5 Ways to Expand Your Child’s Social Skills

In my pack of 8 kids, several are very outgoing and socially savvy, one is shy, a couple are well ahead of their years when it comes to good social graces, and a couple more are socially appropriate but definitely rely on me for guidance as they navigate their awkward tween years.

Basically, kids reach social milestones as they grow and mature just like they meet developmental milestones.

In Improving Kids’ Social Skills, Susan Diamond, M.A., a speech-language pathologist and author of Social Rules for Kids says "It's important to know the normal developmental skills appropriate for different age groups so you can determine where help is needed."

My kids, now ages 11 through 24, have all experienced a different journey along the road to attaining appropriate social interaction skills so today, Mighty Mommy shares 5 ways you can help your child expand his own social graces which will help him grow into a confident young adult.

#1. Identify Age-Appropriate Social Skills

Too often, we as parents compare our own kids to their peers when we’re not sure if they are reaching milestones at the appropriate age. While some kids absolutely start out a bit slower in the socializing department (half of my eight kids included) there are some helpful milestones to keep in mind.

In How Can I Help My Kids Develop Better Social Skills?, a study done at Vanderbilt University found the top 10 social skills kids need to succeed in elementary school, based on surveys of 8,000 elementary teachers and two decades of classroom research, are:

1. Listen to others
2. Follow the steps
3. Follow the rules
4. Ignore distractions
5. Ask for help
6. Take turns when you talk
7. Get along with others
8. Stay calm with others
9. Be responsible for your behavior
10. Do nice things for others

#2.  Pretend Play

I had three significantly speech-delayed children, and one of the strategies our speech-pathologist used on a regular basis was engaging my kids in pretend play. Anything from playing house and taking care of dolls and stuffed animals to being a fireman who would help people and put out fires became a part of each and every session.

One of the reasons pretend...

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Why The Japanese Language Has So Many Words for 'Time'

When I first moved to Japan, I worked as a researcher for an architect. For two years I walked the city every day, especially its older districts, taking notes. I wrote "The Bells of Old Tokyo" in part because I wanted to understand the things I saw: not just landmarks, but the city’s secret spaces, its hidden histories.

Then a chance meeting with a Japanese physicist, Hashimoto Koji, left me with a question: why does the Japanese language have so many words for ‘time,’ when English has so few? Koji told me that roughly a third of the world’s string theorists were Japanese.

I had vague memories of string theory from popular science magazines; claims that the universe exists not in the three dimensions that we see (plus time, the fourth dimension) but in eleven dimensions.

One dimension is a dot.

Two dimensions is a line, a square, a triangle, a circle.

Three dimensions is a cube, a pyramid, a sphere.

For each person I interviewed, time was something other, something alien.

Four is a cube, moving through time. A pyramid, moving through time. A sphere, moving through time.

Five dimensions is…? And what was six? Seven? And on up?

Non-believers said string theorists were crazy, because—if they existed, where were those missing dimensions? And how could you prove they were real? String theorists said the missing dimensions had curled up inside themselves, like fiddlehead ferns, so small no one could see them. Critics said the string theorists might be brilliant, but that when you became a string theorist, you joined a cult that worshiped the invisible. It wasn’t science, it was science fiction.

“Wow,” I said.

“In Japan, string theorists are ordinary,” Koji said, shrugging off my amazement.

“And you study—what? The universe? … Time?”

What, I wondered, was the Japanese word for 'time'? I only knew how to ask about hours on a clock; about minutes and seconds. About weeks, months, years.

At home, I opened a huge old thesaurus that my Japanese teacher loaned me; it had belonged to her father, who had been born in the nineteenth-century. The book thudded open, its old pasteboard endpapers dissolving in my hands, leaving brown dust all over my palms and fingertips.

When I found the section on time, the sheer number of words amazed me. They roosted underneath sections for the Past and the Present and the Future; alit in subsections for Cyclical Time and Approximate Time, and flew off the page after the entries for Irregular Time and Fixed Time.

Some expressions reach backward into ancient Chinese literature:...

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12 BBQ Hacks That Will Leave Your Guests in Awe

Hack 1: Clean a Grill with an Onion

Dirty grill? Clean it with an onion! The sulfur compounds in onions combined with their rough texture make them a perfect green cleaner for barbecue grills, whether they're in a public park or in your own backyard. First, remove any large bits from the grates and heat the grill. Then apply cooking oil to the cut side of a halved onion, spear it with a grill fork, and rub it on the dirty grates. It will not only leave a yummy taste behind, new research has shown that onion juice might even be able to inhibit the growth of e coli!

Hack 2: Use Sugar to Light Charcoal

Can’t get the charcoal going, and don’t have any lighter fluid? Try using sugar. Once sugar is exposed to a flame, it decomposes rapidly and releases a fire-friendly chemical that can help ignite that stubborn charcoal. Simply apply a light dusting of sugar to the coals before you light them.

Hack 3: Another Lighter Fluid Substitute

When the coals start to die down on your grill, don’t squirt them with more lighter fluid, which not only costs money, but can leave your food tasting bad (not to mention, burn the hair off your arm). Instead, blow a hair dryer on the base of the coals. The hairdryer acts as a pair of bellows, and your fire will be going again in no time.

Hack 4: DIY Utensil Caddy

An old oven mitt makes a great holder for barbecue utensils. Use its hanging loop to attach it to your grill and it’s perfect for tongs or anything else you need.

Hack 5: Chill Beer Fast

The best way to chill beer or soda rapidly is to fill a cooler with layers of water, ice, and salt, then plunge the beers inside. They'll be ice cold in about 20 minutes! Even if the ice water is warmer than your freezer, it absorbs the warmth from the bottles or cans more rapidly and more efficiently than the cold air of the freezer does.

Hack 6: More Flavorful Grilling

To get the most out of that grilled flavor everyone loves so much, add a few sprigs of your favorite herbs, such as rosemary, thyme, and savory, directly to the top of the charcoal as you grill. It will infuse whatever you’re cooking with mouthwatering flavor.

Hack 7: Skewer Trick

Grilling up kebabs this summer? Make meat-removal as easy as possible by spraying skewers with cooking spray before assembling them. The food will slip right off the skewer, no knives necessary! And, more importantly, no risk of flinging your meat from the skewer to the floor.

Hack 8: Super Steak

If you’re grilling a steak on a closed barbecue, here’s a neat trick to impress your friends. Open a can of beer and place it on the hottest part of the grill. It will boil and keep the meat moist, while adding flavor, too.

Hack 9: The Best Corn on...

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What's It Like to Be a Book Editor and Translator?

The Words and Languages of ‘The Big Bang Theory’

May 16 brings the final episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” one of TV’s most popular comedies. The show started in 2007 and has run for 12 seasons. The May 16 series finale will mark the show’s 279th episode, making it the longest-running multi-camera sitcom on American TV.

Fans of the show have come to love the contentious but ultimately caring relationships between the show’s protagonists: Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, and Howard; and Penny, Amy, and Bernadette. 

Fans also appreciate the way the show has blended wordplay, pop culture lingo, and scientific jargon into the characters’ day-to-day conversations. 

To celebrate the end of the show, here are some fun facts about the words and languages used on “The Big Bang Theory.”

Fake Languages Used on ‘The Big Bang Theory’: Klingon, Ubbi Dubbi, and Op

First, we’ll talk about three fake languages used on the show.

• First, there’s Klingon, the constructed language that was first developed for the TV series Star Trek, which ran from 1966 to ‘69. The first words of Klingon were developed by James Doohan, the actor who played “Scottie” on the original series developed the first words in Klingon. The invented language was then expanded in 1984 by linguist Marc Okrand, who was hired to flesh it out for the movie “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” It’s since become a fully functioning language that’s spoken by hard-core Star Trek fans worldwide. A recent Planet Money podcast episode even reported that about 1% of CAPTCHA farmers—those are people (usually in countries like China, India, and Russia) who manually solve CAPTCHAs on websites all day long for fractions of pennies a shot—were able to solve instructions given to them in Klingon.
• We also hear Ubbi Dubbi on the ‘The Big Bang Theory.' Ubbi Dubbi is a code language, kind of like Pig Latin. Penny and Amy use it so they can talk without Leonard and Sheldon understanding. To speak Ubbi Dubbi, you add “ub” before each of the vowel sounds in a word.  Instead of “hello,” you’d say “hub-ell-ub-o.” Instead of “thanks,” you’d say “thu-banks.”
• Finally, there’s Op, used by Amy. To speak Op, you spell out every word in a sentence (except for the first word) and add “-op” to the end of each consonant. So instead of saying, “Hey, dude,” you’...

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5 Unofficial Types of Depression

IN THIS ARTICLE YOU'LL DISCOVER

• Depression symptoms that almost all depressed people have
• Why depression is so hard to treat
• Five (unofficial) types of depression ... each with a very different face.  

Depression is like salad. Hear me out on this one. 

Salads come in a staggering variety. A leafy green house salad, a creamy macaroni salad, even a Jell-O salad—they’re all salads. How do you group together such disparate examples? Two things: first, a salad is a variety of foods (you can’t have one ingredient and call it a salad). And second, a salad is bound together with a common dressing.

So it is with depression. With nine hallmark symptoms, of which you need five or more for an official depression diagnosis, there are hundreds of possible combinations. 

With nine hallmark symptoms, of which you need five or more for an official depression diagnosis, there are hundreds of possible combinations.

But across those combinations are some commonalities—think of those as the dressing that pulls a salad together. No matter what constellation of depression symptoms you have, it probably includes three things. According to a study of almost 1,200 depressed individuals in the super-prestigious journal Nature Medicine

• 97% of depressed people struggle with their mood: feeling chronically unhappy, hopeless, or helpless.
• A tad more than 96% have what’s called anhedonia, which is when pleasure and satisfaction get crushed like a cigarette butt under a stiletto heel.
• And 94% feel fatigued. Whatever you call it—tired, exhausted or wiped out—it means you feel about as energetic as a sloth in slo-mo.

Those are the symptoms common to most depressed people. But beyond those three? There’s a huge range of symptoms and hundreds of possible profiles—the equivalent of ambrosia versus tabbouleh. And to make things more complicated, some of the symptoms are opposites. For example, losing your appetite or eating everything that’s not nailed down are both symptoms, as is feeling agitated and restless, feeling like you’ve been fitted with some cement shoes, or worse, both.

No matter the combination, depression is serious. The World Health Organization ranks depression as the third most common burden...

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‘Dilemma’ or ‘Dilemna’?

Do you have trouble spelling the word “dilemma”?

I’m nearly certain I was taught the wrong spelling in school, and when I got older and checked a dictionary, I was shocked to find that the word is spelled "dilemma." Further, the only correct spelling is “dilemma." I thought it was spelled “dilemna.” It’s not as if "dilemna" is a substandard variant or regional spelling. Dictionaries often note alternative spellings and sometimes even nonstandard spellings, but "dilemna" doesn't even show up that way.

The wrong spelling (‘dilemna’) shows up in a few books in the Google Book Corpus—not a lot of books—it peaked around 1980 and has fallen since, but it’s in what I can only call “serious publications”: court reports, books that look like they came from academic presses, journal articles, and so on. They are the kinds of things that are probably written by well-educated people, but that also probably didn’t have extensive copy editing.

One of the reasons I was looking through the Google Book Corpus was to try to see if there was a children’s book or English instruction book that had the misspelling—some reason I would have been taught the wrong spelling in school—but I didn’t find anything. From searching the web, I see that other people have also looked for such books and haven’t found them. 

I was talking about this with a friend I went to school with, and she also remembers being shocked when she finally learned the correct spelling of “dilemma” as an adult, and she also insists we were taught the wrong spelling in school. If you start poking around the internet, you’ll see that this is a common story.

The Mandela Effect

If we’re all wrong—and we might be, since I’ve never seen proof that I was taught the wrong spelling and nobody else seems to have come up with evidence either—this could be an example of something called The Mandela Effect. It’s a form of collective misremembering: when many people remember the same thing, but they’re all wrong. The phenomenon gets its name because it was first described in 2010 when many people claimed they remembered seeing Nelson Mandela’s funeral on TV. The problem was that he was actually still alive. He died in 2013. 

How might something like that have happened with the spelling of the word “dilemma”? 

One theory is that it’s easy to think events...

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