On Being a Baby

children are like the R&D department of the human species. They???re the ones who are always learning about the world. But if you???re always learning, imagining, and finding out, you need a kind of freedom that you don???t have if you???re actually making things happen in the world. And when you???re making things happen, it helps if those actions are based on all of the things you have learned and imagined. The way that evolution seems to have solved this problem is by giving us this period of childhood where we don???t have to do anything, where we are completely useless. We???re free to explore the physical world, as well as possible worlds through imaginative play. And when we???re adults, we can use that information to actually change the world.

via seedmagazine.com via mocost

On the topic of Children's Day, some up to the minute research-fueled developmental psychology thinking about just what it is like to really be a child, and no, not some cheap faux inner-child, but the real thing, the real McCoy, the real child. And why is it they are the very strange little creatures that they are, and why might Nature find them being this way is so important to its Humanity.

Kodomo no Hi (Children's Day)

Kodomo no Hi (??????????????? ,meaning "Children's Day") is a Japanese national holiday which takes place annually on May 5, the fifth day of the fifth month, and is part of the Golden Week. It is a day set aside to respect children's personalities and to celebrate their happiness.

via en.wikipedia.org

Traditional celebration of Kodomo no Hi includes the annual marking of the posts with the height of each child, which around here is probably easier than trying to hoist a family of carp up the flagpole. The Festival marks the edge of summer, the original name literally meaning "the edge of five" which I'll wager is a term instantly understandable to any four year old.

common sense about school lunches

Ann Cooper talks school lunches: "Speaking at the 2007 EG conference, 'renegade lunch lady' Ann Cooper talks about the looming forecast that today's kids will be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, and our subsequent waking up to a revolution in the way kids eat at school -- local, sustainable, seasonal and even educational food.

"Ann Cooper cares -- a lot -- what kids eat for lunch. As the head of nutrition for Berkeley, California, schools, she serves organic, regionally sourced and sustainable meals to lots of lucky schoolkids. Ann Cooper believes we were feeding our kids a path to our extinction, and has set out to change our thinking about school lunches.

"We send these kids to school to learn. When we send them there to eat bad food, that's what they learn ... and what's happening is our kids are getting sick."

Here's an example: What if, Ann asks, "what if we had lunchtime recess before the meal?" eh? eh? Kids get de-stressed and hungry, and the only reason to cut short the meal is to scurry back to classrooms?? You think they would? Does that make astounding sense, or what. Know any schools that do it that way? I rest my case.