I read Nurture Shock before my kids were born. One of its main arguments is to praise effort rather than natural abilities ("you worked hard" rather than "you're smart"). Being one who naturally withholds praise, its message of not over-praising resonated with me.
In retrospect, I should have praised kid #1 more. It took me 10+ years to realize that. The book was not wrong but also not the message I needed.
I am definitely of the same generation. I notice my mom will praise my kid’s intelligence while we praise their effort. But I’ve definitely noticed my son responds to praise about ability more than my daughter and likely would appreciate more praise than her.
What did you notice and what were the consequences of the strategy of praise. I’d like to learn from your experience.
I have noticed that my daughter responds so much better to compliments like, "I am really impressed how you handled situation X, you stuck up for yourself in a way that doesn't alienate yourself with your friends. I know how hard that is to do well ..." When I give the reason for the praise it doesn't come off, intended or not as "you did good for a kid." I don't do it everytime, but sometimes the praise works to give another reflective or metacognitive pass over the event.
Praise is a verbal activity. And while words definitely matter, I think holistic encouragement is needed. Pats on the back, hugs, and periodic ambient physical presence when the kid is working on a new skill.
Children the Challenge chapter 3 discusses encouragement.
All this stuff should be done tastefully and without being overbearing. Like the previous poster said, it's a balance.
Back in August, the Odd Lots Podcast had a good show about speculation in hazelnuts.
As I recall, Ferrero buys like 25% of the world's hazelnut supply.
My neighborhood school issues Chromebooks to all kids starting in sixth grade.
It's been an interesting, um, pedagogical experiment.
In my kid's friend group (now 7th grade), the usage is all over the map. Some kids write C++ code or do Tinkercad. Others watch YouTube from 8am to the closing bell, during class and lunch. Still more spend their lesson time on Minecraft Educational edition.
(YouTube is a bit of a loophole... Since some teachers use it for lesson material, the school's WiFi leaves it unblocked. So YouTube Shorts stands in for IG Reels and TikTok, which are blocked.)
I planted asclepias incarnata here in my south bay garden and orange aphids killed it within a month. Maybe not a great choice anyways, since it requires a lot of water.
I planted some in my yard up in New England, where it’s native. It’s spread nicely, and seems to act as a “sink” for aphids, keeping them away from other plants. They flock to it but don’t appear to seriously damage the plant’s ability to do its thing.
I run the standalone Scratch program on an offline raspberry PI. My kids enjoy it. The best thing about offline is that they have to create something to play a game.
We formerly used Scratch online, starting in 2nd grade at school. It had good and bad aspects. It was great to follow griffpatch, who has really sophisticated coding tutorials. On the downside, they got creepy comments on their Scratch projects. There were also various ruses to get the kids to upvote projects, typical social media crap.
Also, being on the Scratch community means my kids could just search for someone else's clone of (insert game here). So Scratch can turn into just another way to play video games. With offline, that's not an option.
If your kids are good at self-regulation, online can be fine, though.
> The other grant will examine how the protein lactoferrin – a novel protein found in human and cow’s milk – may help improve the intestinal absorption of iron
That's interesting that a milk ingredient boosts iron absorption.
A dietitian recently suggested I serve iron-rich and calcium-rich foods at separate meals. They said that calcium in milk can inhibit iron absorption.
> This map shows a slice of our Universe. It was created from astronomical data taken night after night over a period of 15 years using a telescope in New Mexico, USA.
So, this is the slice that the telescope was observing.
Sequence diagrams force you to think about the flow of control in a system.
When reviewing draft designs, I sometimes ask the author to convert a simple boxes-and-lines architecture diagram to a sequence diagram. It can be revealing.
I can relate. It's an essential communication tool. When discussing asynchronous events with a colleague, there is a point in the discussion when it becomes almost impossible to explain it in words and you really need something like a sequence diagram to communicate accurately.
I read Nurture Shock before my kids were born. One of its main arguments is to praise effort rather than natural abilities ("you worked hard" rather than "you're smart"). Being one who naturally withholds praise, its message of not over-praising resonated with me.
In retrospect, I should have praised kid #1 more. It took me 10+ years to realize that. The book was not wrong but also not the message I needed.