swissmiss

“Every infant is born adorable but selfish and the center of the universe,” she replied. It’s a parent’s job to teach that “there are other people, and other people have feelings.”
The conversations that every pediatrician has, over and over, about “limit setting” and “consistently praising good behavior” are conversations about manners. And when you are in the exam room with a child who seems to have none, you begin to wonder what is going on at home and at school, and questions of family dysfunction or neurodevelopmental problems begin to cross your mind.

Making Room for Miss Manners Is a Parenting Basic, by Perri Klass, M.D

Alas, convenient as it might be, we can’t blame the children. “There’s no such thing as a spoiled gene,” says parenting expert Michele Borba, author of Don’t Give Me That Attitude! “The brat factor is all learned.” Which means that if you’re the dad pushing Junior around in a limited-edition Bugaboo stroller by Bas Kosters ($2,000), carrying a Louis Vuitton diaper bag ($1,380), and checking in at a members-only parenting club like Citi-babes in Manhattan (annual membership: $2,000), your offspring are probably developing some serious entitlement issues. Just read the news. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the rise of sixth-grade “fashion bullies” who terrorize peers who don’t wear Junior Dolce & Gabbana. Then there was the New York Times article on youngsters—4-year-olds!—who fancy themselves collectors of highly coveted works of art.

Are You Raising a Douchebag? by David Hochman

(thank you Keren)

Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea. Interesting TimesOnline Article by Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods

UPDATE: Google disagrees.

(via jakehimself twitter)