out these 5 ways to get motivated.  If you can muster the enthusiasm to click the link, that is.

deep breaths and crossed eyes

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oh babyat last … I’ve made it out into my glorious office and photographed the OHbaby! mag which houses my article about Technoference.  Oh, friends and gentlegeeks, if money (and courage!) were limitless I’d rush off to Rome for the World Infant Mental Health Congress in May next year.  Just to hear Jenny Radesky and her “Digital Media in the Dyad” prez.  Swoon!

But alas … I’m neither rich enough NOR am I sufficiently brave.  Travel often feels pretty daunting.  I managed a trip to Canada last year, communing with other disciples of the Gospel according to Bruce. 

But a foreign language, another whole continent away?  For a New Zealander to even think about Rome you’d have to pad it with ages either side, to justify the costs.  Both the monetary expense and the time.  Uproot the whole family for a good month.  Spend as much as it’s going to cost to fix the laundry/kitchen conundrum.

Too much, too soon for this geek.

Ah … a wise local recently reminded me: for everything there is a season, etc.

For today, I’ll stay home with an ailing teen and tend to some office time.

First … may I share some links?

I’ll start with some light reading for the nerdily inclined … a paper published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.  It’s by Jenny Radesky and others, and then an awesome longread article by the Guardian about smartphone addiction … the dude who invented the “Like” button and his peers all send their kids to schools without screens.

Mark my bloody words:  To learn to think creatively enough to be able to build such immensely complex and innovative things as iPads and apps and pull-down refresh functions. … you gotta have a childhood full of relational richness and hands-on play.  Nature and sunshine and eye contact.  Opportunities to lose yourself in discovery and enjoyment.

Meanwhile … what are we like?

What are we actually like?

Honestly, I could go on all day.

Between the angsting about technoference (think of the children!  And not just to sell stuff to them!)  and the all the coveting I’ve been doing (WANT and WANT) I’ve barely had time for much else.  School holidays are over, of course, which changes things a bit.

Speaking of schools, there’s been another conversation about teaching values/life skills (dare I say it!  Social and emotional intelligence stuff!) in the classroom.  I’m kinda all for it, but remind us all that amazing things like Roots of Empathy, and the Nurture Groups, and other cool things exist.  We can call on existing ideas with evidence based results.  We can do better than dodgy posture and other forms of self harm.   We can find ways to heal.

We bloody well ought to.  Digital focus, my eye.

Life, eh!   What, ho!  What a ride.

 

quick … while the room is empty

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you know, one of the more challenging bits of being outspoken about the dangers of tech overuse … my kids have zero tolerance for a hypocritical mother.  (Yummy blog post HERE from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood about the Camp Grounded experience).  So school hols are a difficult time to get to my computer and do even the bare minimum.

But OH!  The links I have to share!

Here come a flurry thereof: First, from the Washington Post, this is AMAZING on so many levels!  This is your brain on Art … enjoy.  Next, further evidence, it seems, of our profound interrelatedness.  This is a snippet about some research done at Penn State, demonstrating how a mother’s relational wellbeing with her partner may have implications for her baby’s state.

Speaking of research: this is PROFOUND … it’s from MIT.  Behold the poetry of the academic abstract!  Wade through for useful insights.  Shared meals, touch.  Yup.

OH MY GODDESS I just loved this, from Mothering.com, about Mother Culture.  Sign me up.  I reckon Podcasts go a long way toward filling my head with juicy content.

Here is a small local piece of news (I think it’s from Rhode Island?) where students are requesting screen-free time in classrooms.   Poor buggers.  And it’s so modest, what they’re asking for.  Meanwhile check this out … an organisation called Protect Young Eyes, who are all about digital safety for kids.  As am I.

For the Halloween inclined, this is a list of costumes for girls … non-slutty costumes, non-princess-dependent costumes, thanks to the awesome “Mighty Girl” website.  In a totally different direction, here is a sheet for teachers … what you oughta know about adoption.  

This is a link to an odd and cool take on the relationship between sleep and brains (oooh!  Jellyfish!) and another conversation about brains and other creatures … what the heck, pusscats, poop, and brain parasites.  YOWZER.    Finally, and this is from Mothering as well, an article about what Self Care looks like when Mama is depressed.  Thank you.

Anyway, I have to share a pic of the most recent OhBaby, which has an article I wrote about Technoference … but the rain is relentless and my office (in a separate building, albeit on the same property!) seems a long way away.  So bear with, K?

letters to editor

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letter editor tallKia Ora friendly geeks,

This picture is one I just snapped from the Letters to the Editor page of the latest Tots to Teens magazine.  I am delighted to report that the article those readers found useful was one that I created.  You can read it here.  It’s a phenomenon I thought others would recognise, and LO!  IT is SO!

We are more alike than we know.  The ways we are the same are so many more than the ways we differ.  Important to consider this week, as we slide toward election day in NZ.  It is no secret that I am a left-leaning, progressive liberal and this is the way I will vote.  No matter your politics, I just hope everyone who can vote, does.  Especially the women!

A couple of links now … this is more of the stuff I’ve been sharing plenty of, it’s about the benefits of hand writing notes.  Laptops away!

And PRAISE BE for this wisdom … I love you Golden Bay!!!  It is wise for schools to switch off WiFi at lunchtime.  People need to practice being the ADULTS to their teens.  Wiser, and Kind.  Because without intervention, young people may wind up like THIS!  Thanks, Harvard Business Review, for highlighting the impending epidemic that is the inability relate to other humans!  JEEZ, LOUISE!!   Anyone else worried?? 

This is an important article about a worrying trend in early childhood education – the size of these centres is downright alarming and not conducive to quality!!  Interesting to juxtapose that article with this one, about school readiness.  Or not-readiness, as the case may be.

This is an awesome article from the Girl Scouts of America, about one of the ways that girlhood is sexualised prematurely and unnecessarily.  Catcalling. Ugh.  I remember that happening to me when I was ridiculously young, and the shame I felt … even though I’d done nothing wrong … UGH!  I’d have been sub-11.  UGH!!!

a few links on a Thursday

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Kia Ora te whānau

What a week!  Had a beautiful workshop with teachers on Tuesday arvo, I’ll be back to work with the parents of the self-same preschool on Tuesday night.  Groovester.  Meanwhile, tomorrow I’m teaching a coupla workshops (play as springboard to classroom curriculum, yes, even in primary school!) and delivering a keynote (technoference-ish stuff).  Big!  Busy!

Irony not lost – perfect late-winter weather out there, and what am I doing?  Tapping away indoors, encouraging less engagement with screens by … what, what! … engaging with my screen.

Anyway, let’s share a few links, shall we?  First, from the Atlantic, an excellent piece about the free preschools of Boston.  Play, you say?  Well supported & educated teachers?  Radical!  (not)  Now, from the Guardian, enjoy this write up about the rise of low-tech schools in high-tech regions.

It’s been a wee while since I shared the excellent organisation known as TRUCE (teachers resisting unhealthy children’s entertainment) … their ideas are excellent and their toy guides are worth downloading/sharing.  Speaking of unhealthy entertainment, this is a link to a v good episode of the EXCELLENT ‘Hidden Brain’ podcast, from NPR.  This episode deals with the tomfoolery that exists within social media.  

Essential reading, now … This is an article from Psychology Today that just made my heart bounce with recognition. YES!  We know what works, evolutionarily.  We deviate at our peril!

All this stuff is worth paying attention to … apparently rates of empathy are on the decline, and as Dr Bruce Perry would say, empathy is both endangered and ESSENTIAL.

Finally, Life is Fine xxx

 

many things, much stuff

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Kia Ora dear friends and lovely geeks

I’m just gonna dive into some link sharing, sans preamble.  Tons, today:

First, a link to a report about some research that reminds us to hold our babies, A LOT.  There is no such thing as too much!  (*unless your arms are sore, in which case you gotta get a sling).  And THIS is from the London School of Economics, about the role of money in children’s lives (spoiler that is not really a spoiler: inequality is not our friend).

Here is an interesting wee article from Mothering mag, it’s about breastfeeding practices all over the world.  Go, Mongolia, go!  And here is the Washington Post, reporting on research about fathers’ differing habits with their girl- or boy-babies.  Meanwhile, this is a li’l something from Harvard Medical School about the evolution of our brains.

So this weird thing happens now and then where the people raising a ruckus about the stuff I care about are those who seemingly sit on the opposite (i.e. Right!) of the political spectrum to me and my lefty ways.  It is true here, where a group of concerned New Zealanders are questioning the amount of screen time in schools.  Yeah, I’m worried too! On a similar subject: check out THIS from Scientific American, about the ways that students are better off WITHOUT a laptop in the classroom.   And one for good luck, research from Penn State about how texting is just too tempting for students.

Finally, cos I gotta sort domestic stuff before school is over and my kids need their mama, this is a link to a page from the excellent Conversation about parental involvement in education.  Irony!  Hello!  You’re never far away, are you?

living in all kinds of worlds

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IMG_4071Yesterday there was lots of media chat from our Ministry of Education about the digital focus of this next chapter of NZ education.  That’s their priority.

Because we live in a digital world.

Cool.

But as a mate reminded me, let’s just ensure we don’t lose sight of our natural focus.  Because we also live in the natural world.

And our relational focus.  Because we also live in a relational world.

An emotional world.

A sensory world.

And without a shadow of a lie, all kinds of sciences collide on the notion that there is a unifying reason we have evolved the brains and skills we have – the ones capable of the incredible and complex things our brains can do … like building iPads, for flip’s sake!

(I mean, I can barely understand the TELEPHONE , let alone bluetooth, wifi, or how to create an app.  Full credit to the mighty cortexes and superb fine motor skills!  Hooray for the opposable thumb!)

Friends, the reason we can do all that stuff is because we are social mammals.  Evolutionarily, we are not the strongest or the fastest.  But we win because we know how to function in groups.  We developed language.  Accumulated knowledge over generations.

We are top of the food chain because we have nurtured this brain into being.   And now we have this brain that has developed into something capable of witnessing itself for the first time in history (thanks to extraordinary brain imaging technologies).  I mean, at random, let me share an example of the profound stuff we are figuring out.  This is just one of a quadrillion things published, it just happened to hit my inbox this week.  From Harvard, about the way that pondering hardwired!  YUM!

I love what Dr Tara Brach says when she reminds us that with our understanding of neuroplacticity “We can train our ways of paying attention”.  She encourages excitement in living now: “at this juncture of our evolutionary history … we can actually evolve our own brains.  We can choose to pay attention in ways that open up our heart and mind”.

Right on!

So let’s try not to lose sight of all that.  The digital world is cool, but it’s our social brains that brought us here.  Undermine the health of them and … YIKES.  It’s like icing a beautiful cake but then obsessing so much about the icing that the cake itself might be raw.  Or mouldy.  Or something.

Here is a special treat … my dear friend Nathan courageously advocating for children on ‘Nine to Noon’ on RNZ. The question: Does NZ education policy align with recognised research?  (the answer … um … nope).  Love it.  Those parenting sections on a Thursday morn are often really good.  I miss them all the time but LOOK!  Oh, wondrous internet!  We can find them all here.

What a time to be alive!  Hot running water, and now all this!

Anyway, big thanks to the hardworking and glorious teachers of young folk in North Canterbury who came to the meeting yesterday.  Thanks to Swannanoa for hosting.  Amazing.  Can’t wait till next time.  But we failed to set a venue … d’oh.

If I may, I just need to clear a few tabs.

A few things from Scientific American, this one is why dads downplay their feelings, and it led me to the wonderland of journalistic adventure that is The Conversation, from Australia.  

This is a wicked downloadable pamphlet from the Campaign for a Commercial FreeChildhood, it’s a fact sheet about screen time and you need it.   You will be able to get one from the excellent people at the Amberley Medical Centre when we have our “Technoference” prez on the 2nd of August.  That’s a wednesday.

Nerd alert (Me, too) this is the Journal of the Psychology of Popular Media Culture, and with much love to soon-to-return-home Lauren for alerting me to Sherry Turkle, here is an amazing Ted Talk.

Arohanui,

Stay warm, kiwis.  And stay cool, if you’re lucky enough to be somewhere warm.

x x x

April? May!

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Kia Ora friends

Sometimes family circumstances chew us up and spit us out.  As I pull rumpled bits of life back together, straighten them out like tin foil, I am grateful when they fit back together but open to the notion of rearranging the whole thing, altogether.

Anyway: what I’m saying is, April slid through my fingers like water.  Much love and big ups to the warm and loving group of early childhood teachers I workshopped with in late April.

A few links that have been on my mind and in my heart:

This is about how we are manipulated as we move around the internet.  It’s written by someone who was a Design Ethicist for Google, and is a magician.  Brilliant.  Important.  Makes me wonder why our children are being allowed internet technologies at school without being given information to allow them to critically think about the ways they’re being toyed with.

Because oh-ho-ho how they are being toyed with.  Did you see this?  About the leaked info demonstrating how cynical and uncaring Facebook are in the way they use information about their users, including (especially?!) vulnerable youth.

Meanwhile: something positive and cool … next Tuesday this event is being held at the Champion Centre, thanks be to IMHAANZ!  Can’t wait to get all up in Prof Jean Clinton’s sphere of influence!

Other goodness: this from Taranaki where their Circle of Security programme is being expanded HURRAH! and in Minnesota there are doulas helping incarcerated mamas.

Gratitude.