By Elizabeth McDade-Montez, PhD | June 1, 2017

We joined the march. Along with millions of others across the globe, my young daughters and I marched for women’s rights on January 21, 2017. It was exhilarating and empowering! It was also sometimes challenging. I found myself having to explain some difficult topics to my girls. 

By Pamela Anderson, PhD | February 9, 2017
Senior Research Associate, ETR

I’m having a sentimental parent moment. Our three-year-old is looking at the iPad. She is trying to defy gravity by watching her show upside down. The iPad falls on her face. She falls off the couch and hits the floor.

Our almost-seven-year-old immediately sprints over to help and console her sister. 

By John Henry Ledwith | January 8, 2015

Recently I had the interesting experience of hearing Dr. Peter Gray deliver the closing keynote at the Texas State AHPERD (TAHPERD) meeting. This is an annual gathering of the Lone Star state’s physical and health education teachers.

The Texas Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance is committed to “the development of knowledge and programs that promote active, healthy lifestyles and enhance skilled, aesthetic motor performance.”

Dr. Gray’s topic was “How Free Play Promotes Children’s Social and Emotional and Intellectual Development." He has long been sounding the alarm about the decline of play and its impact on adolescents. (The Ted Talk video below is highly recommended!)

By Laura Perkins, MLS | May 7, 2015
Project Editor, ETR

Here we are in the middle of Screen-Free Week, May 4–10, 2015! One week a year, families are encouraged to “power-down” their screens—TVs, computers, tablets, phones, games and other electronic media—and engage with each other and their own imaginations.

This is the first year my family and I decided consciously to participate. We already limit movies to the weekend, and our 8-year-old daughter doesn’t have her own computer or tablet or phone....

Then our daughter got a bad sore throat, cough, low-grade fever, and stayed home from school for two days.

By Elizabeth McDade-Montez, PhD | February 3, 2015

TV is not what it used to be. There are new methods of content delivery (Netflix, YouTube, Hulu), new ways of watching (bingeing on Downton Abbey, catching short segments on YouTube), and new ways of calculating ratings.

Unfortunately, although television platforms have clearly modernized over time, television themes and stereotypes around gender and sexuality have not. I recently conducted an analysis of popular children’s television shows to quantify the amount of sexualizing content within these shows. My findings were disturbing.

By ETR | October 17, 2014

Why is this child holding his breath? What are men really saying when they catcall women? And what does compassion in action look like in a group of Canadian fourth graders? Check out some of our favorite videos of the past month.

By ETR | October 7, 2014

We like this study from Harvard researchers looking at child and adolescent BMI scores (body mass index) and their correlation with walkability in the children’s neighborhoods. Researchers looked at BMI scores from medical records for almost 50,000 children ages 4 to 18. Then they used 8 variables to score the walkability of the children’s neighborhoods.

By Debra Christopher, MSM

New research is giving us some powerful and creative ways to understand what our brains are doing (along with the brains of our students, trainees, clients, patients and colleagues). The principles of neuroscience can help us make a healthy difference in people’s lives.

Here are some of the books we’re reading right now that contribute to better understanding of how brains work. Highly recommended!