The gist of the discussion on the blog was this: Some parents felt that facilitating a child’s belief in Santa was nothing short of deception, and that it would lead to anger and feelings of mistrust and betrayal when the child eventually learned the truth. Others saw real value in creating a magical Santa experience for their children, believing that it presents a developmentally-appropriate way for children to engage in make-believe and fantasy.

I knew where I stood; I remember well how magical a time the holidays were for me as a child, how much of a thrill I got on Christmas Eve as I climbed into bed hoping I’d fall asleep before Santa arrived on my block.  And I remember being extremely disappointed when I learned that it was all pretend, although I certainly didn’t feel betrayed. But I was curious—Had anyone actually approached this from a scientific perspective? Was there research on children’s reactions to learning there is no Santa?

As it turns out, there is, albeit very little. The one empirical article I found (by Carl Anderson and Norman Prentice) interviewed children who used to believe in Santa about their reactions to finding out that he didn’t exist after all. The children admitted to feeling sad, angry, and disappointed—but those feelings were short-lived, and they were not severe. About half of the children interviewed found out the truth on their own, with another third being told by their parents—and for most children, the realization was a gradual one. What I found most interesting was that many of the children reported mixed feelings about discovering the truth, including relief. Their parents, on the other hand, reported almost no positive feelings about their children’s discovery, and were mainly just plain sad about it.

This was a small study, and as far as I can tell it hasn’t been replicated. But it made me feel a little bit better about my child-deceiving, trust-busting holiday parenting decisions. I hope it does the same for yours.

Now if someone would only design a study to measure the traumatic effects of forcing children to sit on Santa’s lap for a photo op….



I thought I would share here some of what I have learned about this topic. It’s sobering, but reminds us of the importance of prevention and intervention programs aimed at stopping the cycle of poverty. Much of this information comes from the National Center on Family Homelessness and empirical research conducted by experts in child development.

Effects of Homelessness on Child Development

• Internalizing behaviors, such as anxiety/depression, social withdrawal, somatic complaints
• Peer rejection and social ostracism
• Homeless children are self-critical and have low self-esteem
• Among adolescents, prostitution, drug use, and other forms of delinquency are common—which means that homeless teens often end up incarcerated.

Effects on School Achievement

• Less than 25% of Oklahoma’s homeless teens graduate from high school.
• The test scores of Oklahoma’s homeless children are far below those of middle-income kids.
• Homeless children are far more likely to be retained at least one school year (often more than one).
• Most homeless kids are below grade-level in reading and math.

One of the primary causes of these achievement-related outcomes is that homeless children are simply not in school regularly. The transient nature of a homeless family means that it’s difficult to keep a child registered in their (ever-changing) neighborhood school. Homeless parents are more likely to allow their children to stay out of school because of how difficult it is to keep them enrolled and attending. As a result, their children fall farther and farther behind—which means that when they eventually secure permanent housing and can enroll their children in school again, their children have fallen far below grade-level and cannot keep up with their peers. The frustration, embarrassment, and incredible academic challenge that results can lead to chronic academic underperformance, and eventually to complete school drop-out.

The solution to this enormous social problem is obviously complex and multi-faceted. But it has been incredibly encouraging and rewarding to be involved with an organization that’s changing the lives of homeless children, one family at a time. If you’re in the OKC area and looking to devote some time or money to a worthy cause, please visit Positive Tomorrow’s website and contact their executive director or volunteer coordinator.

I'm still working to rebuild some of the content, and unfortunately the hundreds of comments are lost forever. But I hope to be back in the swing of things and blogging regularly within a few more days.

But if you’re looking for a chance to make a difference in the lives of children–look no further.

Positive Tomorrows is a nonprofit school for homeless and at-risk children in Oklahoma City, and it needs your support. Check out the website, read the story of this amazing school, and try not to cry. (Not easy.) Click Donate. (Much easier.)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I serve on the Board of Directors for the school, but if you think they’re paying me to post this, you clearly have no idea how badly the economy has affected nonprofits!

Why are you still here? Go, read, give them some money!

I was at Starbucks today to meet and friend and colleague for coffee, and I happened to glance at a newspaper while waiting for my friend. And I saw another one–a story about a six-month-old who was shaken to death by her father, because, as he explained, she was resisting his attempts to get her dressed.

Expectant parents all know that babies cry. What’s hard to imagine pre-parenthood is how persistently they can sometimes cry. How uncooperative they can be. How angry the cries can sound. And how frustrating and maddening the crying can be, especially after hours and hours of it. I experienced this with my own daughter. Lily was not much of a crier, but she had her nights, and she was never a very good sleeper. Which meant a lot of nights spent trying–for hours–to rock her, nurse her, and soothe her to sleep, despite her protestations, wiggling, and fussing. There were moments I thought I would lose my mind.

I didn’t know there was a National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome until today, when I started Googling in an effort to find out what kinds of resources are available to parents who feel like they’re losing control. I’ve felt that scary feeling, but I always felt that my awareness of what shaking could do to a baby–something I can’t bring myself to describe here, but is detailed on the Center’s website–helped keep me in line. I knew that no matter how out-of-control I felt, there was nothing Lily could do that would make me risk hurting her that badly, much less losing her completely. I have that information; I know the risks, and they’re sobering when you’re standing in the middle of a nursery at 3 a.m. with a screaming baby in your arms. But today, I started wondering how many people truly realize how fragile an infant’s brain is, how much damage even a relatively nonviolent shaking can do to it. I wondered how many parents even realized the risks to shaking their child.

So, I don’t know how many people will read this post and visit the Center’s website. But if you’re a parent of an infant or toddler, or think you might be a parent somewhere down the road, do me a favor and look over the site, will you? I want people to hear this information playing over and over again in their heads when they feel that their babies are pushing them to the limit. It won’t take long, I promise.

Thanks.

The day before the conference officially starts is reserved for “preconference events”—usually mini-conferences or meetings of researchers and students in smaller subfields or interest groups. My students and I regularly attend the Peer Relations Preconference, which is a relatively large (300+ attendees this year) meeting that includes brief talks by leading researchers in the field, breakout discussion groups, and a social hour.

One of the breakout sessions I attended (and co-led with my colleague Phil Rodkin) turned toward a discussion of popularity in different cultures. Most published research of popularity among children and adolescents is based on US, Canadian, or Dutch research samples, so our understanding of the social dynamics is limited to those in relatively similar cultures.

However, we do have evidence, for example, that in Hong Kong, popularity is based on academic achievement, rather than looks, possessions, or social savvy the way it often is here. The kids who would be geeks here are the cool kids in China. So we know it’s not universal—there are cultural factors at play that provide a context in which dominance and popularity develop.

One member of the discussion group, a woman from Portugal, expressed real surprise that American (among other) teenagers give power to peers who are aggressive. The rest of the group, of course, wanted to know what makes adolescents popular in Portugal. Turns out that in Portugal, it’s the friendly, outgoing, and engaging students that people look up to. (When asked what teens would call an attractive, well-dressed person who looked down on, manipulated, or hurt others physically or socially, she responded with “An ass!” It was a great discussion. I love my job.)

Now, it’s important to remember that this is just one person’s perspective—we might ask nine other friends from Portugal and get nine different definitions of “popular.” But my point is, there are other cultures in which the cool kids really are cool, in the totally embarrassing geeky adult definition of the word. (Or, at least, my totally embarrassing geeky adult definition of the word. What I wouldn’t give for my lovely teenaged niece to long to be valedictorian, for example.)

What is it about US culture that drives kids to ascribe power to mean people at least some of the time? Surely it can’t be as simple as the clothes they wear. (Right?) Scholarship that investigates the cultural underpinnings of popularity is relatively lacking in our field (and books like Milner’s Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids that are written from other perspectives are definitely worth a read). I hope that as more and more people like my colleague from Portugal speak up, we’ll begin to consider the role of culture more carefully in our research. The peer microculture that young people create for themselves obviously doesn’t develop without adult input, so in some ways we’re responsible for their social dynamics. It’s not a comforting thought, but it’s worth thinking about. We may be setting our kids up to value things we really wish they didn’t.

Many of my visitors find this site by searching for things like “relational aggression” and “What is popularity?”. But running a very close third is the phrase “how to beat someone up” and its variations. I suppose the posts about bullying match that phrase well enough to land them here.

I know this is naive, but a part of me hopes that when they do land here, they look around long enough to read about the damage that bullying does and how serious a problem it is. I know, I know….But I can hope, right?

Children: Recess Found to Improve Behavior

The article summarizes a large study showing that children who received at least a 15-minute recess during the school day scored lower on teacher-rated behavior problems than children who received no break or a break of less than 15 minutes. (A brief summary of the article in Pediatrics can be found here. The full article is available for a fee.) The researchers highlight that children’s relatively short attention spans and their need to burn off energy necessitate recess for both cognitive and social reasons.

I don’t disagree with the authors–anyone who has tried to keep a child (or 25) cooped up inside all day, especially with no down time, knows what a counterproductive idea it is to do away with recess, especially if improving learning has anything to do with why it’s being eliminated.

I’m also reminded, though, of the research by colleagues like Wendy Craig, Debra Pepler, and Dorothy Espelage, who have shown that the majority of bullying episodes at school take place during unstructured time (recess, lunch), at least in elementary school. It’s especially bad when large groups of children recess at the same time, and there aren’t enough teachers or other adults supervising the play. Craig and Pepler, in their famous observational study of bullying on the playground, found that adults intervened in only 4% of bullying episodes–even though the bullies and victims were right there in sight. It’s not that the teachers were ignoring the bullying. But there were too many children for them to effectively manage, the play areas were often very large and difficult to police, and the children were too good at hiding the bullying (by engaging in verbal, covert, or relationally aggressive acts).

Now, I’m a fan of recess–If I get to take a break to run across the street for a Diet Coke every morning, 8-year-olds should get a chance to recharge, too. But kids obviously need adequate supervision and structure. Recess should be scheduled in a way that maximizes the adult-to-child ratio on the playground. The lunch room should have more than a bare minimum of adults present–and they should circulate.

Children also deserve options. Recess and lunchtime are a nightmare for children who are chronically victimized. They’re sitting ducks. If they’d like to “opt out” of recess, they should be able to (by visiting the library, working on homework, or, for teens, volunteering in the front office).

For those who are still not convinced that kids need recess, though, there’s a bright side. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) 15 minutes is all it seems to take. In the study linked above, the children who had at least a 15-minute recess were better behaved in the classroom than the children who received less playtime than that, but there were no increasing benefits beyond that 15 minutes. In other words, kids who got 30 minutes “off” were no better behaved than the kids who got their measly 15. Surely schools can spare 15 minutes, right?

The article (linked here) reviews exciting cases in which children “recovered” from autism–those who had met criteria for an autism spectrum disorder at one point, but after some period of behavioral intervention, no longer met the criteria.

One thing I found particularly exciting about the article was that the authors also identify certain child characteristics (like relatively high intelligence) that predict recovery. As they note, many children who receive treatment of some type don’t recover–so there have to be other factors at play in the recovery process.

For those of you in the OU community, Beth will present some of her research involving children with autism next Friday, Feb. 20 at 12:30 in Dale Hall Tower, Room 905.

One of those professional “nonessentials” that I’ve mostly given up on is trying hard to cultivate a richer professional atmosphere for myself and my graduate students, in terms of surrounding us with as much developmental psychology as possible. In departments where there are multiple developmental psychologists on faculty, there’s a regular exchange of discipline-specific ideas and research via regular “brown bag” talks, seminars, and visiting speakers. Faculty and students get a broader perspective on what’s happening in the field, they’re exposed to new theories and research methods, and the exchange of ideas can be inspirational and motivating.

I actually am wending my way toward a point, so bear with me. In my five-ish years in my department, there has been one talk by a visiting developmental psychologist–my own advisor, Toon Cillessen, whom I invited to speak at our weekly “Lunch Bunch” series. I remember how great it felt to see someone talking about my own field, how I finally felt connected to the research being presented. But that was something like four years ago! I haven’t invited anybody since. It was one of those things that got swept away in the tide of things that had to get done, or else. (Translation: Inviting speakers to your department doesn’t exactly count toward tenure.)

This semester we have two developmental psychologists coming to campus to give talks. One is my dear friend Beth Kelley of Queen’s University in Ontario, who studies cognitive and language development in children with autism. This one landed in my lap. Beth planned a trip down to OK to visit my family and me, and she offered–offered!!–to give a talk to my department while she was here.

The second speaker is Linda Smith of Indiana University, the celebrated cognitive scientist who has devoted her career to understanding cognitive and language development in infants and young children. Along with Esther Thelen, Dr. Smith revolutionized the way our field approaches the study of cognitive and motor development with their books and papers on dynamic systems theory.

So, to get to the point: I’m practically giddy. I had no idea that the chance to see two developmental scientists that I respect and admire give talks on my own campus would create such glee, but there it is. My big insight for this week–a professional kick in the pants–is the sense that it probably wouldn’t be all that hard to invite a colleague in the field to give a talk here now and then. It would benefit my students and my department, surely–but it would also benefit me. I need a richer professional environment if I’m going to thrive as a scientist, too. I need inspiration and motivation as much as anyone else. I need to keep up with advancements in my field so that I’m a better scientist and a better teacher. I need every chance to connect to my field. It was easy to let this slide over the last few years, but I don’t think that’s going to work anymore. Sometimes it turns out that the nonessentials aren’t as nonessential as I thought.

Details about the talks:

Beth Kelley speaks on “Social Cognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Across Development” on Friday, February 20 at 12:30. The talk takes place in Dale Hall Tower, Room 905 (9th floor) as part of the Department of Psychology’s Lunch Bunch series.

Linda Smith speaks on “Grounding Toddler Learning in Sensory-Motor Dynamics” on Monday, March 9, from 4-5:30. The talk will take place at the Stephenson Research and Technology Center on Jenkins Avenue.