The happiest children in Europe are in the Netherlands and Scandinavia but Britain is among the worst places to grow up, according to new British research published today. [continue reading…]

School-aged children who witness violence in urban communities show symptoms of post-traumatic stress. They also suffer physiological effects with a disruption to their normal cortisol production pattern during the day, which may have long-term negative effects on their health. According to Dr. Shakira Franco Suglia, from the Harvard School of Public Health, and her team lead by Dr. Rosalind J. Wright from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, because these children are not diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, these abnormal physiological symptoms are unlikely to be picked up by their doctors. The study has just been published online in Springer’s International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. [continue reading…]

More than 2,000 years ago, Plato suggested, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Play is essential for learning and human development.

Interest in play is very much on the upswing among psychologists, educators,and the general public , according to developmental psychologist Peter Gray.

“People are beginning to realize that we have gone too far in the direction of teaching children to compete,” he said. “We have been depriving children of the normal, noncompetitive forms of social play that are essential for developing a sense of equality, connectedness, and concern for others.”

A new theory about early human adaptation suggests that our ancestors capitalized on their capacities for play to enable the development of a highly cooperative way of life. Writing in the current edition of the interdisciplinary American Journal of Play, Gray suggests that use of play helped early humans to overcome the innate tendencies toward aggression and dominance which would have made a cooperative society impossible. [continue reading…]