She cites cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, author of The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads and the father of four children. Digital kids “have less patience for being bored,” says Willingham. “What I think that all the digital activities have in common is that, with very little effort from me, something interesting happens. And if I’m bored, another interesting experience is very easy to obtain.” Willingham said it’s a mistake for

In the middle of an “Ask Polly” column on dating, Heather Havrilesky unleashed her hatred of “the never-ending scourage of dioramas . . . that drain your time “and your will to live, and for what? So your kid learns that clay figures fall to pieces once they’re fully dry?” Her husband, a professor of education who “fixates on the stupidity of these things,” refuses to help their daughter build dioramas. That leaves me to coach my kid. And honestly, sometimes I just want to te

Parents value structured activities over free play, according to a Gallup survey, “despite research associating unstructured, child-led play with self-confidence, social skills, and resilience,” reports NetNewsLedger. The Melissa & Doug toy company funded the poll. Parents of children 10 and under estimate their children average 19 to 21 hours per week watching media or playing on electronic devices, but only 15 to 17 hours of screen-free indoor play. Only one in five parents

The Internet isn’t changing kids’ brains, writes cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham in an excerpt from The Reading Mind on Education Next. He sees no evidence that tech-loving young people can’t sustain their attention. Their apparent distractibility is an unwillingness to tolerate boredom. “It’s an expectation that I should always have something interesting to listen to, watch, or read, and that creating an interesting experience should require little effort,” Willingh