713: Clean Your Plate

When we force ourselves, or force kids, to ignore their body’s signals for hunger and fullness, that we start to lose touch with those signals.

662: Recess

With so much research that is so clear, why is there even a question? Frankly, because time is a limited resource.

617: Allowance

Did you get an allowance as a kid? If so, how much? Full episode script In America, sometime between the 1890s and 1920s, the idea of giving children allowances became not only more common, but suggested by some child-rearing experts. As one research article explained, quote: Statistics suggest that parents increasingly used allowances to allocate […]

589: Civic Involvement

What was the first civic or political issue you got involved with? Full episode script In 2016 in the United States, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, quote: […] nearly six million young people (ages 18-29) were “undermobilized”—meaning they were registered but did not vote. The problem of […]

551: Young Coffee

How old (or young) were you when you first drank coffee? Full episode script Coffee – or anything, really, that contains caffeine is something that was strictly off limits for me as a kid. I was told that coffee would stunt my growth… and even though I snuck a few cups here and there when […]

517: Doing Scary Things

What was the scariest thing you did as a kid? Are you glad you did it? Full episode script In 2016, a survey of 1,003 UK parents by online bookseller The Book People found that 33% would steer clear of books for their children containing frightening characters. As The Guardian wrote: Asked about the fictional […]

507: Unsupervised

Do you or would you let a kid run around your neighborhood unsupervised? At what age do you think that would be “OK”? Full episode script On May 8, the state of Utah will become the first in the nation to have a quote-unquote free range parenting law on the books. It’s a law that […]

470: Siblings

Did you have siblings or were you an only child? What was the best / worst part of that? Full episode script In 2015, the Pew Research Center reported: In the late 1970s, the average mother at the end of her childbearing years had given birth to more than three children. Since that time, average […]

433: When I Grow Up

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up? Full episode script When I was a kid, I would see those TV commercials for mail-order college courses (probably dating myself here by the lack of online courses), and I would always pick something from the list that I was just […]

420: First Memory

Around what age is your first clear memory? Show notes and links: Popular Science WebMD Full episode script Memory is one of the topics that endlessly fascinates me, because it is so very far removed from the photographic perfect recall that it is often thought of as. In a 2014 Popular Science article, Kate Gammon […]

393: Childhood Mementos

Do you keep mementos of your childhood around? Show notes and links: http://smallnotebook.org/2010/02/03/your-childs-keepsakes-30-years-later/ https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/what-are-your-favorite-keepsakes-from-childhood/ https://www.becomingminimalist.com/how-to-simplify-your-stuff-and-honor-your-memories/ https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/40331 Full episode script In episode 248 about keeping mementos of relationships around, there was quite a bit of very crunchy and useful information about why we enjoy holding on to mementos, and how our brains use those physical objects […]