I might be in the minority, but I find an increase of 1.45 days, in women with regular cycles, to be significant, when you consider how much individual fluctuation it takes to move this number. I myself experienced an extreme shortening of my cycle with both the initial vaccine series, booster, and one out of 2 known infections (4 days, 7 days, and 12 days shorter, respectively). My period post-infection was also really atypical in terms of heaviness and pain to the point of affecting my day-to-day. My post-menopausal mother experienced bleeding. I have lived my entire life without having any significant disruption to my cycle despite many illnesses, including a very severe flu infection. I don’t find it “scary,” as it was short-lived, but I do find it interesting and I wish we had more research and explanation about the relationship between our immune system functioning and our menstrual cycles. My own doctor experienced a similar phenomenon but really didn’t have much insight into the “why” it happened and most of us just like to understand what is happening with our bodies.

With regards to the lengthening of menstrual cycles as a result of COVID and COVID vaccines, you conclude that there “is no reason to think there would be any fertility impacts as a result”, but I wonder if that might not be the whole story.

Since the average increase was only 1 day, I think I can agree that on average, there wouldn’t be an impact, but what about the rest of the distribution? For example, if some people experience a much longer lengthening, even though it’s rare in the population as a whole, could we not plausibly hypothesize that those people might experience an impact on fertility?

I think that this discussion of trampolines does not adequately distinguish between trampolines and trampoline parks. Jumping in a foam pit isn’t necessarily similar to jumping on a trampoline of the sort some have in their yards. My own kids sometimes spend time at trampoline parks getting pizza or doing the arcade, among other things. So I can’t infer much about the safety of trampolines from data on time spent in trampoline parks.

What I do know is that any ER professional will tell you that trampolines are a top cause of pediatric injuries that bring in kids. And it doesn’t even have to be from misuse, like carelessly crashing into another kid. A kid I know broke her leg as a 3yo just from bouncing up and down on one. The force itself is the problem.

We would never allow our kids to have a trampoline, but we do take them to places like Urban Air. The places for jumping there don’t allow you to spring as high or as hard as your typical backyard trampoline, and plenty of the time spent is on aerial rope courses, slides, arcade games, snacks, and other things that aren’t what we consider risky.

I’m mostly just here to say thank you for making me laugh out loud this Monday morning with the line “Very few high school students are still demanding an M&M every time they poop in the toilet.” My daughter is in 5th grade at our neighborhood elementary school, which has students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds as well as a high number of students with behavioral and learning differences. I’ve seen her in a class with a fairly high level of behavioral chaos (her teacher is a 30 year veteran but was out for an extended time for health issues and the class essentially went off the rails when they had a sub – this was also the year after covid disruption). Many teachers at this school use incentive based programs. I agree in 1st grade there was some heartbreak over kids missing “points” parties, but I tend to support the teachers at this school who are knowledgeable of this student population and are committed to helping them succeed in their overall school experience. In 5th grade the teachers have a “money system’ where all the students are earning/losing money for both individual and collective behavior and saving for a class goal (pizza party of course!) and the kids seem really into it. It seems like a good way for them to learn some budgeting and financial skills as well. The only potential downside that has recently come to my attention is that the students are betting each other using their classroom money – ie one student owes another $10 for betting on whether it would snow or not! I can’t imagine it will impact my daughter’s love of learning since that seems intrinsic to me (in her case), and it does seem to be improving the overall class behavior (and thus making more time for learning) compared to some years in a class without the incentive system.

I’ve heard that any negative effects which come from reward systems are easily overcome by occasionally randomly rewarding children.

Re:Classroom rewards …What about the motivation to learn new things over time. Yes, once learned, I no longer need an M&M to go potty, but what effect has this exchange had on how future learning is motivated? (new habit formation post being extrinsically motivated (especially over years), not the maintenance of an established habit post being extrinsically motivated)

Can we also talk about the environmental effects of all the crap kids get for rewards? Not infrequently my kids will bring home 10 plastic gizmos that get lost, broken, or chewed by the dog in short order, and they know they got them as some sort of reward but they don’t even know for what. Add them to the pile of cheap plastic crap they get just for going to the dentist. Arrgh.

I’m not against rewards, but it seems like kids get them all the time and it’s not linked in their heads to behavior necessarily. Kids with ADD supposedly do better with reward charts, and we use them sometimes, but I don’t like them getting plastic trinkets or sugar so much as the reward.

I had 2 “economics of points” systems growing up one in 3rd grade and one in 7th grade. They were both fantastically implemented. You didn’t need points for any normal classroom activity but you could use your currency at the class shop that ran on a periodic basis. In grade 3 the teacher created the items to purchase. In the older class students were responsible for selling items in the store. It had the benefit of teaching basic financial skills. I think that the 7th grade class even took out takes and had a bank where you could earn interest.
I found that these two programs enhanced my learning and they were very popular among all the students.
For me the thing that I find ruins my intrinsic motivation is tests.

One thing not address in the discussion of rewards is why this “problem behavior” exists in the first place. For that, we have to go upstream. Take the example of a young boy who cannot sit still, tends to fidget, walk around, etc. Yes, you can convince this child to comply and sit still by offering rewards. But to what end? There are many MANY children who do not learn well in a standard learning environment (i.e. silent, sitting still, facing forward). Pressuring these children to comply with standard classroom behavior may be detrimental to their learning outcomes, even if the methods “work” in the sense that they get them to sit down and shut up.

To me, it reeks of “quiet hands” in the autism community, an approach that has been almost universally panned as harmful and ineffective.

Anyone curious about this space should read “Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn.

My guess is that external rewards don’t impact intrinsic motivation, but not all behaviors need to be intrinsically motivated to be valuable. As Emily notes, in the case of disruptive behavior in the classroom, paying kids to be quiet and calm has benefits that go well beyond getting an individual kid to settle down. But will that behavior become “valued” by the kid long term? I doubt it. I have three (older) kids, and two were born motivated to perform well (in school and elsewhere), although their reasons for this are different! The 3rd could not care any less about performative success–behavior, grades, showing up on time–none of it matters to them. Introduce rewards and, if they like the prize enough, maybe they’ll respond, but it won’t in any way impact their intrinsic motivation.

BTW, when #3 was in preschool, the class was able to fill up a jar with marbles to get a pizza party–the teachers put in marbles for good behavior, as defined in various ways. It didn’t take long for us to get called in: #3 had simply taken all the marbles from the box and dumped them into the jar and presto! Free party, right?

Re baby sleep schedules: The idea of getting babies who have three or more naps per day on a schedule drives me nuts!! In my experience with my three kids and observing many other babies, some babies seem inclined to be on a schedule and some do not. My babies were not, and when I couldn’t get my first on a schedule (mainly because his nap lengths varied tremendously), I felt like a failure. Once my babies transitioned to two naps, they were much more scheduled. But before that, all bets were off. The one exception was when my middle child was in the NICU for 8 days. She was on an amazing schedule of eating almost exactly every three hours, guided by her sleep. But the day she came home, it was over. I think she loved all the cozy sleep props they used. Anyway, I found guidance around wake-time windows to be much more helpful in guiding newborn sleep. Schedules may work for some babies, but not all.

On the sibling question, what I really what to know is if there’s any data indicating what drives different sibling relationship outcomes? So it seems it’s not age gap from other of Emily’s writings. To what extent do socioeconomic factors, parental focus on those relationships, family meals, idk eating broccoli? etc etc influence how close your kids are when they grow up. Because if we accept there’s a range of possible adult sibling relationships, and some of them are world changingly intimate and a true gift to our children vs others that are less so, then we need to know how much we can influence – if at all – which of those outcomes our kids will get. Without this, it’s incomplete to just say “eh, you could get anything, don’t worry about it.” If all I have to do is make sure my kids eat broccoli and then they’ll have a beautiful sibling relationship like I do (or more realistically, if we see these strong relationships are heavily correlated with high parent SES which I’m lucky enough to have), then we are in a different situation closer to “an additional sibling is very likely to be a precious gift to your child and you should consider it” vs the answer given.

LOVED the post from 1/25/24 on boundaries and consequences! Love the reframing of “punishment” as “consequence”, and the difference between natural and logical consequences. Thanks for sharing this!!

I’m a first time mom, with a young infant, so we aren’t close to the consequences phase yet. But as someone who is struggling right now with the loss of control that seems to be parenting, I just want to say that I appreciated this line, “How your unique child responds isn’t your job. It may become your problem, but it isn’t your job.” It is helping me separate my inputs from my baby’s response (which is still not still sleeping terribly no matter what I try!). Thanks for the distinction between problem and job.

Responding to Everybody Hurts? about childbirth complications. Our birth certainly did not go smoothly (emergency c-section, sepsis, etc) BUT we had been seeing a midwifery collective for all our prenatal care and they were with us every step of the birth so honestly it didn’t feel traumatic, just eventful. Hopefully you’ll have folks with you who you trust! Plan for it!

RE: Nipple Shields. I used nipple shields for the full year I nursed my daughter with no issues. I’m now 9 months into nursing twin boys. One of the twins I still use a nipple shield with and the other one decided he didn’t like it around 5-6 months old. He would nudge it off so I knew he didn’t need it anymore. I would suggest buying enough shields so you only have to wash them once a day. Otherwise it’s not much work and if it helps, that’s great! Good luck!

I just read the question about nipple shield weening in todays Q&A and just want to add that I breastfed with nipple shields (inverted nipples that refused to exvert on their own) for 13 months. I also pumped and bottle fed breast milk, which may have helped with breast emptying and increased milk for my little one, but we never even tried to latch without the shields after the first few weeks. I too was frustrated by lactation’s recommendations to wean! My baby and I had a very easy, positive experience with breastfeeding and she gained weight beautifully.

On the topic of statistical significance, Emily Oster wrote: “When it is used in common parlance, I think people often read [the phrase ‘statistically significant’] as meaning ‘true.'” I would guess that another common interpretation is “important.” If the media says, “It was found that taking ballet lessons increases a child’s risk of concussion, and these results were statistically significant,” it may be that the result really is true but that the effect size is extremely small, and it’s a problem if what the reader takes away is “ballet lessons have an significant effect on concussion risk” (especially if they then trade ballet lessons for something which actually carries a larger risk).