Writing, second language and Nicaraguan signs

* I was listening again the podcast with the guy who is writing a book every 21 days. Few years ago he would get just enough to stop working for a living, but now, two years later, he is averaging 40-50k per months with more than 100 books.

I was not so efficient like him, with two books published in March last year and another two this year in February, reaching the total count of 12.

** When it is about children, a negative habit such as whining or hysteric episodes, the way to deal with them is by using the psychological idea of extinction. But our rate of success needs to be as close to 100% as possible. If we decide to not give in when the child is whining, consistence is the key. If we stop after a while, we will reinforce the idea that we will eventually give up when the child is persistent. So giving in later is a No-No.

***Learning a new language as a child can have its own benefits. The second language will be native if it is learned before age of three, decreasing in quality with each age group (4-15, 15-18, 19-39) After age of 39, you will never speak perfectly, in theory. One good resource to check your child language is wordbank.stanford.edu. The ideal age of acquisition for a second language is before age of 10. A peer group talking in the studied language is ideal. If this is done early, the child will gradually lose the ability to speak first language, even if he/she will understand it. Even if parents are using the language. But not if he/she will have a second peer group where to use the language. An interesting observation was done in Nicaragua, where the deaf children were not supported until 1980s. Because of that, being deaf in there meant that you will have only rudiments of language, but something strange happen. After 1980, they start to create schools for deaf children, and their sign language started to get structure and subtlety with each new generation. The result was called Nicaraguan Sign Language. Main benefits in learning the second language are believed to be a result of switching from one language to another, creating a series of cognitive advantages called executive functions (EF). The main influence of the executive functions are observed in planning, flexibility and stopping/inhibition. They will relate later in life with retirement habits, diet, stopping bad habits such as smoking. Let's talk about diet as an example. Everybody knows the theory, but we do not do the right things, even if we know them. When you are on diet, and see food, the initial response (prepotent tendency) is to eat, but then we switch and stop. Same as when we are French speaking - English, but we are asked in French. The first impulse is to answer in English, but we switch and answer in French.