Things To Tell The Kid At The Breakfast / Dining Table

Teach Them How To Handle The Bullies In Their Life
Parents intuitively know how their kid will fare when in the midst of bullies in school. This knowledge comes to them automatically. It is partly out of their own predisposition towards the concept of bullying, partly out of their own experiences as a child, and partly as they watch the child growing up from the cradle onward. For parents whose kids are physically and / or mentally sturdy, there is absolutely no problem. They can bask under the self-glorifying tales recounted by the kids after they return home from school about how they made life hell for this boy or that girl. But for parents whose kids are at the receiving end of aggression? To say that it is a bit of a challenge is an euphemism.


It is alright to airily dismiss the problem as a ritual - a rite of passage - that everybody has to go through at some time or the other. Oh, don't worry, the kid will cope. Now is the best time for them to get a taste of what the wide world is going to be outside the cocooned shelter of the home. Indeed it will be good if they can cope with the situation and come out on top. Because, the lessons learnt in these episodes will mentally prepare the child for the tougher times when facing stalking by strangers or acquaintances, when facing physical bullying or verbal taunts from peers and colleagues in the workplace, and when handling manipulative bosses or supervisors who think employees are slaves, always willing to go down on their fours to get their promotion or to keep their job.


Besides hoping that the child will work out their own strategies to cope with any bullying they might be facing, there are things we can do that can work as a shield for the child in all circumstances, now as well as when they lead their adult life. The best place to begin is at the breakfast and / or the dining table. Sermonizing, finger-wagging, and edgy tones do not work of course. Light, humor-laced conversation that subtly delivers the right messages is a skill that we need to learn to imbibe as parents / caregivers.


This setting is the best time when the child's receptive mind can absorb finer points about how they are not alone, and that for every single enemy, they can rally around two allies from amongst the crowd of the other kids. The child finds it useful to wolf down, along with the nutritious cereals on the table, thoughts such as how brave and fearless they innately are, and that it does not matter if the other party appears to have more physical strength, because there is some or the other flaw that makes everybody vulnerable, and because there is always going to be something that the child excels in which the other party is no good at and which can ultimately make the child a winner. The child begins to discover their inner strength when they are repeatedly told that they are the best human being in the world, and that the taunts and the teasing and the name-calling can be handled good-humoredly and in more positive ways than by mere sulking or by withdrawing into some shell. The kid can also be made aware about the existence of something known as "justice", in the form of the administration at the level of the school, a wider law that regulates the wider public, as well as a still wider Law that shepherds the entire cosmos, and that having the law by one's side is the best way to lead a peaceful and trouble-free life.


The kid won't consciously understand what it is they are receiving at the breakfast / dinner table, along with the food. But when the time comes for them to be parents themselves... they will know.

[In front of children, we have to, at times, put on a brave front, and project ourselves as one who has all the experience and the wisdom to dispense the right advise. But we know, deep in the heart, of situations which we have no clue how to handle. This article might give insights into handling situations where the brain simply refuses to work: "When Facing Troubles - Focus On The End Outcome You Want".]

Here Is One Technique To Motivate Kids For Better Performance

Positive Visual Cues, Delivered Subtly, Does The Trick

Do you think that your kid's academic report-card does not reflect his or her true capabilities? A recent research has provided empirical evidence that positive visual cues delivered subtly can improve academic performance of certain category of students. Here are some details.


The research was conducted on a group of first year undergraduate students attending a regular psychology class (both genders, average age around 19). The class comprised a lecturer explaining the nuances of some topic by stepping through a slideshow. For one group of students, the slideshow was interspersed with "special" slides that contained negative-sounding words such as "obligation", "constraint", "forced" and "ought". For another group of students, the slideshow had slides that contained positive words such as "interested", "desire", "willing" and "free". Each such slide had one single such word, positioned at random locations on the slide. While normal slides were displayed for the appropriate duration by the lecturer to explain the topic, the special slides were each displayed for 32 milliseconds followed by a 16-millisecond-mask. In other words, using the self-development industry lingo, a visual subliminal technique was used.


The students were subjected to a quiz immediately after the class was over, on the topic that was just discussed. It was found that in the group that was subjected to the negative subliminals, certain students performed less better than they would have otherwise. Similarly, in the group that was subjected to positive subliminals, certain students performed much better than they would have otherwise. For the other students, the subliminals appeared to make no difference in their performance. The inference? These certain students are more amenable to being motivated / de-motivated to subtle visual cues delivered subliminally.


So what was special about these "certain" students? A common attitude these students across the two groups shared was that their actions are driven by impulse and / or they blindly follow routines mechanically, automatically. Put differently, these kids would normally not pause and deliberate about their own thought processes and actions in day-to-day activities. These kids are normally easily affected by subconscious cues available in the environment, because they do not possess a "mindful" disposition.


"Mindful" kids, on the other hand, keep in perspective their actions in the present context and are fully aware of why they are doing what they are doing. These kids have a questioning mind that wants justification all the time about what they are being asked to do. Thus, there is a defensive wall erected between the environmental cues and their subconscious. (While in one sense this could be good, the other side of the coin is that they are fobbing off even the cues that are positive and affirmative and useful for their growth.)


Does this distinction between "mindful" behavior and "non-mindful" behavior confuse? Never mind, irrespective of which category you think your kid fits in, this could be one technique - providing positive visual cues, delivered subtly - worth using.



The research has been reported in the Journal of Research in Personality (article still in press), available online here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.02.011. While on the subject of subliminality, here is a book that may be referred to for further information: "The new consciousness". There is a stack of articles on the subject on the blog here: http://success-nirvana.blogspot.com (click on the 'subliminality' label in the side-panel.)

_*
* 'The new consciousness', Amazon.com.

Why Hugging The Child Everyday Is Important

So That, As Adults, They Stay Mentally Healthy
You see Johnny there, in the third cubicle - no not the one who's just joined, but the one to his right? You can't help sympathizing with him as you pass him by - he with his nails perpetually being bitten off between the teeth, the fingers always drumming the table when he is not biting them nails. The muscles of the face look screwed up with worry and anxiety all the time, you think he was born with that look on the face. The man seems to be breaking his back to meet his deadlines and assignments, but fumbles when the boss asks him for an update. Or talk to young Jane here. The woman who cannot hide irritation from her voice when she speaks - or is it frustration with herself, one wonders. The woman who is always pessimistic, and is unable to hide her disappointment when things actually turn out to be positive and happy and cheerful --- different from what she had forecast and predicted.


None of your or my business, but if you probe a little deeper, you will also stumble into a family life that is none-too-happy. Perhaps a separation / divorce has already happened, or is on the way?


These are people who have so gotten used to the emotion called worry that they have fallen in love with it. And they feel a huge void when there is no worry to worry about, no anxiety to be anxious about. So they go in search of the right worry and the perfect anxiety with which to fill the void. And can you guess why they have come to such a state? Because the parent or guardian or caregiver did not hug them every night, that's why. Because the senior did not pat them on the back and told them how much they were loved and cared for, that's why. Because the caregiver did not convey with words and actions that they would be there whenever the child needed them, that's why.


Uh, the link between anxiety disorder and being-hugged-every-night-as-a-child looks incredulous? Well, this is not some mushy sentimentalist grandma mumbo-jumbo; this is the outcome of investigation conducted on the quality of relationship-with-primary-caregivers-during-early-childhood, and traits-and-worry-and-anxiety in adulthood. The study involved 138 participants - with 69 control subjects -, and was conducted by researchers from the University of Maryland (published in the journal "Behavior Therapy", article still in press, available online here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2007.12.004.) The correct technical term for this condition is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, GAD for short.


As a child, when you know that there are a pair of arms you can rush into whenever you are afraid or scared or traumatized; when you know that there is a secure base that you can turn to in times of need - a safe haven that will protect you from all evil in the world --- then you will grow into a self-confident individual who will always feel the warmth of the hug and the strength of the love you received in those crucial days. The reassurance that there will always be somebody you can turn to, lingers and carries on, even when the senior is no longer part of your life. But whenever you feel stressed and need comfort, instead of a reassuring pat on the back - you get rejection, disparagement and derogation and mocking and indifference --- you begin to view the world as a most dangerous place to live in, with no safe haven to take recourse to.


But live you have to, cope you have to. So you begin by building your own cognitive support structure with your own internal resources; by first denying to your conscious self the welling up of all the anxiety and the worry and the perception of falling into some huge hole in the earth that has no bottom, a consciousness that is always on the lookout of the hole. You have no one to turn to, you see, and so you better be on your guard all the time, or else. That is where the constant worry and the GAD come in.


The support structure is therefore skewed, and built upon the scaffolding of the most easily available material - which is a negative emotion called worry. No wonder then, that you live a life which is bridled with a sense of physical and / or psychological danger at all times. Who knows what doom waits in the next step or at the next corner?


A self-assessment. Are you a constant worrier yourself? A quick dip into the past could help you guess how you have come to acquire this trait. The article in wiki puts it quite well - "common sense action may be taken to reduce the level of anxiety." The internet is full of self-help material that you can read up on, and which you can use to rebuild the cognitive support structure that you have been living by.


And if you have kids under your care, you know what to do. Hug them before putting them to bed. Assure them you are there whenever they need you.


Who said bringing up children was easy? Here's another article for you to ponder, while on this same issue: Children Are Like Sponge. And how do you think kids with little affection to fall back on, fare in their online relationships as adults? This article here should give you a clue: "Don't Cry, Shopgirl".

Has Your Kid Witnessed Violence, Victimization Or Bullying?

Throw A Protective Sheath Of Nurture And Care Around Them
Whenever there are incidents of shootouts in schools and colleges, the entire focus of the media is either on the perpetrator(s) or on the people who have become their victims. Close-ups of the bully or the psychopath and the innocent victims are shown nauseatingly incessantly on the television with their life stories discussed threadbare, and over-zealous reporters scoop memorabilia out of dusty cupboards and tear old photos out from old family albums to pose before the camera. The parents and the other relatives become the focus of national and international attention for that brief while. After a few days, there is yet another incident involving something else, and this particular event is all but forgotten.



In the flashes of the cameras and the stark photos of the bullying / victimizing / violent events, however, are the hazy images in the background of the scores of other people who are witness to these events. If the event happened in a school / college setting, then invariably a majority of this crowd comprises young kids with impressionable minds. While all the excited attention is riveted on the "main actors" of the drama, these fillers in the background always get ignored. Which is a pity. For, very few appear to have bothered about what the sound of the gunshot or the sight of the assault or the frenzy of the chase or the stab of the knife or the sight of the blood spilled out on the road would be doing to the psyche of those who stood by while the drama was being enacted. I know of counselors working on the perpetrators; I have seen counseling sessions going on for the victims and their parents; but I have so far not come across or read about any case of institutionalized counseling being conducted for the witnesses, though academic research has been undertaken on this issue.



And then what happens when these kids report their firsthand experience to their peers who were not present on the scene but are curious nevertheless, and who while recounting what they saw, add some more gory details generated from a creative mind that has become even more hyperactive in such abnormal circumstances? A spiral chain is set in motion as fear hops from one vulnerable mind to another.



Let's not leave out the "less fearful instances" such as verbal insults, verbal threats, the younger students being shoved and pushed around by older and / or stouter students, group / gang conflicts, extortion, sexual assault - have I put them all down, is there anything left out? - and we become pretty sure that the kid is not carrying home with them only the knowledge the teacher imparted on the blackboard of the classroom - it's a lot more, besides.



Despite the imposing facade of the school's buildings and the soothing morning prayers and the charming talk given by the counselors, a sense of insecurity begins overtaking the mind. Attrition, absenteeism, and under-performance are perhaps just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The impact goes deeper than that. Depending on the combination of DNA and childhood environment that has nurtured the mind, the individual copes in different ways. They either externalize their behavior - become aggressive or truant or rebellious, or they internalize their experience - withdraw into a shell, become submissive, anxious or depressed. As they grow up and enter the adult world, coping becomes even more difficult if the right counseling has not been undertaken at the right time. The struggle-to-cope may manifest in the form of a messed-up career or a messed-up family or social life. And the spiral continues to the next generation.



As parents, therefore, it becomes our responsibility to ensure that if at all our kids have witnessed any violence, victimization or bullying in the community or in the school, we give them the right counseling that nullifies whatever negative impact the incidents might threaten to have on them. After all, as this article observes - children are like sponge, and they absorb whatever comes their way, good or bad.

Say Hello To Peg Leg Chuck

Meet The Youngest Entrant To The Literary World
He doesn't have an entry in Wikipedia. Yet. The present entry in Wiki under the name, "Dalton James", belongs to a 1971-born actor. But the way he is going, I am sure one day somebody somewhere will post an entry about him out there.



Say hello to Dalton James from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Dalton is seven going onto eight, and studies in the first or the second grade at Woodland Elementary School in his hometown. And he has authored a full-color, children's paperback, "The Sneakiest Pirates", with its own ISBN number! Priced USD 10.95, the book is already available in the all the major outlets, both offline and online. The cartoon faces on the book cover cheekily stand out in the crowd of the more somber subjects such as "Community Psychology", "Mind over Markets" and "Personal Financial Planning" written by other James and Daltons namesakes - try googling his name on Amazon, and wow at the august assembly the kid is in already!



The 20-page book's plot is about a father-and-son duo tracking down a treasure looted by the villain named Peg Leg Chuck.



Sigh. And here I am. Last weekend, I deleted two whole chapters - worth nearly three months of effort - of my fiction work because I had woven in them a character which my inner critic now says "doesn't make sense, very superficial, distracts from the main theme, where is your plot going?". "Still doesn't have any depth in it, Sanjay. Why don't you stick to your software development and your systems analysis and designing and coding and support? Stick to manual writing and technical documentation, not creative writing. Who told you that you could be a writer too? This is just not your line, dude. Sheeesh! What an utter, sheer, imbecile waste of time!" No such self-examination, introspection, self-critiquing for young Dalton. He simply went ahead and did it.



And there is another project - a non-fiction, in the genre of self-development. Two years, and the chapters are still at the stage of notes-making. And this young Dalton, he is already working on a second book whose title he has already thought of - "The Heroes of Googly Woogly", and whose subject he has already made up his mind about: outer space. Talk of inspiration!



Though the young author's first book-signing ceremony was reserved only for peers at the school, I am sure there will be more occasions where you can join the queue to have your own copy with Dalton's signature on it.



Wouldn't be surprised if Oprah's people call upon Dalton one of these days. That is now the ultimate American dream today, isn't it: to shake hands with Oprah and appear on her show. And why not? Dalton, you deserve it boy!

Effect On Fetus' Brain Of Eating Fish During Pregnancy

Fish Have Essential Nutrients, But Beware Of Mercury Levels

A recent press release quotes a study conducted by a team of "respected" scientists from Harvard and the University of Michigan on the impact of fish intake during pregnancy on children's academic performance. (The quotes around the word 'respected' are mine; wonder if not using the adjective makes the study or the people behind it any less credible? Ask the press release writer! Here is the release.)



The study is available online here: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/kwn034v1 . This study seeks to qualify an advisory issued by the FDA way back in March 2001, on the presence of Methyl Mercury in fish, and its harmful effects on the fetus if consumed during pregnancy. For the study has concluded that children of mothers who consumed canned tuna at least twice in a week performed better on cognitive tests before they reached their third birthday.



Though very welcome, this news must be treated with caution. The study does not give a green signal to consume any and all kinds of fish during pregnancy. The study in fact reinforces the document already put out by the USEPA here: http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/advice/factsheet.html.



While eating good food that strengthens the child's brain to perform well, always nurturing good, positive thoughts in the mind during pregnancy strengthens the child's psyche and emotional structure to face life more wholesomely. Here is one post that dwells on this aspect.

The Miracle In Kevin Everett's Life

A Parallel To Morris Goodman, "The Miracle Man"


Right at this moment, as I write this post, a miracle is unfolding in a room in Millard Fillmore Gates Hospital in Buffalo, New York.




Kevin Everett, 25-year-old student of the University of Miami and football player, suffered a spinal-cord injury while playing for Buffalo Bills in an NFL match.




The team was stunned to learn from the doctors that Kevin might be paralyzed for life. Dr. Andrew Cappuccino repaired a break between his third and forth vertebrae and alleviated the pressure on the spinal cord. The chances of Kevin regaining full body motion were considered remote.

But the very next day, doctors on duty reported that Kevin on his own moved his arms and legs when he was still groggily awake. Which gives hope to the possibility of him walking out of the hospital one day, fully fit as a fiddle.




A Miracle!

Reminds me of the miracle in the life of once-insurance-agent and now motivational-speaker, Morris Goodman.



Life took a U-turn for Morris, just like it has done for Kevin. Morris almost died in an air crash. How he fought all odds, and lived to not only prove wrong all diagnoses, but to be an inspiration to the rest of the world, is well-documented in a movie, here: http://www.themiracleman.org/w_movie.htm.


I join Kevin's friends and team-mates in praying for him. May the strength of positive thoughts give him the ability to walk out of the hospital on his own two feet.





He will make it.

Seung-Hui Cho - The Transformation From An Innocent Kid To A Mass Murderer Requires Just This ...

... Negative Thought Patterns Going Over And Over In The Mind

Expectedly, polls have begun being conducted on the pros and cons of a stricter gun control policy. Experts are analyzing the statistics on people's opinion on whether enforcing gun control could or could not have prevented Cho do what he did. Message boards are flooded with vitriolic comments, sad comments, philosophical reflections, I-told-you-so's; the entire spectrum of dialectics that humans are capable of producing in such events (eventualities?) is on display.



The boy's video will enter the curriculum of psychology courses across the universities of the world. Psychoanalysts and their fraternity in academia will come out with lengthy discourses on why things happened with Seung-Hui the way they did.



The current, ongoing postmortem of his character profile (wonder why his character profile couldn't have been so comprehensively built up while he was alive and before he started the shooting?) shows that he:

- was a shy kid, acutely conscious of his alien background. Migrating from a rented basement apartment in the Dobong-gu district of Seoul, South Korea, to the vicinity of an affluent community in Virginia - can be a big cultural shock for an eight-year old child that Cho was, in 1992. Coping with this shock requires a mindset that is molded in oodles of self-esteem. Which Seung-hui apparently lacked. Busy parents. A successful elder sister who must have been held up as a benchmark worth emulating, must not have helped his own worth of self any better.



- used to be intimidated and picked on by peers as a high-school student. The peers found his accent and his personality very funny. An already low-self esteemed boy touched further depths in his own eyes. Anger and frustration towards his peers, and by extension, the world around him, must have kept growing in his mind.



As is the public wont, such incidents spark an ephemeral hue and cry about a low counselor:student ratio, the problem compounded further by the fact that the counselors apparently spend more time administering tests and filling up forms than actually doing what they were hired for: spending time with the kids - and 'counseling' them.

[Why didn't the Student Affairs cell take cognizance of the English Department Head's alert about the kid's behavior, as early as in 2005? Surely, a counselor could have been put on the job? Or did they naively expect the child to walk into the counselor's chamber on his own?]




- fantasized about the opposite sex. His being a loner and introvert didn't help things when his surging hormones drove him to seek the company of fellow female students. His inner conflicts: a low self-esteem and insecurity putting him on the leash on the one hand, and his urge to satisfy his natural, carnal demands on the other, led him to do what young boys in his circumstance do: stalk the girls. Ultimately, his first victim was a girl.



- successfully hid his inner anger and sense of revenge against the "injustice" that the world meted out to him, when he was psychologically evaluated. Surely, the tests that are routinely administered in such cases, at Carilion's Saint Albans Behavioral Health Center themselves need re-evaluation? That an apparent lack of emotional reactivity at the superficial level, may actually be concealing a simmering, seething volcano of perhaps self-destructive lava which may explode anytime? Which only a deeper probe can reveal?



Sigh. The kid withdrew into a shell and created his own hyperreal world where he was the sole inhabitant - and not having to bear anybody's insults or mockery, and where he could extract his own revenge against his alleged tormentors, just like Woo-jin did in the OldBoy movie.



In hindsight, Seung-hui seemed to have given enough signs of warning, to his seniors and teachers, at least of mental illness, if not of possible erupting violence against the others around him. Through his behavior, through his writings. If only one of them had proactively taken the initiative and got him started on a consistent counseling session to rebuild his self-esteem, and instill in him respect - and not hatred - for the world he cohabited.



All - because once a negative set of thought patterns are formed, one tends to repeatedly walk down the same road again and again. It takes but a simple shift of perspective, to move from negative to positive, from low self-esteem to high self-love - to change direction. A simple shift. Which Seung-hui didn't make.



As we grieve for the people who faced the bullets that were suddenly sprayed at them, not even given the chance to know why they deserved this fate; as we shed tears for the young who had their entire life spread out before them, life snuffed out before they could live it to their full potential; as we share the hopelessness and helplessness of Seung-hui's parents (Seung Tae and Hyang In) and sister (Sun Kyung), the nightmare and soul-searching that they must now be going through is palpable: let us also reflect on how our society developed the circumstance which shaped this kid's thoughts, and how we couldn't stretch out our helping hand to lift him - when it was still time - as he was sliding deeper into his morass of negativity and self-destruction.



Amen.