The article is long, and parts are rather boring, but some parts, especially on the second page, are quite insightful.

I’ll summarize with very broad, simplistic strokes:

• Yes, teenagers do take more dangerous risks than most other age groups
• They do understand the dangers involved (so you telling them “Don’t you know what could happen?” is not particularly useful)
• The main difference between teenagers and others is that they value the rewards (gained from taking the risks) much more than adults
• Teenagers take more risks in the company of their friends/peers. In other words, they value “social rewards” and “peer recognition” quite a lot – much more so than adults
• In general, this is evolution’s way of encouraging teenagers to learn new things, explore new opportunities, to boldly go where they haven’t gone before. This prepares them for leaving their parents’ home and going out into the world on their own
• They prefer the company of young people. Parents, teenagers don’t what you as friends, they want their friends as friends. (As explained previously, they are wired to get excited about new and unknown things, and parents are neither new, nor unknown, nor exciting.) Evolutionarily speaking, this is the teenagers investing in their future rather than their past or present
• To help, parents should “engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence.” While the teenagers should obviously benefit from your experience (and they often do – but a little later than you would like), their primary instinct is to learn from their own mistakes. Let them.

I am not the parent of a teenager, so I have no idea what I’m talking about. But I’m good at summarizing long articles into pithy blog posts.

You should probably read the full article.

But, most of it can very easily be prevented. All you need to do is to have a simple 15 minute chat with your children, once every six months. This chat does not involve talking about sex, does not involve talking about genitals, and is not an uncomfortable chat, and is not scary for children.

Here is a video of what this chat is like:

If you can’t see the video above, go to see it on YouTube

That is Dr. Bhooshan Shukla, a Child Psychiatrist going through one such session.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do.

For more detail on the Hows and the Whys and FAQs, see Dr. Shukla’s blog post on this subject. By the way, you should subscribe to his blog too.

Again, this is important, this is easy. Please do it.

And please spread the word.

This is not a problem that affects only western countries, or only kids in slums, or only kids from broken families. It affects everyone. That’s why you need to do this.

If you don’t have kids, I’m sure you know others who have kids. Please tell them about this.

If you would like such a session to be conducted in your society/school, but are not confident enough to do it on your own, you can contact me, or Dr. Shukla, or meetu (email), and we can figure something out.

Update: from Dr. Shukla on 11 August 2011:

Please continue to spread the word. Thanks.

For example, one exercise in the positive psychology asked students to list 3 good things that happened to them each day for a week – then the follow-up questions asked what the event meant to them and what can increase the likelihood of this happening again (kind of connecting the dots for the students).

…

The net result: positive thinking and resiliency training improved students' school outlook and engagement, improved classroom behavior and cooperation, resulted in more self-control, and more empathy. Not bad!

That's not all – think about this:

students who believed that intelligence was a fixed entity were more likely to show no improvement in their math achievement from 7th to 8th grade, more likely to withdraw or cheat, and less likely to demonstrate mastery-reactions to setbacks. Not surprisingly, the students who believed intelligence could be 'grown' – were more likely to persevere, show resiliency behaviors to setbacks, and improve performance.

See full article.

(Via: http://twitter.com/sandygautam)

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

Each student stays in the same tutor group for all the 5 years, and the guardian tutor of the group remains the same throughout. Each year, the students of Std. 10 will obviously pass out and leave the group. At this time, new students from Std. 5 will enter the group. This whole set-up creates a sort of a family unit, where the guardian tutor becomes the surrogate parent, and the other students become surrogate siblings.

The tutor group meets every day for a little time – the school time-tables have been adjusted to allow for this. In addition, they meet once every two weeks for a longer period. These meetings have no agenda. Just hang out and bond and behave like a family.

See this pdf for a more detailed description of the guardian tutor system in Vidya Valley.

It sounds like a very interesting idea, and I have not really heard of anything like this being used in Pune schools (but I could be mistaken). In any case, seems like a neat thing to have. They have introduced it just a few months ago, so it will be interesting to see how it works out in real life.

Click here. From BBC. Go here for a lot more educational goodies.

They asked a group of preschool children ages 3 to 6 to rate drawings by children and adults they knew, as well as strangers. The preschoolers judged the artwork both when the artist was present, and when he or she was absent. The three-year-olds were completely honest, and remained consistent in their ratings; it didn’t matter who drew it, or whether the person was in the room. Five- and six-year-olds gave more flattering ratings when the artist was in front of them. They flattered both strangers and those they knew (although familiar people got a higher dose of praise). Among the four-year-olds, half the group displayed flattery while the other half did not. This supports the idea that age four is a key transitional period in children’s social understanding of the world.

Lee suggests adults flatter for two reasons. It can be to show gratitude for some positive action in the past. As well, when they’re meeting someone for first time – someone who may turn out to be important for their advancement down the road – flattery is also used as an investment for future favourable treatment from the person. “We don’t know which the child is doing,” says Lee. However, the fact that the older children flattered strangers as well as familiar people suggests “they are thinking ahead, they are making these little social investments for future benefits.

Found: here.

A towel elephant is a cute addition to your bathroom and an incredible way to impress your guests! Cruise lines and “bed and breakfast” motels use these quite often. If you want to give your bathroom an original touch, have “Eddie the Towel Elephant” greet your unsuspecting guests and tickle their sense of humor.

Link.

These cute shoes from Finland are designed to be worn by a parent balancing a child on her/his toes while dancing.

Link. I found them on boing-boing.

Alka Seltzer tag sounds fun: each player wears an Alka Seltzer on necklace, and players run around with hoses/squirtguns trying to wet the others’ tablets. As the tablets foam, they drop off the string. The last intact tablet wins.

Found here; via boing-boing.

I got tired of being the boss of when my kids (three and five) could watch videos and DVDs. I also wanted to help them learn to make choices about media consumption while they’re still young. So I decided to set up a ticket system.

Every Friday, they each get tickets (purple for one kid, green for the other) that can be redeemed for ½ hour of TV time.

See full article. And this post helpfully gives designs so that you can create the tickets yourself on your printer.

I am tempted to try it out, but I think that my kids might be a little too young for this.