Round-the-Clock Demand
January 20, 2012
Caring is the ultimate competitive advantage.
-Ron Kendrick
"Day care is slowly becoming night care in today's economy, as parents work ever longer days, take on second jobs, and accept odd shifts to make ends meet," reports Sabrina Tavernise in a recent New York Times article (January 15, 2012). She continues...
"About 40 percent of the American labor force now works some form of nonstandard hours, including evenings, nights, weekends, and early mornings, according to Harriet B. Presser, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. That share is expected to grow with the projected expansion of jobs in industries like nursing, retail, and food service, which tend to require after-hours work.
"At the same time, working hours are less predictable than they once were. 'There’s a greater variability and irregularity of schedules,' said Lonnie Golden, a professor of economics and labor studies at Pennsylvania State University. 'In surveys, more and more people are no longer able to specify a beginning or end of the workday.'
"Yet for years it has been a frustrating reality for parents that child care services have failed to keep pace with the changing workday, with many centers still keeping a rigid 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. schedule. Experiments with nighttime care have come and gone over the years, but lingering ambivalence about the concept led most centers to deem it financially untenable."
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Kids Swearing
Preschooler Swearing
January 24, 2012
Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or culture also become a dead people.
-Malcolm X
In a recent episode of the TV series, "Modern Family" a toddler blurted out a swear word. This scene stirred quite a controversy as experts waded in with arguments that swearing by preschool children is inevitable, intolerable, avoidable, or something else. Here is a sampling of some reactions as shared in MSNBC.
"The show's theme already has critics at the anti-indecency Parents Television Council grumbling, but researchers who study cursing find that, believe it or not, 2 years is about the age when kids really start to use 'adult' language.
"'Yes, 2-year-olds say f---,' said Timothy Jay, a psychologist who studies psycholinguistics and obscenities at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. 'Preschoolers are pretty well versed in the lexicon, and by 11 to 12, we are looking at adult swearing patterns. Kids say swear words as soon as they talk.'
"Jay and his colleagues have a dataset stretching back into the 1970s of words that school teachers, day care workers, and other adults who work with children report hearing. Kids mimic words early on and pick up quickly on which words are 'bad,' even if they don't know the exact definitions of those words, Jay said.
"In fact, studies suggest that swearing is firmly embedded in the brain. Swearing is a form of 'formulaic language,' said Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, a professor of communicative sciences and disorders at New York University. These are expressions such as 'You bet!' that frequently appear in conversation, and kids learn them as they're learning how to piece together sentences."
January 24, 2012
Just as a tree without roots is dead, a people without history or culture also become a dead people.
-Malcolm X
In a recent episode of the TV series, "Modern Family" a toddler blurted out a swear word. This scene stirred quite a controversy as experts waded in with arguments that swearing by preschool children is inevitable, intolerable, avoidable, or something else. Here is a sampling of some reactions as shared in MSNBC.
"The show's theme already has critics at the anti-indecency Parents Television Council grumbling, but researchers who study cursing find that, believe it or not, 2 years is about the age when kids really start to use 'adult' language.
"'Yes, 2-year-olds say f---,' said Timothy Jay, a psychologist who studies psycholinguistics and obscenities at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. 'Preschoolers are pretty well versed in the lexicon, and by 11 to 12, we are looking at adult swearing patterns. Kids say swear words as soon as they talk.'
"Jay and his colleagues have a dataset stretching back into the 1970s of words that school teachers, day care workers, and other adults who work with children report hearing. Kids mimic words early on and pick up quickly on which words are 'bad,' even if they don't know the exact definitions of those words, Jay said.
"In fact, studies suggest that swearing is firmly embedded in the brain. Swearing is a form of 'formulaic language,' said Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, a professor of communicative sciences and disorders at New York University. These are expressions such as 'You bet!' that frequently appear in conversation, and kids learn them as they're learning how to piece together sentences."
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