The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

We don't wife our husbands and we don't child our parents.

Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.

If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.

You read a bunch of books and you get a bunch of how-tos, and you take a bunch of classes and you learn a bunch of techniques. You set yourself goals and benchmarks. I think people have imported that into their experience of taking care of children.

Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments.