Corrections: July 28, 2025
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Yahoo
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- Yahoo
Local officials slam woman with $2,000 fine for unconventional front lawn: 'That front yard looks hideous'
Local officials slam woman with $2,000 fine for unconventional front lawn: 'That front yard looks hideous' A Long Island woman faced fines for the supposed offense of replacing her lawn with native plants, CBS News reported. New Hyde Park, New York, resident Xilin Zhang made the decision to transform her yard, per CBS, participating in a growing "rewilding" movement. "It's a very natural look. There's tons of butterflies and bees and birds coming. ... It's not just some grass doing nothing," Zhang told CBS. Rewilding your yard is a practice growing in prominence — it typically entails replacing some or all foliage with indigenous greenery and, oftentimes, swapping out monoculture grass for a native lawn. The benefits of planting natives and switching away from a traditional lawn are manifold. They require fewer resources such as water, cost less to maintain, provide crucial support for pollinators, and — because native plants are suited to their areas — don't require nearly as much work. However, there's one prominent downside in some places, with New Hyde Park being one of them: homeowners associations (or HOA bylaws), neighborhood busybodies, and sometimes local code enforcers have been known to object to or even sanction rewilded yards. In Zhang's case, the village in Nassau County took exception to her native plants. In particular, Mayor Christopher Devane expressed disdain for her garden. "When ugly is that overwhelming, you have to call it what it is. That front yard looks hideous," Devane opined. Devane's personal assessment wasn't the only hurdle Zhang faced after rewilding her yard — she was given a summons with a potential fine of up to $2,000, per CBS. Confusing matters is the fact that New Hyde Park is in the Towns of Hempstead and North Hempstead, the latter of which has an initiative that encourages native plants — and even offers homeowners grants to facilitate rewilding. Do you think the government should ban gas-powered lawn tools? No way Definitely Only certain tools I don't know Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. While Zhang's efforts were encouraged by the Town of North Hempstead, New Hyde Park claimed her yard violated village code. Across Long Island, groups such as ReWild Long Island have endeavored to convert gardeners — particularly because the chemicals used to maintain code-compliant lawns have been catastrophic for the health of the Great South Bay. Neighboring Suffolk County has the highest rate of pesticide use in the state, and scientists at Stony Brook University determined that a record number of harmful algal blooms and dead zones occurred last summer. "There are lots of towns on Long Island which are encouraging people to put in wild flowers because they don't want all that pollution going into the bay," ReWild Long Island President Raju Rajan explained. Ultimately, Zhang was permitted to keep her native plant lawn with one caveat: "as long as all plants stay under 4 feet tall," per News 12 Long Island. Join our free newsletter for easy tips to save more and waste less, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
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Opinion: Parents Want to Support Their Kids. Behavioral Science Can Help Them Follow Through
For over 10 years, the Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab at the University of Chicago has been investigating how parents make decisions. A key insight from our research is that what parents do does not always align with what they intend to do. This 'intention-action gap' can reduce parents' engagement with their children, which in turn interferes with children's skill development. This gap is a common characteristic of decision-making. People plan to save for retirement or stick to diets, but often fall short of their goals. In parenting, the stakes are higher: Not reading a bedtime story or skipping a day of preschool may seem momentarily insignificant, but small gaps in learning time accumulate over time, making it increasingly difficult for children's skills to catch up. Why do well-intentioned parents sometimes struggle to follow through with engaging their children, and how can behavioral science help parents close the intention-action gap? Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter The field of behavioral economics offers insights into what creates intention-action gaps and our research identifies practical ways to bridge the gap. Many of these approaches rely on the concept of 'nudges' — subtle changes in how choices or information are presented that make the desired action easier or more likely to occur. In parenting, nudges often come in the form of reminders, feedback, or other simple tools sent through digital technology. These nudges acknowledge that busy parents aren't failing to engage their children in learning activities that are key to the child's future because they lack love, knowledge, or good intentions; rather, daily life is full of friction and temptations. Our research has shown that 'present bias,' a manifestation of the intention-action gap, is central to parenting choices. Parents, like everyone, often prioritize immediate rewards over future benefits. Raising a child requires long-term effort; while considerable research shows that reading books to a toddler boosts their language skills in the future, the benefits of today's actions can be long delayed. Meanwhile, daily distractions and fatigue demand immediate attention. Related This bias can cause parents to focus on the 'now' rather than the 'later,' even when they value activities like reading. In our Parents and Children Together (PACT) study, we tackled present bias by sending parents text-message prompts and goal-setting reminders to read to their children from a digital library that we provided to parents. These reminders were intended to 'bring the future to the present.' Parents who received these reminders read to their child over twice as much over six weeks compared to parents who received the digital library with no reminders. Notably, the parents who gained the most were those who exhibited present-biased preferences in assessments given before the experiment began. In other words, the parents most prone to procrastinate on reading were the ones who saw the greatest improvements when we helped them overcome present bias. Parents without present bias already read regularly, so the extra reminders had little impact for them. Tools to Help Parents Follow Through Another successful example of narrowing the intention-action gap from our research lab is the 'Show Up to Grow Up' study, a randomized controlled trial we conducted to increase attendance in Chicago's publicly funded preschool programs. Our intervention sent personalized text messages to parents over 18 weeks, indicating the number of days their child had been absent and highlighting the learning opportunities they missed while not in school. The messages reminded parents of their commitment to adopt good attendance habits and their goals to help their child develop kindergarten readiness skills. For children whose parents received these messages, preschool attendance increased by about 2.5 school days, and chronic absenteeism — a measure of missing 10% or more of the school days in a school year — decreased by 20% compared to the children of parents who did not receive the messages. The text nudges and reminders helped align parents' actions with their long-term goals. This type of light-touch program is inexpensive and easy to scale, making it a viable tool for education policymakers aiming to reduce early absenteeism. Technology offers a promising solution to close the intention-action gap. Our recent Children and Parents Engaged in Reading (CAPER) study provided families with a tablet preloaded with a digital library of over 200 high-quality children's books. The tablet had no apps or internet access beyond the library to reduce distractions. The goal was to remove the obstacle of finding new books and to make shared reading as easy and engaging as possible. Related The impact on children's language skills was notable. Over an 11-month trial, low-income children whose families received access to the digital library showed approximately 0.3 standard deviations more progress in language skills (equivalent to three months of language learning on the test we gave to children) than those who did not, moving from roughly the 41st to the 50th percentile nationally. Notably, the treatment impact was significantly larger – 0.50 standard deviation, equivalent to approximately five months of language learning on the test we gave to children – for parents who exhibited present-biased preferences in assessments administered before the experiment began (as in the PACT study). Sometimes the best way to narrow the intention-action gap is to reduce barriers to the intended action. From Research Insights to Early Childhood Policy These research insights go beyond academics: They offer a new toolkit for early childhood policy. Traditional parenting programs often assume that if parents are informed about the benefits of their decisions or provided with free resources, they will naturally act accordingly. However, information and resources alone don't always lead to behavior change, especially when cognitive biases interfere. Relatively low-cost, behaviorally informed interventions can directly address the intention-action gap. For example, text-message programs can be scaled through school districts, pediatric clinics, or social service agencies to encourage behaviors like daily reading, conversations, or preschool attendance. Digital tools, such as the library tablet in the CAPER study, could be integrated into public early education programs or library initiatives to ensure families have access to books and find them easy and enjoyable to use. Such approaches can promote equity by focusing on parents who face more cognitive biases or for whom these biases cause the most harm. Behavioral tools can help close early learning gaps before children reach kindergarten, which research shows is the most effective and cost-efficient time to empower parents as active partners in their children's development. Solve the daily Crossword
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Ground Game: AI scammers deepfake Trump officials, golf diplomacy, Vance sells tax bill
This newsletter was originally sent out via email to our Ground Game subscribers on July 28. You can subscribe at any time at This newsletter was originally sent out via email to our Ground Game subscribers on July 28. You can subscribe at any time at
