Season’s Greetings from PSG!

Season’s greetings from everyone at Parenting Science Gang!

It’s been a busy year – our first four groups got underway in April and 9 months on are working to make their chosen experiments happen.

2018 looks set to be just as exciting, with five new groups joining us.

We’re pleased to announce that two of our new gangs have launched already – Let Toys Be Toys and Breastfeeding Health Care Experiences. Look out for announcements about the remaining three gangs early next year.

Asking the experts

We’ve had loads of great Q&As over the last couple of months.

• Rebecca Asher came to talk to us about breaking gender stereotypes
• Dr Rob Aldridge came along to help us understand epidemiology
• Dr Meghan Azad told us about her work looking into links between breastmilk composition and child health, and
• Dr Alaa Bani Hani talked about breastfeeding and dental health.

Flexi-schooling

Dumfries and Galloway Bumps Babies & Beyond PSG are investigating flexi-schooling in Scotland. Over the last few weeks we’ve had several Q&A sessions with experts in flexi-schooling, as well as some help thinking through the best way the group can ask questions on this topic:

• alternatives to full time school with Dr Helen Lees, a reader in Alternative Education Studies at Newman University
• Exploring Flexischooling, a Q&A with three trustees from the Centre for Personalised Education – Dr Harriet Pattison, Alison Sauer and Emma Dyke
• flexischooling benefits as seen by Julia Black, parent turned educator at Explorium
• the great flexi-schooling survey with Dr Louise Tracey
• learning in the woods – forest schooling with Sara Knight

Babywearing

Science Aware Natural Parenting PSG  are working with Dr Davide Filingeri to investigate the temperature rise of a baby when carried in a sling after he talked to us about thermoregulation (how our bodies regulate temperature).

We’ve also spoken to Dr Rosie Knowles about babywearing and to Dr Rebecca Whittle about how babywearing affects people’s sense of space and place.

Calling all experts!

Want to get involved?

With 5 new groups of parents joining us, we’ll have 9 groups of inquisitive parents. So we are still on the look out for experts in all areas of childhood and parenting. Would you like to get involved? You could join us for an online Q&A or be an expert in residence in one of our groups.

We are particularly interested to hear from black and ethnic miniority experts as, so far, their voices are under-represented in our expert Q&As.

To tell us what you do and find out more, please contact us at newsletter@parentingsciencegang.org.uk

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