【推荐1】Football, to me, is more than just a game. I have probably learned more valuable lessons from it than from school.

When I joined the team freshman year, I didn’t realize what I was getting into. Even though I had been playing since fourth grade and knew it was hard work, nothing would prepare me for the effort I would put into football that year. We worked all summer in the weight room and ran on the track to get in physical and mental shape before the season.

See, football is more of a mental sport than anything else, so running on the track wasn’t only about getting in shape, we would push our minds by running as hard as we could even if we were going to pass out. At the beginning, I was immature（幼稚）and only thought of myself, sometimes even gave up when I was tired or hurt. Then after the third game I had a season-ending injury. Imagine working all summer and then only being able to play three games! I needed surgery（外科手术）on my arm and at least five months to recover.

Needless to say, I missed the rest of the season, but this actually helped me realize that since you never know when your last play will be, you should try your hardest in football and life.

After freshman year I decided that I would always give my best effort. Playing varsity（校队的）football has taught me so much more than just what my assignments are on a particular play or how to block. I have learned to think about others first and realized how important working hard is. Being with all my friends, even sweating and bleeding with them, really made us bond as a group of hard-working young men who I know will succeed in life.

【推荐2】Ben, at the age of 23 ,was the youngest man to ski solo to the North Pole. He dragged a 180-kilogramme sledge over 1,420 miles through the worst Arctic conditions. This year, Ben plans to ski solo from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole and back in the autumn, carrying all his supplies on his sledge.

Ben Saunders was fired after persuading the firm to support his disorganized first adventure. “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We didn’t get to the Pole, so we had no media interest. No one heard about it.”

“People said it was impossible for me to get to the Pole. I said, “No, I can get there,” and I did. Self-belief, I see it as being a bit like a muscle — it’s my belief that the more you stretch yourself the stronger it gets. If you never do anything that’s uncomfortable or risky then your self-belief gets weaker. So that’s one of the lessons I’ve figured out along the way.

“My Antarctic adventure is just practicable and that’s what is exciting to me. If I knew I could do it without too much bother, I wouldn’t be interested.“ Why? “Personally I’m attracted by the human performance element to it. Not that long ago, running a marathon was seen as the top point of human attempt, and now I wouldn^’t be that surprised if my mum said she was going to run one.”

People’s horizons are changing. “I’m not particularly gifted. I’ve just chosen this one goal to achieve and I’ve been working hard to realize it. And that’s the thing that attracts me: with enough training and enough determination, enough focus and preparation, how far can we go? And I don’t think I’ve found out yet.”

【推荐1】Is Managing Kids' Screen Time a Good Idea?

Screen time is a big topic of conversation in today's households, particularly during the pandemic when online education hours have multiplied for many students.    1    They hope to spare their kids from the countless challenges that technology can bring. Yet the challenges of screen time overuse seldom come from kids' devices themselves, but rather from the tense relationships that technology can bring to families.    2    But technology has positive benefits too. Since every child and family is different, managing screen time calls for joint family decision-making.

If parents believe they can manage a child's screen time through adolescence, they are not only fooling themselves but also inviting relationship trouble with their teens. It is a myth to think that parents can or should manage their kids' screen time through authoritarian restrictions, even during elementary school.     3     When children are left out of those decisions, they often become less communicative with parents and siblings. This is the opposite of what parents want to achieve.

    4     From early ages, children are quite capable of understanding that a good life involves awareness and balance. Just as they learn right from wrong, and good from bad, they can also learn to use technology in healthy ways. Learning how to regulate oneself and develop healthy behaviors is one of the primary tasks of childhood and adolescence. What happens when an adult tries to regulate a child is that the child misses out on the opportunity to learn for themselves. Enforced restrictions can also make children feel helpless and less confident.

To be clear, this article is not suggesting that families never use apps or trackers, or that there should be no restrictions on screen time.    5    Parents should give voice to children and involve them in the planning and decision-making process.

【推荐2】Early or Later Day Care

Many young parents are confused about whether their children should have early day care, and there have always been different views on this subject.

The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby believes that separation from parents during the sensitive “attachment” period from birth to three may scar a child’s personality and lead to psychological problems in later life. Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlby’s work that children should not be subjected to day care before three because of the parental separation it causes, and many people do believe this.

According to Bowlby, a great deal of psychological harm can occur when young children are separated from their parents. If they are left without touch for a while, they will have a higher stress level. Parents’ influence on their children’s well-being may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child’s brain is developing rapidly and when nearly all of her or his experiences are shaped by parents and the family environment.

However, there are critics. Some anthropologists (人类学家) point out that the love affair between children and parents found in modern societies does not usually exist in traditional societies. There has been a long history of the fact that father and mother did not bring up their children alone. Plato, around 394 B.C., argued that a system of early child care would free women to participate in society. Results from Israeli and Dutch studies show that child-raising duties are more evenly distributed among a broader group of people.

Besides, studies have reported that early day care has a neutral or slightly positive effect on children’s development. They learn the benefits of being socially smart, understanding the concept of sharing and caring. They promote concentration skills, which is very important in their learning. There are games where children are taught basic language and mathematical skills through stories and everyday examples.

Common sense tells us that early day care would not be so widespread if children had problems with it. But Bowlby’s analysis raises the possibility that it has delayed effects. The possibility that such care might lead to more mental illness 15 or 20 years later can only be explored by the use of statistics. Whatever the long-term effects, parents sometimes find the immediate effects difficult to deal with. Children under three dislike leaving their parents and show unhappiness. At the age of three almost all children find it easy to go to the nursery. The matter, then, is far from being clearly known, though experience and available evidence indicate that early day care is reasonable for young children.

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【推荐3】Parents can begin good organization (条理) habits with preschool-age kids. Experts recommend asking them to do small, simple actions on a regular basis with the help of parents. Maybe they open their bags and bring their lunch bag to the kitchen, or take their shoes off at the door and put them in a nearby closet. These won’t save parents much time, but they will help develop good habits.

When kids enter primary school, they should be ready for more responsibility. This is the time to teach them about daily routines, and help them take control over theirs. Parents and children might sit down together and make a list of everything that needs to be done to get out of the house in the morning, or get ready for bed at night. Together, parents should figure out how long each activity takes, and when is the best time to do them. Some of the kids might want to get their bags ready and pick out their clothes the night before.

It’s also wise to create a firm schedule for homework. When do kids do their homework? How long do they need? Where do they do it? Where will the homework go once it is done? Figure them out and stick to the schedule as much as possible.

Parents should print up these task lists and help kids finish them step by step. Kids might even check them off each morning or evening. Also, make sure there are clocks in the rooms in which these tasks will take place. Time management is an important part of learning organization, but it can’t be done if kids don’t know what time it is.

Organization gives kids the chance to make it possible to focus on a task and complete it. Kids tend to be more motivated to learn organization skills if they see organization as a challenge to overcome, rather than a fault to repair.