Most Fridays I try to post interesting things I’ve found while looking around the internets. Here’s this week’s list:

I was born in 1970, so my back to school experience was a lot like that described in the first half of Victoria Fedden’s article. Sadly, the back to school experience with my kids is a lot like that described in the second half.

The problem with telling our children they’re smart is that they begin to think “smart” is a think you’re either born with or you’re not born with. They forget that “smart” is something you can actually acquire through diligence and hard work. That’s why I love this article from Salman Khan. In it, he asserts a thing I believe to be true: You can learn anything.

It’s not a huge surprise, but it’s a fact that consistently gets ignored: Teenagers simply aren’t getting enough sleep. Of course, most adults don’t get enough sleep, either. Perhaps there’s a relationship between the two.

Sometimes I feel as though the news anchors who show their faces on our televisions should begin their broadcasts with the words: “And now, the bad news.” But, as Glennon Doyle Melton and the folks at the relief and development organization Church World Service want us to remember, there is a lot more good news in the world than bad.

People who know me well know that I don’t do massages. I did. Once. And it wasn’t…it didn’t…well…I don’t do massages anymore. Kirk J. Rudell provides a commentary on how…um…awkward massages can be. I would laugh, but I’m too busy over here in a fetal position.

Finally, it seems as though Will Reid is tired of his children not knowing how to do some very basic things. So, he’s decided to do a series of instructional videos for them. The first deals with how to change a toilet roll. You might want to share this with your children, but be careful, he gets a little advanced there towards the end.