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Ian McMillan caught a baseball thrown out during an Arizona Diamondbacks game. He noticed that a younger boy was very disappointed that he didn't get it. So Ian handed him the ball. This generous act to a stranger was caught on screen and led to visits by players and the opportunity to throw out the first ball at another game. What did Ian learn? "If you do good things, good things will happen to you."

Somebody get this kid a copy of The Rules of Acquisition before it's too late.

Link -via American Digest

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The soccer team Real Madrid performed an exhibition match against 109 children from Guangzhou, China. Though outnumbered almost 10 to 1, Madrid prevailed with a score of 2 to 1. Link -via Blame It on the Voices

Cindy Hopper has a great idea for a kid-friendly craft. Have your child make a crayon picture on sandpaper. Place a piece of cardboard inside a white t-shirt. Then place the sandpaper face down with a hot iron on top. After thirty seconds of heat and a run through the washing machine, you've got a t-shirt front designed by your own child! Link -via Craft

Tattooing is no longer just for sailors, bikers, and punks. Now it's a rather mainstream and accepted practice throughout American society. So Phil Padwe wrote Mommy Has a Tattoo to help children get used to the idea of seeing inked people:

Mommy Has A Tattoo tells the story of a little boy named James, who is afraid of his tattooed neighbor until he discovers that his own mother has a tattoo as well.

The book emphasizes the importance of familiarizing children with tattoos at a young age and eliminates the common notion of SCARY that has sometimes been linked to tattoos.

http://www.amazon.com/Mommy-Has-Tattoo-Phil-Padwe/dp/0977023273/ref=pd_sim_b_21?tag=dealswoot-20 -via 21/2 Baker Street

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If you're one of my Facebook friends, then you know that I've been trying to teach my toddler to laugh diabolically. It's not really working well. Oh, she's laughing. But not with that kind of deep-throated cackle that a well-rounded adult needs when she goes out into the world.

This father, being a responsible sort, is trying to get his baby started on this essential life skill at a very early age. The baby is displeased by his efforts. -via reddit

People ask me, "John, why do you prefer DC to Marvel?" Well, this. I mean, do you really think that Wolverine would bother?

This kid had lost his dad in the crowd, and freaked out until he saw the Flash and Wonder Woman. He went up to the Flash to ask for help, because he knows him

Now to be clear: these were just cosplayers, not the real Flash and Wonder Woman. Link -via Fanboy

According to a new study conducted by the credit card company Visa, even the Tooth Fairy has been impacted by the recession. The per tooth payout has dropped quite a bit:

The study found that the average price per tooth dropped to $2.60 this year from $3 in 2010.

On the East Coast, last year’s highest-paid children are now the lowest paid ones. The price of a tooth dropped 38 percent to $2.10. In the South, children also took a big hit to their piggy banks as the price was cut 21 percent to $2.60.

The price for teeth in the Midwest and West Coast remained stable. Children in the Midwest noticed a decline of 3 percent, or 10 cents, to $2.80. While West Coast youngsters actually saw the price edge up to $2.80 from last year’s $2.70.

Link -via Marketplace| Photo by Flickr user PinkStockPhotos!

C.J. Senter is only ten years old, but he's already developed an amazing physique and an impressive football record. And beyond those accomplishments, he's teaching other kids to exercise effectively through classes that he conducts himself, as well as training DVDs:

C.J. started working out five years ago when his football coach told him and his teammates to go home over a weekend and get some exercise. He did some push-ups and sit-ups and loved it. Not too long after, he saw a P90X infomercial and loved that too. He's been working out ever since. C.J. does his own routines three times a week, after school and homework, and he's given new names to some old and boring moves, like the burpee, which involves a squat, push-up, and jump. C.J. calls that one the "shredder." He even teaches a class of (mostly older) kids at the gym near where he lives in Locust Grove, Ga.

You can see samples of his fitness videos at the link.

Link | Photo: The Post Game

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A Vancouver-based ad agency named Dare created this ad to promote child participation in sports. It makes clever use of the kids' bodies themselves to form infographics that express the dangers of childhood obesity. Agency Website -via Fubiz (Google Translate)

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This generous bulldog not only makes room for the little boy, but cuddles him, as well. Content warning: do not click the play button if you have a deficient cuteness gland, for it will be overloaded. -via Ace of Spades HQ

A study conducted by Diane Poulin-Dubois of Concordia University has determined that children as young as fourteen months can determine whether or not an adult is a reliable source of information. Testers expressed delight that a toy was in a container, whether or not there really was one. Kids were eventually able to understand that certain testers could not be trusted to accurately report the presence of the toy:

"Infants seem to perceive reliable adults as capable of rational action, whose novel, unfamiliar behaviour is worth imitating," the researchers said. "In contrast, the same behaviour performed by a previously unreliable adult is interpreted as irrational or inefficient, thus not worthy of imitating."

Link -via Marginal Revolution | Photo by Flickr user xlordashx used under Creative Commons license

Jill Miller, a performance artist, doesn't care for restaurants and other public venues that are hostile to breastfeeding moms. So she has a fanciful Kickstarter project aimed at confronting them. The Milk Truck, when summoned by a mother, will go to the offending business, park outside, and set up a friendly area for women to nurse:

When a woman finds herself in a situation where she is discouraged, harassed, or unwelcome to breastfeed her baby in public, she summons The Milk Truck. The truck arrives to the location of the woman in need and provides her with a shelter for feeding her baby. The woman feeds her child, the shopkeeper who harassed her feels like a dweeb, and the truck does what it does best - creates a spectacle. (Which is, incidently, the very thing that the shopkeeper thought he was trying to avoid. Alas, some people have to learn the hard way.)

Link -via Boing Boing | Miller's Website

The COA (Children's Outing Association) Youth and Family Centers of Milwaukee wants to encourage parents to interact with their children, especially when it comes to learning. So it asked the ad agency Cramer-Krasselt to put together a campaign to do so. The result was a series of public signs and displays that feature puzzles, experiments, and stories. You can view four more at the link. Link -via NotCot | Photo: My Modern Met

Of course, parents have known this for years. But now science confirms that the sound of a whining person is almost impossible to ignore:

Psychologists from SUNY and Clark University put participants through the daft trial of trying to do maths problems while listening to a range of six sounds, including a screeching saw on wood, machine noise, a baby crying, motherese and whining, for a whole minute each. Weirdly, the whining sample actually came from an adult, as child actors could not “act out a sustained whining bout”. Previous research has shown adult and child whining to be similar enough to enable this substitution.

The study subjected both men and women, parents and non-parents, to the tests, who were rewarded for their troubles with either M&Ms or toy shop vouchers, depending on their childrearing experience.

After having looked at the maths results, the psychologists found that while all “attachment vocalisations” — meaning motherese, crying or whining — caused greater distraction than silence to the participants, a minute of whining resulted in a greater number of mistakes than machine noise or motherese. Furthermore, both parents and non-parents were affected similarly by whining.

Link | Photo by Flickr user emrank used under Creative Commons license

Researchers at the University of Zurich had twenty-four babies look at paintings by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. The ones by Picasso usually held their interest longer:

Immediately afterward, the young participants (who were seated on caregivers’ laps) were shown side-by-side images of two paintings — one by each artist. Experimenters observed how much time they spent gazing at each.

Those who had been looking at Monets preferred the Picasso. This was not a surprise; it was something different and interesting. But those who had been looking at Picassos also focused on the Picasso, suggesting “a spontaneous preference” for his work overrode the appeal of novelty.

“This preference appeared to be highly robust,” the researchers write, “and was observed (in follow-up experiments) even in the absence of very obvious artistic features such as bold colors, sharp contrasts, and the presence of figurative object-like elements.”

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture/everyones-a-critic-babies-prefer-picasso-32221/ -via The Hairpin | Images: Monterey Museum of Art, Cummer Museum of Art