Weekend Reading is a weekly collation of 3-5 articles that have caught my attention, published on Saturday mornings. Previous editions can be found here.

1. How to Ruin Children’s Play: Supervise, Praise, Intervene (Psychology Today)

I linked to this article in a piece I wrote last November, Let the Children Play, but the entire article by psychologist Peter Gray is worth a second look. Childhood play is incredibly precious, and we well-intentioned adults can easily interfere with its most beneficial aspects if we aren’t careful.

2. How Women Are Fighting the Marketers that Nearly Ruined Them (thedailybeast.com)

Multi-Level Marketing is terrible (and in other news, water is wet). Here’s an interesting piece drawing on the experience of numerous former MLM sellers victims.

3. The Daniel Tiger Doctrine (The Atlantic)

My kids really enjoy watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, which is an antimated Mr. Rogers spin-off. But since they’ve been watching I’ve been plagued by a nagging question: why is Mom Tiger the only one in the Tiger family who wears pants? This interview with show creator Angela Santomero finally gives us the answer. Also there’s a bunch of stuff about the Daniel Tiger philosophy of children’s programming, but really, I’m here for the tiger pants.