Learning
24 articles
How to Assess a Daycare's Curriculum and Activities (US)
"Curriculum" sounds formal, but for kids under 5 it really just means: what does my child do all day? The honest test of a daycare program is whether...
How to Assess a Daycare's Curriculum and Activities (UK)
"Curriculum" sounds formal, but for kids under 5 it really just means: what does my child do all day? The honest test of a daycare program is whether...
How to Assess a Daycare's Curriculum and Activities (Global)
"Curriculum" sounds formal, but for kids under 5 it really just means: what does my child do all day? The honest test of a daycare program is whether...
Child Socialisation in Daycare: What to Expect and How It Develops (UK)
"They'll learn to play with other kids" is the most common reason parents give for choosing daycare. The truth is gentler and more interesting: 2-year...
Child Socialisation in Daycare: What to Expect and How It Develops (Global)
"They'll learn to play with other kids" is the most common reason parents give for choosing daycare. The truth is gentler and more interesting: 2-year...
The Role of the Caregiver in Managing Child Conflicts (US)
How a carer handles a fight over the red truck affects more than the next thirty seconds. The pattern they use shapes what children learn about handli...
The Role of the Caregiver in Managing Child Conflicts (UK)
How a carer handles a fight over the red truck affects more than the next thirty seconds. The pattern they use shapes what children learn about handli...
The Role of the Caregiver in Managing Child Conflicts (Global)
How a carer handles a fight over the red truck affects more than the next thirty seconds. The pattern they use shapes what children learn about handli...
How Sleep Affects Memory in Children
The relationship between sleep and memory is one of the best-established findings in cognitive neuroscience — and it extends to infants and toddlers i...
Why Sleep Matters for Brain Development in Young Children
Sleep is the part of the day where it looks like nothing is happening. In a young child's brain, that is exactly when the most consequential work is h...
Why Play Is the Primary Way Young Children Learn
The idea that play and learning are separate — that children play when they are not learning, and learn when they are not playing — is one of the most...
Why Repetition in Play Is Important for Development
A 2-year-old who has filled and emptied the same bowl 47 times in 20 minutes is not bored or unimaginative — they are doing exactly the cognitive work...
How to Create Educational Toys at Home
The word "educational" is one of the most abused in the toy industry. Many products marketed as educational provide minimal developmental value beyond...
Play and Learning in the Early Years: The Complete Parent's Guide
Adults treat play as the soft category — the thing you do after the real work. For young children it is the real work. The fastest brain growth happen...
How to Talk About Mistakes Without Shame
The clearest body of work on this distinction is June Tangney and Ronda Dearing's research at George Mason. They tracked children into adolescence and...
Why Pretend Play Is Doing More Than It Looks Like
Your toddler hands you a plastic banana and tells you it's a phone. A 3-year-old narrates an elaborate scene where the stuffed bear is sick and needs...
The Science of Positive Discipline
"Positive discipline" sounds like a marketing phrase, but it rests on roughly forty years of developmental neuroscience. The short version: young chil...
Natural Consequences vs. Punishment: What the Difference Actually Is
There's a meaningful difference between "this happened because of what you did" and "this is happening because I'm cross with you." Children pick up o...
How to Let Children Fail Safely
Every parent dreads seeing their child fail. Yet failure is one of the most powerful teachers your child will ever have. The key is understanding the...
How Confidence in Parenting Decisions Is Formed
New parents often ask themselves, "How will I know if I'm doing this right?" The answer is that confidence isn't something that magically appears. It'...
Books and Research on Parenting: Key Concepts
A handful of underlying ideas show up in nearly every parenting book worth reading. Authors have rebranded them, repackaged them, and added their own...
How Daycare Staff Support Toilet Training
Most American children master daytime toileting somewhere between 24 and 36 months, with the AAP noting that pushing children before signs of readines...
Co-Viewing Media With Young Children: Making Screen Time Worth Something
Most under-fives spend some time in front of a screen. The interesting question isn't whether they watch — that ship has often sailed by the time they...
Homework Battles: Why They Happen and How to Defuse Them
The homework battle is recognisable in millions of households at 4pm: a tired child, a tired parent, a worksheet, and within ten minutes both people a...