All of us gardeners know that nothing comes out the way you planned. It's a different garden every year, and it's always sort of different from what you were thinking when you began. What it really means to be a good gardener is to work hard to produce an ecosystem that will have enough diversity, enough possibilities, so it's robust, and it's resilient, and it can change when the seasons change. And that kind of robust, unexpected, variable, messy system - that's what you want to create when you're having children, too.

We provide a secure, stable space for children to grow up in, so children will be able to take risks and have adventures and do things that are unexpected. If there isn't a risk that your children can fail, then you haven't succeeded as a parent.

It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.

What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.

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

Preschool kids learn best when exploring, but kids in school learn best when they do things, interacting with a master. Unfortunately, our schools don't do much of either. Also, kids do need to learn how to deal with technology, and online education and otherwise using electronic devices as learning tools facilitates that.

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.