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The Booyah Moment Blog
Small ideas about feelings, reading, music and the five minutes that change a day. Grounded in research, written for tired parents.
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What Schools Call SEL, Families Have Always Called Bedtime
There is a three-letter acronym moving through education right now. It describes something you have probably already done this week, in your pyjamas, badly, at 7:40pm.
Social-Emotional LearningEveryday Parenting
Read more →SEL Is Being Argued About in Statehouses. Your Living Room Isn’t on the Ballot.
Since 2021, bills to strip social-emotional learning out of schools have appeared in at least 25 states. Meanwhile most parents, across both parties, say they want it. There is a gap there — and it has a bedtime in it.
Social-Emotional LearningSchool & Home
Read more →575,361 Children Can’t Be Wrong: What the Research on Feelings Actually Says
Three big studies, one boring conclusion, and the reason we keep putting questions at the back of a picture book. No jargon, we promise.
What the Research SaysSocial-Emotional Learning
Read more →The Book Isn’t the Magic. The Conversation After It Is.
Two groups of preschoolers heard the same stories. One group also talked about them. Only one group’s emotional understanding moved. Here is what that means for tonight.
Reading TogetherFeelings & Words
Read more →Name It to Tame It: What Happens in a Child’s Brain When They Find the Word
In a UCLA scanner, people looked at distressing images. Simply labelling the feeling turned the alarm system down. This is the most practical piece of neuroscience a parent will ever use.
Brain & DevelopmentFeelings & Words
Read more →The Goldilocks Effect: Why a Picture Book Beats Both the Audiobook and the Cartoon
Researchers scanned children’s brains during three versions of the same story. Audio alone was too little. Animation was too much. The illustrated book was just right — and they named the finding accordingly.
Brain & DevelopmentReading Together
Read more →Twelve Words for Feelings: The Vocabulary Gap Nobody Screens For
We test children’s reading. We test their maths. Nobody tests whether a child has a word for the thing making them cry — and that turns out to matter more than it sounds.
Feelings & WordsReading Together
Read more →The Eleven-Point Advantage: Why Emotional Skills Show Up on Report Cards
The most counter-intuitive finding in education: teaching children about feelings improved their academic results by the equivalent of 11 percentile points. Here is the unsexy reason why.
What the Research SaysSocial-Emotional Learning
Read more →Sing It, Don’t Say It: What Singing Does That Talking Cannot
Singing calms a distressed infant more effectively than speech does. It also calms the person singing. Nobody in the research cares whether you can hold a tune.
Music & SingingBrain & Development
Read more →Why “How Did That Make Lilly Feel?” Is the Most Powerful Question at Bedtime
It works because it is about somebody else. A child who will not discuss their own day will happily analyse a lamb’s. That gap is not avoidance — it is how the skill gets built.
Reading TogetherFeelings & Words
Read more →Screen-Light Isn’t Nostalgia. It’s a Brain Scan.
“Less screen time” usually arrives as a moral position. There is an MRI study underneath it — and also some honest limits that most people quoting it leave out.
Brain & DevelopmentWhat the Research Says
Read more →Coloring Is Not a Time-Filler
Handing a child a crayon buys you twenty minutes. It also, according to some interesting and genuinely limited research, does something to the person holding it.
Coloring & CreativityFeelings & Words
Read more →Every Dollar, Eleven Back — and That’s the Boring Reason to Care
Columbia economists ran a cost-benefit analysis on six social-emotional learning programmes. The number they came back with is the reason school boards keep funding this even when it is politically awkward.
What the Research SaysSocial-Emotional Learning
Read more →Parents Agree on This One Thing (Which Should Tell You Something)
In a decade where parents agree on almost nothing about schools, majorities on both sides say children need emotional support. When that happens, it is usually because everyone is looking at the same thing at home.
School & HomeEveryday Parenting
Read more →For Teachers and Librarians: The Read-Aloud That Keeps Going After the Last Page
Every read-aloud hits the same wall: you close the book and thirty children look at you. Here is what the research says to do with the ninety seconds that follow.
Teachers & LibrariansReading Together
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