Since 2011, the American Pediatric Association has advised parents of children under age 2 to avoid screen time for their infants, noting the accumulating evidence of potential risks and the lack of evidence for educational or developmental benefits. Yet screens are an integral part of many young children’s lives. For some families, tablets, computers and smartphones aren’t just a source …

Within three days of starting high school this year, my ninth-grader could not get into bed before 11 p.m. or wake up by 6 a.m. He complained he couldn’t fall asleep but felt foggy during the school day and had to reread lessons a few times at night to finish his homework. And forget morning activities on the weekends — …

Ron Ferguson, an economist at Harvard, has made a career out of studying the achievement gap — the well-documented learning gap that exists between kids of different races and socioeconomic statuses. But even he was surprised to discover that gap visible with “stark differences” by just age 2, meaning “kids aren’t halfway to kindergarten and they’re already well behind their …

When Linda Tock heard her 5-year-old telling her he was going to be sick, she moved quickly. She sprinted for a trash can, ready to run upstairs to help her son, with her husband, Simon, close behind her. Then it happened: a rain of vomit from the balcony above. “I put the trash can over my head,” Tock recalls. “We …

Walking through the woods alone can be a scary prospect for a kid, but not for 7-year-old Matthew of Portland, Oregon. He doesn’t have much of a backyard at his condo, so the woods behind his house essentially serve the same purpose. He spends hours out there: swinging on a tire swing, tromping across the ravine to a friend’s house, …

It may be a new school year, yet I come to sing the praises of trampolines and bubble-blowing, pillow forts and peekaboo, Monopoly and Marco Polo. A new paper in the journal Pediatrics summarizes the evidence for letting kids let loose. “Play is not frivolous,” the paper insists, twice. “It is brain building.” The authors — Michael Yogman, Andrew Garner, …

My friend Cathy and I recently took an afternoon off and got a couples massage. We lay side by side in a small candlelit room, almost completely naked and entirely at ease. It was the third time we had met in person. In February 2017, our mutual friend, Steph, introduced us over email. Steph’s first child had just been born. …

Crayons, of course. Scented markers. Colored pencils, presharpened. And coloring books by the jillions. Why do people like coloring so much? For grown-ups, I can totally get the nostalgia — and the simple pleasure of creating something. But here at NPR Ed, we’re all about kids and learning. And so, as parents head to the store this summer with their …

The way we teach math in America hurts all students, but it may be hurting girls the most. For parents who want to encourage their daughters in STEM subjects, it’s crucial to remember this: Math is the sine qua non. You and your daughter can have fun throwing eggs off a building and making papier-mâché volcanoes, but the only way …

Picture this: You’re in the supermarket with your hungry preschooler in tow. As you reach into the dairy case, you spot a sign with a friendly cartoon cow. It reads: “Ask your child: Where does milk come from? What else comes from a cow?” In a small study published last year, signs like these, placed in Philadelphia-area supermarkets, sparked a …

“Why are traffic lights red, yellow and green?” When a child asks you a question like this, you have a few options. You can shut her down with a “Just because.” You can explain: “Red is for stop and green is for go.” Or, you can turn the question back to her and help her figure out the answer with …

Do you remember the day you decided you were no good at math? Or maybe you had the less common, opposite experience: a moment of math excitement that hooked you for good? Thousands of studies have been published that touch on the topic of “math anxiety.” Overwhelming fear of math, regardless of one’s actual aptitude, affects students of all ages, …

As a parent, did you ever push your child in ways you now regret – or not push enough? Or when you were a child, did you ever feel pushed too hard or not enough? These were the questions we posed to you, our audience, at the conclusion of our story highlighting a troubling situation in Ghana: Parents in the …

Angry footsteps upstairs. Screams. “I hate you!” Slam. Fists, on a bedroom door. Then, inevitably, the unified shriek: “MOOOOMMM!” That was the soundtrack of the year when my daughters were 11 and 12, shared a bedroom and fought like caged tigers. As a parent, I was at a loss. It seemed as though every meal or car ride ended in …

What do you wish you’d known before becoming a parent? In May, we asked our audience this question at the start of How To Raise A Human, our month-long special series on how to make parenting easier. More than 1,000 moms and dads opened up about the struggles and joys of raising children of all ages, from babies to adults, …

The number of men in the United States who are full-time, stay-at-home parents has risen steadily in recent decades, from maybe a million or so in 1984, according to a Pew Research Center estimate, to roughly double that in 2014. That’s still much smaller than the number of stay-at-home moms, of course, and many of the challenges these dads face …

It’s after hours at Rafael Hernandez, an elementary school in the Bronx, and Room 421 is in an uproar. It’s what you would expect from a sixth-grade sex education class learning how to put a condom on. Sex education: The very concept makes a lot of people cringe, conjuring images of teenage giggles and discomfort. It’s also a subject a …

On New Year’s Eve, back in 2012, Savannah Eason retreated into her bedroom and picked up a pair of scissors. “I was holding them up to my palm as if to cut myself,” she says. “Clearly what was happening was I needed someone to do something.” Her dad managed to wrestle the scissors from her hands, but that night it …

Bullying takes many forms, but when it involves a food that triggers severe allergies, it could be potentially deadly. Once, when Brandon Williams, a 16-year-old from Kentucky, was on a trip with his bowling team, his teammate decided to eat some food from McDonald’s on Williams’ bed. One item had so much mayonnaise that it dripped onto Williams’ bed and …

A recent recommendation from doctors in the United Kingdom raised eyebrows in the United States: The British National Health Service says healthy women with straightforward pregnancies are better off staying out of the hospital to deliver their babies. That’s heresy, obstetrician Dr. Neel Shah first thought. In the United States, 99 percent of babies are born in hospitals. “There’s really …

Six months ago, Melissa Nichols brought her baby girl, Arlo, home from the hospital. And she immediately had a secret. “I just felt guilty and like I didn’t want to tell anyone,” says Nichols, who lives in San Francisco. “It feels like you’re a bad mom. The mom guilt starts early, I guess.” Across town, first-time mom Candyce Hubbell has …

Stress can undermine our best parenting intentions, but new research suggests a way to reduce its impact. I was looking at Mother’s Day cards recently and found a couple that made me chuckle. One suggested a cape as a gift for a super mom. The other had a presidential seal for the mom-in-chief. Their common theme? The idea that moms …

She’s raising five children, does housework and chores — we’re talking about fresh tortillas every day made from stone-ground corn — and she helps with the family’s business in their small village about 2 1/2 hours west of Cancún on the Yucatán Peninsula. Sitting on a rainbow-colored hammock inside her home, Burgos, 41, is cool as a cucumber. It’s morning, …

Scott Barry Kaufman was placed in special education classes as a kid. He struggled with auditory information processing and with anxiety. But with the support of his mother, and some teachers who saw his creativity and intellectual curiosity, Kaufman ended up with degrees from Yale and Cambridge. Now he’s a psychologist who cares passionately about a holistic approach to education, …

Parents who embrace attachment parenting can be distressed when they can’t live up to its ideals. They shouldn’t be. In the months leading up to birth, a pregnant woman begins to read about childrearing, including a book called Attachment Parenting by pediatrician William Sears and registered nurse Martha Sears. They advocate for a collection of seven practices they call the …

During the stressful teen years, most adolescents experience emotional highs and lows, but for more than 20 percent of teenagers, their worries and sad feelings turn into something more serious, like anxiety or depression. Studies show that 13 percent to 18 percent of distressed teens physically injure themselves via cutting, burning or other forms of self-harm as a way to …

Positive encouragement and patience are key to helping your child learn organizational skills. Brush your teeth!” “Where are your socks?” “Don’t forget to bring a sweatshirt!” “Where’s the homework you finished last night?” Too often, weekday mornings can seem like a race against the clock. When your alarm goes off, you start out with the best of intentions (serenity now!). …

Children who experience adversity tend to have health problems later in life. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris explains why—and how we can help heal those wounds. When Dr. Nadine Burke Harris set up the Bayview Child Health Center in 2007, she immediately noticed an association between traumatic experiences and health outcomes in the children she treated. “Day after day I saw …

“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” That’s one of the many quotes that has made Sir Ken Robinson’s 2006 lecture on rethinking the nation’s schools become one of the most popular TED talks — with more than 50 million views. Over the past two decades, Robinson, an author, …

In Kelly Stevens’ kindergarten classroom, each day begins with circle time for what sounds like a menu of lesson options. Students — or “friends” as Stevens calls them — can read at the green table, they can build boats or make things out of clay, among other options. Students Marco Carias Castellanos and Holden Free chose a writing activity today. …