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Study finds parents can give their kids anxiety about math
TODAY: A new study in the journal Psychological Science by researchers at the University of Chicago finds that "when parents are more math anxious, their children learn significantly less math over the school year and have more math anxiety by the school year's end, but only if math-anxious parents report providing frequent help with math homework." The research, led by Erin A. Maloney, also finds that if a parent has anxiety about math, it might be best for him or her to steer clear of helping a child with math homework. Read the whole story: TODAY
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Daycare Doesn’t Lead to Aggressive Behavior in Toddlers
Working parents often worry about sending their toddlers to daycare. But the results of a new study that tracked almost 1,000 Norwegian children enrolled in daycare indicate that working parents can breathe a sigh of relief: The amount of time children spent in daycare had little impact on aggressive behavior. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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Microlending Success Starts with a Smile
The economist Muhammad Yunus was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 in recognition for his pioneering work in microlending – making small loans available to people living in poverty. Yunus believed that entrepreneurs in rural, impoverished areas needed the same things as any other business—capital to get their small businesses started and growing. These entrepreneurs are frequently unable to get loans through traditional banking institutions. Through microlending, someone in Montana can help finance a small $500 loan so that an aspiring tailoring business in Tajikistan can invest in buying more sewing machines.
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Bedtime Stories for Young Brains
The New York Times: A little more than a year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement saying that all pediatric primary care should include literacy promotion, starting at birth. That means pediatricians taking care of infants and toddlers should routinely be advising parents about how important it is to read to even very young children. The policy statement, which I wrote with Dr. Pamela C. High, included a review of the extensive research on the links between growing up with books and reading aloud, and later language development and school success. ...
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3 lessons from the Amazon takedown
Fortune: The recent profile of Amazon’s culture shows us that leaders aren’t always what they seem, money trumps human comfort, and harried workers may have themselves to blame. The recent New York Times profile of Amazon.comdescribing its relentless, high-pressure, measurement-obsessed culture is scarcely the first to depict what it is like to work there, either in its warehouses or its offices.
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Don’t Hit Send: Angry Emails Just Make You Angrier
The Wall Street Journal: One evening, after a frustrating chat with his boss, Jason Bauman sent an email to a co-worker. He wrote that his supervisor never praised him, only criticized, and said he found this frustrating. He went on for several hundred words. Mr. Bauman, the manager of a cellphone store at the time, complained that his boss was bad at his job. He said the man was jealous because he made less money than his employees. He insisted his boss had no right to give him what he called “a hard time.” “It felt really good writing the email and hitting send,” says Mr. Bauman, a 30-year-old who lives in Souderton, Pa. Not for long. Mr.
