Is the secret to improving your kids' grade be as simple as who they're friends with? Maybe so, according to a new study by high school students Deanna Blanksy and friends:

In the grade point study, researchers took to the classroom to see whether academic achievement might be as contagious as obesity. They asked 158 eleventh-graders to go down a class roster and point out their pals. Then they checked everyone’s report cards at the time of the survey, and again a year later.

The researchers found that those students whose friends were outshining them academically tended to improve their grades over the year. Whereas those who were hanging out with academic underachievers let their grades slide.

Link

Kelli Higgins and her husband have eight children, including 13-year-old Latrell and his younger sister, who were adopted from foster care at age 10 and 5.

The family was sitting around the dinner table last month, when Higgins – a professional photographer – mentioned that she was preparing for an upcoming baby photo session. Latrell mentioned that he wished he had baby photos of himself.

Higgins’ 12-year-old daughter asked, why not “recreate” a newborn photo shoot just for Latrell? The family had a good laugh thinking about him in all the newborn poses.

“I thought it was funny and that it would be a good idea,” Latrell told TODAY.com. His mom found the notion bittersweet.

“I was very sad too because I didn’t have any photos of him either," Higgins said. "I think it’s really hard to have children and not know what they looked like when they were younger.”

Higgins and Latrell went into her studio the next day, both laughing hysterically the whole time, she recalled.

Latrell's photo shoot created a sensation when she posted it on her Facebook page. Latrell is cool with it, and the photos have brought attention to the many older children available for adoption. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Kelli Higgins Photography)

Photo: University of Washington, Institute for Learning & Brain Science

Your baby is smarter than you'd think. A new laboratory technique allowed scientists to peer inside a baby's brain to see what's going on there while you read or talk to it:

Infants as young as 6 months are capable of making predictions based on probability, a higher level of reasoning than is commonly believed possible, researchers have found.

When shown a range of facial expressions, children as young as 7 months cast the longest gaze on the fearful face, similar to adult behavior, which scientists say signals an early sign of emotional processing.

And every parent knows that mimicking a baby's behavior, such as clapping hands, brings the child pleasure. Imaging technology has confirmed that this kind of play activates the pleasure center in the baby's brain, whereas engaging in a mismatched activity doesn't.

Sumathi Reddy of the Wall Street Journal has the full report: Link

(vimeo link)

Bianca Giaever made a film by asking six-year-old Asa Baker-Rouse for a story. The story is about a bear and a mouse, but then Asa gets philosophical about dealing with nervousness and fear.

We all get a little scared sometimes. Scared of graduating school without a plan; scared of monsters. One six year old has a remedy: think of something else until the "nervous has gone out of you." Think of juice, pizza, and a piano shaped chocolate chip cookie. In other words, he says, "when the scared feeling comes into you, the scared is scared of things you like."

There aren't many situations that couldn't be improved by pizza and a cookie. Link

Chris and Laura King take their children's manners seriously. They insist that the kids behave themselves in public. This was greatly appreciated by the servers at the Sogno di Vino restaurant in Poulsbo, Washington, who gave them an unsolicited discount as an expression of their appreciation:

Owner Angela Scott, who was also serving that night, and the two other servers were so impressed with the kids' manners that they wanted to congratulate them somehow.

"You would never even know that children were in the dining room," Scott said. "We just wanted to say, 'Awesome! You guys were so good!'"

So they agreed to give the kids free ice cream. [...]

Soon after, the picture exploded in popularity. By Feb. 4, the friend contacted King and told her that people were asking for more information about the receipt.

"They are always pretty well-behaved so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary from them," she said.

But the night was somewhat extraordinary for Scott who still recalls how much easier three polite children made her job that evening.

"We see the opposite a lot of time," Scott said. "Sometimes children are not the most well-behaved. It was nice especially because they are so young."

Link -via Daily of the Day | Photos: Laura King

(YouTube link)

This three-year-old has read the manual: Deny, deny, deny, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence, deny again. Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes? His mom says:

After I filmed it we had a VERY long talk about the difference between telling the truth and not telling the truth. He has an amazing imagination and loves to tell us stories. I saw this as a sweet moment, something that every child goes through...where they try to push the boundaries to see how far they can go. And I thought I'd share it with my friends and family. And apparently, the world seems to enjoy it, too. We are currently working on the difference, and he is doing really well. :)

-via Tastefully Offensive

Eli, the four-year old nephew of a Jalopnik reader, devised an incredible car with, among other features, 42 wheels, 19 engines and a huge toy storage area. BWM immediately moved into this market by coming up with the BMW 4219Eli, the greatest car ever designed. There's no word yet on when it will be available for sale, but save up your pennies for that frabjous day.

Link -via Jalopnik

Which came first: The Cat in The Hat or the hat on the cat? It's not clear, but we do know that Theodor Geisel -- Dr. Seuss -- loved hats. The sillier, the better:

He collected hundreds of them, plumed, beribboned and spiked, and kept them in a closet hidden behind a bookcase in his home in the La Jolla section of San Diego. He incorporated them into his personal paintings, his advertising work and his books. He even insisted that guests to his home don the most elaborate ones he could find. [...]

As editor in chief of Beginner Books at Random House in the late 1960s, Michael Frith worked closely with Geisel, sometimes into the early hours of the morning. When they were stumped by a word choice, Mr. Frith said, Geisel would often bound to the closet and grab a hat for each of them — a sombrero, or perhaps a fez. There they would be, sitting on the floor, Mr. Frith remembered, “two grown men in stupid hats trying to come up with the right word for a book that had only 50 words in it at most.”

Several of Geisel's hats will be on display a branch of the New York Public Library beginning on Monday.

Link -via School Library Journal | Images: Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Photo: China News

No sissy kids here, ma'am! South Korean Army is offering a boot camp vacation for civilians that's designed to make soft kids into tough ones:

The kids are put through all kinds of hardships during the rigorous training schedule lasting up to 10 hours a day, like basic exercises, rappelling, river crossing simulations, mock parachute landings in the pouring rain, and various team events. 15-year-old Yeom Huck said that he was “very nervous but thrilled” just before he hurled himself off an 11-m parachute jump tower. “Everything is fun – but right now I miss my parents,” he added. [...]

Not all the kids are equally thrilled, however. 15-year-old Cho Byung-Chan was angry with his parents for sending him. He does love his computer games, but his parents felt it’s time for him to grow up. “It’s hard. I’m hungry,” he complained.

Oddity Central has the story: Link

It was a jarring moment when generations of young readers got to the fourth book in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder and saw that it opened with the simple statement that her sister Mary had gone blind from scarlet fever. Ingalls wrote her remembrances late in life for young readers, and many believe they were heavily edited by Rose Wilder Lane, but what made it into print left a distinct and frightening impression. But it turns out that scarlet fever doesn't cause blindness. Dr. Beth A. Tarini deduced, after a decade of research, that Mary probably went blind in 1879 due to viral meningoencephalitis. But why does it matter so many years later?

“When I’m in clinic,” Dr. Tarini said, “and I tell parents their child has scarlet fever, I see their eyes widen. In my mind, it’s no different than a strep throat with a rash, but the specter of history colors their reaction.” Those emotional words describing Mary’s lost vision still carry weight with the parents who read and remember “By the Shores of Silver Creek” and all the books that came before and after it.

“We’re taught to find out what’s wrong and give a patient a diagnosis,” Dr. Tarini continued, “but that’s only one of the things the patient needs. If I say ‘scarlet fever’ and a mother is thinking, ‘Mary Ingalls’ then if I don’t know to pull that out, I’m not doing my job.” It matters to pediatricians if it matters to their patients.

Read more about Tarini's research at the New York Times. Link -via Boing Boing

Children in the hospital need every distraction they can get. Enter artist Jason Bruges. He created an interactive display at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Animals appear on the wall with the touch of a finger:

The brief was to design and install a distraction artwork helping to create a calming yet engaging route that culminates in the patient’s arrival at the anaesthetic room. Inspiration came from the idea of viewing the patient journey as a ‘Nature Trail’, where the hospital walls become the natural canvas, with digital look out points that reveal the various ‘forest creatures’, including horses, deer, hedgehogs, birds and frogs, to the passerby.

Link (warning: auto-starting video) | Jason Bruges's Website

(YouTube link)

A new skit from the Muppets of Sesame Street spoof the TV show Downton Abbey. Steak and kidney pie, anyone?  -via Tastefully Offensive

NFL players are doing a service to students at the Elmwood Franklin School in Buffalo, New York simply by tweeting. They're providing great examples of bad grammar which second grade students are correcting.

Perhaps we could recruit them to use Neatorama that way.

Link -via Super Punch | Photo: Elmwood Franklin School

Parents have been telling their children to get a job for ages, but when a judge does it, that's definitely new.

A Western Massachusetts boy who spray-painted graffiti onto his neighbor’s homes as an 11-year-old was ordered Wednesday to get a job so he can pay the victim’s $1,000 restitution – and learn a life lesson at the same time.

The boy, who was identified in the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruling by the pseudonym of “Avram,” had previously had charges of juvenile delinquency put on hold for one year in return for his promise to make restitution to his Easthampton neighbors.

After he failed to pay a single penny within that year, Juvenile Court Judge James G. Collins extended the now-12-year-old boy’s probation for four years and ordered him to get a job – an order defense attorney Craig R. Bartolomei said was contrary to juvenile law and to the reality of society today.

Problem is, what kind of job can a 12-year-old boy legally do? The kid's defense attorney pondered:

“The state itself limits what they [12-year-olds] can do,’’ Bartolomei said in a telephone interview. “They can be actors, with a permit. They can work a farm, and they can basically deliver newspapers. But kids don’t deliver newspapers any more.’’

John Ellement of the Boston Globe reports: Link

Creative names are a no-no in Iceland, so it's big news when a 15-year-old girl was finally granted the right to legally use her birth name, despite opposition from the government:

Reykjavik District Court ruled Thursday that the name "Blaer" can be used. It means "light breeze."

The decision overturns an earlier rejection by Icelandic authorities who declared it was not a proper feminine name. Until now, Blaer Bjarkardottir had been identified simply as "Girl" in communications with officials. [...]

Like a handful of other countries, including Germany and Denmark, Iceland has official rules about what a baby can be named. Names are supposed to fit Icelandic grammar and pronunciation rules — choices like Carolina and Christa are not allowed because the letter "c'' is not part of Iceland's alphabet.

Blaer's mother, Bjork Eidsdottir, had fought for the right for the name to be recognized. The court ruling means that other girls will be also allowed to use the name in Iceland.
In an interview earlier this year, Eidsdottir said she did not know the name "Blaer" was not on the list of accepted female names when she gave it to her daughter. The name was rejected because the panel viewed it as a masculine name that was inappropriate for a girl.

Link (Photo: Anna Andersen/AP)