My father went to medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in the 1940’s at a time when there were some really distinguished physicians walking in the halls such as Hans Selye (the originator of the concept of ”stress”) and Wilder Penfield, who did a series of amazing experiments with surgery for epilepsy which...Read More

I’ve just returned from Monterrey, Mexico where I keynoted the 19th Encuentro Internacional de Educacion Inicial y Preescolar (International Meeting of Initial & Preschool Education).  This conference is hosted by the Centro de Desarrollo Infantil or Center for Child Development (CENDI), a network of public educational centers that offers comprehensive services for children in high...Read More

Increasingly we’re seeing early childhood education programs veering toward formal academic learning.  This is a distressing trend, inasmuch as it makes young children do things (formal reading and math, computer instruction) that they are not developmentally ready for, and that take precious time away from letting children be children.  There are no critical periods in...Read More