All posts tagged: St. Louis Post Dispatch

Fiction Friday: Long, Strange Trip

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By Leslie Lindsay My father-in-law lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He reads the newspaper religiously. And actually, today–July 4th–just happens to be not just the birth of our nation, but his birthday, too. Happy birthday, Pop! It only seems appropriate I’d share this article he clipped from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and sent my way (dated Saturday, June 21st 2014). The day it arrived in my mailbox, I needed it. You see, I was thinking of shelving the whole “Zombie Road” book and calling it done. It’s not. Far from it. I just wanted to be ‘normal,’ you know enjoy summer, raise my kids, read a book, go on vacation. I didn’t want to slave work on this nebulous thing called a manuscript. But the article–small that is–stirred the muse within. I showed my hubby when he walked in the door at the end of the day, “Hey, Pop sent this. It’s about Zombie Road.” I waved the clipped article in his face. Eye roll. Mine, not his. Jim grinned over the clipping, “Hon, you’ve gotta write this book. I …

The Teacher is Talking: Nurturing your Child with Praise

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By Leslie Lindsay There is something about the brain that I love.  The seat of imagination, intelligence, emotion, bodily regulations, it’s a pretty darn amazing thing, the brain.  But there is more it than just those things…it has to do with love. According to a Washington University study, positive reinforcement may increase brain size.  The article, from the St. Louis Post Dispatch indicates supportive mothers who practice positive reinforcement actually help their children’s brains grow.  I remember hearing something along those lines when my babies where younger–loving them, cuddling them, holding them doesn’t just get them to be quiet and content, it actually makes them smarter.  Thus, the message: you cant’t “spoil” your baby by holding them. Brain scans show that school-aged children of nurturing mothers have a 10% larger hippocampus–the region of the brain that has to do with learning, emotion, memory, and stress response as compared with children whose mothers were deemed less responsive/supportive/nurturing. How did they do it?  Researchers gathered 92 children between the ages of 3 and 5.  The watched how they …