David Elkind’s extensive bibliography includes research, theoretical articles and book chapters. He has had articles published in mainstream magazines and journals as diverse as Good Housekeeping and Psychology Today, New York Times Magazine, and others.

A Place For Us: Children’s Museums in a Child Unfriendly World.

There is little space for children and youth in today's adult oriented society.  This is true sociologically, psychologically and environmentally. Sociologically we have effectively collapsed the stages of childhood that took almost a century to establish.  Psychologically, we have narrowed the range of normality for children and youth such that behaviors that were once seen as normative, such as high spirits and mischievousness, are now regarded as deviant. Finally, there are many fewer play and social environments open to young people than there once were. Read article »

Digital Children: Growing Up in a High Tech Society

How we develop as individuals is always a joint product of our heredity, and of our environment. When our environment changes, so too does our development. The so-called secular trend is an example. Over the last century, young people in contemporary America, and in other Western countries, are several inches taller, on the average, than were children of a century ago. Likewise girls today begin menstruation several years earlier than did women in the 1800’s. Read article »

Preschool Education: Enrichment or Instruction?

In this essay I want to describe two different orientations to preschool education, which, for lack of more precise terms, can be called enrichment and instruction respectively. In general, these two orientations correspond to the two approaches to education that Dewey (revised 1962) described as centering upon "development from within" and "enforcement from without. Read article »

Parental Competition

At my granddaughter's two-year birthday party, I listened to the conversation of some of the attending young parents. Much of it centered about their children's relative progress in language, social skills and motor control. There was also a lot of talk about the use, and value, of early education products like Baby Einstein. Although the discussion was friendly, I could sense the underlying anxiety – particularly among those parents whose children were less advanced than some of their peers. Read article »

Some Misunderstandings of School Readiness

The phrase "school readiness" was, until recently, most often uses in connection with a child's preparedness to meet the demands of a first grade classroom.  With the contemporary push down of the curriculum, readiness is now taken to mean the child's preparedness to meet the demands of the kindergarten.  Whether in regard to first grade or kindergarten, this way of thinking assumes that school readiness resides entirely in the child's head. Read article »

Thanks for the Memory: The Lasting Value of True Play

Recently, a parent observing at our Children's School here at Tufts complained about the amount of time the children spent "playing." She told me that her friend's four-year-old son was in a program where he was already learning his letters and his numbers.  This mother was concerned that her own son might not be prepared for first grade.  I was mentally rehearsing  my usual lecture about the educational value of play and how much children learned from it.  Read article »

Tune in to David Elkind's blog to read more about, and comment on, his experiences, opinions and insights on children's perceptual, cognitive and social development.