Jumping Monkeys Episode 21: Ashley Merryman on Sleep and Your Kids

Today we talk with Ashley Merryman, writer, attorney, and former speechwriter for Al Gore. Ashley is the author of a recent article on how to get kids to sleep more, and is co-authoring a parenting book with Po Bronson.

We first learned about Ashley when we came upon her New York Magazine piece with Po Bronson about praising your kids. When we learned about her recent sleep research, we knew had to have her on to talk about it.

Listen as Ashley chats with us about the science of sleep and offers some surprising data about sleep and kids.

Whether you have infants or teenagers, you'll want to listen to this interview, read Po's companion piece to Ashley's sleep article, read Ashley and Po's blog and then you'll want to go take a nap.

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Comments

[Todd B Norris]

I am typing this to discuss the kind of TOTALLY uninformed reporting of the XO Laptop, i maybe coming off as a little harsh but i am one that has been waiting for these laptops to release for about 3 years now. Here is the info you should have read over before you started talking about it..
01. The laptop is not a big work horse, but it can run for 24 hours on a single charge and the battery is rated at about 2000 charges verses 500 for a "regular" laptop.
02. you can charge it or run it off a 1 foot square solar panel.
03. it has a "yo-yo" pull hand charger that one minute of pulling gives you about 10 minutes of power.
04. it has the mesh networking and webcam which will allow not only kids to talk to each other and to trickle updates from unit to unit, but when the students take them home the teachers can then have a webcam conversations with the illiterate parents and let them know what it going on with the students.
05. Since it is linux based the source code it viewable, with a simple key press so that kids can play with the code and learn how to program and make useful changes to the software ON THE FLY!!! and if they mess up the whole unit, well it does not matter they can just quickly restore the unit from a on board image.
06. it is made to inspire ingenuity with even the games, there are 5 "programing" languages that are for making music.
07. Some of the biggest problems with hesitation of leaders is that they are afraid that these units with teach the students too much and they will replace the leaders that are in power.
08. the Give 1, Get 1 gives you or your child 1 laptop and 1 will go to a poor child, and you get a write off for that second 200 bucks.
09. the XO is water resistant, dust resistant, drop resistant, and all the major components are on the part that is the screen.
10. it is a touch screen and even has a super low power mode that changes the screen to a gray scale good for reading like an ebook.

there is a GREAT article AND a video where he shows you the laptop and discusses some of the more advanced features.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/circuits/04pogue.html?_r=1&em&ex=1191729600&en=3dc2ce6b6d434d21&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin
digg article that showed me the nytimes article:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/XO_laptop_now_in_final_testing_is_amazing_a_total_kid_magnet

i LOVE the show. I listen every week, not because i have kids, my wife and i don't really want any, but because my wife's mom and sister have kids, two are 6 and one is 2. In fact, we, the wife and i, were hoping to get 4 of the give one, get one laptops for the kids for christmas and one for myself to program on. We are second guessing this as that is like $1600 bucks, but 800 would be a tax write off. i am very into the spreading on knowledge and getting a usable knowledge pool in these third world countries. So, they can help pull themselves up and not have to rely on help from everyone else in the world.
-todd norris

[David Wells]

Hi Megan and Leo,

I left a voice message but wanted to leave a comment as well. We have to think outside the box when it comes to the XO laptop. We're picturing kids walking to school with this little laptop and wondering whether it would be better for them to have had clean drinking water and breakfast before they go to school. For many children in third world poverty, it is too difficult to get to school in the first place. The school may be too far away or it may be too dangerous to walk to school. Many children, girls in particular, spend their time helping the family gather food and clean water and don't even dream of going to school. How cool would it be for children and their parents to reach out and learn with this little laptop right in their own homes. Learning can take place anywhere in the web 2.0 world we live in. By giving children new ways to learn, they can have clean water and a window to the world too!

[Keith]

Hi Megan and Leo,
I think the XO project is a great idea at its heart but an issue that always appears when you give someone a thing of value and they do not have enough food, water, medicine, clothing, etc. The item of value gets traded for these essentials for pennies on the dollar. Two interesting benchmarks that I think XO org. needs to track is (1) how many units are still operational in one year and (2) how many of the original recipients still have their unit one year later.
Love this show and the TWIT network also!

[Tamara Gruber]

The sleep segment was absolutely fascinating and I enjoyed the scientific approach. Much more informative then your usual sleep article. I'm passing this along to friends. Great job!