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Absorbing media and assimilating it into your existing knowledge is a challenge, and this is a concern when the media is full of big, scary headlines about artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world, stealing jobs, and being sentient. As teachers and parents, you don’t need to know all the details about AI to answer young people’s questions, but you can avoid accidentally introducing alternate conceptions. This article offers some top tips to help you point those inquisitive minds in the right direction.

"I want The Three Bears!"

These days parents, caregivers and teachers have lots of options when it comes to fulfilling that request. You can read a picture book, put on a cartoon, play an audiobook, or even ask Alexa.

A newly published study gives some insight into what may be happening inside young children's brains in each of those situations. And, says lead author Dr. John Hutton, there is an apparent "Goldilocks effect" — some kinds of storytelling may be "too cold" for children, while others are "too hot." And, of course, some are "just right."

Hutton is a researcher and pediatrician at Cincinnati Children's Hospital with a special interest in "emergent literacy" — the process of learning to read.

Emotional intelligence is the prerequisite to great relationships. Here's how to teach kids to develop them.

Step 1: To be happy and successful, they need to develop great relationships.

Step 2: To develop those relationships, they need adequate emotional intelligence.

Step 3: To develop emotional intelligence, it helps if their mentors (especially their parents) model good behavior in love and partnerships.

Relationships are dynamic. They're made up of an uncountable number of small interactions. Julie and John Gottman, a husband and wife team of psychologists who are experts in this area, describe these interactions as "micro-behaviors" and "bids for attention."

Children’s brains develop in spurts called critical periods. The first occurs around age 2, with a second one occurring during adolescence. At the start of these periods, the number of connections (synapses) between brain cells (neurons) doubles. Two-year-olds have twice as many synapses as adults. Because these connections between brain cells are where learning occurs, twice as many synapses enable the brain to learn faster than at any other time of life. Therefore, children’s experiences in this phase have lasting effects on their development.

"Children are more likely to draw women than in the past—but they become skewed toward sketching men as they get older ..."