Home Schooling

I have been going back and forth over the idea of home-schooling my children. I know that I can't shield my kids from all of the potentially harmful things that society can teach, but I do believe that I can teach them better than a public school can. It may sound egotistical of me but if IQ is more genes than anything, my son will have a high one and I want to make sure that he has the right environment to cultivate that. If I do decide to home-school, I think I've convinced myself to take an approach that is a combination of Montessori and Vygotsky. In our class on Tuesday we read a quote: "Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself." I actuallly went home and pinned this up on my fridge because it speaks to the heart of how I want my son to learn and grow. I also think that there are times when a child needs a little assistance. I think that is the sole reason that we make such advancements with every new generation: We build upon the discoveries that past generations have made. We don't start over all by ourselves, we build off the past ideas and come up with some of our own. Montessori's idea was to let kids interests guide the directions that they took because she believed there was a crucial period that kids were cognitively ready and eager to learn something in particular and that if that stage was passed, we could not get it back. Vygotsky described there being a range of tasks that are too difficult for a child to learn by his/herself, but his idea was that they could learn it with guidance/assistance from older children or adults. Unlike Piaget, he believed that kids learn from the outside in. I believe it to be a combination of both. I think that kids do have stages where they are ready and eager to learn something, but I also believe that, if the stage comes and for some reason they experience a glitch and can't figure it all out by themselves, it would be essential to have somebody their to guide them to a full understanding of the task at hand. Whether or not I decide to home-school my son I will be teaching him at home using a combination of Montessori, Vygotsky, and a dash of my own ideas.

Bullying Study

I would love to do a study, or at least take part in one, that dives deeply into the world of the victims of bullying. I had never even considered the difference between behavioral and characterological in terms of how victims think about themselves before, during, and after an incident in which they have been bullied. Obviously, we need to learn far more about the differences in how they think and whether or not those differences are innate or learned, but I'm far more interested in studying different methods of intervention. There is no way that we will ever be able to stop every single case of bullying, but can we change the way they think about the experience? I get tingles thinking about making at least a minimal advancement in this area of our understanding because it may mean the difference between a life lived in shame and one lived in confidence. I think we could use any number of methods to find kids all over the country that have been bullied. I believe it to be essential that we find them early, like kindergarten, because they haven't completely formed their self-image. We could split the kids into different categories based on how they talk about their individual experiences of being bullied. Categories could be something like: all behavioral, some behavioral/some characterological, very little behavioral, all characterological, and very little characterological. That may not be all the possibilities but it is a start. Then we could divide the kids into sub-categories based on the method of interventions that we would like to try such as therapy(individual, group, and family), pairing them with kids that have had similar experiences or speak about the experience similarly, and individually coaching parents on different ways that they can deal with their child being bullied. Again, that doesn't cover it all, but it's a start. I would suggest that we follow, and maintain treatment methods, all the way through high school and then analyze how different everybody has become. Maybe this could give us a small hand in determining how to best help a child that is the victim of bullying and maybe change the outcome of their development through adolescence.

Animal Testing in Psychological Experiments

Lately it seems that animal testing is growing more and more controversial, but in terms of discovering how organisms function, I think its absolutely necessary. I've encountered several articles explaining how stem cells could be used in research, but they wouldn't be useful enough to understand all aspects psychology. Plant tissues have been considered for testing too, but that would hardly make sense: Plants have no brain or emotion, so whats to study? Besides, many laws and standards exist today to be sure that live animals involved in experimentation remain safe and healthy (for the most part). If we were to discontinue animal testing all together, we may as well just give up on discovering more about how brains work and why we do what we do, and that's just out of our nature.

Conformity

The experiment described in this video is similar to that done by Ash in the seventies, but its set up to seem like more of a real-life situation. A student walked to a room and passed a man on a ladder on the way. She was the only student in the room and heard what seemed like the man falling off of the ladder. She immediately ran to see if he was okay. In another situation, three students were in the room. Two were asked to ignore the sounds of the man falling of the ladder. As a result, the third student also ignored the sounds. This goes to show that humans jump on the band wagon to be like their peers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTb7RqhUArE

Spankings and Learned Agression

I came across this article on the CBS News website about the relevance between spankings and aggression and anxiety in children in different cultural settings. The studies showed that children receiving spankings in countries where physical punishments were frowned upon seemed to act more aggressively than children in other countries. 336 mothers were asked questions about both their physical and verbal disciplining habits, and their children were asked a series of questions to determine how aggressive they were. In Kenya, spankings were used both at home and in school, so children interpreted it as a normal thing. Children in Thailand, on the other hand, were raised in a non-violent Buddhist environment where spankings were rare, so they were more likely to see themselves as being "bad kids". In the United States, it was a bit more difficult to put a correlation on spanking-related aggression in kids.
Whether or not spankings actually take part in aggression and anxiety, this research wasn't necessarily the most effective method of getting information. The mothers and kids interviewed may not of been completely honest about their lifestyles. Also, other factors could lead to aggression and anxiety as well.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/14/health/webmd/main1042550.shtml

What Makes Teens Tick

Time Magazine had an article on Friday September 26, 2008. The article suggests that researchers are discovering more about how the brain develops by studies of teens and twin teens over a period of several years. Using MRI to basically watch the development of the brain the research suggests that raging hormones and environment may not be the only factors in a teens irrational or dumb decisions. Another factor may be in just how the brain develops it suggests that some parts of the brain are are over producing or flooding while the prefrontal lobe has just begun to develop indicating that the teen is unable or unequiped to use reasoning to prevent fron making those irrational decisions. There is little conclusive evidence to prove this but researchers are working on gaining the emprical evidence that may help in dealing with our teens. You can read more at www.time.com

Celeb's influence on young teens...

I have a friend who goes to Hastings every Tuesday afternoon to pick the new issues of her favorite magazines, to be honest I think is ridiculous! The media has gone too far with exposing celebrities personal lives. I all I have to say is who cares what they do? Children are easily influenced by what they see in the tabloids, that’s why I feel there should be more regulation on what paparazzi are allowed to print. Just because a person is famous does not mean that the entire world needs to know every detail of their life. The article Girls Gone Bad shows that famous women making the news and influencing young teens has been going on since the mid 20th century. Photographers make millions of dollars selling pictures of celeb’s behaving badly, but the reason is because PEOPLE BUY THEM! If parents are so concerned about their children being negatively influenced by these bad girls of Hollywood then they need to take a stand. Stop buying the tabloids, stop letting your kids watch Entertainment Tonight and E News, and stop giving so much attention to these girls getting into trouble. When these factors cannot be avoided take the time to explain to children the consequences of the actions, and help them understand that individualism is far more valued than being like the hot messes in Hollywood. Another good approach would be to put more of an emphasis on celebrities who are doing good things for society.

Five Axies

The lecture today made sense to me more since i have a little bit of a background information on it. Seeing as my little brother has to go to the special doctors for his disability. He has a learning disability and they are always evaluating him on how he learns and how he comprehends things. They have him do different types of tasks and sees how he does each of the task they also evaluate how he completes the tasks. So when it was said that they dont diagnose little kids with things since they are so young how do they know if it all stay or will the disorder go away after time?

Sexual Education is vital...

Sexual education has obviously shifted over past decades; I believe that parents and educators need to be more concerned with the well being of the children than that of their own. It is important for children to understand what is going on with their bodies, the more a child knows and understands the more likely he/she is to control the inclination to engage in sexual activities. In a perfect world abstinence would be the best idea, but we all know this is not a perfect world. I do feel it is important to also teach children about abstinence so they will have adequate information to make a rational decision what the time comes. I do not believe that young people do not think before they act, but there are far too many risk factors in today’s society not to take into account the fact that young teens do act on impulse. There are some overwhelming statistics about young American teens in correlation with sex ed. (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_sexEd2006.html)
By their eighteenth birthday 60% of girls and 50% of boys have engaged in sexual activity. Despite the decrease, the United States has the highest number of teen pregnancies in the developed world. I find this statistic evidence enough that controversial education is important to differ teens from becoming pregnant, or even contracting an STD.

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology is the study of psychological changes life over a span of time. I have always been soley interested in psychology but after taking this class I believe I have found what facinates me the most. To watch how someone develops from the time of conception to the elderly years and to see what factors may or may not contribute to who they become or who they do not become is incredible. This class has challenged me to look into topics that we have discussed on a deeper level. I think I have read more in these past five weeks than I have in my entire school career, not by just reading the readings but also looking things up and reading extra study's. The level of depth that can be reached in so many different ways under so many different topics is outstanding. So to sum up my last blog, here is a link to a study that I would love to be apart of. It is a perfect study for developmental psychologists, along with psychology itself as a whole. Its just to bad it is completely unethical and would never get approved by the Instituational Review Board but its a nice thought to branch out from and a good laugh as well. Please read http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/truman-show-experiment.php

The Five Axises

I found this talk this morning interesting because my two boys attend the aware program. One is in it not only for the counseling and pschological part but for meds and when we got to the different axises and the codes the psychologists use to diagnois a patient I thought I have seen this before and I have in the evaluations we do at aware with my boys. SO I just thought this was interesting that everyday things we use come into picture in our classroom and studies. The whole thing on behaviors and how we respond to things and why is also so interesting because being a parent and a grown up I see how things are and can be just by living and learning.

Physical Punnishment in the United States

I thought it would be interesting to see exactly what schools still allowed physical punishment and in what forms. While researching I ran across this report. It is a report against any kind of physical punishment and defines physical punishment as; the use of physical force with the intention of causing the child to experience bodily pain or discomfort so as to correct or punish behavior. Physical punishment would be considered anything from hand slapping to washing out a childs mouth with soap or forcing a child to sit or stand in painful positions for long periods of time.
The articles research highlights state to there is little research evidence the physical punishment improves children's behavior in the long run. There is clear evidence that physical punishment puts children at risk for negative outcomes including increased mental health problems, and finally, there is substantial evidence physical punishment makes it more likely that children will be defiant and aggressive in the future.
What I found interesting was that the article pointed out that physical punishment puts children at greater risk for injury along with emotionally connecting physical abuse with love. The article supports most of the issues as presented in classs but further explaines that physical punishment does not teach children why their behavior was wrong ore what they should do instead.
There was information on what states allow physical punisment and the laws of those states with some onformation on foreign countries too. There are also links for parent resources.
The article can be found at www.stophitting.org and as you can tell the article stands against physical violence of any kind.

Comprehensive Sex Education

The thought of even having this issue scares me. How does one even judge when their child is ready enough mentally for this discussion? Some parents just wait for the school to graduate the child to the grade it is taught in. Others try to prepare them and discuss certain issues with them first. Aren't we really teaching them by example though, before any teacher based learning begins on either subject? The way that we interact with our partners (or lack there of) shows our children so much in regards to how we view sex and abstinence. That's why in school I believe that we must have comprehensive sex education. I don't understand why taking values and self-worth mixed with facts and statistics is so scary to anyone. In this day and age don't we want our children to be fully prepared for whatever happens in life? Ignorance gets you no where in life!

How does Prison Effect Peaple that are in it.

In one of the readings we have had recently, there has been study of the effects of prision on people. I foulnd this very interesting, because in the experiment there was a prison that was created called the Stanford Prision, in which volunteers were at the flip of a coin supposed to either be a prison guard or a prisoner. After very little time, alot of corruption had happened to the students that were prisoners and even the guards themselves. Many of the prisoners became very unhumane and depressed, some even stopped eating. Meanwhile the guards themselves had fallen out of reality and became so into their role of being the guards. I cannot say that this is unfair to all the murderers, rapist, and child molesters out there because i believe that their lives should be as miserable as possible while in jail, after all it was their decisions that got them in there in the first place. It is just interesting to see how environment can effect the way a person behaves in such a dramatic way. On the other hand if people have been wrongfully charged and put in prision, I think that the way that this person may be changed is not right at all. Our prisons are bacomming more and more packed every day and the U.S. has more people in prison than anywhere in the world. This makes me think, is there a better way to discipline our criminals that could lead to better outscomes than we have today?

Can the Unconscious Outperform the Conscious Mind?

I found this reading very interesting for a few different reasons. In the reading it is said that more complex decisions can be made more accuratly when they are made quickly. I would also like to compare that with blurps, or quick responses that you say you might not mean, but do you? Some of the tests in the reading have disproved the thoery, but I have a few opinions of my own. First of all when I have taken any multiple choice test, I have found that when I was not certain about the question, my first attempt to answer the question was often times the right answer, but after thinking about it for a while longer I change my answer. Then the following day I get my test back with the right answer erased and the incorrect one circled. This often makes my wonder if I should always just go with my first attempt or to really look at the question with great thought when this instance comes up again. Another comment is that when you say something as a blurp or slur, most of the time what words slipped out of your mouth are very true. How does the brain make such opinions so quickly, yet so accuratly? Like it says in the article we seem to make remarkably good decisions without consciously thinking.

Development!!!

I find this study we are doing very interesting because I have two boys 3 years apart. My boys are very differentin their personalities, one is quiet keeps to himself and doesnt socialize very much and the other the youngest is outspoken, socialable and lets out his emotions. I find this interesting because in class we talked about this how sometimes how a child is is from their home life or parents and both were raised pretty much the same. Although both boys have been through a lot with moving from Delaware to Montana and losing contact with their dad so I think things that happen in a childs life can effect how they are as a person and with out the proper treatment not nessasarily meds but just someone to talk too it can carry out to their adulthood and cause major problems.

Suicide Hotlines

Well I have to give my debate tomorrow on how hot lines are good and explain that they accomplish positive results. BUT...I am having a hard time with my research. Everywhere I look I find critics, people who say that they have called and nothing has changed( yet they are still alive). Or they say that the hot line workers were to nosey(What did they expect when they call like that?). Some say that all the hot line did was recommend counseling and not try to help them through the situation at hand. In my research I found nothing about the practice "norms" of handling the phone calls, although every place has a basic generic set of guidelines to follow. The only positive feed back i received was from people who actually worked at a hot line crisis center. They all can recall at least one instance when they have talked some one down or eased someones pain. I personally believe that the hot lines do serve a purpose and that they do have the ability to help in a very desperate situation. More education to the public about the hot lines is key, maybe if more people knew how easily accessible this resource was they may not hesitate to call.

Parents or Pop culture?

One of the sections in this reading focuses on music T.V. and video games, mainly "Barbie Fashion Designer". Now I will start by saying that I am strongly opposed to my children planting themselves in front of a video game , but I will also say that we do own a Wii and a Play Station II as well as my home computer. My kids are rarely on any of them to the point that they get in the way sometimes. Mind you I have bought none of the above except the computer for school. My oldest daughter does get on the computer more than anything though. She loves to play fashion design games and dress up! Mainly "Barbie Fashion Designer". My girl is the exception , not only does she play that online but I encourage her to practice it other ways also. She has learned from that game and the others how to cut and sew the fabric, which she does with her swatches. She has books of sketches and designs she has created. Jayden also has brianstormed here own trademark, " NOSNORB FASHIONS tm". She makes me so proud, I feel that with my encouragement she can do anything. I do relize that this is the exception and do not condone continuous video or computer play in my house. If you see your child shinning in a certain light then I do belive to let them explore it to it's fullest extent! So remember in 15 years when your kids or grandkids are flipping out over the latest Nosnorb, you can say you know how it got started. :)

Piaget

Piaget's ability to be a father of three and look past his children too see theories and unstudied or even un-thought of concepts amazes me. I wonder what kind of father he actually was? I'm sure that question has been asked at some point. As far as Piaget the psychologist goes would someone else have gone into as much depth regarding developmental psychology as Piaget if he had not pursued his notions? The reading states that as a collective the mental health field may not have come up with as much data as he had ever discovered. That its self is shows how important this was to him and how devoted he was to it. Before taking this class I had no idea of these concepts mere existence let alone Piaget himself. I'm glad that i got the opportunity to learn a little about him this session. After all he is compared to Shakespeare and Aristotle and they are some of the greats, right?

When I Grow Up... Kids Dream of Rewarding Careers

Think about when you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up. Likely answers range from doctor and nurses to magicians and princess' or vetrinarians or professional athletes. Never do you ( well at least I haven't unless its Halloween) heard a kid say I wanna be Paris Hilton or Brittany Spear's next husband. While the tv, internet and magazines have a huge influence on our youth; they don't have the power to change the mind of a 6 or 16 year old to want to be one of the rebels of hollywood.
Yes most forms of advertisement are mostly targeting youth, their reasoning is marketing, money, sales, not to corrupt our children. We even as adults resort to getting idea's for clothing, and hairstyles from the media, instead of 17 or Sports Illustrated we now get Cosmo or Maxim. Children, just as we did they are trying to find themselves. Reading the headlines, captions and maybe half an article and looking at photos of outragous celebrity behaviors is for pure amusement and gossip. They're not meant to deter kids to run around naked making fools of themselves, most kids/teenagers do know right from wrong. The general public usually is the first to comment and raise concern about their obsenities anyways because celebs are meant to be made into role models. Celebrities for the average person are more of an infatuation rather an obsession. We enjoy their music, movies, style, and athletic capabilites.
Absolutely parents need to play a part in the hollywood frenzie, talk to their kids about the behaviors and enforce the word no. NO to the Louie Voton purse or the brand new car. As adults we need to guide and instill the meanings of respect to others and thyself, teach them good work and social ethics. While there still is and always will be the select few spoiled kids getting everything they want, explaining why keeping up with the Jones'isn't important and why earning materialistic things is more rewarding. Today's parents are doing a great job, worrying firstly about being a parent and not a friend- that comes later in life. Its a given kids are going to try some acts of rebellion ( think of the things you tried); good thing our parents equipped us with the knowledge and skills and pushed us to become better parents then they were. For that they deserve a pat on the back, thank you. After all, our parents ruined our lives when we were teens, and now they just so happen to be our bestest friends and mentors.

We've Come Along Way: Unerstanding Deficits and Behavior Disorders

There was a time when young children who couldn't concentrate, couldn't sit still and/or had "weird" ticks were shunned, misunderstood and pushed aside. People, coudn't handle these kids, they let them fend for themselves, ignored them and worse gave up on them. Teachers, parents, the main stream adult society were biased toward these children simply because they couldn't control them or they just didn't know how to help. These children we now now, and it is relatively common, have ADHD or other social disorders.
An article "Informing the ADHD Debate" is a perfect example of how we, as a society have evolved. We've come to terms that not all people are created equal, ADHD does exist and there is help. Thanks to ongoing studies we can conclude ADHD and others can be detected as early as three years of age. This early detection sets a path for parents and providers to assist the child before the disorder worsens (most children with ADHD left untreated have emotional, anxiety and other social disorders later in life) or gets out of control leading to such things as drug and/or alcohol abuse and dropping out of school, and poor life choices. With early detection, children are given the oppurtunity to axcel and lead a healthy, productive life. It seems ADHD seems to fade in a persons 20's or 30's, in the meantime, medication to fix the genetically based dopimine imbalance, and extensive behavior therapy and support are available for assisting the child overcome there impatience and hyperactivity. As mentioned in the article ADHD children are fantasti individuals that possess many positive traits and should be given the chance to flourish in the clasroom, at home and in society.
So rather than turning on children with deficits parents, teachers and caregivers are seeking help to understand the disorder and working to better their lives. There are plenty of people and articles to assist in understanding behavioral issues and disorders. Besides we all deserve the chance to shine, ADHD children are ready for success, they just need a helping hand to hold along the way.

Free IQ Test

This is a .html site so it's not necessarily the most reliable but it was fun and I thought the rest of you would like to see how you would do.
http://www.psychtests.com/tests/alltests.html

Liberal Ed vs. Vocational Ed

I think we need to have a liberal education. We need to be able to communicate ideas across boundaries like culture, economic status, ethnicity, individual expertise, and education level. I think that if we all don't have at least an introduction to subjects like ethics, psychology, sociology, history, math, science, music theory, literature, language usage, and rhetoric; then we will eventually create little niches of people that cannot communicate outside their circles. We can't have a democracy if the people cannot understand each others wants and needs. I don't think we all need to be experts in everything to at least be able to understand the gist of another person's ideas, but I do think we need the same foundational knowledge.

Echolalic Language

Echolalic Language is the immediate and involuntary repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others, often a symptom of autism or some types of schizophrenia or an infant's repetition of the sounds made by others, a normal occurrence in childhood development. This is something that I found interesting and since we often discuss language and recently discussed autism in class I thought I would share it with everyone. There are two types of echolalic language immediate and delayed. Immediate meaning the child repeats what they heard when they hear it and delayed is when the child repeats something they heard hours, days or months ago. It fascinates me that all children do this and then with most autism children it stays. With some autistic children this type of language becomes functional. They use other tones and lines that they have picked up to express their feelings at that moment. For instance, if they are angry they may use an angry saying from a movie to express themselves. To me this shows an immense amount of intelligence, to be able to relate others people's feelings to their own. They may not seem to understand the sentence but they seem to understand the feeling expressed when utilizing the sentence. This is just an amazing form of communication. Another question that this brings to mind is how does it relate or differ from a 'normal' child who tends to repeat sayings. Are they just fast mapping or do they also understand emotions behind language before they understand language? All of this would be an interesting phenomena to study. Not sure if I would do a structured observation or a balanced amount of case studies. You can read more about this at http://www.spdsupport.org.uk/echolalia.html or http://knol.google.com/k/bryna-siegel/autism/epDokBTC/w3lKYg#

Bullying

I was raised in two households, in two separate towns and by two very different sets of parents. I had two separate lives and two very different peer groups to try and fit into. My father and step mom raised my sister and I in Alaska during the school year and then we would come to Montana during the summers to stay with my mom. I loved it and wanted with all my heart to live full time with her. (My mother by the way is a very outed lesbian, which does play a part in this story.) Finally my wish came true and i was able to live with her full time by the age of 14. I then moved to Butte , and started 8th grade at East Jr. High. Moving from Ketchikan I didn't think that the kids would be that different especially regarding my mothers sexual preference. Really none of my friends in AK. cared either way it was my mom and had nothing to do with me. Kids actually asked questions and were very curious, nobody was cruel to me and i don't think that they even thought to be. When I came to Montana it was a completely different world. I had a couple friends from the previous summers spent here that I could talk to and sit with at lunch, at least I thought I did. The minute the word got out about my mom i was outcast and ridiculed. I was teased, threatened, and heckled. This went on for weeks before I could not deal with it anymore. I started skipping school by hiding in my house so my mom wouldn't find me. Finally the school caught on and I of course was caught. At this point I told my mom what had been happening at school and as any good mother would she went right to the school with all of this. Nothing happened to anyone I just had to deal with it, I had to learn to deal with it! It made me stronger! That was the worst time of my life and I did make some friends that year that were just as much outcast as I was, and they will be my friends for the rest of my life. I feel for every kid that has ever been picked on teased or bullied. It feels like your world is wrong and its all your fault. These kids had nothing better to do and nothing better to accomplish with there time than to take my self esteem and drag it through the dirt. Although all of this had really nothing to do with me just a bunch a scared kids not understanding life. Like i said it made me stronger and I meant that!! I have never in my life let anybody treat me like that again. I beg that my girls do not ever have to go through what i have had to experience. I hope that if they do they can talk to me and we can deal with it together. I would never wish for anybody to have this happen to them.

More to Bowlby's attachment theory's?

Today I found an article online that I have to blog on for those of us who have late toddler/early preschoolers at home, its called The Forgotten Step in Attachment: Negotiation and Separation. The article explains a theory that when children of this age are about to be separated from their parents how they may negotiate things in order to reduce their anxiety a bit. Showing that they are indeed attached to their parents but they are setting themselves up for a way to deal with the separation. The example the article uses is bedtime. I don't know how many of us have a child that always wants that last cup of milk before bed or has to use the restroom one more time. These are somewhat reasonable requests, notice the child does not ask for a new bike or a chocolate brownie because the parents would automatically say no. These children are learning how to negotiate, understanding that their caregivers want them to be somewhat comfortable and do care about them. This is a really good article and I really enjoyed it. What came to my mind while reading it, however, was why is this stage forgotten? When you read about Bowlby you don't read about this stage. I think it is a viable stage and shows significant relations to future relationships. How we may learn how to negotiate in relationships and how we learn to understand that our needs are connected to the people's need to care about us. It all seems like a big step to me.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/child-myths/200906/the-forgotten-step-in-attachment-negotiation

ADHD

I have to admit that before reading this article, I thought that ADHD wasn't even a valid disorder. My idea of what attention-deficit disorders are has changed but I do still think that we have a tendency to write a prescription before talking about other options. My mom moved myself, my brother, and my sister up here to Butte from Reno in the middle of a school year after we had only met our new step-dad once. My brother(8) and sister(6) started having issues at school almost instantaneously. The first thing they did, at my step-dads demand, was take the kids to a doctor to see if they had ADHD. Long story short, they ended up on Ritalin and it never worked. They both went through different doses for about two years and then my mom just gave up on the idea of medication. They stopped acting out a couple months later and they've been fine ever since. I felt very strongly about them being on medication at the time because I had a pretty good idea what was actually happening with them.

When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed as with bi-polar disorder. The first thing everybody wanted to do was start a medication regiment. I have never taken medication for it. What I did do was work my way through about six different therapists until I found one that was just as committed to teaching me how to deal with this disorder on my own as I was to learning.

I think that even if the medications work we should be more concerned with helping a child learn how deal with a disorder first if it's possible. I think that if we don't at least try behavioral therapy, we are just succumbing to a quick fix with medication. I work with kids on many, many different medications and the difference in there behavior before and after medication is obvious but that's not the only noticeable change. Every morning for four of the six kids that I work with, about 45 minutes after they've had their medications, it's almost as if somebody has come along and ripped the personality right out of them. They seem numb, tired, almost like little zombies. It breaks my heart. I really believe that if we had enough staff to devote one on one attention to every single one of these kids, we could do more for them in the long run with behavioral therapy than with medications.

Prosti-tots

I don't like everything that the magazines picture or write about. I don't like the majority of clothes found on racks in every store meant for girls of all ages. I don't like the way you can't watch an entire movie or TV show without seeing something in reference to sex. The fact remains, companies will only make and sell what we will buy. We can talk until we're all blue in the face about how horrible it is to stand in a check-out line at Wal-Mart and see fifteen half-naked women on magazine covers and how damaging this must be to the morals of our youth but, we still pay to see them up there. It is very hard as a parent to fight the peer-pressure of every other child that goes to school with our own kids and I think, for the most part, we've lost the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. It seems like we are all on our own these days but, on the up side, statistics are showing that teen pregnancy is down and there is nothing to show that girls are becoming sexually active at a younger age than previous generations. It is hard these days to take the time to really be an example to our kids. Some parents may even be the people in their child's life that they see the least and that truly is tragic. Even in cases like that, parents have a little bit of time to show their children what's really important. I think it all boils down to remembering that we are allowed to have expectations and guidelines, that we decide what we will and wont buy, that living our values is far more powerful than preaching them, and that it is possible to hold our kids to our standards even in the face of pressure from the media.

The impact of the Flynn effect

Intelligence testing has become a major force in our society; any changes in how the test is measured will have many consequences. Intelligence tests should be updated at regular intervals. Measured IQ is increasing at 0.3 points per year. This makes a case for updating the tests. This is why most companies that produce intelligence tests a doing some updating.
The updating of these tests has consequences for a society that depends on these tests. Many decisions made in our educational system are dependent on these tests. Intelligence tests determine whether a student is put into an advanced class or a class for mentally handicapped students. A child may not be able for a special education class one year but in the next year with an updated test may become eligible even though their ability remained the same. How a person is treated in the criminal justice system is also effected. A person being tried as being mentally retarded is treated differently than a person with a normal IQ. How a person scores on an IQ test may even determine whether they could be executed.

There is also what is known as the plateau effect. This is the idea that as intelligence will at some time reach a plateau and level off. The premise is that as when the optimal environment is reached the rise in intelligence will stop.

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=27757267&site=ehost-live

Hekyll and Jyde

More than a decade before Freud published his ideas about the conscious, subconscious, and preconscious, and around 30 years before he developed his id, superego, and ego ideas, the short novel “The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson was published, in which the same ides were presented. Dr. Jekyll creates a concoction that brings forth in him the personification of what Freud called the id, Mr. Hyde. While Dr. Jekyll is a rational man, Mr. Hyde is his nasty, cruel, violent side. As time progresses Hyde grows in power and no longer needs the potion to come out and soon he would be unable to change back to Jekyll. The id had overcome the superego. This a thrilling example of the inner conflict between good and evil and what probably everyone faces in themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwpnqy7iHzI

The stimulus could help with child care

President Obama has pledged $10 billion in investments in early education. By directing $ 2 billion to Head Stare and Early Head Start and $ 2 billion to Child Care and Block Grants and the remaining money through the 2010 budget.

Investing $10 billion in quality childhood education for the nations most at-risk children, will also stimulate employment in the child care field, which could create two million jobs. In Montana, the jobs related to children health care are conservatively put at 8,740. For every two jobs created in the child health care by the economic stimulus, one more job would be created through the multiplier effect.

More investment in early child care and education would also help the economy by providing relief for struggling young American families who would either have to pay budget-busting amounts of tuition for childcare, quit their jobs or leave their children in dangerous circumstances. Many people cannot afford to work because the cost of child can run 16,000 a year for two children. Montana has the seventh highest cost for child care in the nation for pre-school and after school children and the 10th highest for infants.

The long term economic effects should not be ignored. Children who attend preschool earn more income and are more likely to earn a college degree. They are also less likely to abuse drugs or become welfare dependent.
http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2009/01/28/opinion/hjjajihchhjcjb.txt

Thoughts from the article "Who's in charge here?"

When I read this article a number of things came to my mine. First off, since recently learning about the styles of parenting I found this to be a relative example of permissive parenting. The fact that these parents have no control over there children and can not say no for the life of them. Another thought I had while reading this article was that we do tend to compare today's children to the children of yesterday, and truly there is no comparison. Raising our kids today is nothing compared to the way kids were raised twenty years ago. I don't agree with any child not being held accountable or without any limits. However I do agree that the kids of today are growing up way to fast. It is my opinion that our society has made it this way. With technology as advanced as it is today, you see kids as young as five years old with their own cell phones and carrying around their first Hewlett Packard notebook. I think that maybe not to the extreme this article takes it but to an extent we, our society, have socialized our children to develop like this. The world is truly a different place today. I.Q's are higher, kids are little adults, people live longer, its our time of evolution. Its almost scary to think of what we are evolving to but maybe not, maybe its only scary because we have not been there yet. We could be on our way to self-destruction or we could be on our way to a new world, like living on mars?!

The NCLB Act should there be standard testing

This article is from USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-06-06-schools-main_N.htm



No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has a deadline of 2014 for states to make public school students proficient in reading and math; however each state decides the way to meet the goal. Some states have strategies to disguise how well students are doing as measured by the one federal test.
In Mississippi every fourth grader knows how to read. However, in Massachusetts only half can read.
The 2002 NCLB act was meant to raise the standards of education for the entire country by punishing schools that do not perform well. The law allowed each state to set its own rules.
According to the Gannett News Service (GNS) analysis of test scores, many states have made the test easy to fool the parents that their children are prepared to move on to college.
GNS found that in Mississippi 89% of fourth grade children passed the state test for reading in 2005, but only 18% passed the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. This 71% gap is the widest in the nation.
Massachusetts had one of the smallest gaps, with 50% of the fourth grade kids passing the state test and 44% passing the NAEP test.
The NAEP test is taken by a small percent of the students and includes material not covered in school.
Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Fuller states that the gap as actually widened since the NCLB act went into effect.
State educators deny the claims they are cheating the system by making the tests easy. They also think that their test should not be compared to the NAEP test.

Paul Vallas the chief of the Philadelphia schools thinks that there should be one set of standard tests for all.
Vallas, who took over the New Orleans schools, said that the children that fled the Gulf Coast during the hurricanes were amazed to find out that other states had tougher education standards.

Who's in charge here?

The way that I see kids dress, act, and talk amazes me. I was not spoiled as I child, I actually had to wait until things were out of date and very "un-cool" until my parents would even consider getting it for me, and then it was given as a reward of sorts. Raising my daughters is hard enough with all of these outside influences. Even if i were to keep them from the influences in the media they would get it from school or their peers. Unless I am willing to move into a cave in the mountains there is nowhere to hide from the pressure to buy buy buy and spoil spoil spoil. The struggles that I face with the "to spoil or not to spoil" debate are endless. It definitely puts stress on myself as a parent. 1. Do I give them what they want or just what they need? 2. Do i buy them what they desire so that they will be socially accepted by their peers? 3. Do i teach them how they can help themselves in acquiring what they want? Well I think the least harmful and the most helpful one would be #3. I try ,and believe others should also, to show them that they can have whatever they want as long as they have earned it and deserve it. Earning things and deserving things are different then expecting them and assuming that they will be there, no matter the behavior exhibited or the consequences of prior actions. Parents are spoiling as a easy way out I believe. When in the end it just makes things harder all around.

An interesting view of development: Nature vs. Nurture

Before the 1960’s, twins that were put in adoption agencies were often intentional separated at birth. Psychologists and scientists interested in human behavior wanted to study the twins without them knowing about each other. Studying the twins to see if they had similar behavior patterns and interests should prove the impact our environment plays on in shaping personality, or if it genetics makes up who we are before we are even born. If genes are more important in behavior, then separated twins should have similar personalities, despite their different families. But if environment is more important, then each twin should be more like their adoptive family.
In 1968 a women who was a schizophrenic psychiatric patient, and had learned she was pregnant only two weeks earlier, gave birth to twin girls. Knowing she was too sick to raise the girls herself, she gave them up to a prominent Manhattan-based Jewish adoption agency. The girls were given to two different families and made the subjects of a secret scientific study of mental illness. The girls didn’t learn of each other until they were 35 years old. In 2003, Elyse went looking for her birth mother but instead found her twin sister Paula. A few days later they met at a café and almost immediately notice the similarities in their mannerism. Within minutes, they learned they had the same medical tendencies - depression, eating disorders in college, acne in high school, weak eyesight and the same drug allergies. They had even first menstruated at the same time, days before their 13th birthday. Their faces both go flush when they get excited, and their eyebrows make the same expressions. As the two began talking they learned of other shared characteristics; both had been adopted by Jewish families that had also adopted toddler sons and grew up to consider themselves more ambitious and liberal than their adoptive parents. Both became editors of their high-school newspapers, took school trips to Italy at age 17, and attended New York colleges where they studied film. Elyse became a filmmaker and Paula a writer - both write film criticism.
The girls both had been visited by psychologists who said they were checking up on the girls when in fact they were studying their behavior and the environment they were living in. They discovered they were among five sets of twins and one set of triplets separated by the Louise Wise Services and used as unknowing guinea pigs in a developmental study headed by an NYU psychiatrist and funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health. This institution has since been shut down because of lawsuits brought about by the people who were separated from their twins. However all paper work having to do with this study has been sealed until 2066 at Yale University.
Identical twin girls were born in Mexico and separated at birth, for twenty years the two didn’t even know the other existed. They grew up 20 miles away from each other. The way these girls meet is an amazing story of coincidence. Adrianne was a 20 year old college student who had been dating a man she met at school. The two didn’t click so they decided to be friends; the man’s friend set him up on a blind date with a girl, Tamera, who went to school just half an hour away. When the two met he was astonished by the similarity of this girl and has ex Adrianne so he began asking questions. After only minutes he realized they had to be sisters. Both girls were born in Mexico, given up for adoption at birth, and they were both the same age.
After hearing of this girl who was just like her, Adrianne insisted on meeting Tamera. Adrianne says: "It's uncanny how much we have in common.”We've both been dancing since the age of five. We're both musical - I play the clarinet and Tamara plays the sax - and love listening to RnB and hip hop. We're both sporty and love to dress casually. We even both wanted to be vets when we grew up but then decided we couldn't bare to put down an animal."
The girls even have similar tall, dark and handsome boyfriends called Alex and Adam. And when they were children not only were they dressed in identical Minnie Mouse romper suits, they had both crashed into a plate glass door.
In my research of twins being separated at birth, although I was looking similarities and differences in identical twins, I came across an article that I found amazing yet disturbing. A couple in London who were married find out that they are actually twins. The couple is urging adoption agencies to provide more information in their records. The marriage was annulled.
The reason I was so interested in the subject is because my brother and sister, obviously not identical, are twins. Their personalities are nothing alike and I always wondered if it was because they try so hard to be different or simply because they are different. They compete at everything they do. My brother is very athletic and played sports all through high school, where my sister hates to even watch sporting events on TV. My brother started college this year and is doing very well and my sister doesn’t plan on ever going to college. I found in my study that these people who did not know they had a twin were amazingly alike, and in the case of my family, the twins are so different you wouldn’t know they are actually twins.

Children should be introduced to a foreign language at a young age

Language is one of the hardest culture barriers to overcome; without a common link people cannot communicate. In March of 2005 it was reported there was 35.2 million immigrants living in the USA. Although nearly 320 million people on earth speak English, other languages have an overwhelmingly higher magnitude: did you know that 266 million speak Spanish, 189 million Bengal, 182 million Hindi and 885 million Mandarin Chinese? With business becoming more and more global every year, I feel that it is very important to introduce foreign language into our schools, and break the barrier that has held many back for so long. Learning a foreign language teaches you that there are often several ways to convey an idea. In the business world, it gives you an astonishing edge in being able to communicate directly with your customer. Incorporating a second language at a young age is vital. Myriam Met National Foreign Language Center writes in her that children as young as 3 can learn a second language. She goes on to say that many studies support her theory; children are better able to learn second languages before they have “mastered” their primary language (http://www.internationaledwa.org/resources/wl/mmet/starting_language_learning.pdf). I believe that Piaget’s cognitive development theory would support this idea because of his concept of sensory stages. I know from experience learning a second language at an older age is very difficult.

The Child In Between; Example of Why Parents Should Work Together

I hear it all the time, mom's mean, dad's nice (or vise versa). Its seems just from observation that this child often turns to the stricter parent for their needs and the more lienant one for their wants. These actions and different parenting skills may cause stress a stressful relationship between parents and even worse make for a confused child. Recently in class we discussed the variety of types of parenting. While going over the qualities and outcomes of each, I couldn't help but think of how times have changed. Moms and dads don't seem to work together as well as previous years. Remember when the phrases "talk to your dad," or "I'll discuss it with mom" were common? For whatever reason (parents time away from home for work, a mother too young) parents don't tend to have the same skills and values; they don't seem to work as a team. As an example, if you have one authoritive parent and one Permissive parent, what are the childs outcomes going to be? This child may take on the traits of both, playing both sides. Asking the permissive, more lienant parent for favors and permission because they know the answer will be yes. Yet they have a high self esteem, and achieve academically making the parents proud; traits of authoritive parenting. But the child can turn rebellious and disobedient, when things do not go their way. In return one parent tries to punish the child for their behavior while the other believes their child is just being a kid, its just a phase. The possibilities and confusions are endless. This leaves me to empasize children are smart and will paly the parents against each other, creating a very long and stresful 18 years for the entire family. Mom and dad need to work with each other to save their sanity and help keep their marriage/relationship and family prosperous.

Corporal punishment

In class today we talked about corporal punishment. So, I thought that I would look into if corporal punishment is effective.
In the last few decades, the problems of larger class size and increased student diversity have led to increases in rebellious and disruptive behavior by students, which seem to indicate that past ways of dealing with bad behavior by teachers has not been effective.
The study on corporal punishment found that students thought a letter to their parents would be a worse punishment than receiving corporal punishment. The students also thought that they should receive a reward for doing well in school. Also, the students thought the punishment they received was about right.
When asked who students most wanted to please with their class work. African Americans (71%) thought that pleasing the teacher was the highest priority, while Caucasians (52%) thought the parent was the highest priority. Girls as a group (54%) choose the teacher as the person they most liked to please with their school work, along with African American girls (81%) choosing the teacher more than any other group.
This study showed that race and sex play a factor in student attitudes about reward and punishment. However, one thing it showed is that students do not think that corporal punishment is very effective.


Casteel, Clifton A, (1997 Apr) Attitudes of African American and Caucasian eighth grade students about praises, rewards, and punishments, Vol 31, Retrieved June 15, 2009 from
http://web.ebscohost.com.mtproxy.lib.umt.edu:3048/ehost/detail?vid=7&hid=103&sid=8b93338a-dbbb-4db2-b710-6d98f9051cfe%40sessionmgr108&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=psyh&AN=1997-05195-003

Skinner Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm5FGrQEyBY

Skinner believed that with the right social engineering we can create a new bread of human being, that by using the right tools we can control or predict behavior. He also believed that you could use this to create a greater humanity. Skinner believed that environment was everything, by training pigeons in the right environment he believed that he had them ready to guide missiles for the military, the only problem is at the time the military had no missiles. Skinner also proved that when a behavior was rewarded the action will be repeated, which is known as Operant Conditioning.

Another reason parents have to be careful about day care

There is evidence to suggest that childhood obesity and day care. The Oregon obesity task force is calling for the state Legislature to consider enacting nutrition and physical activity guidelines for children enrolled in day care, the Portland Oregonian reports. Oregon law stipulates that children have to have some form of exercise, but not how much exercise the children should receive. (Parker, Portland Oregonian, 1/5/09).

Of the nation’s 21 million preschool children, 13 million spend a substantial part of their day in child care facilities.

There has been a large change in how people rely on day care in the last three decades. Changes in the basic family structure, demographics, gender roles and the need for economic security has made day care more important. Along with mandatory work requirements for under the 1996 welfare reform act have increased the number of low-income parents in need of child care.

Approximately 80 percent of children under the age of five with working mothers are in some form of child care for an average of forty hours a week.

A poor diet is considered to be a major contributor, together with little physical activity to the problem of obesity in children. To stop the trend children should have access to healthy food. Most of the children in the U.S. do not meet the dietary guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Mary Story, Karen M. Kaphingst, and Simone French (SPRING 2006) The Role of Child Care Settings in Obesity Prevention VOL. 16. 16 / NO. 1 Retrieved June 13, 2009
http://www.futureofchildren.org/usr_doc/07_5562_story-care.pdf

waist to hip ratio

I found this really cool study in the web about the waist to hip ratio and the intelegince in a fetus and it said that the study is still being reviewed, there is a moderate correlation between WHR and intelligence of offspring. Using data from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, William Lassek at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Steven Gaulin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found a child's performance in cognition tests was linked to their mother's waist-hip ratio, a proxy for how much fat she stores on her hips.
Children whose mothers had wide hips and a low waist-hip ratio scored highest, leading Lassek and Gaulin to suggest that fetuses benefit from hip fat that contains polyunsaturated fatty acids critical for the development of the fetus's brain I found this very interesting and thought it was a great thing to talk about

REinforcment vs. Punishment

When we talked about this in class I actually find this very interesting because i do this every day with my dog. She is only a year old so i am still in that stage of potty training. When she was just a puppy i would use those potty training pads for puppies and as she got use to them i would moe them closer and closer to the door. Finally I stopped using them and then when she started to go outside every morning and i would watch her go potty i would let her back in and give her a dog treat. And of course when she has an accident in the house and then i put her outside she still wants a dog treat when she comes back in but i know that she didn't do what she was suppose to so she doesn't get a dog treat. That way she knows that what she did was wrong and if she doesn't get that dog treat she knows that she needs to go out side in order to get it. She also gets punished for the accident in the house by getting her nose in it and she goes in to her cage for a little bit. Which helps her understand that she is in trouble and not to do it anymore.

The Cocktail effect...

I actually did this experiment with my mom and my dad. My mom was on one side and my dad was on the other side. THe were both equal distances away from me and they were talking about two differnt things. My mom talked about what was for dinner and my dad talked about what was going on for the weekend. I have to say that i actually heard what my dad was saying more than my mom because his tone was a little bit higher than hers. But then i also did not hear that my dad said he wanted me to mow the lawn but i did hear that my mom said that we were having pizza for dinner.

The Cocktail Party Effect

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I found this article in the bloogers. I thought it was pretty interesting in that we have been talking about this in class and that we as people tend to think it is easy to multi task and listen and do many things. Colin Cherry, then at Imperial College London (Cherry, 1953.) Cherry used the method like we did in class of playing two messages at the same time to people. He discovered just how good we are at filtering out what we hear. It is very hard as we found in class and Cherry realized to listen to two voices presented at the same time it's very hard yet possible. The farher apart you are from the conversation the easier it is to confuse the listeners.
Cherry's second expierment was the suprising one and this was when he put one conversation in someone'e left ear and a total different conversation in the right ear and found that it is easy to tone out one ear and listen to only one converstation. One study has found that two-thirds of people don't even notice when their own name is slipped into the unattended speech, while those who do notice are likely to be of the extremely distractable variety (Conway, Cowan & Bunting, 2001).
You have been warned!
I thought this was a interesting article and that our brain and sences are incredible when it comes to different situations.

Helping Young Children Manage the Strong Emotion of Anger

I found this Article in the Earlychildhood News. It was written by Marion Marion, Ph.D. Published by the Excellence Learning Corporation 2007. http://earlychildhoodnews.com
As we talked about emotion regulation in class today I began to wonder how we might help our young children to manage emotions. The article discussed how children are not able to understand another's perception and that their anger in classrooms has three parts. They feel anger, express anger, but they do not seem to understand anger therefore the article encourages teachersto guide children toward understanding and managing anger. Children express anger by emotional scripts that they have learnd by example. Therefore children need help writing heathy emotional anger scripts. According to the article the steps in helping them write healthy emotional anger scripts are as follows; 1)send helpful messages to children about feeling and expressing anger in early childhood classrooms, 2)teach young children how to use words to express anger, 3)teach children about being "a little angry" or "very, very angry", 4) Explain angry feeling and encourage angry children to talk about the situation that made them angry, 5)use thinking puppets to put discussion about managing anger into the curriculum, and 6)use books and stories about anger.
As managing anger and other emotions can make for a well balanced child, the article has some good points in teaching the child to not only express their anger in a healthy manner, to understand why they are angry along with the fact that it is ok to get angry, and to deal with it as well.

Emerging Morality: How Children Think About Right and Wrong

I found this article in the Earlychildhood news. It was written by Sandra Crosser, Ph.D. Published by the Excellence Learning Corporation 2007. http://earlychildhoodnews.com
As you can tell by the title, the article takes a look at early childhood thinking. The article states that experts tell us that morality involves thnking, feeling, and acting. Feelings of empathy and altruism and acts of sharing and compassion are coupled to and limited by the individual's cognitive development. How we feel, act, and think about good and bad are all parts of our morality. It seporates moral issuses from issues of social convention (such as taking off your hat indoors), as well as points out that boys differ in moral decision making than do girls and that research has led to the conclusion the females think about moral issues in a manner that is different, not inferior to, males. In resolving moral dilemmas, females are typically less concerned with justice and more conscerned with carilng and maintaining relationships even to the point of self-sacrifice (Gilligan 1962). The article offers Steps in how to help children develop moral thought and action; 1)deal with problems appropriately, 2)allow children to experience moral conflict, 3)discuss moral dilemmas, 4)encourage children to change the rules, 5)involve children in making some classroom rules, 6)encourage dramatic play and role playing, 7)explore the concept of intenition and motive, 8)praise moral behavior, and 9)Use real dilemmas.
What this article comes down to is helping young children learn, experience, and make moral decisions while teaching them about morality in thinking, feeling, and action. I found this article to make good sense in that it directly works with with the children in teaching them along with helping them understand at their cognitive level.

The importance of Emotional Regulation

After talking about emotional regulation in class I started to think about exactly how important this is. Emotional regulation defined as “intrinsic and extrinsic processes responsible for indentifying, supervising, evaluating, and altering emotional actions” (Thompson,1994)
Now if you think about that definition for a minute its almost scary. Children who do not learn emotional regulation would find themselves in a lonely world. Not having the ability to control their emotions could cause these children to produce socially in appropriate behaviors, and in the majority of their personal relationships would be complete disarray. As adults this could very well develop into BPD, borderline personality disorder, which is defined as “ a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity beginning by early adulthood and present in a varity of contexts” (DSM-IV-TR) This disorder calls for a lot of ‘self searching’ throughout adulthood. Leaving adults in and out of therapy most of their lives, learning such things as dialectic behavior therapy to cope themselves through their overwhelming flood of emotions and mishaps.
In my opinion, the development of emotional regulation within a child is so important it could literally mean the difference between a life of chaos and inner struggle or happiness and inner peace.

Levi Leipheimer

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/cycling/2009-02-17-leipheimer-hypnosis_N.htm

On Tuesday June 9 we discussed hypnosis and how it might be good for people. In this article Levi Leipheimer, a professional cyclist, talks about how he used hypnosis to help him ride better. Levi received an Ultimate Cyclist CD created by Josh Horowitz Liquid Fitness booth and clinical hypnotherapist Rick Collingwood. The CD puts positive thoughts into the users mind. Levi started listing to this every night. Since using the CD Levi has won the Amgen Tour of California two years in a row and placed 3rd in 2007. I believe this article has a great message to tell everyone. That is that if you think positive more good things could happen to you. By having better positive thinking you may be able to forget about all the problems you have a get things done. "The mind is probably the single most important part of our bodies that we need to train," Josh Horowitz says. and Levi was able to relax his mind, which is not very easy to do. If you relax the mind then maybe you can relax the body.

Tutors for Toddlers
This was an article in time magazine in 2007 http://www.time.com. The article calls it kindercramming and states that parents hope that if their kids learn to read before the first grade it will help them get into college and get good jobs. The article attributes the push for toddlers early education to the tutoring industry which has benefited in profit and the Baby Einstein marketing as the biggest proponents. Opponents believe that parents are expecting too much too soon and that brain-imaging data shows that children aren't ready to read until around age 5. It almost seems that we are going back to the times when kids were little adults and not kids. The parents in this article are looking at the childs future and not their childhood. this theory takes away the from the social aspect of childhood and puts the children in the role of academic performers. Not to mention the stages of development and the harm it may do to the child. it is sad to think that the most important thing in a 4 year olds life is whether he/she will get into college. Many children who did not read at age 4 made it into college and were very successfull in life.

Perinatal Nurses:Could They Be the Answer?

While recently reading the prenatal development and birth article, the section on perinatal nurses caught my attention. These nurses are there, by request, throughout a mothers entire pregnancy; supporting, guiding and teaching the soon to be mother of all the importances during her nine months and after the baby's birth. I find these women extrodinarily helpful to all women; but especially for the first time and drug addicted mother. What if these nurses were required to provide assistance to both of these women? I realize the perinatal nurses assistance with the drug addicted mother would be more difficult so lets me begin my theory there.

A woman enters a low income community clinic because she believes she is pregnant. The doctor assesses the woman and confirms she is in deed pregnant. While performing her test he concludes this woman is doing meth, he then contacts authorities. This woman, in turn, is then required by law ( because drugs are illegal and she is pregnant) to attend a rehabilitation center where perinatal nurses are present. Along with a drug counsler, a nurse would be assigned to her. The nurse would teach and assist the soon to be mother in healthy habits and growth during her pregnancy as well as support her after birth. As for the first time mother-to-be, a perinatal nurse would be required during all of the woman's doctor appointments and check ups. She would be a constant presence at every doctor visit. The nurse would also provide a way of contact for all the mother's questions and concerns outside the office.

I am fully aware this procedure will not help all mothers abusing substances, but I believe the presence of such a nurse: her constant attention, knowledge and support would lower the risk of babies being born addicted to drugs and/or with defects, and also assist in helping the mothers overcome their addictions.

HHS Toned Down Breast Feeding Ads

In this article, there is a debate about whether or not some pretty intense breast feeding ads should or should not have been toned down. I believe they should have been and I'm grateful that they were. It took me a year of working at least 38 hrs a week to qualify for a weeks worth of paid vacation. I had to pre-schedule this paid week off and that was the only amount of time I could afford to take off. My boyfriend doesn't work because of a surgery on his foot that went horribly wrong. The only source of income in the house is mine. I have no choice but to work. When I was pregnant with my son, my due date was the 24th of July. Trying my best to figure out how I was going to pre-schedule a week of paid time off to have my baby was meaningless. I ended up settling for the entire week surrounding my due date. Imagine my frustration when the little bugger didn't arrive untile five days after his due date. My point is, I took an extra four days off without pay to rest and be with my son but that was absolutely all I could afford. I made serious efforts to breast feed my son but breasts do not produce the milk needed unless you can pump or feed several times a day. I don't know about where other women work but I had only a couple fifteen minute breaks and no place that I could privately pump my breasts at work. I was doing half formula and half breastmilk for the first month but then school started again. I was in classes from 8 in the morning until 2 or 4 all week and then I went straight to work and didn't get home every night until around midnight or 1am. It didn't take more than a week for my breasts to start drying up completely. It just doesn't work sometimes and I had no other choice. I wanted desperately to form that bond, through breast feeding, with my son. You cannot imagine the guilt that I feel already and how angry it makes me that I couldn't. I hardly ever watch TV but if I were to watch some and I saw a commercial with an insulin bottle that had a rubber nipple on the end or an asthma inhaler with a rubber nipple on the end, I would probably start sobbing. I had asthma as a child and my first thought while reading this was, "Did I have it because my mother didn't breast feed me?" I would wonder for the rest of my life whether every illness or cold could have been prevented by breast feeding, as if I wont even without seeing the ads. All of these unhealthy attributes or illnesses have simply been shown to correlate with a lack of breast feeding. No cause has been shown. I think we should be less concerned with how many mothers are not breast feeding and more concerned with why. I can't imagine that any mother, knowing the benefits of doing so, would choose not to breast feed for some minute reason. I'm sure there are some but I would bet that they are an extreme minority. There is an interesting graph on this website (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave) that shows the levels of paid and unpaid maternity leave and paid and unpaid paternity leave. As you scroll down pay close attention to what it say for the US and then for the entire graph of European countries. The article from our reading pointed out how much higher rates of breast feeding are in European countries, migh this have something to do with it? Since Wikipedia is not really a trusted site because anybody can add information to it, I've also added a link to this article in USA Today that points out how the US stands apart from the rest of the industrialized world: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-07-26-maternity-leave_x.htm.

The Blank Slate, an argument for the nature side.

The blank slate is an article that supports the nature theory in the all to famous debate nature versus nurture. I found this article to be very informative and structured. It sets up for a strong lead against some of the overly dramatic headlines used to support the nurture side such as "Children enjoy sweets because their parents use them as rewards for eating vegetables." and "Teenagers get the idea to compete in looks and fashion from spelling bees and academic prizes.". Now, even to me those sound a little on the imaginative side. The article states that we should not forget about human nature and that we were not born blank slates that are fully developed through our environment. It suggests that "human nature is the source of our interests and needs". All this could hold some truth to it but I also felt that this article took away from some of the strong theories that do show support for the nurture side. It screamed nature, and implied that there is no results to come from nurture besides a bit more happiness. This can not be true. Psychologist such a B.F. Skinner and John Watson did multiple studies to support the nurture side. I believe Skinner produced pigeons that could dance, do figure eights and play tennis. Both these psychologists believed in classical conditioning. There are plenty of studies to hold water for the theory of nurture. However, most psychologists are in agreement today that it is neither one way or the other, that nature and nurture go hand in hand. The blank slate, although is a good article, seems to be bias towards nature in the nature versus nurture debate.

As reported in CNN health.com stem cells may actually put an end to the use of animals especially in the use of testing for pharmaceutical companies.

This relates to several of our discussions into the topic of the ethics around animal testing and the reasons why we need to use them. This article presents another approach to the issue, a very viable option.

This article does not go into great enough detail into how this will work and the process by which the stem cells will be used in the research. One of the things it fails to discuss is the reality that we need to use animals for certain experiments that use different parts of the animals anatomy. This article talks a great deal about the pharmaceutical companies and the impact it will have on the testing that could be done and some of the implications.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/22/stem.cell.drug.tests/index.html

illusion

http://www.bucknell.edu/x49962.xml

In this article Art Shapiro and two Bucknell University graduates created an illusion that fools the brain. There illusion shows a spinning ball, when you watch the ball directly it moves in a straight line, but when you see the ball from the corner of your eye the spinning of the ball tricks the brain into thinking that the ball is sharply curving. This study may explain why batters in baseball can have so much trouble hitting the pitch. Knowing this you could possible improve your batting average. This study could help us understand more about sensory perception and the more of the brain since it is so complex..
To try the study yourself go to
http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com/2009/the-break-of-the-curveball/

The past several years ive been observing the relative tolerances for pain of my grandmothers, Betsy and LaVerne. One of them appears has a very high tolerance while the other has a very low tolerance for pain. Betsy is seemingly not bothered by complicated and intrusive surgeries, while LaVerne complains greatly over something as common as a sliver. The idea of gaining higher tolerance for pain through painful experiences is thwarted by the fact that they both have had many of the same injuries and surgeries and have gone through childbirth many times, so what is the difference between them? Maybe Betsy is just less likely to make her pain known than LaVerne. Afterall, nobody likes a whiner. Maybe there is some difference physically. To gain insight into this, I have devised an experiment (hypothetically of course).

The goal of the experiment is to determine whether Betsy truly is more tolerant to pain than LaVerne. A small electrode will be attached to the tip of each subject’s nose. Electrical pulses will be sent through the electrode and into the nose in intervals, starting with no power and increasing gradually. The subject will be given a stop button that will turn the power to the electrode off and instructed to only press the button when they experience pain. I believe that LaVerne will press the stop button at a lower level of power than Betsy.

A possible problem with this, aside from the fact that I doubt that either of them would agree to participate, is that this would not distinguish whether the difference is in the nerves in the nose, or if it is something in the brain that causes one to be more tolerant than the other. Also, it does not account for temporary desensitization. Future studies could focus on the location of the differences or use different stimuli on different parts of the body.

"Cool Fact" Experiments

http://www.skygaze.com/content/facts/psychology.shtml

In this article that I have found on this website states an interesting fact about termites. Studies at a couple different colleges have shown that heavy metal music not only amps up humans but termites. Studies have shown that when introducing heavy metal to theses insects caused them to chew through wood at twice the speed as the would normally. I think this is cool because it is interesting to see how music or hearing can effect or actions or stimulate the brain. If you have some house work to do listen to heavy metal and you might get your work done twice as fast.

Synaesthesia

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/09/synesthesia.genes/index.html

In our readings "A world of one's own" we have come to understand the condition known as Synaesthesia. In the article "Seeing color in sounds has a genetic link" Cnn reports the genetic link that has been discovered in regards to syneasthesia and those who live with it.
This article relates to our readings in that it covers the genetic evidence that has been studied for so long by other people. It discusses the old belief that one gene was responsible for the condition and the findings that it is actually linked to four regions, Chromosomes 2,5,6 and 12. Our reading went over the symptoms and some of the reasons for it and this article explains the genetic evidence that has recently been discovered.
This article was very brief in its description of the condition. It described several people in history who have had the condition and the ways in which it effected them. I do believe that it covered the basic areas of the condition and the way in which the brain processes stimuli. Their was sufficient reference to studies that supported the material discussed. Upon further investigation into the sources of the studies i found that they were indeed published and supported.

Erickson: The More Sensable Theorist to Mankind

The pioneering theorist to approach human development pschology, I believe to be, is Erick Erickson. While Sigmund Freud psychosexual stages make sense, they seem to be too more opinionated and tend to lack life. Erickson on the other hand, while taking a similair approach to studying infants, children and the youth as Freud, he went above and beyond; he opened his mind to the possibilities of more. Erickson's psychosocial approach took in how an infant acts and responds to its surroundings and mostly to people (trust and mistrust). Not just its obession with the mouth as its only concern. In the industry vs. inferiority stage he notices the childs slight acts of rebellion n how the roles of compitition with other peers and the media play in a childs life. Where as Freud only seemed to reconize the childs ability to supress its concentration on their private body parts because they become more concerned will socialization. Erickson took note children learned and adapted to there enviroments, they became "indivudual people". He took in that there is much more to a person's development then "sex" and a person did not stop developing after puberty or in too adulthood, thus the added three stages. Maybe even helping people come to the conclusion those later years are their "golden years". Life didn't end at 40. He reconized mankind is contuniously learning and adapting from there surroundings, possibly to be more comfortable in them. His stages of development are easily understable and something that anyone can relate with and find examples in life to support his theories. I for one don't believe Erickson was nearly as shallow as Freud.