Mama and Pappa - that doesn't compute, OK!

NVDL: This is fascinating.

Instead of simply insisting that the child wears a coat, Munakata says, “rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face. Perhaps you could say something like ‘I know you don’t want to take your coat now, but when you’re standing in the yard shivering later, remember that you can get your coat from your bedroom.’”

clipped from news.yahoo.com Are you listening to me? Didn't I just tell you to get your coat? Helloooo! It's cold out there... Toddlers listen, they just store the information for later use, a new study finds. "There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different." "The older kids found this sequence easy, because they can anticipate the answer before the object appears," said doctoral student Christopher Chatham, who participated in the study. "But preschoolers fail to anticipate in this way. Instead, they slow down and exert mental effort after being presented with the watermelon, as if they're thinking back to the character they had seen only after the fact."