All week I kept stumbling across useful articles and podcasts about this almost-there-but-not-quite-yet moment in the pandemic. Here are three of my favorites on muddling through this moment in the pandemic; helping middle schoolers establish and evolve critical coping skills to manage their stress, anger, and anxiety; and pandemic changes parents actually want to keep.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading about how to detect and neutralize misinformation this week –and how to teach my daughter to do the same. Here are a few of the articles, blog posts, and books I’ve found most helpful.
Last week our local public health office released official guidance for how to mitigate the risk of spreading COVID-19 during Halloween and Día de Los Muertos celebrations. I wanted to share it with you here, in case your family is also trying to figure out what those celebrations will look like this year.
In this week’s extract from my now-deleted Facebook archives, I am once again reminded how grateful I am to no longer be the parent of a small child in the snowier bits of the U.S.
In this week’s extract from my now-deleted Facebook archives, my daughter demonstrates the proper way to perform CPR on a T.Rex. #ThrowbackThursday
I joined Facebook a very long time ago as a way to reconnect with old friends, keep my extended family up to date on funny stuff The Youngest Howell said, and of course, post cat pictures. It was fun and seemed harmless at the time. But my daughter is older now, and it’s time to re-examine my social media use.
Tamiko Pettee’s ebook for children touches on a topic I’ve been thinking about lately – how to help children navigate friendships in a digital age. (Book Review)
My father has been having a few health issues lately, which have resulted in my flying down to Texas a couple of times to help out with this and that. My daughter, being the curious and caring sort, has had all sorts of questions about what’s going on with Grandpa. Respecting both my father’s need for privacy and my daughter’s desire for answers has been challenging at times. On my last trip, I accidentally hit upon a good solution. I thought I’d share it with you in case you also wanted to try it.
Last week in my ongoing search for hard data about the benefits of remaining curious, I came across an article in Thrive Global about Matthew Berger, the 9-year-old who discovered a missing link in the story of human evolution while he was out walking with his dog. What struck me about this story, was not the boy’s reaction to his discovery, but his father’s.
I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading and thinking about curiosity lately. One of the first articles I came across was by Daisy Yuhas of the Hechinger Report. In it, she talks about a set of studies that demonstrate that curious people are happier in their jobs, better at social interactions, and enjoy greater academic success. Reader, I had questions.
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