How to Correct Toddlers by Jacqueline Bacino

Developmental Discipline: Time out or no time out?
In order to give a child an effective action-consequence experience, often called time-outs or safe-chairs, an adult needs to consider the child’s developmental level of thinking and processing. A two-year-old child is probably not going to benefit from a time-out longer than 1 minute because they will not understand the cause and effect reasoning because they are extremely egocentric and are still melding that others have feelings and perspectives in the world. We, in Western culture, raise children to think about themselves from a individualistic perspective for the first year that the second year of life is challening because they are then asked to consider other people’s perspectives. Many psychologists recommend children “taking a break” or “getting some space” from an environment that is challening the child or possibly adult–often the adult reads child’s cues and undersirable but the child is looking for space and does not know how to communicate such needs. Furthermore, if a child is three-years-old, many teachers recommend removing them from the environment only after the child looks at the situation and is not forced to say “Sorry” but rather consider another perspective and then be removed until the child can “show” that they can play, behave, act, etc. appropriately and within limits. If a child is asked to not do something and then they do it then an adult needs to consider telling the child what they can do. This situation will often reflect the child’s individual processing skills and an adult should modify the situation appropriately.

Children need consistency, schedules and routines. If you make it a routine for them to find comfort alone and with books then they won’t look at it like a consequence or punishment. However, you need to make sure it also isn’t a reward for a child’s non-desirable behavior. A professor of mine once said that consequences need to match behavior or the child will not learn. If a child hits and is then spanked as a consequence the child is taught in fear and will not learn to keep their hands to themselves, but perhaps keep hitting and spanking. If a child is going to hurt someone or themself an adult can physically remove the child because the situation is extreme. Some children learn how to calm down with small motor meditation movements (linking middle finger to thumb and chanting ‘Om’) but again this takes repetitive practice, almost like Pavlov’s dog experiment. When a child is acting too excited, model for them how to calm down, and then give them reinforcement (verbal or physical ‘high five’, smile, wink) and then continue in the situation. A child should not be set-up to get disciplined, for example, being in a small room with many other non-verbal children, inconsistency in loving relationships, lack of verbal skills, etc. Depending on the child’s coping skills they may not need an adult to model how to calm down, but often at school children need help calming down.

 

Global Demographic Changes Indicate Instability

In The Graying of the Great Powers, Richard Jackson and Neil Howe predict trouble ahead. Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest youth-bulge with over a third of the population, more than double the number in the developed world. The youth bulge could lead to instability in sub-Saharan Africa and some Muslim nations, including Afghanistan and Iraq, until at least the 2030s. As the youth bulge increases, “so does the likelihood of civil unrest, revolution, and war.”[i]  Historic global aging never seen before hit developed nations first. This phenomenon is creating a demographic gulf between them and developing nations, but will eventually reach there as well as people live longer and numbers of births decrease. As populations age their economic growth is threatened, and probably will cause the influence of the developed world to wane, according to the authors of The Graying of the Great Powers. The exception is the US due to immigration and relatively high fertility rates that likely will maintain its influence.

Demographic change will impact Russia with its population decrease, China will have to handle an age wave just when it becomes a middle-income country, and some countries will face intense competition between faster and slower growing ethnic and religious groups. As countries rapidly modernize, stress follows from “some combination of globalization, urbanization, rising inequality, family breakdown, environmental degradation, ethnic conflict, and religious radicalism.” Demographers Jackson and Howe predict that the disparities between graying countries with their shortage of youth labor and countries with large youth populations will come to the forefront in the 2020s to make it the decade of greatest global danger.

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[i] Richard Jackson and Neil Howe. The Graying of the Great Powers.  Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008, p. 193.

 

Your input into global youth viewpoints and revolutions

After 7 years of research, the manuscript on global youth viewpoints and revolutions is ready for you to critique and add your observations. Email for chapters gkimball@csuchico.edu. Thanks!

Global youth revolutions are changing our traditions. To learn how the Millennial Generation is shaping our future, Dr. Kimball generated a worldwide network of youth informants and traveled to 21 countries on all the inhabited continents to talk with them. Her dialogues ranged from Tahrir Square in Cairo, to Rio slums, to villages in Tanzania and Indonesia, to posh London and Shanghai homes. A Brighter Future draws on almost 3,500 written responses from 65 countries. The actual voices of youth make for interesting and thought provoking reading.

 

A Brighter Future: How Global Youth Are Shaping Our Future
Contents Overview of around 250 pages

Introduction  (10 pages)
 
Chapter 1 Global Youth Power (22 pages)
Youth Power, Get to Know Eva, Abel, Sahar and Yuan, International Youth Issues: Urban vs. Rural, The Gap Between Rich and Poor
 
Chapter 2: Millennial Generation (27)
Teenaging of Culture vs. War on Kids, Youth Generation Characteristics, What Youths Think About Adults
 
Chapter 3 Global Youth Culture (33 pages)
Media and Common Language, Teen Style, Multinational Corporate Consumerism, The Demise of Traditional Values?

Chapter 4: Youth Activism for Equality (45 pages)
Activist Youths vs. Apathy, History of Youth Movements, The Arab Spring, European Summer, US Fall and Russian Winter Youth Revolutions, The Occupy Movements, Change Making Tools: Electronic Networking
 
Chapter 5 Activism for Gender Equality (22 pages)
Current Status of Gender Equality, Life For a Traditional Village Teen, Women in Government, Global Feminist Activism, Third Wave Feminism
 
Chapter 6 Traditional vs. Modern Values (26 pages)

Life Purpose, Values, Rural vs. Urban, Respect for Elders, Modern Consumerism

 

Chapter 7  Beliefs about Religion and Spirituality  (24 pages)

Suffering, Religious Purpose, Beliefs About God, Participation in Organized Religion, Spirituality

 

Implications for the Future (4 pages)
 
Appendices (35 pages)

Corporations are not people, amendment needed

A Petition to Support the Saving American Democracy Amendment : Bernie Sanders – U.S. Senator for Vermont  <http://shar.es/WJkAo>


Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court decision in a case called Citizens United vs. FEC.   The Saving American Democracy Amendment. 

We’re seeing the impact of the SuperPacs on the primaries. They’re the ones who spend millions on negative ads. Coroporations are not people and don’t have the right to free speech.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

2012 Goofy and Sexist Republican Presidental Candidates

I challenge you to think of a goofier set of presidential candidates in US history than the current Republicans: see Perry’s NH speech or his “10 excuses” on Letterman, both on YouTube; see Cain singing or his memory lapses on sexual harassment settlements and a 14-year affair; Romney’s unapologetic reversals as in “absolutely” approving Mississippi‘s personhood amendment then disavowing it after it was rejected and declaring ‘Corporations Are People Too,’ Gingrich on marital fidelity after his adulterous affairs, Ron Paul saying he didn’t read racist newsletters that had his name as author…. Would be funny if not so embarrassing to be an American. This plus the cruelty expressed by audiences at Republican debates (applauding Texas’ execution record, yelling to let a sick man without health insurance die, applauding Cain when he was asked about sexual harassment settlements) is sad.

Santorum is against contraception because it’s a “license” to to do things that are “counter to the way things should be.” He opposes abortion even to save the woman’s life, opposes same-sex marriage, and thinks there “are a lot of problems” with teaching evolution. Republicans in Virginia’s legislature backed down on requiring a vaginal probe ultrasound of women who need an abortion, fodder for TV comedians. What century do they live in? Reformers like Margaret Sanger went to jail in her struggle to make contraception legal. If these men could get pregnant would they take the same stand?

space is not what we think; it’s like fabric

Most of our Newtonian views of the universe are wrong, like the idea that space is static. Scientists don’t understand most of the universe, which is made of dark energy and dark matter. Because of Einstein’s brilliant mathematics, physicists now understand that space-time is like a fabric that bends. Gravity is wrapping of space-time caused by the objects in it. The moon moves in a curve in space caused by the drag of planet earth. We think of space as empty but quantum mechanics knows it’s teeming with fluctuating fields. The CERN accelerator in Switzerland aims to find the Higgs particle, perhaps the basic component of the field, by recreating the Big Bang that occurred 14 billion years ago. When Peter Higgs presented his theory in 1964, he was ridiculed. The moral of the story is our senses are very subjective and innovators usually meet opposition.

In Brian Greene’s Nova series on physics[i] he explains that the sub-atomic world of Quantum Mechanics, studied since the 1920s, has different laws than the larger world defined by Isaac Newton and later by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity. (Newton is the greatest scientist according to Greene). Einstein spent the last part of his life trying to figure out how to unify the two sets of laws. For example, black holes operate according to both tiny and huge processes. The quantum world is unpredictable except for being weird and crazy, with potentialities perhaps manifesting in parallel universes. Einstein was uncomfortable with Quantum Mechanics, saying “God doesn’t throw darts,” so he looked for predicable laws. Greene suggests that String Theory could provide the unifying theory with tiny vibrating strings, like violin strings, as the basic building block of the universe. Quantum Mechanics defies common sense: Our bodies seem solid but are mostly empty space, for example.

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[i] His book The Fabric of the Cosmos is the basis for the November series, 2011. Episoded will be streamed at video.pbs.org.

M. Bachmann says be submissive to husband

In a Newsweek article, August 7, 2011, Michelle Bachmann is quoted:

She has said her husband directed her to study tax law, and she obliged because “the Lord says: be submissive, wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands.” Asked about her choice of words, she explains, “That means that I respect my husband, and he respects me.” But in a Bachmann White House, she adds, “I would be the decision maker.”

How can she be submissive to her husband and be President?

US Deficits

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains what’s wrong with the US economy. Although it has expanded, 40% of the wealth goes to the superrich. They use their lobbying dollars to reduce their taxes– the capital gain tax is only 15%. The decline in tax revenues adds to the deficit and businesses are afraid to invest. The solution is a strong middle class and fair taxation.

 

http://front.moveon.org/scribbling%2Dsharpie%2Dillustrates%2Dthe%2Dtruth%2Dabout%2Dour%2Deconomy/?id=28091-1862142-PZ4%3Dmsx

A trip to northern Louisiana

 

I spent 10 days in Natchitoches (founded in 1714 by a French Canadian trader) and the tiny town of Saline, visiting an old friend. Impressions of northern Louisiana:

 

People are polite; a lot of yes mam, no sir, Ms. Gayle. Not just a lot of “you all” but the plural is “Let’s go all you all!” A new phrase is tender-headed. Got my hair cut and the hair dressed asked if I was. A Calif. Woman who has lived there for four years praised Southern hospitality, but said she’ll never be accepted as one of them. They were so polite that no one said anything when the movie Avatar was 20 minutes late, so the Californian went to talk to management. Ditto when the movie melted mid-way through. (I’m looking forward to seeing it in 3D today)

 

Go to a restaurant and almost everything is fried, even okra, crab cakes, pickles. I ate fried alligator, crayfish, hushpuppies (corn bread). They’re not big on salad and fresh veggies. There are lots of hunters and deer heads on restaurant walls.

 

Religion is big. In the small rural town of Selene, there are 22 Baptist churches, 1 Methodist and 1 Pentecostal. Lots of the Creole people are Catholic. The town of Natchitoches has over 50 Christmas light displays along the 56-mile Cane River (it looks like a river but is a lake), including ones with crosses and Christian messages although the town sponsors it. They celebrate the whole month of December with Sat. beautiful fireworks from the riverbank. (I’ll post a video I took on Youtube.) They’re not worried about separation of church and state. I saw a house with a sign in front “Jesus,” never seen anything like that in California. We went to a black Baptist church service. It took three hours for the testimonials of the Lord’s work in their daily lives, money raising, singing, and preaching.

 

We went on a tour of two old mansions in town and two plantations out in the country. One called Oakland was owned by the same Prud’homme family for over 200 years, until the feds took it over as a museum in the 1990s. Dolores’ brother was married to one of the daughters. The children’s room had a trapdoor so the slave who cared for the kids could go up and door from her room on the ground floor. Houses, included the two-room slave quarters, were built off the ground for airflow and in case of flooding of the river. They used cypress wood because the trees grow in water and the wood resists termites. The “bouselage” adobe-like walls were made of river mud, moss, and deer hair placed between cypress wood, then covered with a lime wash. We saw a house made like this in 1776, with packed mud floors, heated with the fireplace, water collected from the roof into a cistern. The kitchen was a separate building, as was the outhouse.

They originally grew tobacco and indigo, and then switched to cotton until it became unprofitable. Lots of pecan trees, corn and soybeans are grown now.

The area has much longer history than in California, influenced by the French, French Canadians (Cajuns), Spanish, Native Americans, and African slaves. The Creole people are a combination of these different backgrounds. Many of the local Creoles are descendents of the 10 children of a Frenchman, Claude Metoyer, and a mulatto herbalist slave woman named Marie Thereze. They lived together in the late 1700s, but couldn’t marry because of her race. We saw the Yucca Plantation where they lived. A Spanish priest campaigned for Metoyer to break up with the mother of his children, but they were backed up by a Made de Soto who contributed money to the church. Metoyer purchased and freed his lover and her children. After 20 years they separated, but he gave land to Marie Thereze and her children. She built her own plantation and grew tobacco and ran cattle. I got to meet several Croele people—see photos.

 

This experience junky enjoyed being woken up at 4:30 AM by a siren and loud speaking proclaiming a tornado warning, repeated at 6:30, then an all clear at 9:30. The sky was yellow-red pulsating with lighting, but you couldn’t see the individual strikes. Overall the weather was cold but with some good sunny days, including my flight home via Dallas.