I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them.

On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.

Children are the most amazing thing in the universe, as far as I'm concerned. If you're worrying about how it's going to turn out, you aren't experiencing that day-to-day satisfaction of being with these incredible, extraordinary creatures. Every single one of them is the most incredible, extraordinary creature that you're ever going to want to see. I think the joy of having that deep relationship - that's the core of what being a parent is.

Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.

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.

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

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.