Last October, Walking Zombies commented on adolescent sleep deprivation, and its effects on schooling, learning, health and safety.

Here’s one solution, reported in the Washington Post: Power Napping which is planned for, supported, and encouraged. It seems like a weak answer compared to getting enough sleep, but it might be easier for many to make a few minutes for a nap than rework a lifestyle.

This continues Mirror Neurons – 1.
and Mirror Neurons – 2,
not to mention Mirror Neurons – 2.5
Again: This series introduces you to one of the most important discoveries about human learning in decades.

Thanks to Matt Maher for pointing me to the very relevant (and way cool) Pink video, Stupid Girls

The Pessimist’s Version of Mirror Neurons

It’s tempting to think of the negative implications of co-experiencing. Lately, I watch the apparent dea[r]th of learning and of thoughtfulness in our worldwide culture and in the institutions that shape and transmit that culture, and I find myself (am I becoming old?) despairing for our lovely little planet. Learning, knowledge, thinking – along with the emotions that power and direct them – these are the most important tools we have. But in my worst moments, I believe the forces opposing learning, knowledge, and thought, crushing our drive and our emotions, threaten to turn us into consuming, reproducing automata – robots who buy stuff and hatch kids who buy stuff.

I haven’t seen anyone suggest it, but it seems to me that mirror neurons may be the primary mechanism that makes us and our children so manipulable. I would speculate that when mass manipulation is effective, it is because of mirror neuron circuits. When someone on TV has fun with a new toy, the child watching the TV coexperiences the fun, and wants it to continue. If the “I want it” response to the advertisement doesn’t respond to your logic, it’s because logic has nothing to do with the wanting. The same is true of what we see in the faces of football fans, mobs, and moviegoers. These responses are coexperiences. The brain is not simply watching. It is participating.

What about this pessimist’s version – all those influences on your child that you wish weren’t there, and which sometimes threaten the most basic values you hope to instill? The thing is, these influences are the flip side of a powerful adaptive mechanism which is the base for our ability to empathize, and the powerhouse for cultural transmission. The same strategies that give us greater positive influence will help us counteract the negative ones. So how do we manage to maximize the good of mirror neurons, and do what we can to control negative influence?

Discuss Mirror Neurons in the Coffee Shop

Babies can communicate long before they can talk. We know this is true of the nonverbal communication that helps tie child and parents to each other from day 1. But what about communication by language, the quintessential human ability? Infants can use their hands with greater precision than their mouths. What happens, then, if we teach infants some of the common signs of American Sign Language? If they can communicate more effectively with their parents, does it spur intellectual development? For Grow With the Flow parents, this would be a whole new way to foster intelligence.

Perhaps I should explain that this is not about teaching deaf or hearing-impaired children to sign. This is about using sign with hearing infants before they have the oral motor control to communicate verbally.

Jessica Egan, a graduate student at Colorado State University, is fascinated by Infant Sign Language. She signs with her infant daughter, so when it came time for her thesis, the topic of the possible good effects of signing was a natural.

She’s using some items from the checklists in Chapter 12 of Grow With the Flow: “Discovering Your Child’s Intelligence River,” as a way to describe infants’ growth. It seemed like fun to both of us to set up a table in the Coffee Shop for people working with Infant Sign language – a guest forum where Jessica, her research compatriots, and others interested in the possible usefulness of signing with infants can trade ideas and impressions. Welcome!

Visit this new forum in the Coffee Shop

Verizon is offering to let you know where your pre-teens are, and fire you a text message if they aren’t where they’re supposed to be.*

Good idea?

Of course there are technical and ethical issues with Chaperone.**

The ethical and technical questions involved aren’t my topic: The goal of Grow With the Flow is to help parents raise kids whose real-world intelligence allows them to thrive. As readers of GWTF know, I see that intelligence as an artful blend of factors, ranging from many ways of being smart through executive functions, to deep motivation to learn. How does this electronic surveillance fit into that goal? The more I think about it, the less sure I am.

Your thoughts?

Discuss this article in the Coffee Shop

* Verizon’s Chaperone will combine cell phone and GPS technologies to tell parents where their kids are, and will also (for an extra fee) send parents a text message when their kids leave a pre-defined boundary area. Sprint launched a similar product in April, Disney plans one next month.

The popular media hasn’t yet really picked up on the story, but the response is expected to be overwhelmingly positive (safety for the child, assurance for the parent). The product is aimed at 5-9 year-olds – you’ll be stunned to learn that teens are expected to object.

** Industry response is positive (sluggish market) but also cautions about the practical limits of the service. There are also Big Brother aspects of the service, both obvious (my parolees would think it looked like an ankle monitor) and less obvious (you aren’t the only one who knows where your child is).

Discuss this article in the Coffee Shop

Three-year-old and his mom at the counter. A bit of a line is forming behind them as he considers what he wants. She points out that people are waiting, but not because she’s embarrassed or impatient, only as a reminder to him that they need to think of others. They step to the side with their drinks, and she shows him how to put a tip in the jar. He stretches to his limit to reach it – she watches without offering to help. As they go to a table, he says “Mom?” I think it’s a new way of addressing her, because there’s a twinkle when she says “Yes….son?” He giggles, and they pass out of my eavesdropping range.

I picture what could have been: the shaming, the taking over, the “corrections.” It’s so much easier to do it right.

Thanks to The Splendid Table (and Carol) for pointing out this splendid story:

The James Beard Foundation announced its 2006 winners at a gala on May 8 in New York City. The annual awards—the Oscars of the food business—honor restaurateurs, chefs, cookbook authors, journalists, broadcasters, and restaurant and graphic designers….

This year’s award in the Webcast category went to Chicago sisters Isabella and Olivia Gerasole for their Web site, www.spatulatta.com. What is extraordinary is that the sisters are 10 and 8 years old—the youngest winners ever!

The aim of their cleverly designed site is to teach kids how to cook. Take a look. It’s great fun

On page 174 of Grow With the Flow I praise cooking as one of the overarching tools parents can enjoy with their kids – one of the activities that are so fecund that it would be foolish to pigeonhole what can be learned from them.

This NPR interview with the Gerasole sisters makes that point. After you listen, thumb through My View of the Elephant and just try to find an intelligence that hasn’t been influenced by their focus on cooking, and their family’s nurturance of that focus.