Dear Less-Than-Perfect Mom

hoyasmeg via Compfight cc

Dear Mom,
I've seen you around. I've seen you screaming at your kids in public, I've seen you ignoring them at the playground, I've seen you unshowered and wearing last night's pajama pants at preschool drop-off. I've seen you begging your children, bribing them, threatening them. I've seen you shouting back and forth with your husband, with your mom, with the police officer at the crosswalk.

I've seen you running around with your kids, getting dirty and occasionally swearing audibly when you bang a knee. I've seen you sharing a milkshake with a manic 4-year-old. I've seen you wiping your kids' boogers with your bare palm, and then smearing them on the back of your jeans. I've seen you carry your toddler flopped over the crook of your arm while chasing a runaway ball.

I've also seen you gritting your teeth while your kid screamed at you for making him practice piano, or soccer, or basket weaving or whatever it was. I've seen you close your eyes and breathe slowly after finding a gallon of milk dumped into your trunk. I've seen you crying into the sink while you desperately scrub crayon off your best designer purse. I've seen you pacing in front of the house.

I've seen you at the hospital waiting room. I've seen you at the pharmacy counter. I've seen you looking tired and frightened.

I've seen a lot of you, actually.

I see you every single day.

I don't know if you planned to be a parent or not. If you always knew from your earliest years that you wanted to bring children into the world, to tend to them, or if motherhood was thrust upon you unexpectedly. I don't know if it meets your expectations, or if you spent your first days as a mom terrified that you would never feel what you imagined "motherly love" would feel like for your child. I don't know if you struggled with infertility, or with pregnancy loss, or with a traumatic birth. I don't know if you created your child with your body, or created your family by welcoming your child into it.

But I know a lot about you.

I know that you didn't get everything that you wanted. I know that you got a wealth of things you never knew you wanted until they were there in front of you. I know that you don't believe that you're doing your best, that you think you can do better. I know you are doing better than you think.

I know that when you look at your child, your children, you see yourself. And I know that you don't, that you see a stranger who can't understand why the small details of childhood that were so important to you are a bother to this small person who resembles you.

I know that you want to throw a lamp at your teenager's head sometimes. I know you want to toss your 3-year-old out the window once in a while.

I know that some nights, once it's finally quiet, you curl up in bed and cry. I know that sometimes, you don't, even though you wanted to.

I know that some days are so hard that all you want is for them to end, and then at bedtime your children hug you and kiss you and tell you how much they love you and want to be like you, and you wish the day could last forever.

But it never does. The day always ends, and the next day brings new challenges. Fevers, heartbreak, art projects, new friends, new pets, new fights. And every day you do what you need to do.

You take care of things, because that's your job. You go to work, or you fill up the crock pot, or you climb into the garden, or strap the baby to your back and pull out the vacuum cleaner.

You drop everything you're doing to moderate an argument over whose turn it is to use a specifically colored marker, or to kiss a boo-boo, or to have a conversation about what kind of lipstick Pinocchio's Mommy wears.

I know that you have tickle fights in blanket forts, and that you have the words to at least eight different picture books memorized. I've heard that you dance like a wild woman when it's just you and them. That you have no shame about farting or belching in their presence, that you make up goofy songs about peas and potatoes and cheese.

I know that an hour past bedtime, you drop what you're doing and trim the fingernail that your 3-year-old insists is keeping her up. I know that you stop cleaning dishes because your kids insist you need to join their tea party. I know you fed your kids PB&J for four days straight when you had the flu. I know that you eat leftover crusts over the sink while your kids watch "Super Why."

I know you didn't expect most of this. I know you didn't anticipate loving somebody so intensely, or loathing your post-baby body so much, or being so tired or being the mom you've turned out to be.

You thought you had it figured out. Or you were blind and terrified. You hired the perfect nanny. Or you quit your job and learned to assemble flat-packed baby furniture. You get confused by the conflict of feeling like nothing has changed since you were free and unfettered by children, and looking back on the choices you made as though an impostor was wearing your skin.

You're not a perfect mom. No matter how you try, no matter what you do. You will never be a perfect mom.

And maybe that haunts you. Or maybe you've made peace with it. Or maybe it was never a problem to begin with.

No matter how much you do, there is always more. No matter how little you do, when the day is over, your children are still loved. They still smile at you, believing you have magical powers to fix almost anything. No matter what happened at work, or at school, or in playgroup, you have still done everything in your power to ensure that the next morning will dawn and your children will be as happy, healthy, and wise as could possibly be hoped.

There's an old Yiddish saying: "There is one perfect child in the world, and every mother has it."

Unfortunately, there are no perfect parents. Your kids will grow up determined to be different than you. They will grow up certain that they won't make their kids take piano lessons, or they'll be more lenient, or more strict, or have more kids, or have fewer, or have none at all.

No matter how far from perfect you are, you are better than you think.

Someday your kids will be running around like crazy people at synagogue and concuss themselves on a hand rail, and somebody will still walk up to you and tell you what a beautiful family you have. You'll be at the park and your kids will be covered in mud and jam up to the elbows, smearing your car with sugary cement, and a pregnant lady will stop and smile at you wistfully.

No matter how many doubts you might have, you never need doubt this one thing: You are not perfect.

And that's good. Because really, neither is your child. And that means nobody can care for them the way you can, with the wealth of your understanding and your experience. Nobody knows what your child's squall means, or what their jokes mean, or why they are crying better than you do.

And since no mother is perfect, chances are you are caught in a two billion way tie for Best Mom in the World.

Congratulations, Best Mom in the World. You're not perfect.

You are as good as anybody can get.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lea-grover/dear-less-than-perfect-mom_b_3184445.html?ir=Parents&utm_campaign=021915&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-parents&utm_content=FullStory&ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

Blocks, Play, Screen Time And The Infant Mind

Courtesy of Bing Nursery School
Our "Tools of the Trade" series is taking a look at some of the iconic objects that form a vital part of our educational lives. For an upcoming piece, I'm reporting on how young children learn through that most basic of preschool education tools: simple wooden blocks.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis has done extensive research on blocks and play, and haslectured on media and children. He is the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute. He's also a pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

We talked about the way young children learn and how their minds develop. He's not against digital education tools, but he says they have to be the right kind and age-appropriate. He is raising alarms that Americans are over-charging their infant's developing brains.

In a broad sense, your research seems to point to the fact that over-stimulation in children's brains is having a negative effect when it comes to fast-paced media. Is that accurate?

Right. Our brains evolved over millennia to process things that happen in real time. And by definition, anything that happens in the real world happens in real time. It wasn't really until the advent of modern media that we were able to speed things up and make them happen at a pace that is surreal. And even early media didn't do that. That's a relatively new phenomenon. In the case of infants, there was no infant television viewing prior to about 10 years ago. And we've seen an explosion since then. Today, 90 percent of children watch TV on a regular basis before the age of 2 — in spite of the fact that the American Academy of Pediatrics advises strongly against that.

And they do that, in a sense, and displace activities they previously did. In research we've done, the typical preschool child in the United States watches about 4 1/2 hours of television a day, and they're only awake for about 12 hours a day. So somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of their time is spent in front of a screen, [raising] the question of what are they not doing that they would otherwise be doing? What activities are being displaced? And much of those activities are traditional means of interacting with the environment and with adults. And blocks are a classic example of that.

Four-and-a-half hours a day! That's from research you guys have done, or others have?

No, it's from research we've done. It combines screen time at home and screen time in day care. Most of the studies to date have asked parents about how much their children watch at home. And, of course, most children in the United States are cared for during the day outside of their home. So you're missing all of that time. In fact, in the average home-based day care, children watch an additional two hours a day.

That seems alarming. And the idea that for an infant, lots of television and all the digital media options really are only a phenomenon of the last 10, 12 years?

That's right.

Can you compare children's television as it first started out versus what it is today? Are we getting that much more fast-paced? Are we getting much more digitally distracted?

We are. The pacing of all programs, both adult and child, has sped up considerably. Part of the reason for that is that the more rapidly sequenced the scenes, the more distracting it is. It's taxing to the brain to process things that happen so fast even though we're capable of doing it. And there's emerging science now in older children that watching such fast-paced programs diminishes what we call "executive function" immediately afterward. It tires the mind out and makes it not function as well immediately after viewing it.

It makes the mind not function as well in what sense? In making decisions? Processing information?

Processing information. The evaluations that are done afterward are of one's executive function, which is the measurement of high cortical functioning — things like remembering sequences of numbers, which requires you to concentrate. We see that after watching fast-paced shows, at least immediately afterward, children don't function as well. We don't see that with things like block play, reading or drawing, all of which happen in real time.

You did a randomized trial on building blocks, and you linked it to language assessment. Tell us about that.

In that experiment, we took 200 children, from a low-income environment, and we randomized them to two groups. One group got a set of large building blocks, that are intended for young children, at the beginning of study. And one got them at the end of the study, six months later. In the group that got the blocks at the beginning, we also gave parents a list of what we call "blocktivities." So these were simple ways to play with your child with blocks: stack the blocks, sort the blocks, divide them by color, etc. We had them keep daily diaries so we know how many kids played with blocks in a typical day.

Sixty-five of the children in the block group played with blocks on a typical day, compared with 9 percent in the control group. And most importantly, at 6 months, we looked at their language development.

And what we found was that the control group, those that did not get the blocks, scored in the 42nd percentile — meaning they were slightly below average. Which is unfortunately not uncommon for a low-income population. But the group that got the blocks scored in the 52nd percentile — so, slightly above average and significantly and clinically different from the control group.

So having blocks — and more importantly having activities that promote caregiver and child interaction — resulted in significant improvements in language over just a six-month period.

Is there something special about blocks? Or could it be any activity where the parent and child have to work together in simple, basic creation?

There is nothing special about blocks insofar as they provide an excellent platform for parents and children to engage with one another. But what is somewhat unique about blocks is that they're a great venue! Children love them and like to play with them both with their parents and on their own. In fact, in our study of blocks, what we found is that children played with their fathers much more with blocks than with their mothers.

The interesting thing about blocks is that, in one way, shape or form, they've probably existed for millennia. Long before anyone marketed such things, children probably built things with sticks and stones, and some children do that now anyways.

Blocks have never, ever, marketed themselves as an educational toy. For most parents, they've simply been something that was fun to do. And it's interesting because in today's climate there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of toys that make explicit claims that they are educational, that they will make your child smarter, or a young engineer or a poet. And the overwhelming majority of those products have no evidence whatsoever to make those assertions.

You're making a call to go back to old-school blocks and other creative play, but what about these digital tools? What do you say to skeptical, digitally savvy parents?

In medicine, we have a saying which says, "First do no harm," and I apply that to parenting as well. I'm a scientist as well as a parent, and I really believe that there is such a thing as evidence-based parenting. There are some things that we know that are good, and there are many things we have no information on at all. And there we have to rely on our best judgment. In the case of over-stimulation of digital media, this bombarding of young brains, we do have both a theoretical and an empirical foundation now to say that it is not good for children. At the same time, we have a very large body of literature that shows very clearly that traditional means of interacting with your child is exactly what they need for both the short term and the long term.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/02/12/385264747/q-a-blocks-play-screen-time-and-the-infant-mind?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150212

6 Words You Should Say Today

Very rarely does one sentence have immediate impact on me.

Very rarely does one sentence change the way I interact with my family.

But this one did. It was not from Henry Thoreau or some renowned child psychologist. It was invaluable feedback from children themselves. And if I've learned anything on my Hands Free journey, it is that children are the true experts when it comes to grasping what really matters in life.

Here are the words that changed it all:

"... college athletes were asked what their parents said that made them feel great, that amplified their joy during and after a ballgame. Their overwhelming response: 'I love to watch you play.'"

The life-changing sentence came at the beginning of an article entitled, "What Makes a Nightmare Sports Parent and What Makes a Great One," which described powerful insights gathered over three decades by Bruce E. Brown and Rob Miller of Proactive Coaching LLC. Although I finished reading the entire piece, my eyes went back and searched for that one particular sentence -- the one that said, "I love to watch you play."

I read the sentence exactly five times. Then I tried to remember the past conversations I had with my kids at the conclusion of their extracurricular activities. Upon completion of a swim meet, a music recital, a school musical, or even a Sunday afternoon soccer game, had I ever said, "I love to watch you play"?

I could think of many occasions when I encouraged, guided, complimented, and provided suggestions for improvement. Did that make me a nightmare sports parent? No, but maybe sometimes I said more than was needed.

By nature, I am a wordy person -- wordy on phone messages (often getting cut off by that intrusive beep) and wordy in writing (Twitter is not my friend).

And although I have never really thought about it, I'm pretty sure I'm wordy in my praise, too. I try not to criticize, but when I go into extensive detail about my child's performance it could be misinterpreted as not being "good enough."

Could I really just say, "I love to watch you play," and leave it at that? And if I did, would my children stand there clueless at the next sporting event or musical performance because I had failed to provide all the extra details the time before?

Well, I would soon find out. As luck would have it, my then-8-year-old daughter had a swim meet the day after I read the article.

Her first event was the 25-yard freestyle. At the sound of the buzzer, my daughter exploded off the blocks and effortlessly streamlined beneath the water for an excruciating amount of time. Her sturdy arms, acting as propellers, emerged from the water driving her body forward at lightning speed. She hadn't even made it halfway down the lane when I reached up to wipe away the one small tear that formed in the corner of my eye.

Since my older daughter began swimming competitively several years ago, I have always had this same response to her first strokes in the first heat: I cry and turn away so no one sees my blubbering reaction.

I cry not because she's going to come in first.

I cry not because she's a future Olympian or scholarship recipient.

I cry because she's healthy; she's strong; she's capable.

And I cry because I love to watch her swim.

Oh my. Those six words... I love to watch her swim.

I had always felt that way -- tearing up at every meet, but I hadn't said it in so many words... or should I say, in so few words.

After the meet, my daughter and I stood in the locker room together, just the two of us. I wrapped a warm, dry towel around her shivering shoulders. And then I looked into her eyes and said, "I love to watch you swim. You glide so gracefully; you amaze me. I just love to watch you swim."

Okay, so it wasn't quite six words, but it was a huge reduction in what I normally would have said. And there was a reaction -- a new reaction to my end of the swim meet "pep talk."

My daughter slowly leaned into me, resting her damp head against my chest for several seconds, and expelled a heavy sigh. And in doing so, I swear I could read her mind:

The pressure's off. She just loves to watch me swim; that is all.

I knew I was onto something.

Several days later, my then-5-year-old daughter had ukulele practice. It was a big day for her. The colored dots that lined the neck of her instrument since she started playing almost two years ago were going to be removed. Her instructor believed she was ready to play without the aid of the stickers.

After removing the small blue, yellow, and red circles, her instructor asked her to play the song she had been working on for months -- Taylor Swift's "Ours." With no hesitation, my daughter began strumming and singing. I watched as her fingers adeptly found their homes -- no need for colorful stickers to guide them.

With a confident smile, my daughter belted out her favorite line, "Don't you worry your pretty little mind; people throw rocks at things that shine... "

As her small, agile fingers maneuvered the strings with ease, I had to look away. My vision blurred by the tears that formed. In fact, this emotional reaction happens every time she gets to that line of the song. Every. Single. Time.

I cry not because she has perfect pitch.

I cry not because she is a country music star in the making.

I cry because she is happy; she has a voice; and she is free.

And I cry because I love to watch her play.

I'll be darned if I hadn't told her this in so many words... or rather, in so few words.

My child and I exited the room upon the completion of her lesson. As we walked down the empty hallway, I knew what needed to be said.

I bent down, and looking straight into her blue eyes sheltered behind pink spectacles I said, "I love to watch you play your ukulele. I love to hear you sing."

It went against my grain to not elaborate, but I said nothing about the dots, nothing about the notes, and nothing about her pitch. This was a time to simply leave it at that.

My child's face broke into her most glorious smile -- the one that causes her eyes to scrunch up and become little slices of joy. And then she did something I didn't expect. She threw herself against me, wrapped her arms tightly around my neck, and whispered, "Thank you, Mama."

And in doing so, I swear I could read her mind:

The pressure's off. She loves to hear me play; that is all.

Given the overwhelmingly positive reactions of my daughters when presented with the short and sweet "I love to watch you play" remark, I knew I had a new mantra. Not that I would say it like a robot upon command or without reason, but I would say it when I felt it -- when tears come unexpectedly to my eyes or when suddenly I look down and see goose bumps on my arms.

Pretty soon I found myself saying things like:

"I love to hear you read."

"I love to watch you swing across the monkey bars."

"I love to watch you hold roly poly bugs so gently in your hand."

"I love to watch you help your friends in need."

I quickly realized how important it was to express that heart-palpitating kind of love that comes solely from observing someone you adore in action.

But there was more. I learned that this powerful phrase is not exclusive to children and teens.

This revelation hit me when my husband, donned with white bandage on his arm from giving blood, was hoisting a large trash bag as we cleaned the art room at a center for residents with autism.

I watched him from the corner of the room where I was dusting shelves with my younger daughter. Embarrassingly, I had to turn away so no one saw me tear up. In that moment, I reflected on other recent events where I had been going about my business and had to stop to take pause. Moments when I stopped to watch my husband in action simply to admire the loving person, the devoted husband, and caring father he is.

But had I ever told him in so few words?

It was time.

And since writing is much easier for me than speaking, I immediately wrote my observations down. There were no long-winded paragraphs or flowery descriptions, just words of love, plain and simple:

I love watching you help our daughter learn to roller skate.

I love watching you teach her how to throw the football.

I love watching you take care of your employees in times of need or uncertainty.

I love watching you interact with your brother and sister.

I love watching you read side by side with our daughter.

I love watching you take care of our family.

I typed up his note and left it on his dresser. I didn't stand around to see his reaction because that was not the purpose of this loving gesture. I felt those things, so I knew I should tell him those things.

When simply watching someone makes your heart feel as if it could explode right out of your chest, you really should let that person know.

It is as simple and lovely as that.

HuffPost Parents <dailybrief@huffingtonpost.com>

How mindfulness can change your life

How can mindfulness change your life Jon Kabat Zin talks about how it works.
 https://sites.google.com/site/healthi... The history of clinical stress Jon Kabat Zinn (click subtitles for the French version) The Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society is a visionary force and global leader in mind-body medicine. For thirty years, we have pioneered the integration of mindfulness meditation and other approaches based on mindfulness in traditional medicine and health through patient care, academic medical research and vocational training, and in society in general through various outreach initiatives and public service. Directed by Saki F. Santorelli, EDD, MA, since 2000 and founded in 1995 by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., of the Centre is an outgrowth of the famous Stress Reduction Clinic - the oldest and the largest university medical centre based on the reduction of stress in the world. Association for the Development of Mindfulnesshttp://www.association-mindfulness.org 
https://sites.google.com/site/healthi...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2iYp...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZikN0...

For when you doubt yourself as a parent

When You Feel Like You Don't Make a Difference, Remember This

The way your child's eyes light up when you pick him up from school.

How you know just the right way to tuck sheets up and where to put the kisses good night.

The infinite number of toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, or anything else that needed to be replaced that you replaced without announcing to everyone you replaced them again.

The silly pictures that you take with them just because.

The time you wouldn't leave the doctor's office until you had an answer.

The hours spent scouring the Internet trying to find an answer.

The parenting books that collect dust on your shelf because you don't need them anymore.

All the shirts with spit-up on the shoulders and snotty nose wipes left there because you just hugged them when they needed you.

How you stay up late and wash clothes that are needed for the next morning.

The hours pacing around and around and around with a colicky baby.

The hours spent trying to figure out how to deal with a colicky baby.

Push after push after push on the swings at the park.

How you can MacGyver almost anything.

The projects helped with -- science, history, book reports, star student posters and on and on and on and on -- and how you almost kept your patience the entire time.

All the board games, Legos, dolls and other things you played again and again.

When you felt alone or tired and just wanted to stay home, and you still loaded them in the car and drove and drove and drove.

The times cleaning the wrappers, junk, paper and everything else from the car that just gets left.

All the beds you've cleaned underneath.

That you have the passwords to every kid site memorized.

That you remembered to write down the ones you forgot.

All the questions you have answered.

Let me repeat that -- all the millions of questions you have answered that begin with why.

All the times you've uttered just one bite or just one try or just one pedal, or any time you've worked and worked and worked to help them learn.

The shirts tucked, coats buttoned, shoes tied and pants zipped.

Your hand in their hand as you cross the street.

You running behind a bike as they finally get their courage, leaving you in the dust yelling look up look up and you did it you really did it!!

The knees bandaged under your hands.

The tears wiped away and hands in your face and words of you can do itagain said.

Your hand in their hand as you say goodbye and leave them at a college thousands of miles from home.

The times you've snuck in and just watched them sleep.

All the books, toys and things that are all over your home and make a mess but make you a family.

The tears that you've shed behind the bathroom door.

The tears that you've shed in the car.

The tears that you've shed standing at the sink while someone pulls at your leg.

The tears that you've shed because you want to be a good mom.

How only you can find the missing item that vanished.

The notes written to the teacher.

The times spent sitting in a chair meant for a 7-year-old across from their teacher.

The times spent filling out college applications when you felt brave.

All the balls thrown, piano keys pressed, markers colored and other times spent investing in them.

The worry.

All the toilets scrubbed, hair pulled from drains, vomit cleaned and other gross tasks that you just do.

The fact that dandelions (or any flowers really) are picked and given to you.

The fact that you put those dandelions above your sink.

The sweet hugs in the morning as you wake your slumbering little ones.

That even when they're old, when they're sick, they still just want mom.

That you show them the rainbow every time after it storms.

The times you sit at the table helping with homework and it feels like torture but you just sit there.

When you give extra food because they're still hungry even though you'll be hungry.

The patience it takes to grocery shop with a toddler in tow.

The super duper patience it takes to grocery shop with a toddler and a newborn in tow.

The extra super super patience it takes to shop with a tween.

All the times cooking in the kitchen, making dinner out of nothing.

Haircuts, nail trims, baths, and all that grooming stuff.

The times you sit in the haircut place and tear up when your 5-year-old returns looking so much older.

How your hug and kiss makes whatever get better.

The times you curled up in that toddler bed when they had a bad dream.

How you sleep half asleep in case they wake up and call your name.

The lack of sleep that you've learned to survive through.

That you're the only one who can pack lunches and get them ready and out the door in 8.3 minutes if needed.

The times sitting on the sidelines.

The times when you say I believe in you, when they had forgotten how awesome they truly are.

The courage to deal with slammed doors and "I hate you"s and all of that hard stuff.

All the times when you stay up late, waiting waiting waiting for them to return.

All the days spent worrying, trying, stumbling and trying again.

The fact that on their phones you're the only one labeled mom.

All the clothes that you've made go from inside-out to right-side-in.

The "I love you"s said over and over and over.

The fact that you are the only one in the whole world your kids call mom.

That even though this list is full of normal, it is extraordinary.

You make a difference.

Don't ever doubt that.

You. Are. Wonderful.

~Rachel

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachel-m-martin/when-you-feel-like-you-dont-make-a-difference-remember-this_b_6622862.html?ir=Parents&utm_campaign=020615&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-parents&utm_content=Title&ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

Why the modern world is bad for your brain

"Our brains are busier than ever before. We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting. At the same time, we are all doing more. Thirty years ago, travel agents made our airline and rail reservations, salespeople helped us find what we were looking for in shops, and professional typists or secretaries helped busy people with their correspondence. Now we do most of those things ourselves. We are doing the jobs of 10 different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favourite TV shows.

Our smartphones have become Swiss army knife–like appliances that include a dictionary, calculator, web browser, email, Game Boy, appointment calendar, voice recorder, guitar tuner, weather forecaster, GPS, texter, tweeter, Facebook updater, and flashlight. They’re more powerful and do more things than the most advanced computer at IBM corporate headquarters 30 years ago. And we use them all the time, part of a 21st-century mania for cramming everything we do into every single spare moment of downtime. We text while we’re walking across the street, catch up on email while standing in a queue – and while having lunch with friends, we surreptitiously check to see what our other friends are doing. At the kitchen counter, cosy and secure in our domicile, we write our shopping lists on smartphones while we are listening to that wonderfully informative podcast on urban beekeeping."

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world-bad-for-brain-daniel-j-levitin-organized-mind-information-overload

The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains

http://brainz.org/10-most-toxic-places-earth/

"Forty-one million IQ points. That’s what Dr. David Bellinger determined Americans have collectively forfeited as a result of exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides. In a 2012 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, compared intelligence quotients among children whose mothers had been exposed to these neurotoxins while pregnant to those who had not. Bellinger calculates a total loss of 16.9 million IQ points due to exposure to organophosphates, the most common pesticides used in agriculture.

Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified."

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/