Recently confirmed things about kids:
They are naturally helpful beings, contrary to what Hobbes and Machiavelli thought.
According to the marshmallow experiment (reenacted here), there’s some direct link between a kid’s ability to sit in a room unattended with a big fat marshmallow and his or her future academic achievements.
And most recently from the NY Times’ 9th Annual Year in Ideas, that infant sleep is destiny – good sleeping habits in babies lead to better executive-funtion abilities in childhood. Hm, alright, that seems to be aiming a bit high. My son sleeps about 11 hours a night (and my husband and I thank our lucky stars for that) and all that I expect is he’ll have lots of energy to play when he wakes up.