Three favorite 2020 books on parenting and mental health

For a lot of fam­i­lies, par­ent­ing has nev­er been hard­er than it was this year. Many have been strug­gling for months try­ing to pro­vide child care and school­ing at home while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly work­ing either along­side their chil­dren or as essen­tial work­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty, if they haven’t already lost their jobs. The theme that emerges across…

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How children’s ADHD symptoms affect parents’ feelings & parenting behavior

——- ADHD in chil­dren puts stress on par­ents. In fact, par­ents of chil­dren with ADHD report greater par­ent­ing stress, less sat­is­fac­tion in their par­ent­ing role, and more depres­sive symp­toms than oth­er par­ents. They also report more neg­a­tive inter­ac­tions with their child. This is cer­tain­ly not true in all fam­i­lies where a child has ADHD but…

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On brain development, socioeconomic status and parenting styles

Rich Man, Poor Man: Socioe­co­nom­ic Adver­si­ty and Brain Devel­op­ment (Cere­brum): “..While ear­ly expo­sure to addi­tion­al lan­guages or music may lead to ben­e­fi­cial changes in brain devel­op­ment, ear­ly adver­si­ty can like­wise have impor­tant but detri­men­tal effects on the brain. For example, 

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Epigenetics: Nature vs. Nurture?

In yes­ter­day’s inter­view with Michael Pos­ner, he says: — “There is a grow­ing num­ber of stud­ies that show the impor­tance of inter­ac­tion between our genes and each of our envi­ron­ments. Epi­ge­net­ics is going to help us under­stand that ques­tion bet­ter, but let me share a very inter­est­ing piece of research from my lab where we found…

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Training Attention and Emotional Self-Regulation — Interview with Michael Posner

(Edi­tor’s Note: this is one of the 20 inter­views includ­ed in the book The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age) Michael I. Pos­ner is a promi­nent sci­en­tist in the field of cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science. He is cur­rent­ly an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon (Depart­ment…

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