It is widely recognized that the best foundations for learning and success in school are established in early childhood…

“Kids at this age learn best through play and hands on activities, so we really encourage parents to create activities for children that are play based,” says Lozier.

For instance, she says setting the table can be made into a fun counting game.
“The more you talk to, sing with and listen to your kids the more learning takes place,” Lozier says. “Reading to them and with them and telling stories right from birth gives children a better chance at succeeding in school and in life.” …

“According to the latest research on brain development the most critical period of a child’s development is in the first six years of life. Amazingly 90 per cent of the brain’s growth occurs by age five. This is when a young child is developing emotional and social attachments, language and motor skills,” Lozier says.

“We know that when children receive the right care and nurturing in these first six years the results can be tremendous. They are likely to succeed in school and in life. As they grow into teens and adults they are far less likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs, have health problems or become involved in crime,” Lozier says.

Source: Williams Lake Tribune
http://www.wltribune.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=37&cat=59&id=816938&more=

China will not loosen its one-child policy, despite a top family planning official’s acknowledgment Tuesday that it was partly to blame for a worsening problem of too many boy babies and not enough girls in the world’s most populous nation…

Dropping restrictions on childbearing now would risk a population surge as a baby boomer generation born in the early 1980s becomes ready to start families, Zhang said. Another factor in the government’s decision is that many migrant workers living in cities have been evading restrictions and having two or more children, he said…

Susan Greenhalgh, professor of anthropology at the University of California Irvine, said her research shows Chinese “couples’ childbearing preferences have changed” since imposition of the one-child policy, and many now say they would only choose to have one child.
The policy and easy availability of sonogram technology to determine fetal gender have prompted many families to abort girls, and other couples give up girls for adoption abroad so they can try for a son…

Greenhalgh said that though sex selection was a problem in the past, “people’s gender preferences are shifting where girls are at least as desirable as sons.”

City-dwellers, most of whom will receive pensions upon retirement, depend less on their children for financial support, Greenhalgh said, so they are happy to have girls, whom they often consider better providers of emotional care late in life.

Source: Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/01/23/ap3354518.html

Today, the children on the leading edge of “the ADD generation” have reached the cusp of adulthood. And as they take on jobs or college, care for themselves away from home, enter into adult relationships and become parents, these newly minted grown-ups are carrying out a massive natural experiment…

Mostly, it was parents who dictated whether and when they would start medications to sharpen their focus. But the decision to stay on or go off these drugs is one that these teens and young adults have made for themselves — with little research to guide them…

Looking back, he acknowledges that Ritalin did help him academically. But he also felt that it blunted his natural sociability, made it “hard to feel passionate about anything.” And the same intensity of focus that helped him in class, he believes, impaired his instincts on the soccer field — a troublesome side effect for a rising soccer star.
He quit Ritalin as a freshman in high school. Off the drug, he says: “I felt more like a happier person. I just felt more like myself,” voicing an observation heard again and again among young adults who abandoned their ADD medication…

By high school, she adds, the most glaring of ADD symptoms — the inability to sit still — has typically eased. And, just like their peers without ADD, these young patients are driven to question the judgment of the people that have been in charge of their lives.
Those challenges are naturally focused on the parents, teachers, physicians and therapists who played roles in labeling them different and putting them on medication that is a daily reminder of that judgment.

Source: statesman.com
http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/health/01/22/22addkids.html

How does Caltech rise from a vocation school to a world leading university within one hundred years’ history? With the question in mind, Xing Zong, of Duke University Chinese Students and Scholar Association (DCSSA), recently took an exclusive interview with Caltech President Chameau…

The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States. Caltech maintains a strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering. Caltech also operates and manages the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), an autonomous-space-flight complex that oversees the design and operation of most of NASA’s space-probes. Caltech is a small school, with only about 2100 students, but is ranked in the top 10 universities worldwide by metrics such as citation index, Nobel Prizes, and general university rankings.

Source: People’s Daily Online
http://english.people.com.cn/200701/20/eng20070120_343172.html

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s advisory panel on education reform said Friday that increasing classroom hours by 10 percent would help stop the decline in student academic performance and employing strict discipline would help curb bullying and classroom chaos…

Increasing the number of class hours by 10 percent — an increase of one or two hours a week at elementary schools — will help pupils get basic academic skills, Yamatani said.
“This does not mean that the public education goes back to rote learning,” she said.
The government has had a “yutori” — or relaxed — education policy since the mid-1970s, when it began to very slowly decrease the number of hours students spent in the classroom.

As part of this policy, in 2002, the government cut textbook content by 30 percent and reduced the school week to five days.

The public has criticized these reductions, saying it has led to a deterioration in student performance.

Source: Japan Times
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070120a1.html

Neuroscientists seeking clues to autism in studies of brain development have surmised the cause of and perhaps cure for the disorder may lie at a nature-nurture nexus.

While most mainstream researchers implicate genetics in the onset and progression of the neurodevelopmental condition in the vast majority of cases, they also acknowledge the influence of external factors, some of which may come into play even before the child is born.

In that early phase, before it gels into the master of orderliness, the brain is an unruly mesh of some 1 trillion nerve cells.

Stimulated by the environment, and our actions in it, these form an estimated 1 quadrillion connections, called synapses, where nerve impulses zip from one nerve cell, or neuron, to another.

These specialized points of cellular contact that receive, store and process neural information are in a constant state of flux.

Even after they are made, synapses continuously undergo change, becoming stronger, weaker or even disappearing altogether. They are coaxed and cajoled, crimped and curtailed, depending on the activity at hand.

Experience shapes the brain throughout life. How that happens — how the connections mold and fold in response to surrounding stimuli — is one of the great unsolved mysteries of neurobiology, researchers said…

The results suggest the circuits may be highly malleable and mold to the sensory world of the newborn. That means everything the baby experiences — be it disease or distress — can have a profound impact on the way his brain develops, the researchers concluded.

Source: United Press International
http://www.upi.com/ConsumerHealthDaily/view.php?StoryID=20070117-045949-6050r

Growing up in Austria, Arnold Schwarzenegger said he “got smacked about everything.” But when it comes to disciplining his four children, Schwarzenegger said he and his wife “never” resort to spanking.

As governor, Schwarzenegger on Thursday expressed an open mind to a controversial proposal that would ban parents from spanking a child under the age of 3.

He hinted that he has concerns about how the bill could be enforced - “Is it that when you see someone spank a kid, you go and say, `Can I see the birth certificate of the kid?’” But he didn’t smack down the idea either, saying he understands the desire to “get rid of the physical, the brutal behavior that some parents have.” …

The governor was exposed to different child-rearing strategies by the family of his wife, Maria Shriver, which relied on “no physicality at all, just communication.” Now, when the four Schwarzenegger kids misbehave, they are talked to or barred from social outings.
As for spanking them, he said, “Never. None of our kids ever was touched. Absolutely not.”

Source: The Contra Costa Times
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/16493604.htm

Some major changes have occurred in Chinese young people’s ideas about dating and marriage over the past several years, according to a report released by the China Youth and Children Research Center.

Statistics indicate that adolescence comes earlier and so does sexual maturity, both psychologically and physiologically. As a result, today’s youth experience their first love earlier…

The fact that a female university student spent a year writing a sex education book that is to be published is a wake-up call that good sex education books are urgently needed to meet the needs that changes in early adolescence have brought about…

More care and attention from both schools and parents are necessary for youngsters to successfully get through puberty and develop healthy attitude towards sex and love.

Source: CHINA VIEW / XINHUA
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/18/content_5621449.htm

Why Learning A New Language May Make You Forget Your Old One

In a study appearing in the January, 2007 issue of Psychological Science, Levy and his colleague Dr. Michael Anderson discovered that people do not forget their native language simply because of less use, but that such forgetfulness reflects active inhibition of native language words that distract us while we are speaking the new language. Therefore, this forgetfulness may actually be an adaptive strategy to better learn a second language…

Interestingly, the study also showed that the more fluent bilingual students were far less prone to experience these inhibitory effects. These findings suggest that native language inhibition plays a crucial role during the initial stages of second language learning…

Source: ScienceDaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118094015.htm

The California Legislature is about to weigh in on a question that stirs impassioned debate among moms and dads: Should parents spank their children?

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, a Mountain View Democrat, wants to outlaw spanking children up to 3 years old. If she succeeds, California would become the first state in the nation to explicitly ban parents from smacking their kids…

“I think it’s pretty hard to argue you need to beat a child 3 years old or younger,” Lieber said. “Is it OK to whip a 1-year-old or a 6-month-old or a newborn?” …

Lieber conceived the idea while chatting with a family friend and legal expert in children’s issues worldwide. The friend, Thomas Nazario, said that while banning spanking might seem like a radical idea for the United States, more than 10 European countries already do so. Sweden was the first, in 1979.

“Why do we allow parents to hit a little child and not someone their own size?” said Nazario, a professor at the University of San Francisco Law School. “Everyone in the state is protected from physical violence, so where do you draw the line? To take a child and spank his little butt until he starts crying, some people would define that as physical violence.” …

Source: Charlotte Observer
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/nation/16484476.htm