Parenting

This is a fascinating description of the movement to encourage children to spend more time outside.

Leave No Child Inside | by Richard Louv | Orion Magazine March-April 2007

Similarly, the back page of an October issue of San Francisco magazine displays a vivid photograph of a small boy, eyes wide with excitement and joy, leaping and running on a great expanse of California beach, storm clouds and towering waves behind him. A short article explains that the boy was hyperactive, he had been kicked out of his school, and his parents had not known what to do with him—but they had observed how nature engaged and soothed him. So for years they took their son to beaches, forests, dunes, and rivers to let nature do its work.

The photograph was taken in 1907. The boy was Ansel Adams.

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine

This is, for me, a stunning article.  I have a hunch it will take me a while to really process it.  See, the basic point of the article--supported in very powerful and conclusive fashion by repeated studies--is that it is worse, even destructive, to praise a child for his/her intelligence.  Those who are praised for their effort learn to respond to failure by trying harder.  Those who are praised for their intelligence are praised for something apparently beyond their control; I'm thinking it's like praising someone for the weather today.  So when a child runs into failure, they believe they have no recourse.  If all they have is their intelligence, and that's failed them, what can they do about it?  Nothing, they think.