This being my first post, let me begin by telling readers what they can expect to see on this blog. I'm a developmental psychologist. While pursuing my PhD at Cornell, I found myself surrounded by scores of diligent developmental scientists, each of us immersed in tons of exciting data that often revealed the most fascinating insights into the minds of children. Our young research participants ranged in age from the tiniest infants to chatty (and often sassy) preschoolers. We would publish (or more often than not, try to publish) our findings in prestigious academic journals, where they would be read by other diligent scientists, and that would be the end of it until an eager graduate student was inspired by our findings to launch a new study, in which case, his/her results in turn would follow the same fate.
And all through this process, I couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that our exciting findings were never reaching the eyes and ears of real parents in the real world, for whom these cool insights might be truly useful!
Now that I have graduated with those three elusive letters, p h d, attached to my name, I've finally decided to do just that- somehow bring those research findings to those curious parents, who really want to know what goes on in the minds of their children.
So in this blog, you can expect to find the latest findings, big and small, in the area of child development, presented to you in the most accessible and relevant way possible.
And before I sign off, some of you might be wondering about the name 'wide open'. Well, those two words sum up for me the state of a child's mind from the moment she is born (and in fact, even before!). Those minds are wide open, ready to soak up all the experiences and sensations that will surround them, and most importantly, those minds are absolutely ready to learn from these sounds, images, smells, and yes, even the thoughts all around them.
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