One in five teenagers has met someone face-to-face whom they first encountered on the internet, according to research into the risks taken by young people online.

The study found that teenagers also freely hand out personal information to strangers. Details divulged include full name (30 per cent), address (12 per cent), mobile number (20 per cent) and where they go to school (46 per cent), while 9 per cent had posted family photos…

The study found that parents are often ignorant about what their children are up to, with only a fraction aware that they are befriending strangers.

Although nine out of ten parents questioned said that they monitored their children’s online activities, more than half the teenagers questioned admitted to going online without their parents’ knowledge, usually late at night.

John Carr, the Government’s adviser on online safety for children, said that girls were particularly at risk. “The most vulnerable group are girls between the ages of 12 and 15 who are going through puberty and becoming interested in boys and relationships,” he said. “You only need to listen to the news to see how common it is for girls to be lured into meetings.” …

Tom Ilube, chief executive of Garlik, urged parents to hammer home lessons on internet safety.

“Our research is a shocking wake-up call to all parents in the UK to sit down with their children and talk about how to keep safe online,” he said…

Source:TIMES ONLINE
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article1862533.ece

Most parents treat their children unequally - but don’t admit it to themselves, let alone their kids, according to researchers from two U.S. universities who tracked 74 families.

When kids perceive unequal treatment and don’t understand it, families run into trouble, says researcher Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied family studies at the University of Illinois who worked with two other researchers from the University of Missouri.

“Kids aren’t in a position to appreciate why parents treat their kids differently,” Prof. Kramer says.

“They don’t have all the information or they don’t have an adult perspective.”

But if children recognize the different behaviour as being warranted, there’s no negative effect on family relationships. Siblings who have a shared understanding of why parents treat them differently actually get along better, Prof. Kramer says…

One reason they may be disinclined to talk to their kids about the issue is the enduring ethos of equality. Parents may feel guilty about not treating kids equally. But Prof. Kramer says equality is a parenting goal best discarded…

Source: Globe and Mail
http://tinyurl.com/377kwx

A child who is beginning to walk will show a decreased interest in play. When a child begins to walk, the way in which he experiences his environment changes. This change may be manifested in the way he plays. Study results revealed a tendency to a decrease in the child’s level of persistence, concentration and attentiveness at the onset of walking in comparison to the pre-walking stage…

Your baby, who used to play so nicely, suddenly seems less attentive and appears to have difficulty concentrating. There could be a good reason for this—it could be that he is beginning to walk. New research at the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa found that a baby’s learning to walk affects his play skills. “Parents need to know that they should modify their demands from their child during certain periods of change and development in order to encourage their child and enhance his feelings of mastery and competence,” said Dr. Eleanor Schneider who conducted the research under the direction of Prof. Anat Scher…

Results revealed a tendency to a decrease in the child’s level of persistence, concentration and attentiveness at the onset of walking in comparison to the pre-walking stage. This “regression” in play behavior was short-term since the child’s persistence and attentiveness tended to increase and improve after mastering the initial stages of independent walking. The researcher also witnessed a regression, albeit not decisive, in task-directed behaviors during this period…

Source: Newswise
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/530349/

Healthy babies can learn any language, but new research suggests that genes might play a part in learning tonal languages like Chinese.

Dan Dediu and Robert Ladd from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland found a genetic difference between people who speak tonal languages – such as Chinese and most languages of sub-Saharan Africa – and those who speak non-tonal languages like English…

The language each person speaks has traditionally been considered an entirely cultural trait, determined no more by genes than religious beliefs or musical preferences. As evidence, scientists point to the fact that regardless of ancestry, any normal baby learns the languages it hears during its early years…

In tonal languages, subtle changes in pitch can radically alter the meaning of a word. So a non-native Chinese speaker enquiring after the health of someone’s mother might easily enquire about the wellbeing of their horse instead.

In non-tonal languages this is not the case, although tone is still used to express emotion, convey sarcasm or indicate a question…

The authors found that there is generally no link between genes and linguistic features, but a strong negative correlation emerged between speakers of tonal languages and recently evolved forms of ASPM and Microcephalin. That is, people with the older forms of these genes were more likely to speak tonal languages, even when biases for geography and history were removed…

Ladd believes that discovering a causal link between population genetics and language structure would be big news, but says he and Dediu haven’t found that link yet. “We’ve just demonstrated some very unlikely correlations that suggest there might be such a link.” …

Source: Cosmos Magazine
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1349

Nicholas Kristof, writing from China, expresses his admiration for Chinese education in a column in the New York Times.

Kristof says that we should “take a page from the Chinese book” to improve our own system of education. As he traveled, he visited elementary and middle schools and noted that even in peasant schools, children were learning math at levels matched only by the best American schools. But while his children’s school doesn’t start foreign language instruction until seventh grade, Chinese children start their English studies in first or third grade.

Why do Chinese students succeed in school, he asks? They are “hungry for education and advancement and work harder,” while American students spend more hours watching television than attending classes. At one school he visited, Chinese students show up for school at 6:30 am to get extra tutoring before classes begin an hour later. They have a lunch break from 11:30 to 2, then stay in school until 5. There is homework every night, every weekend, and every day during their summer vacation.

Then too, he says, the Chinese culture venerates education and educators. Teachers are respected more there than in the U.S.A.

And then there is a deep-seated belief that success in education depends on effort, not ability. Two American scholars, Harold Stevenson and James Stigler, wrote about this in their book Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing And What We Can Learn From Japanese And Chinese Educ about 15 years ago. American parents think that kids succeed in subjects like math because they have the ability (”my child just isn’t good at math,” or “math is Johnny’s best subject”), but Asian parents think that anyone can succeed if they work at it…

At bottom, we face the problem of our success. Too many American kids dream of growing up to be an entertainer or a sports star, neither of which is a realistic prospect…

The problem, which Kristof does not address, nor does Thomas Friedman in his best-selling book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, is that American youth are not hungry…

Source: Huffington Post
http://tinyurl.com/32dwa9

Experts claim how you treat your child in its early years can impact on the rest of their life

Psychotherapist Sue Gerhardt, author of controversial new book Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain, has found that a baby’s nervous system is shaped by early relationships.

Positive facial expressions, hugs, kisses and loving care can all improve your child’s ability to cope with life as an adult.

“It is possible to predict future problems as early as the age of six to 10 months, not from the baby’s temperament so much as the mother’s behaviour,” Sue said…

In our highly materialist driven world, new mothers find themselves going back to careers or jobs for money or adult stimulation, resulting in many babies being cared for by strangers in nurseries.

Experts like Sue and child guru and author Stephen Biddulph are now warning that these children are missing out on the constant love a one-to-one carer can give.

He said: “Probably the most stressful experience of all for a baby or toddler is to be separated from his or her mother. Early separation from the mother increases corticotrophin in the amygdala…

Stephen agrees and has spent the past five years examining studies of infants in long-term nursery care.

In his book, Raising Babies, he claims that during the first two years of life, brain development unfolds at its best with one-to-one care. This care could be from mother, father, a loving relative or, if necessary, a single, attentive paid carer…

Source: Daily Record
http://tinyurl.com/2nq3ey

Some experts contend that focusing on children’s abilities (”You’re smart” or “You’re a good athlete”) can undermine children by making them feel like failures when they don’t succeed. Some studies show that praising the effort is a better way to encourage children.

“It flies in the face of what most parents believe,” acknowledges Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stamford University and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Succes, who has researched praise. “They think that the greatest gift you can give your child is self-esteem in the form of praising their abilities and talents … I’m not arguing that self-esteem is not a good thing, I’m just saying that you don’t give it to children in this way.”

And it’s true that the research seems counter-intuitive. Who would think, for example, that telling kids they’re smart before a test might make them do worse? But experiments with 400 fifth-graders found that was the case. The experiment compared a group of children who were praised for being smart with a group who were praised for trying hard…

The children who were praised for trying hard took on more challenging tasks and ultimately did better on tests than the children praised for being smart.

In fact, 90 percent of the children who were praised for their effort improved their scores. When asked to report their scores, 40 percent of the children praised for being smart lied. The children praised for their efforts didn’t.

“We found that praising children for their effort or their strategy is really effective because not only is that something they have more control over but it teaches them about the steps that lead to success,” explains Dweck. “So the students who are praised for their effort wanted the challenge, they were resilient in the face of setbacks, they were honest about the difficulty.” …

Sources: The Times
http://tinyurl.com/2v2r6y

About 40 per cent of three-month-olds watch television or videos for an average of 45 minutes a day or more than five hours a week, says the first ever study of the viewing habits of children under age two.

The study, by pediatric researchers at the University of Washington, also found that by age two, 90 per cent of children are watching television for an average of more than 90 minutes a day…

Researchers said they were surprised not only by the number of hours young children are spending in front of the television but also by the primary reason: Most parents are using television as an educational tool, not for the more conventional explanation of babysitting. Despite nearly a decade of warnings by pediatricians to the contrary, parents believe that the content of programs aimed at babies is good for brain development.

“I wouldn’t be so upset about this if I thought parents were doing it because they needed a break to take a shower or make dinner,” said Dimitri Christakas, the University of Washington pediatrician who co-authored the study. “What I’m troubled by is the notion that parents think it’s good for their kids. That’s more likely to lead to excessive viewing rather than occasional viewing.” …

“We have succeeded in convincing people that the first years are critical to brain development,” said Meltzoff, who is co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

“The unfortunate consequence is that it has spun off to build a brainier baby enterprise, where people think they have to use technology to take advantage of this critical window.”

What parents identify as attention and learning scientists say is a primitive reflex known as the orienting response. “Yes, the baby is staring at the screen, but it’s wrong to think the child likes it,” said Christakas, the study’s co-author and the father of two young children.

“He or she has no choice in the matter. He’s hard-wired to pay attention to anything that is fast moving, brightly coloured or loud. It’s a survival response.”

A baby is born with 100 billion brain cells, but only 17 per cent are immediately operational.

“The rest of the wiring follows in the days, weeks, months and years to come,” said child psychologist David Walsh. What’s not hard-wired by genetics gets soft-wired by experience and exposure…

Source: Hamilton Spectator
http://tinyurl.com/2uw5r5

Despite countless studies, some experts claim, there remains no scientific proof that dyslexics have symptoms or problems that differ from those encountered by others with reading difficulties. In more than 30 years of working in this field, Professor Julian Elliott, an educational psychologist at Durham University, says that he has found no concrete evidence that the condition is clearly identifiable and therefore would not have the confidence to diagnose it. “As yet, nobody has been able to demonstrate scientifically that there is this subgroup of poor readers that should be termed dyslexic,” he says. “There are all sorts of reasons why people don’t read well but we can’t determine why that is. Dyslexia, as a term, is becoming meaningless.”

In Elliott’s view, the condition is a reading difficulty – no more, no less – and should be renamed as such. Currently, confusion even surrounds the criteria – or lack of it – for its diagnosis. No one seems to agree on what defines the condition; one recent analysis of research identified 28 definitions of dyslexia, each slightly different from the next…

For parents, in particular, a diagnosis that their child is dyslexic can be a relief, says Elliot. He believes the diagnosis serves an emotional, not a scientific, function. “There is huge stigma attached to low intelligence. After years of working with parents I have seen how they don’t want their child to be considered lazy, thick or stupid. If they get called this medically recognised term, dyslexic, then it is a signal to all that it’s not to do with intelligence. That is crucially powerful.” …

“There is a sense of justification when children are diagnosed,” adds Dr Michael Rice, a dyslexia and literacy expert at Cambridge University. “It gets them off the hook of great embarrassment and personal inadequacy.” …

Source: TIMES ONLINE
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article1847619.ece

John Mighton says building a child’s confidence is the most effective means of improving math skills, but this is something Canadian schools are failing to do, writes Roger Collier…

Many people today, including some educators, still believe that math class is tough — not just for girls, but for all children except the fortunate few born with a gift for numbers. John Mighton, a poet, Governor General’s Award-winning playwright and mathematician, doesn’t see it that way.

“I think kids, almost without exception, are born with the ability to do well in math,” says Mr. Mighton.

In his new book, The End of Ignorance: Multiplying Our Human Potential, Mr. Mighton, 49, claims that school children are segmented into a strict hierarchy too early in their education. This is especially true in math, which, Mr. Mighton says, separates children like no other subject. Children good at math, the ones at the top of the hierarchy, receive praise and attention. Children ranked at the bottom are written off.

Although acknowledging that some students will always be stronger than others, Mr. Mighton says all students can reach a level of math competency far above what schools expect of them now, because math is not, contrary to popular belief, the most difficult subject in which to excel. In fact, Mr. Mighton claims, it may very well be the easiest…

Source: Ottawa Citizen
http://tinyurl.com/3b6xrm