More Words

"By age 3, a child of professionals hears about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. A child of parents on welfare hears almost the exact opposite: just 80,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements."

--Paul Tough, This American Life

Words

"A pair of psychologists did a close-up study of two sets of families. One group in which the parents were on welfare, and another in which the parents held professional jobs. It turned out that the biggest difference between the two sets of homes was language. The kids with the professional parents heard 20 million more words in the first three years of their lives than the kids on welfare - mostly just the regular jibber-jabber of parents talking to their children. And those extra words had a huge effect on their verbal ability. It was stunning news, that the biggest factor in determining a kid's later success in school wasn't any of the things we always assume to be true - it wasn't money, it wasn't parental education, it wasn't race - it was the sheer number of words that your parents spoke to you as a child.

Among scholars who study inequality, there is more and more evidence out there that the divide between the kids who make it and the kids who don't, starts in the very first years of life."

--Paul Tough, This American Life

Dress Shape

I like the shape of this dress. Also from Hel-Looks.com.

Shirt Dress/Tunic

From Hel-Looks.com. I wonder if my mom could make me something like this?

Quote from Psychology Today

"Style is optimism made visible. Style presumes that you are a person of interest, that the world is a place of interest, that life is worth making the effort for. True style, in addition to being irrevocably social, is even morally responsible. Consumption isn't promiscuous or random, at the whim of the marketplace, or the urging of marketers. Rather, it is focused on what is personally suitable and expressive."

"The Style Imperative", Hara Estroff Marano, Sept / Oct 2008, Psychology Today.

Floral Chair

Cool print, love vertical lines. From Anthropologie.