Remember, what’s OK is the enemy of what’s best.

“Watching television for two to three hours or more per day is linked to significantly higher risks of developing diabetes and heart disease and dying from all causes, according to a new analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health.” (June 15, Journal of the American Medical Association.)

If it were just health, some parents would ignore the need to change TV habits.  But wait! Thinking ability is also at risk here.

A New Yorker study indicates that “A reader learns about the world and imagines it differently from the way a viewer does; according to some…a reader and a viewer even think differently.” (Crain, 2007, 135)

 In several cited studies, illiterates resisted giving definitions of words, grouping like objects, and making logical inferences about hypothetical situations. (Crain, 2007, 137) Moreover, “in an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon…” (Crain, 138) 

Detailed and consistent decline in reading and thus in thinking ability have been reported by the National Endowment for the Arts…

It is much harder to compare viewpoints and ideas between streaming media than to analyze the written word.

Juxtaposed images give the impression of cause and effect where none exists. Logical thinking and learning words become a strain.  Social and communication skills suffer.  Experienced teachers and social workers have noted the trend.  Teamwork, highly valued in the global marketplace and in parenting, is suffering.

According to the scholars Jack Goody and Ian Watt, Crain says, (2007, 138) “it is only in a literate culture that the past’s inconsistencies have to be accounted for, a process that encourages skepticism and forces history to diverge from myth.”  My experience on the Navajo Reservation corroborates all of the above.

Recall is also enhanced by reading, as opposed to merely viewing. Moreover, viewers from the age of eight to sixteen months begin loosing word power for every hour of baby DVD’s and videos they watch daily, according to Crain.

Data on more than a million students worldwide by Micha Razel “found ‘little room for doubt’ that television worsened performance in reading, science and math.” (Crain, 2007, 138)

The N.E.A. reported recently that “readers are more likely than non-readers to play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, paint, go to music events, take photographs, and volunteer.” (Crain, 2007, 139)  

If parents cannot read, their children will not be encouraged to learn more than the minimum to get by.  Thus, each generation will become more ignorant.

Apply the Bingo test:  is reading, good health and the ability to live a richer, fuller life worth changing your TV habits? 

Oh yes, we do need to relax from a stressful day of work, and TV will reward us with entertainments which either stimulate or sedate us…just like addictions will. 

According to Dr. Archibald Hart, writing in Healing Life’s Hidden Addictions, “…two basic drives or fundamental needs can be behind all addictions:  excitement seeking and tension reducing…These two drives are directly related to the two basic categories of drugs (stimulants and tranquilizers)…” (p. 57)

 These psychological needs play a “significant role even in non-chemical addictions.”

Hart says that “Since the function of an addiction is to place a buffer between ourselves and our awareness of feelings, wrenching the buffer away results in increased anxiety…”  Hmmm.  How uncomfortable do we get  when we miss our favorite program?  How many of us are truly listening to our children or our body or our felt needs during those hypnotic sessions with streaming media or facebook? 

Do we really need exercise after being chained to a computer all day, or a couch potatoe session?  Do we need real rest or merely a change of activity?

Moms, Dads, and teachers:  Stress-free Discipline of our children will relieve our stress as it happens, and it will provide rewarding, consistent consequences for our children’s right and poor choices of the day (or period).  The reward is time spent with us on educational, interpersonal activities.  Those activities may be a game of basketball ourtside, spell-down baseball inside, or learning good manners at a nice restaurant!

Let’s apply the Bingo test to those activities.  Is what I am doing now building skills and bonding and family teamwork for the long term?  Teachers, are your present choices of stress-relief really working for your body?

Personal financial hardship is only one cost of  divorce. 

According to CitizenLink.org, a study done by the Institute for American Values has found that the breakdown of families costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion yearly.  The national, state and local costs–which add up to more than $1 trillion over the last decade–are caused, in part, by high poverty rates of single, female-headed households, which lead to higher spending on welfare, criminal justice and education programs.” (Williams, 2008, 1) 

What could the government do with a trillion dollars to create jobs and a better quality of life?  What could parents do with a little more in their bank account and lower taxes for preventable problems?  This is not rocket science.  It has to do with self-control and intelligent work toward family health.

The human cost of family breakup cannot be calculated.  While the average mother looses quality of life as she enters the ranks of the poor, there are many hidden costs.  If she got a divorce wanting control and freedom, her impulse control problems have bad consequences.  She is so overwhelmed with an additional work load–an impossible blend of the need to provide adequate income and good parenting–that she is unable to discipline her children or teach them essential skills. 

Happiness research by Dr. Ed. Diener of the University of Illinois indicates that we are most happy when our ability and the task at hand are closely matched.(see www.psych.uluc.edu/~ediener/research/research.html).  Poor parents can only be miserable, single parents are all stressed, and both children and parents suffer the kind of pressures which lead to poor health, depression, dysfunction, violence and full-blown mental illness.

Self control issues–impulse control problems–pass from parent to child, and “may predict health problems, less financial stability and a criminal record by adulthood…a survey of more than 1,000 children who were studied from birth to age 32, found that kids who scored lowest on measures of self-control…were roughly three times as likely by adulthood to report to having multiple health problems and addictions, earning less than $20,000 a year, becoming a single parent or committing a crime than kids with the most self-control.  

The good news is that self-control can be learned. (TIME, February 7, 2011)

What parents want to curse their child to an unhappy, unhealthy and dysfunctional life?  Yet, according to Stanley Bippus, Superintendent of Central Consolidated School District, Farmington, NM, “The primary cause of most behavior and student achievement problems in the public school system is irresponsible and/or incompetent parents…No child is more handicapped that one whose parents don’t understand and accept the responsibilities of parenthood.  Poor parents destroy the lives of more children in this country than drugs, alcohol and gangs combined.”  (published in the Farmington Daily Times, 9/4/1994)

Parenting is the hardest job we will ever do, in my opinion.  The consequences of poor parenting have the largest negative consequences of anything we are likely to do.  Every fallen culture throughout history has preceded their fall with family decline.  David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, said that “reducing family fragmentation rates by just one percent would save taxpayers $1.1 billion.”  Our impulse-control issues can break this country or build it.  The same applies to our families.

My book, Stress-free Discipline, teaches how to cope with impulse-control issues in both parents and children.

We don’t feel thirsty until we are already dehydrated.  According to Brian D. Foltz and Joe Ferrara, PhD, chronic dehydration elevates histamine, which can lead to allergies and an increase of stress hormones (cortisol).  This suppress the production of white blood cells and we become more vulnerable to more allergens (triggers of  allergy).  Less energy is the first sign of dehydration.  For every one percent drop of water inside your cells, energy production is cut by ten percent.  Unfortunately, much more harm can result.

Dehydration can cause constipation, diverticulitis, polyps, and colon cancer.  But wait!  Dehydration, according to Foltz and Ferrara, “is a frequent cause of mental difficulties, including depression…feelings of anxiety, anger, irritableness, short attention span, impatience… asthma, hypertension…pain and Type II diabetes.”

http://www.hydrationsecrets.com details other consequences, including weight gain and decrease of oxygen uptake.  Our brains need 40% more oxygen than the rest of our body.  Brain fog is not always the result of sleep loss.

What can we do?  Short-term dehydration shows up in darker urine—except urine colored by certain vitamins, foods, medications, etc.  Extreme dehydration is orange color.  The darker your urine, the more acidic your body is, and the more damage occurs in cells.  Acidic blood feeds pathogens, while normal pH helps kill germs, viruses and other problems.  Keep your urine clear or a very pale yellow.

Now that you are aware of physical needs for water, what about your spiritual need for the Living Water of Christ?

The woman at the well in Samaria (John 4:5-26) was not aware of her need for the living water of eternal life.  We are also unaware of our spiritual needs, even if we have accepted Christ as our savior from sin.  Christians–distracted by cares of this world–do not feel spiritually thirsty until they are dehydrated.  They may skip church for a swim meet, unaware of their need for the living water of God’s word.  They may not be in God’s word daily. 

Christians may not be in the mood for these efforts because they are spiritually dehydrated—and deprived of divine energy…”

Do not let your strength be sapped by sloth.  Be energized by the living Spirit of God, who works in us to will and to do His good pleasure.  Connect with the One who loves you more than you can imagine or hope for, often.

When is fun not fun any more?

In case you missed Dr. Archibald Hart’s presentation of his latest book, “Thrilled to Death“, here’s a summary of what he said in a recent (6/25/08) Focus on the Family broadcast: Over-stimulation “hijacks the pleasure center of the brain,” first flooding it with cortisol- and adrenalin-stimulated joy, then blocking the ability to feel joy.

When a person is multitasking, for example, his or her body is constantly bombarded with cortisol and adrenalin, leading at first to a sense of pleasure and accomplishment.  Then, as the experience is prolonged, there is a reduced capacity to experience pleasure. 

Consider the physical experience like holding a small glass of water at arm’s length.  For a while one can enjoy the experience of success, but then the weariness sets in.

This is precisely what happens when people are addicted to a “recreational” drug.  First the high, then it takes more and more of the substance to feel good.  The problem here is that life is a do-it-to-yourself project.  We can pursue what is bad for us.

Brain Damage

As the brain is first over-stimulated, then dulled, there is reversible brain damage to that pleasure center of the brain.  The constant over-stimulation leads to extreme thrill-seeking in an effort to feel pleasure, since the victim suffers from anhedonia.  Anhedonia leads not only to a negative sort of boredom, but to apathy and depression.

This cycle is especially damaging for children.

Too much media stimulation, for example, has been shown to reduce performance on standardized tests, according to a December 24, 2007 article by Caleb Crain in The New Yorker, page 138.

Children are also at high risk since weary, over-stimulated parents park them in front of movies instead to doing Legos, for example, to build the ability to use their own imagination, transfer learning, achieve real self worth, and socialize in the process.  Social workers of my acquaintance tell me that today’s youth are poorly socialized.

Not all boredom is the same

Boredom due to under-stimulations leads to the development and use of imagination or creativity.  As my mother used to say, “If you can’t find something to be happy doing, I’ll put you to work.”  That tactic worked on me.  I read books and raised my I.Q. in the process.

What I’ve been saying for years is being explained in a different, well researched way by Dr. Hart.  His book is a must read for our own good.

Our American ingenuity (creative ability to solve problems) is endangered by our focus on over-stimulation, since we then pursue pleasure to our detriment.  We cause our own depression, boredom and apathy, and the joy of life is gone.  We are becoming more and more addicted to the pursuit but less and less satisfied and certainly less happy with the result of our “pleasant” activities. We are being destroyed by our own ignorant desires.  Odd, the Bible said that (Phil. 3:19).

Besides being less happy, we are going to be less able to compete on the global marketplace.

Our competitive edge is based in our ability to create.  Other countries copy.  We invent.

Moderate Muslims, we are told, consider jihad a personal struggle for spiritual purity.

Americans ignore the facts that over 100 references in the Koran refer to jihad as genocidal slaughter of unbelievers with only one quote referring to an internal struggle[1]. (Source: www.shoebat.com)

Muslim violence (jihad) supersedes peaceful contemplation in every country now ruled by Islam. Americans are too distracted, too comfortable, to pay attention while Islam gains a strategic foothold.

The American approach to Islam is a perfect example of inattentional blindness.[2]

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, psychologists, first showed that people who were paying attention to something else in their line of sight were “blind” to something that was right before their eyes.

U. Neisser, D. Simons, and C. Chabris, experimented with viewers watching a film. Viewers were focused on counting how many times a basketball was passed from one team member to another, while someone walked through the scene wearing a gorilla suit.

A surprisingly large percentage of subjects did not notice something as obvious as a person in a gorilla suit moving through the scene they were observing, if they are paying attention to something else. (Several examples of these experiments can be viewed on the Visual Cognition Lab page of the University of Illinois.)

What does this mean for you?

Pay strict attention: your children’s lives depend upon your focused attention to discipline.

Consider your self discipline and their discipline plan.

While you are teaching your children Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Muslim children learn lullabies and poems about flying body parts and rolling heads.

Here is an example:

“Sharpen my bones into swords, for I am a bomb, I shall eat the flesh of my (Israeli) occupier, O Killers, your blood is ‘Halal” for us, (meaning “kosher” or all right to spill)[3]

Oh, you say, “that’s not me. I’m aware of everything: I’m plugged into news 24/7. I know what is a threat to my family.”

Every country in history which has fallen has done so because of failure to perceive a threat.

Let’s look at some brief lessons in military history, you can research further through Wikipedia:

1. Carthage – fell after this city-state’s council failed to recognize the threat Rome posed. They allowed Hannibal’s victory over Rome to slip away simply by not reinforcing Hannibal when he had the upper hand.

2. Rome – many theories here, most show the failure to recognize a threat either from within or outside Rome itself.

3. Greece – the most famous lesson of recognizing a threat was told in the recently fictionalized movie 300. Recognizing the threat where his countrymen did not, Spartan King Leonidas led a personal bodyguard of 300 Spartans to hold a strategic thoroughfare named Thermopylae.

300 by Frank Miller, Lynn Varley Read more about this book…

4. Persia – failing to recognize Alexander the Great’s tactics as a threat the entire Persian empire was captured by this young Greek king.

Back to the present

“All four major Islamic schools of thought agree that jihad is not merely a personal struggle, but a call to wage war on the infidels by all means possible: giving money and recruiting and training people are also means of jihad.”[4]

It is not only your Christian faith at risk when you’re not looking. It is your life and the lives of your children.

Discipline is not just for kids. It is for you, the adult, first.

Do you “relax” for hours after work with flickering pictures and telephone chatter? Do you understand that you are being hypnotized into a passive, shallow thought pattern?

Print media requires more logic from you.  (See “Twilight of the Books, by Caleb Crain, The new Yorker, December 24 and 31, 2007)

Are you really going to study this, or will you dance past these issues into your chocolate paradise of brain fog?

Do you feel uncomfortable when someone needs to be confronted with facts? Like Pilate when he confronted Jesus, do you wonder, “What is truth?” Have you found ways to learn and grow smarter your whole life, or are you stuck in a high school low effort mentality?

Before you can discipline and teach your children, you must have a plan.  Stress Free Discipline provides a tots-to-teens plan for life skill mastery and lifelong family teamwork.

What’s a parent to do?

To begin:  I suggest you need to simplify your life and read more, with and for your children. Restrict the phone calls, the ipod, the wireless flood of distractions which pacify but do not satisfy your mind. See the tech junkie quiz at rd.com/tech.

Right now a flood of raw data makes you anxious because you cannot use it all or digest it, but you keep trying.  Distractions, as good as they may be, may be a real threat to your thought life.

Inattentional blindness can kill you.  Pay attention.  Read up.  Prioritize.

It is easy to do.  Raise a child to want success without teaching him or her the skills that bring success. 

Make everything easy for your son or daughter.  Do chores for them rather than teaching them to do for themselves.  Serve them without asking them to serve the family.  Let them watch four hours of media every night, the American average. 

Those hours are lowering their attention span, making them less able to compete in the world marketplace, and reducing their ability to think logically.  (Check out Caleb Crain, the New Yorker Critic at Large ,Twilight of the Books.)  This is a recipe for failure.  Cut off your child’s thinking skills at the knees by plugging them into media for hours each day.

   That will take away self confidence so your daughter does not believe she can achieve without cheating.

Feed your son junk food or let him skip breakfast.  Let him go to bed any time, even though the Harvard Sleep Study says children through age eighteen need eight or nine hours of sleep per night in order to learn.  (Check out Matthew Walker, October 17, 2002 Harvard University Gazette Archives.  Also see Beth Potier, December 11, 2003 of the Harvard University Gazette Archives.)

Intimidate your daughter by criticizing her weak first steps so she will not risk running.  Take away your son’s responsibility by saying the teacher is picking on him rather than holding him accountable.  Let the children have after school jobs and cars even though their grades are suffering.

Cheating in college is on the rise.  The pressure to succeed is great.  Give your child tips on how to steal essays from friends, frat brothers and the internet. 

If you want a child to cheat, make success everything, the learning process nothing. 

Teach your child that he or she is just an accident of nature, so moral behavior is no longer a useful choice.  (See Crosswalk.com, Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint 2/29/08)

Your Challenge

Be close to your child.  Know his or her attitudes and actions.  If a teacher says your child has cheated, use the “worried-concerned” approach. Express your doubts and disappointments quietly and privately, not in front of siblings or friends. Remember that to your child, success is everything. Say, “Son, I don’t think you’re being completely honest on that test.”

Punishment for cheating may or may not help your child.

Remember that your goal is to support the right behavior, preventing a character defect from developing into further lies and loss.

If you want to change the cheating behavior, punishment might only make your child determined not to get caught.

Use Adam and Eve as examples.  Adam and Eve appear to be sorry for being caught, not for their own responsibility in their fall.  Your honesty as you talk with your child will encourage changes. Shallow, knee-jerk punishment may reinforce a failing, cheating cycle.  Decide what you want to happen.

Accusing  your child bluntly, ignoring the problem, and emotional reactions will reinforce a failing, cheating cycle.

Instead, realize that needs are not being met.  Help your child learn the skills and earn success.  Help her assert herself or himself and be responsible in every aspect of family and school life. 

Walk with your children through their mine field of uncertainties until they can navigate on their own. 

Make sure they are eating right and drinking enough and getting enough rest.  The Harvard studies prove that learning is a lot more effective when you sleep on it.  Chuck Colson’s research shows that a strong moral foundation prevents cheating. 

Parents, go for the gold!

Technorati Tags: stress,consistent discipline,colds,sharing,leadership

When I was Drew’s age, I thought that if I gave my cold to someone else I would not have it anymore.

Now I make sure my grandchildren understand they’ll both be miserable if they share a cold.

 The passage of stress is much like sharing a cold. 

I can accept Drew’s stress that he is not getting what he wants when he wants it. I will feel miserable and he gets spoiled. I can make exceptions to the rules. I can slide around rules the easy way, being inconsistent. I become a bad parent, or in my case, grandparent. Good parenting is too much work!

If your children are constantly testing you, they have been conditioned to obey you only when you are stressed: (1) standing over them, (2) constantly repeating directions and giving them all of your attention, perhaps (3) screaming at them or hitting them.

Only then, they notice, do you really mean it.

When you aren’t looking, they are doing as they please. As they grow, you age. When you want shared goals, they’re “doing their own thing.” Your family is fragmented. You’re a nag. They’re escaping responsibility, piling it on you, or getting even for your on-again, off-again discipline in underhanded ways.

When you accept your child’s stress, you’re burdened and angry.

It’s no favor to them to let them have their way, but you’re too weary (from the stress you have chosen) to do what is right. Poor discipline is too much work!

Make that child obey!  Discipline is not punishment most of the time but it is consistent consequences.

Ask yourself: Does my child put stress on me to give him or her what she wants? Have I trained her to be bad by changing the rules?  Is this good in the long run? Is this like a cold: we’ll both be miserable?  Whose problem is this? 

“Meaning it” is stressing the child enough so that he or she chooses to obey rules over getting his/her own way.  If you are consistent, poor behavior will self-destruct in a couple of weeks.

In the Navy, sailors inform the commander and then follow his orders.

Researchers gather data, organize it, submit it upline, filter it through their knowledge, experience, values and sometimes bias. Artificial intelligence is interpreted by human intelligence.

View full resolution, size: 1024x768px, 76 KB, Author: Jon Sullivan

Yet, no matter how intelligent the sailors are, they submit their lives and their skills to the greater good. All good commanders are humbled by their responsibility and the awareness that it was their team which achieved the victory, not their own brilliance.

A 17 year old sailor influences the course of thousands of others on the carrier.

In the same way, feelings inform thinking and should submit to conclusions thoughtfully made in your home.

When feelings are in command, we are tempest tossed, up and down with any tide. Yet without the support and information of our feelings, thinking is weak, unbalanced, and blind.

Feelings are a source of power only when they are under the control of thought.

Feelings can send us into a perfect storm of a life if they are not disciplined by thought. Imagine a commander who has mind-bending irrational fits ten days out of every month or when berthing a ship.

Feelings are manipulated by ad agencies, politicians, media and spouses for their own ends. Our children are taking notes.

Their ability to discipline themselves, control their impulses, enrich their lives, and inform their future all depends on us.  We translate the world for them.

It is scary. Will our family values survive? Media myths are confusing everyone. How will children make choices for their future?

The Navy has commanders. Football games have coaches. Cheerleaders have a Head Cheerleader. Families have leaders.

"You can’t have all Chiefs and no Indians" as my Grandma used to say.

But wait! Who is the leader in your family? Do children make the rules because you lack leadership skills? Do husband and wife fight constantly without settling basic leadership issues? Where will you live? How will you live?

Consider your family.  Who is the sailor and who is the commander, responsible for the whole ship?

Imagine a commander with responsibility but no power.

Perhaps that is your husband.  God has given him responsibility for the whole family.

Wives, have you grabbed command of your ship? Has power been stripped from your marriage because your feelings have sent your family into a whirlpool of emotional choices?

Are you really the one who should be making the basic decisions in your family?

I suggest that God’s plan is the one most likely to succeed. Superhuman power is behind it.

Everyone submits to Christ, the High Commander. Then husbands make the decisions after consulting with counselors and family members. They make a reasoned choice.

Wives, take it from Grandma DeSelm. Stop fighting your man.

Those power grabs will finally exhaust you and they are rough on your body.  Your adrenals give out.

They are part of the Genesis 3 curse when Adam and Eve got evicted from the Garden of Eden. Eve was cursed to desire to dominate her husband, but Adam was to rule over her.  Women, then, need to get used to that reality.

The godly family functions as a team without bickering over who will submit to whom in the end.

Every member has valuable skills, personality traits, and insights. Commanders know that.

Husbands know that or find it out in God’s time, not ours, ladies.

God holds men directly accountable for every family member, as the commander is held accountable for the welfare of every sailor.

Family members need to follow all moral orders as sailors follow commands and angels follow God: with joy, in detail. That is how it is done in Heaven. Practice now.