This week’s Friday Reads don’t have much in common. Well, they sort of do. Ok, two of them do anyway. I save the grown up article for last, but they’re all informative and may blow your mind a little and make you feel like “oh man, what am I doing?!” but don’t worry. We’re all learning together and as long as we’re learning and adjusting along the way, we’re total superstars in my book.

The first one is about how dangerous screen time is for young kids and how it affects their development and personalities as they progress into their adolescence and adulthood. It’s a little doom and gloom. I’m a little terrified of the damage that I’ve done from showing my under 2 year old French cartoons and new wave videos since birth. But, I think it’s more about exposure to violence and lack of exposure to real human relationships. We never expose him to violence if we can help it and we have TONS of human relationships, so I hope the damage doesn’t run too deep. What do you think about screen time creating psychopaths? Read this article from the NY Times called “Screen Addiction is Taking a Toll on Children” and then comment below if you dare…

The next covers the elements of ideal play time for developing kids. A lot of the information in here seems like stuff that we should have already known but, as parents, it’s sometimes really, really, really impossibly hard to let them learn on their own. It’s scary for us and we hate to see them frustrated or upset, but it’s so good for them to learn about cause and effect and to learn about making decisions, not to mention the power of learning what they’re capable of. So, give this a quick read through. I have no doubt that if you want to follow this article’s advice, you’ll have to make some changes in your own behavior, not your child’s. Read the article from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) titled “Five Essentials of Meaningful Play” to see how your playroom standards line up. Thoughts?

And finally, my favorite, an article about space! If you don’t know this about me, you do now. I. LOVE. SPACE. You couldn’t pay me to get on a space ship, but I’m fascinated with the science of astronomy and the cosmos in general. It’s such a mystery and it’s so huge and humbling. The fact that we can figure anything out about something so vast blows my mind. And black holes? What the heck ARE they? We might not know exactly what they are, but we’re getting closer to knowing what they DO. This article explains that scientists now believe that black holes turn everything that they suck in, into holograms of what they were and leave a permanent record of its existence within. Maybe that Christopher Nolan movie, Interstellar, that I thought totally jumped the shark at the end wasn’t actually too far off the mark? Read this article from PBS called “Black Holes Could Turn You into a Hologram and You Wouldn’t Even Notice” and decide for yourself.