Children Archives

March 14, 2007

For parents with teenagers ... how to handle road rage

Trunk Monkey #6 - Chaperone Version

How the Trunk Monkey handles road rage

More Trunk Monkey videos

Sample Teenager Driving Contract is here.

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March 05, 2007

Bank Account

This was forwarded to me by Iris, Fern's mom.

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably coifed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.

"I love it," he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

"Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait."

"That doesn't have anything to do with it," he replied. "Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is arranged, it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.

"It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I've stored away. Just for this time in my life.

Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in.

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories! Thank you for your part in filling my Memory bank. I am still depositing."

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

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March 02, 2007

Cailtin piano recital Jan. 28, 2007



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February 28, 2007

Caitlin friends - 2006





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February 27, 2007

Yi Wah and Leann, August 2006

Yi Wah and Leann, August 2006

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February 25, 2007

Bully in the family

"A favorite tactic of the bully in the family is to set people against each other. The benefits to the bully are that: the bully gains a great deal of gratification from encouraging and provoking argument, quarrelling and hostility, and then from watching others engage in adversarial interaction and destructive conflict, and the ensuing conflict ensures that people's attention is distracted and diverted away from the cause of the conflict."

"Bullies within the family, especially female bullies are masters of manipulation and are fond of manipulating people through their emotions (e.g. guilt) and through their beliefs, attitudes and perceptions. Bullies see any form of vulnerability as an opportunity for manipulation, and are especially prone to exploiting those who are most emotionally needy."
. . .
The bully may try to establish an exclusive relationship (based on apparent trust and confidence) with one family member such that they (the bully) are seen as the sole reliable source of information; this may be achieved by portraying the target (and certain other family members) as irresponsible, unstable, undependable, uncaring, unreliable and untrustworthy, perhaps by the constant highlighting - using distortion and fabrication - of alleged failures, breaches of trust, lack of reliability, etc.

Tim Fields on bullying within the family, on "Thru the Looking Glass" blog, February 1, 2007

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February 17, 2007

Wales to visit Keith, November 2006





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February 16, 2007

Winter formal 2006

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February 14, 2007

Why you praise children for their hard work....

According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.

But a growing body of research--and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system--strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.

"How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise," by Po Bronson, New York magazine, February 13, 2007

That's why you praise your children for their hard work and perseverance - those are qualities they can change and those qualities will be helpful to them no matter what they do in life. How "smart" they are they can't change. I'm convinced that the praising of children for being "smart" is a reflection not of brighter children, but of insecure parents competing with other insecure parents.

Also see "For once, blame the student," by Patrick Welsh, USA Today, March 7, 2006:

What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

Politicians and education bureaucrats can talk all they want about reform, but until the work ethic of U.S. students changes, until they are willing to put in the time and effort to master their subjects, little will change.

A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that the reason so many U.S. students are "falling short of their intellectual potential" is not "inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes" and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers -- but "their failure to exercise self-discipline."

Quotes about hard work

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Genius will not. Education will not. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Press on."
-- Ray Kroc

"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly."
-- G.K. Chesterton

"Dissatisfaction with oneself is one of the foundation stones of every real talent."
-- Anton Chekov

"Let us be grateful to Adam, our benefactor. He cut us out of the 'blessing' of idleness and won for us the 'curse' of labor."
-- Mark Twain

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm."
-- Winston Churchill

"I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."
-- Benjamin Franklin

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."
-- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

"The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight.
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."
-- Longfellow, "The Ladder of St. Augustine"

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"The truth is that many successful people are no more talented than unsuccessful people. The difference between them lies in the old axiom that successful people do those things that unsuccessful people don't like to do."
-- Harvey Mackay

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February 12, 2007

A little angel and an old photo




This is the little angel



The angel is the little one....



Uh, this is the old photo


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January 25, 2007

Flowers for 16th

Happy Birthday!

Thanks to Aunt Sophia for the flowers.

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December 05, 2006

"Education is basically a series of rent-seeking rackets"

A very good rule of thumb when reading child-development literature is that any study that has not taken careful account of heritable factors--by comparing identical twins raised together or separately, fraternal twins ditto ditto, non-twin siblings ditto ditto--is utterly and completely worthless. That sentence is (a) true, and (b) guaranteed to get you thrown out of a high window if spoken aloud at any gathering of education theorists.

Certainly Mr. Tough will have none of it. The child is a blank slate. Parents act on it, causing this and this. Then teachers act on it, causing that and that. Bingo!--you have a finished adult. Or, as Mr. Tough summarizes the interesting (but perfectly gene-free) work of sociologist Annette Lareau: “[G]ive a child X, and you get Y.” So simple! One wonders if there has ever been an education theorist who has actually raised children, or retained any memory of his own childhood.
. . .
Raising two children in suburban America, I dream fondly but futilely of my own 1950s English childhood, when by far the commonest words I heard from my parents were: “Go out and play. Make sure you’re back in time for supper.” How on earth did civilization survive?

"The Dream Palace of Educational Theorists," by John Derbyshire, New English Review, December 2006

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January 31, 2006

teen driving - rules and a humorous driving contract

When your children need to learn to drive, you should put as much time and energy ... and patience .. into that as in teaching thme how to ride a bike or swim ...

After watching my oldest learn how not to drive (and me not teaching him very well), my younger children must drive a minimum of 5,000 miles with me in the passenger seat ... on all kinds of roads ... in all kinds of traffic ... in all kinds of weather ... and through the worst intersections they will be using when they have their license ...

our humorous - yet serious - teenager driving contract here ...

Rules that will keep your teen driver safer

  • The 2-second rule is an easy way to stay a safe stopping distance behind the car in front of you, at all speeds. Choose any landmark, such as a sign on the side of the road, a bridge, or a shadow across the road. When the car in front of you passes the landmark, begin counting "one thousand one, one thousand two." Your car should not pass the landmark before finishing the complete count, i.e., two seconds. This rule works at all speeds. Increase the count for slippery conditions. Maintain the 2-seconds even in rush hour traffic, as tailgating increases your sense of anxiety. Make the 2-second a habit - over time, you will not have to count as following this rule will become automatic.

  • Stop light rule: After coming to a complete stop at a light or stop sign, you should be able to see the rear tires of the car in front of you touching the pavement. If you can't, you have increased your risk of injury as your car slams into the car in front of you in the event you are rear ended at the stop.

  • Inside the car and body parts rule: Keep your ego, voice, music and all body parts inside the car. Do not yell or point body parts or any object at other drivers.

  • Tailgate rule: If you follow the 2-second rule, you won't tailgate. If another driver is tailgating you, pull into the right lane. If the driver continues to tailgate and follow you, drive to an open business and alert the police.

  • Equipment rule: Adjust your seat belt, seat and mirrors, and put on your seat belt BEFORE starting the car. Use your seat belt and turn signals at all times - make using these tools a habit. Do not use a cell phone while driving, and do not take your eyes off the road to fiddle with the radio or sound system in the car while the car is moving.


More Resources

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December 21, 2005

Remembering Dad, and being Dad

We also had a Dance Recital at the neighborhood community center; like the church concert, it’s one of those events that defines a community, and is completely off your radar if you don’t have kids. Ever see those pictures of how insects perceive flowers, how they see structures and colors we don’t? That’s what having kids does to you. Or, to put in other terms, it’s like finding yourself in another country and discovering the community of people who speak your language and eat your foods. You become aware of a world that lives side by side with the one you knew, and you fall into it without effort or complaint. There’s a vast difference between remembering Dad coming to your recital and being Dad at the recital. The first is a memory that dead-ends with you; the latter connects you to him and to all the kids and dads to come.

The Christmas Bleat, 2003, by James Lileks, Dec. 22, 2003

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December 11, 2005

Teen fiction

She was wont to proffer eccentric advice to readers such as not to buy "teen fiction" for their children: "They are narcissistic enough and should be encouraged to snap out of it. Make them read Crime and Punishment and dock their pocket money if you catch them reading tripe."

Alice Thomas Ellis, novelist; born September 9, 1932, died March 8, 2005, The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), March 11, 2005

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August 22, 2005

13-year-olds can get abortions without parental consent but 18-year-olds are still "children" if they want to join the military ...

Ay caramba! Mark Steyn writes:

They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.

I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''

The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

"'Peace Mom's' marriage a metaphor for Dems," by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, August 21, 2005

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August 17, 2005

What teenagers think and feel

"I think that overall, we allow - hell, encourage - a very disproportionate and inappropriate level of importance to be attached to what teenagers think and feel.

Contrary to the accepted wisdom out there, I have thought for a long time now that kids today probably should get a lot less attention, not more. Of course, this doesn't apply to poor pathetic ghetto kids whose parents barely even acknowledge their existence at all. But these school mass-murders aren't being done by those kids anyway. It's the kids who come from comfortable homes, whose parents are at least somewhat high achievers, and who have at least some potential for success in life themselves who are doing the killing out there, or at least the non-gang-related media-spectacular killing anyway.

I don't buy the argument that it's all because Mom and Dad are too career-obsessed and don't make enough time to throw the old baseball around in the backyard with little Johnny, or to "just talk." Nor do I think it has anything to do with Johnny's lowered expectations for his own life brought on by (insert one): a) the threat of nuclear war (an oldie but goodie); b) the perpetually-struggling economy; c) the destruction of our natural environment; d) general cultural malaise and lack of purpose or direction.

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that so much of our culture is geared towards making Johnny feel as though he's the "hope for the future," that as soon as he or she graduates high school the world will be depending on his wisdom and vision to correct all the wrongs that all of us muddle-headed or greedy adults have been so unable or unwilling to rectify; that we're all just waiting for little Johnny to walk across that stage, grab that diploma, and get busy showing us what we've been doing wrong all these years. That's a lot of pressure to be putting on kids who basically just want to get drunk, hang out, and cruise chicks.

The idea, promulgated by the "Rock the Vote" folks and plenty of others, that the youth of today is just bursting with bold new ideas that We All Should Be Heeding is just a load of over-indulgent crap.

After all, take a look at some of the wonderful things that have resulted from excessive pandering to the youth market: Zima. Marilyn Manson. Bill Clinton. Stupid little Japanese pickup trucks slammed to the ground with neon around the bottom of them and dopey-looking Matchbox-car wheels. Greenpeace. Limp Bizkit. Rap music in every commercial you ever hear. Dennis Rodman. Pants that don't fit. Sneakers that look like something Neil Armstrong might've worn to walk on the moon.

My advice to the youth of today: lighten up. Enjoy what you can and deal with what you can't. Life is short, but it's also quite long too. And nothing is ever as important as your high-school guidance counselor says it is - not even you."

By Mike Hendrix at ColdFury.com, April 27, 2002

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