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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3077 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 2, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone have any rigorous, evidence-based resources or knowledge about early childhood development? For example, reading a lot of things like 'more tummy time helps babies learn to crawl/walk sooner' or 'x is correlated with earlier speech development.' Is there any actual evidence to show that any of these things matter for outcomes later in life?

I don't have specific recommendations, but I would advise checking the index for any book you're thinking of getting (the index is often shown for free on Amazon's or Google Books' preview feature) and disregarding any book that doesn't have index entries for something like genes, genetics, heritability, or twin studies. Any non-RCT study of parenting or childhood outcomes that does not control for heritability (and most don't) is literally worthless.

Agreed, thanks.

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