Author: admin

Morning,

Check out what I recently read:

… Children are frightened by clown-themed decor in hospitals, a survey suggests. How did the smiley circus entertainers become a horror staple?

Anyone who has read Stephen King’s It would probably never choose to decorate a children’s ward with clowns.

And it probably comes as no surprise to horror fans that a University of Sheffield study of 250 children for a report on hospital design suggests the children find clown motifs “frightening and unknowable”. ….

…

But he believes children’s fear may be less to do with clowns per se and more to do with being unsettled by something as unusual-seeming as a clown.

“People are typically frightened by things which are wrong in some way, wrong in a disturbingly unfamiliar way,” Prof Salkovskis says.

“It is almost certainly not a reaction to clowns, but we are sensitive to things which are extraordinary, particularly sensitive when we are young. My three-year-old was terrified by Peter Rabbit at a B&Q. Peter Rabbit is six inches high, not seven feet high.”

And obviously it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to suppose that children in hospitals, away from home, in an unfamiliar environment and worried about their health or elements of the treatment, may be more nervous than usual….MORE…

What an interesting topic. So far, the only thing my kids have show a fear of about 6 years ago was the “ghost in the blackboard”, which was utterly decimated by taking them to said blackboard in the basement and letting them scribble/feel/turn upsidedown/etc. the school item. To this day, I have no idea how such an idea was generated. Anywhos, after that hands-on experiment, all fear for that disappeared.

I’m big on facing one’s fears. Last year I proactively chose to participate in a kendo match that gave fear a new meaning to me (probably because I had never been so petrified about being hurt before). I literally forced myself to go on, and at the aftermath, realized that hey! I survived! and even if I got pummeled up, I can always recover.

I take this attitude with me to self-defense classes, karate, etc. as well; my motto is, the more I’m forced to confront my fears, the more I’m forced out of my comfort zone, the more I’m pushed to the edge….the stronger I become.

Here are some resources I’ve found for you regarding kids’ phobias:

• Anxiety, fears and phobias
• Fighting Children’s fears
• Helping Children Stare Fear in the Face
• Children’s Fears

So now…what about you? How do you deal with your children’s fears? Do you stand by them as they confront them? Or do you let them get bigger and bigger in their minds until it incapacitates them?

Well?

It’s something about which to think,

Barbara

ps – here are some ways of dealing with phobias:

Morning,

As a parent, one of the things about which I’m always bemused is how other parents will excuse their children from excellence.

Now, I’m not talking about achieving a straight A average all the time, every time. Heck no! But I am talking about knowing what your child’s ability is…and then insisting on meeting that when push comes to shove.

For example, this morning my 6 year old showed me his math homework in which he neglected to finish the last two problems. “Mom”, whined he, “I didn’t see them!” Which, given the fact said two problems took up the entire page….is kinda sorta difficult to believe. Truth was, his desire to finish quickly and get back to the computer caused him to overlook the homework.

Now, my kids know…hand in something lousy, Mom rips it up. Luckily for him, I was folding clothing in the laundry and mulling over how I’m going to outlast the karate senseis today in boot camp…so I wasn’t really focused on being hardnosed. So I allowed him to rescue the paper before it was completely ripped, and fix up his errors.

Consequences! All kids need to know what the consequences are for poor performance. And it can’t be rigid….if a child fails because of other issues (other problems, angst, etc.), those have to be explored, validated and then dealt with.

Parenting has to be the toughest thing I’ve done in my life, period.

Yesterday we had a different challenge – my eldest daughter brought home an 84 in her Wordly Wise. Now, an 84 for my kid is like watching a black belt fail at a front kick, or a toddler fail at consuming a chocolate bar. It just doesn’t happen in my family…or it shouldn’t; English and Literature are things my family was born knowing.

So! My kid was banned from the computer for two days. Poor grades result always in computer bans (and sometimes additional housework). It’s the law in my household and when implemented, causes quite a lot of discussions.

But you know what? Once my kids get into college, they’ll have to rely upon their own abilities to deliver top-notch work. Mom won’t be there. And when they get out into the real world, they’ll have to step up to the plate and excel on their own. I’d be a lousy parent if I didn’t start that character-building at this age when it’s easy to internalize.

So….if you’re a parent, tell your kids your expectations! The final grade doesn’t matter – it’s the honest effort that’s put in at this age that counts. I’ve rewarded my kids for poor performance when I know they’ve done the very best effort they could….not everyone will excel, every time.

But you’ll have given them the tools to always deliver to the best of their abilities. And that, of course, is a very precious gift indeed.

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps – Need some homework helpers? Enjoy!

Morning,

This was from the New York Times – fascinating!!

…

It’s not just the content of our moral judgments that is often questionable, but the way we arrive at them. We like to think that when we have a conviction, there are good reasons that drove us to adopt it. That is why an older approach to moral psychology, led by Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, tried to document the lines of reasoning that guided people to moral conclusions. But consider these situations, originally devised by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt:

• Julie is traveling in France on summer vacation from college with her brother Mark. One night they decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. Julie was already taking birth-control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy the sex but decide not to do it again. They keep the night as a special secret, which makes them feel closer to each other. What do you think about that – was it O.K. for them to make love?
• A woman is cleaning out her closet and she finds her old American flag. She doesn’t want the flag anymore, so she cuts it up into pieces and uses the rags to clean her bathroom.
• A family’s dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog’s body and cook it and eat it for dinner.

Most people immediately declare that these acts are wrong and then grope to justify why they are wrong. It’s not so easy. In the case of Julie and Mark, people raise the possibility of children with birth defects, but they are reminded that the couple were diligent about contraception. They suggest that the siblings will be emotionally hurt, but the story makes it clear that they weren’t. They submit that the act would offend the community, but then recall that it was kept a secret. Eventually many people admit, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.” People don’t generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.

The gap between people’s convictions and their justifications is also on display in the favorite new sandbox for moral psychologists, a thought experiment devised by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson called the Trolley Problem. On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”

Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge? Both dilemmas present you with the option of sacrificing one life to save five, and so, by the utilitarian standard of what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number, the two dilemmas are morally equivalent. But most people don’t see it that way: though they would pull the switch in the first dilemma, they would not heave the fat man in the second. When pressed for a reason, they can’t come up with anything coherent, though moral philosophers haven’t had an easy time coming up with a relevant difference, either…..MORE….

Fascinating, no? Let’s now take this and apply it to our children. How are you teaching morality? Heck, forget that question and answer this….is your morality “the right one”? Is it the one others respect? Is it something that, when passed down, will give your children tools to make a better life for themselves?

Well?

Here are some helpful resources that I’ve found for you:

• Morality, ethics, manners
• Copyright morality – Kids Don’t Care
• Moral development of children

So now you tell me. What do you think?

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps – Here are some useful resources for helping kids’ self esteem as well.