Worth Reading: On Parenting, TV, and Learning

I’ve written before about my recent experience in a parenting class based on Positive Discipline (rather than authoritative or permissive parenting). Apparently, this approach is really beneficial for kids with special needs. To read more, go to Parenting Style Has Big Impact on Kids with Disabilities.

And have I ever mentioned here how much I love David Simon’s HBO series The Wire and Treme (set in New Orleans)? Well, I found out why when I read Wired Magazine’s interview with Simon and he explained that he writes his shows for people who like to read stories in books (which is to say, stories that take 300-pages to relate rather than 40 minutes of TV).  The interview is worth reading in its entirety for Simon’s thoughts on the significance of cities and the importance of telling stories over time.

I was also intrigued by NPR’s recent story about how kids learn in the east and in the west. Over here, we tend to think intelligence falls into our heads. Over there, they tend to think you work hard at it. Over here, we tend to value creativity. Over there, they score higher on science exams. We all have something to learn from one another.

And one more: Loving a Child on the Fringe, a wise (and critical) reflection on Andrew Solomon’s Far from the Tree by the mother of a child with Down syndrome. To leave you with one quote:

 The joy Eurydice takes in each detail of life is the most infectious quality I’ve ever known. When she flings her arms around my neck as she does every day, every night, my most recurrent fear is no longer relapsing cancer, no longer early dementia or heart disease or hearing loss—or even the fact that Eurydice is growing up too slowly. It is a testament to how radically this child has transformed me that my most recurrent fear may be that she’s growing up too fast—that one day she could be too mature to give me those massive, resplendent, full-body hugs.