From today’s NYDN:Tots toted to classes
Head smart for rug rats
BY D—- R—
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
You’re never too old to learn – but can you be too young?A Bayside, Queens, social worker is offering classes for babies not even a year old, promising they’ll make the tots smarter and better ready for school.
“We take ’em as little as 2 months,” said Thinkertots founder Lori Barrett. “There’s so much out there in terms of information – do this, do that – it’s kind of overwhelming what to do to make the kids smarter.” …
“If you’re going to spend money on your children’s education, everything you spend after 5 is not going to go as far,” Barrett said. “Anything you can do with a baby before they’re 3, because their brain is still developing, is going to have a huge impact.”
That’s a well written article.
How can this article pass without your commentary Big D? Interesting stuff.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/us/15census.html
October 15, 2006
To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered
By SAM ROBERTS
Married couples, whose numbers have been declining for decades as a proportion of American households, have finally slipped into a minority, according to an analysis of new census figures by The New York Times.
The American Community Survey, released this month by the Census Bureau, found that 49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples — with and without children — just shy of a majority and down from more than 52 percent five years earlier.
The numbers by no means suggests marriage is dead or necessarily that a tipping point has been reached. The total number of married couples is higher than ever, and most Americans eventually marry. But marriage has been facing more competition. A growing number of adults are spending more of their lives single or living unmarried with partners, and the potential social and economic implications are profound.
“It just changes the social weight of marriage in the economy, in the work force, in sales of homes and rentals, and who manufacturers advertise to,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “It certainly challenges the way we set up our work policies.”
While the number of single young adults and elderly widows are both growing, Professor Coontz said, “we have an anachronistic view as to what extent you can use marriage to organize the distribution and redistribution of benefits.”
Couples decide to live together for many reasons, but real estate can be as compelling as romance.
Re: the baby article … oh my. Two of my friends with babies are already doing flashcards with their kids. It kind of makes me shudder, actually. I will not be passing this article on.
Can I borrow those flashcards to flash at my tummy? I might get pregnant some day and it’s never too early. In fact, can I flash them at my boyfriend’s penis?
Only if you have this thing for Mensa-quality, bilingual penises ….. 🙂
Totally crazy!….creating kids with Turrette’s and ADHD, if you ask me! And I’m a pediatrician
you should learn to spell Tourette’s then, for all the money you get paid…no offense!
oops, that came out a little harsher than it should have. your response was funny, actually. some of the best people i know are bad spellers. but anyway, yeah, you spelled tourette’s wrong; maybe I HAVE it!
Or bad typers.
Too harsh.
sorry again.
Actually, the proper term is “typists”, not “typers”.
oy vey
newsflash to “A girl”…you need to look up how much pediatricians actually get paid…..and residents/fellows (which I am) get paid even less. And hey….I spell very poorly after a 36hr shift 🙂
I am a terrible, terrible, terrible person.
36 hours? These shifts that they give you residents are absurd. Everyone knows it, so they should do something about it!
Lets get back to the gay bar issue ….
Going to gay bars on a date AND long shifts for medical residents are both bad!
Be my lesbian love A girl ….
Wrong thread ariana. 🙂
No way! On the bad scale, the long shifts for medical residents are rated much, much higher than taking dates to gay bars. In between those, you have re-gifting birthday gifts from your least-favorite relative, parking in disabled parking “just for a minute”, and snooping in people’s medicine cabinets when visiting their homes.
Ummm … just saying. (And I don’t park in disabled parking. Or work long shifts as a medical resident. Ever.)
Monday – about people snooping in people’s medicine cabinets, what does that say about them? I know this is off topic, any ideas?
Ummmm … I think it means that they’re people who are ridiculously curious about the world. Hey, I’m certainly not proud of it, but I will admit that I have snooped in the odd medicine cabinet to learn a bit more about someone.
Now, Derek, don’t you think your own parents gave you a stimulating, interesting environment when you were young? Don’t you remember the lego planes etc which magically appeared overnight? and the culturally correct books…..you had moblies over your bassinet at 4 days old….
I remember the legos, yeah.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is going to publish a statement in December that is really going to cause a stir (I can’t wait 🙂
In their Journal, entitled PEDIATRICS, they will site the lack of UNstructured play for children in the US, along with the increasing incidence of anxiety disorders and depression among children. Basically they are saying they we are over-scheduling our children and putting far too much pressure on them with flash cards, tutoring,etc.