Hiya all
There is a new series of Child of our Time on. I'm not sure if this is shown in the US, but it's a kind of experiment. They took a number of millenium babies which they plan to follow their progress and what happens to them until they are 16/18.
Personally I find it a really interesting programme and have been following it from the beginning. The children are from all walks of life... some were premature, a couple have divorced parents now.
It shows a lot about how they are developing emotionally, how they are getting on in school, what kind of problems they might face, through a series of play tests. It also shows them at play, how they interact with others, how they make friends. A lot of it is showing how to give a child a sense of self, how to help them to be confident, and how to recognise what maybe problems later in life for the child.
One of the tests in this programme was to see how materialistic they were... where they gave each child a new toy for 10 minutes, then took the toy a way. They then gave the child two photographs, one with the toy and a mean looking child, and a photo of a nice looking child, and asked which they would like to play with.... most of the children picked the nice child, meaning that they value people over objects.
Here is the link if anyone is interested.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/parenting/tv_and_radio/child_of_our_time/H&H