April 2021

By Karen D'Souza, EdSource, April 6, 2021 Children are born ready to learn. In the first year of life, the brain doubles, with about 90% of brain growth happening before kindergarten. However, only 1 in 3 eligible children under 5 years old take part in California’s publicly funded early learning and care programs. To make matters worse this year, 3 out of 4 California parents with children under 5 are worried their education and development will suffer because of the pandemic, according to...

By Benedict Carey, The New York Times, April 1, 2021 When I joined the Science staff in 2004, reporters in the department had a saying, a reassuring mantra of sorts: “People will always come to the science section, if only to read about progress.” I think about that a lot as I say goodbye to my job, covering psychiatry, psychology, brain biology and big-data social science, as if they were all somehow related. The behavior beat, as it’s known, allowed tremendous freedom: I wrote about the...

Child growth and development are coupled with various challenges that parents deal with as part of what is needed to make them responsible human beings. Teaching your child how to listen and communicate effectively are some of the basic skills that are taught. However, children don’t listen on some occasions. It can be frustrating for a parent that does not know what to do. Raising children that don’t listen is common. This usually, is a hindrance to effective parent-child communication.