Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments. Alison Gopnik More Quotes by Alison Gopnik More Quotes From Alison Gopnik I'm afraid the parenting advice to come out of developmental psychology is very boring: pay attention to your kids and love them. Alison Gopnik psychology advice kids Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention. Alison Gopnik technology mother play What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos. Alison Gopnik motivation inspiration baby We know that kids who grow up in an environment of warmth and support will thrive and function in whatever environment they find themselves. What we need to do is to do more to help poor kids have such an environment. Alison Gopnik support growing-up kids From an evolutionary perspective children are, literally, designed to learn. Childhood is a special period of protected immaturity. It gives the young breathing time to master the things they will need to know in order to survive as adults. Alison Gopnik breathing order children Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways. Alison Gopnik data children ideas Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society. Alison Gopnik caring attitude children Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren. Alison Gopnik grandmother advice children Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental. Alison Gopnik adults teaching fundamentals The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either. Alison Gopnik blank stones brain The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans. Alison Gopnik computer powerful inspiring We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene. Alison Gopnik teenage culture children Owning our past allows us to own our future. Alison Gopnik our-past our-future past I think, at the end of the century we'll have a generation of parents and a generation of children who won't have had the deep satisfactions of being parents and being children in the way that they might have and are going to spend a lot of time fretting and worrying and being hovered over for nothing. The question isn't so much "What will happen in the long run?" but "What's happening to people's lives right now?" Alison Gopnik running children thinking If you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the kind of adult you wanted. There's almost this kind of competitive enterprise. That picture is the picture I think people often imply when they use the word "parenting". Alison Gopnik children people thinking You read a bunch of books and you get a bunch of how-tos, and you take a bunch of classes and you learn a bunch of techniques. You set yourself goals and benchmarks. I think people have imported that into their experience of taking care of children. Alison Gopnik book children thinking Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions. Alison Gopnik teaching play children We don't measure the quality of our other relationships by how well the other person turns out, for instance whether my husband is a better person after 10 years than he was when I first met him. Alison Gopnik quality husband years Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer. Alison Gopnik phone-calls phones mail All of us gardeners know that nothing comes out the way you planned. It's a different garden every year, and it's always sort of different from what you were thinking when you began. What it really means to be a good gardener is to work hard to produce an ecosystem that will have enough diversity, enough possibilities, so it's robust, and it's resilient, and it can change when the seasons change. And that kind of robust, unexpected, variable, messy system - that's what you want to create when you're having children, too. Alison Gopnik hard-work mean children
