bodhi tree swaying

On Monday, the processing of Maia’s citizenship papers came through. The nice people at Homeland Security gave her an American flag.

Cognitive Daily reports that boys who watch violent children’s programming while toddlers (and we’re talking Disney here, not Texas Chainsaw Massacre) are four times as likely at age 7-9 to be in the top 10% of boys with behavioral problems.

…toddlers who are allowed to watch entertainment shows (as opposed to educational TV, and including violent shows) are significantly more likely to develop attention problems when they’re older.

But does violent TV have other impacts? In a separate study, the same researchers — Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman — took a look at the same 1997 survey results and a 2002 follow up of families with small children (330 kids in all). The kids were age 18 months to 5 years old in 1997. This time in addition to TV-watching, the researchers looked at parents’ reports of antisocial behavior of their kids when they were older. The parents rated their kids

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To be honest, I could keep milking my Ethiopia photographs for several years’ worth of Wordless Wednesday posts. This one is of some kids who were fishing off a pier in Awassa, not far from from the motel (more like a hostel) where we were staying. Our driver was very wary about us going for unescorted walks, but we always felt completely safe in Ethiopia. The people there are very friendly and respectful and very few people beg, with the exception of the children. The kids, to their credit, usually start by asking for pens, which they need for school. Next time I go back to Ethiopia I’m going to buy a big box of pens locally so that I can hand them out. Many of the children know a little English — enough to ask for a pen, and maybe to explain that they are very poor and need …

This is a picture of some kids I photographed in Ethiopia. This was taken in a small town south of Awassa, where another couple, Stacey and Eric, were meeting the surviving family of the two girls they were adopting. People in Ethiopia generally are very leery about getting their pictures taken. The children are an exception! Even kids who’ve never seen their picture before are natural posers!

Gary Cross, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University, and the author of “Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood” looks at Mattel’s recall of China-made toys in today’s New York Times and argues that it may be time to “rethink the decision to allow the unrestricted advertising and cartoon promotion of toy lines that has produced year-round marketing and piles of plastic toys, bought and soon discarded.”

“After all,” he says, “we ought to be just as concerned about the impact of character licensing and toy advertising on our children’s psyche as we are on protecting them from ingesting leaded paint and magnets.”

He gives an interesting overview of the evolution of the toy industry, showing how the number of toys based on licensed characters (easily promoted in film and in TV programs that are essentially extended ads) shot from 10% in 1980 to 60% …