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? 

Symbols are a brain short-cut: they bypass thinking

Because the flag of the United States is a symbol of all our history, struggles and victories, we have great feeling when we see it.  Groups of symbols can quietly manipulate our feelings into, for example, buying a car because it is advertised with a beautiful woman who lovingly touches it.  Our subconscious mind thinks, “chick magnet!”  Desire is aroused by a symbolic association, without words and without appeals to logic.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole is a clear symbolic affront to Christianity. The “Pure Ones” are the enemy which steals and hypnotizes Guardian babies into a workforce of robots, taking away their gizzards (no guts to resist).  One of the Guardians which goes to fight for the Pure Ones dies in flames in a hellishly graphic end.  The final message of the movie, in case anyone misses it, includes instructions to destroy evil, which I gather means the “Pure Ones’ who steal babies and hypnotize them into slaves.
Unbelievers see Christianity as a rigid, destructive, irrational set of rules which can only subvert a person’s “self” and destroy their ability to act or think on their own.

Relevant background: Follow the money

The movie is done by the producer of Happy Feet, which is another artistic, highly symbolic brainwashing project appealing to the right brain—just feelings—part of viewers. Happy Feet had the cliched “religious” leader portrayed similarly: damaging, rigid and dysfunctional. The Happy Feet religious leader of the penguin colony required everyone to sing alike, think alike, etc. The religious advisor of the penguins was discovered through the plot to be a total fraud, even though lines of suppliants stretched into the distance to see him.

Symbols bypass the logical part of our minds and gain direct access to our feelings.

In the future, you can bet that repetitive symbolic conditioning (just short of hypnosis) will be called upon to bear bitter fruit in anti-Christian bias and severe harassment activities. The graphic artistry of this movie is unparalleled, reminding me that Satan is beautiful and lyrical to the max. As far as similarities between the two movies, one reviewer sums it up in the compared levels of violence:

It may be from the folks behind Happy Feet, but Legend of the Guardians is a heck of a lot closer to 300 than it is to a cute little animal movie.

Are people really unaware of the dynamics of how their minds work?

Our minds have the right brain (feelings) part and the left brain (logical, thinking) part. When we allow feelings to control thinking, we have allowed an irrational roller-coaster of dysfunctional behavior into our lives.

In  my opinion these are two movies targeted at a children / young adult viewing audience which both have strong viewpoints of an anti-religious nature.

Please remember, parents, that invisible realm of feelings doesn’t need to jerk us and our family around!  Educate yourselves and your children about the power of symbols.

Technorati Tags:fact,opinion,T.V.,truth,Bill O’Reilly,Dr. Archibald Hart,depression,mental health,emotional health.conflict,thinking skills.

When I was six years old I came home to report a fight at school. “I said there IS a Santa Claus because my Mommy told me and my Mommy doesn’t lie!”  If passionate intensity is the measure of truth, I had the truth and knew it.

Child discipline includes discernment training:  what is truth?

Unfortunately truth is not that easy to find.

For example, the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) list put out by the government contains aspartame, but 10% of aspartame is methanol, a poison which causes vision problems, interferes with DNA replication, and causes birth defects. Due to the lack of key enzymes, humans are many times more sensitive to the toxic effects of methanol than animals, upon which aspartame was tested for safety. Here’s another example: mercury in your fillings is safe, according to the government,   but when it is taken out of your mouth it is toxic waste. Truth is hard to find.

Let’s define “Functional Truth” as whatever works whether it conforms to a standard of truth or not.

Our culture prompts us to ask, “Will it work,” not, “Is it true?”

Functional truth, in that light, would be any belief expressed with passionate intensity. Nazi Propaganda Chief Dr. Joseph Goebbels asserted, “It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.” Passions mislead people but they do lead anyone weak on thinking skills.

In the Bill O’Reilly Factor for Kids[1], Bill advocates better thinking skills.  He gives some warning signs that TV is becoming dangerous to your mental and emotional health.

Here are a few:

1. If you get depressed about your WEIGHT or your LOOKS or your SOCIAL LIFE because the kids on a particular TV series have it so much better than you, get a grip. These shows are written to amuse you, not to reflect real life.
2. If you have to rush off to the mall the instant you see something ADVERTISED, you’ve been tricked. Did you need this item before you saw it on TV? No? Then you don’t need it now.
3. If you find that you are getting YOUR VALUES about family life or school life from a TV show, watch out. Sure, there are many programs that are written around positive life lessons. Just make certain that you can tell which ones are and which ones aren’t.
4. If you are talking more to your friends about what happened on a TV SHOW than what is happening in your REAL LIFE, you’ve got your priorities wrong. And you’re definitely watching too much TV.

O’Reilly goes on to say “If you’re TIRED in the morning, if you’re falling behind in school, if you’re slowing down on the athletic field, if you’re short-tempered…there could be many reasons, but one possibility is that you are watching TOO MUCH TV! It’s not HEALTHY to be that passive for several hours a night. Your mind and body are telling you to cut back.”  Dr. Archibald Hart says that T.V. watching does not actually relax you.

Wow, O’Reilly’s comments for teens sounds like advice for some adults I know. Their skills have dropped as their TV watching has increased. As O’Reilly says, “…time is valuable. Don’t waste it.”

How much does knowledge of the truth matter to you?

It is hard work to teach your child advanced thinking skills. If you choose to passively let the schools teach those thinking skills, get a marker and write “Victim” across your child’s forehead. You are your child’s best teacher, and you must not be lazy about it. Stress Free Discipline contains methods and materials for teaching advanced thinking skills.

How committed are you to finding and teaching the truth? You cannot slide into home base on good intentions.

Passionate intensity is not a truth substitute. It is a counterfeit. It will not save anyone’s soul or increase real quality of life. Truth will do both. Treasure truth.

W.B. Yeats in a poem titled The Second Coming wrote, “The best lack conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”

Think about it.

Consider my legacy from my biggest career challenge: teaching delinquents at an alternative high school on the Navajo Reservation. I prayed for weeks and got very frustrated before I was offered that job.  Than I didn’t know if I should accept it. 

I wanted a job where I could express my faith and lead students in meaningful ways.  Should I say “yes?” 

 After three days of especially intensive prayer by my pastor and friends, I dreamed an odd name.: Zerubbabel.

I woke up enough to think it strange, and quickly went back to sleep. Again the name. Back to sleep again. In the morning it came back to me again, and I thought, “Hmm. Might be a demon or something in the Bible.”

When I looked it up, I found Zerubbabel was an ancestor of Jesus who led exiles back to Jerusalem from Babylon. After listening to prophets Haggai and Zechariah, he began construction of the temple. There were major frustrations and obstacles. Yet he was encouraged to be strong (Haggai 2:4, 21ff) and work and not to despise small things (Zechariah 4:10). This new, small temple was disappointing to the old timers who saw Solomon’s temple before it was destroyed, but small progress is still progress! 

How often we forget that important fact: small things may have big results!  We overlook small steps in the right direction, often failing to reward our children for doing small things right!  What kind of legacy is that? 

Who Will Build on Your Foundation?  Will it be a Godly building–a strong, dynamic life?

Zechariah 4:6 has instructions for Zerubbabel:

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts.”

I gathered from my reading that Zerubbabel would make small beginnings, but God would complete the work in the future, perhaps when Christ would rule the world. I was encouraged enough to take the job on the Navajo reservation.  I knew I could do “small beginnings”—just my speed.  I do my best; God does the rest.  I accepted a little job in an unknown part of the country. 

Nothing immense or intense caused sparks to fly in my life.  I teamed up with a missionary who knew Navajo to do Bible Studies at lunch in my classroom.  A  Navajo Baptist pastor led several to Christ. Our small team was on the way toward a legacy that would last by God’s grace.  Altogether, twelve students invited Jesus into their lives.  That result was not my doing; I just introduced them to Jesus and Christ did the rest.

After three years on the reservation, Native Preference in hiring replaced me with a Native American.

Looking for meaning in what I had accomplished, I realized that politics and immense frustrations were part of the big picture that only God knew in advance. Like Zerubbabel I just laid the foundation: others would build.

What kind of a foundation are you laying in the lives of your children?

Is their youth just for fun and fulfillment of selfish desires? Are you building discernment and critical thinking skills into that foundation? What are your long term goals for discipline?

I hope your aim is not just for unquestioning obedience.  Here’s why.

Rachael D. Ramer, Christian Research Journal, writes that

“…demanding unquestioning obedience from children goes beyond what (Jesus) instructed…Authoritarianism goes beyond healthy, positive discipline and demands absolute submission.”[1]

I agree with Ms. Ramer that “many children who receive this type of “training” grow up to fear their parents and any adult figure.” I believe such “training” teaches a child to submit to wrongful dominance as adults.

No surprise: it is hard to “retrain” an intimidated person.

Ask yourself: what kind of foundation am I creating as I raise my child? Excessive punishment without rewarding right choices intimidates a child.  An intimidated child grows into an adult who probably will not stand up to aggressive, wrongful behavior.  You do not intend to produce a coward, but… 

I have raw data and a report done by a licensed private detective on Bible-based, authoritarian cults. Those cults prey on Christian children successfully because the family love bonds are weak. The family love bonds are weak because they are subverted by too much emphasis on unquestioning obedience to authority.  Automatic–unquestioning–obedience is dangerous!

Fact: rules without relationship cause rebellion.

My book, Stress Free Discipline, has an unusual component which retains parental authority but invites in-depth thinking in children.  The stress-free process is simple:  step-by-step, day by day, valuable concepts are learned and practiced.  Right choices are rewarded with quality time playing educational games with parents.

Are you creating a soft, feel-good foundation which will collapse later in your child’s life?  Or are you training your child to think analytically–building a strong foundation?

Three things to remember:

1. The over-riding goal of my work is to unite families into Berean teams: people who search everything in light of the scriptures.  Consider buying my book: Stress-free Discipline.
2. Children can learn critical thinking by dwelling on the Bible and what it means in our lives.
3. Build a solid foundation while you have the chance.

[1] Rachael D. Ramer, Christian Research Journal, Volume 26, Number 1, pp. 33-41.

Personally, I think men are genetically “wired” to respond to a woman’s body (such as not fat and preferably in good shape) as well as other characteristics not related to color of clothing. Energy stemming from good health, for example, is sexy.

Black clothing, however, in one culture will connote one thing (mourning), and the opposite in another culture (joy).  What culture are you aiming for?

Black is the preference of downtown business people and, in general, more conservative people, in my opinion.  If you’re aiming for a conservative (low risk-taking) man, you would do well to wear it, along with modest styling and longer hemline and higher bustline.

Also, a man looking for character in a mate will not have the word “fun” salting his conversation. Questions in that regard may include, “How does your man treat others?  How do his role models, his family, treat each other?”  Again, there are unpredictable elements.  Men engage in “one-up-manship” with each other, a competitive sort of game involving witty insults, whereas women on the whole are oriented more toward cooperative linguistics.  This competitive gaming aspect by itself doesn’t mean your prospective mate is an unkind person or poor risk.

A man who is an entrepreneur or adventurer will be more likely to be “fun” (highly creative) but may become a risk to your own stability (or tiresome) if he continues risk-taking behavior in every area of his life, for the rest of his life, or in every part of his business.  Maturity will change most risk-taking behavior into conservatism, as Winston Churchill observed when he said (paraphrased), “If a person is not a liberal in his youth he has no heart, but if he is not a conservative later on, he has no head.”

Having said that, I am reminded of many great men who began life as failures either in politics (Abraham Lincoln) or in business (Rich DeVos, CEO of Amway corp).  Thus, the long-range view of a committed relationship is unpredictable.  As Solomon said in the Bible, “…time and chance happen to all.” Or, as grandma said, “into every life some rain must fall.”

Suppose you choose a risk-taker over, say, an insurance salesman whose goal in life is CYA to the max, and enjoying a prosperous, but selfish, retirement.  Will this satisfy your need for long-term security AND your need for a creative, refreshing personality or–better–your desire for an altruistic, meaningful challenge?  Our search for meaning needs to include making the world a better place for having trod here.

A consideration in my mind would be whether your man has good morals and a good network of friends who hold him accountable to high standards.  Who would want to marry a debauched prince?  What, then, is a “good life?”

Maybe the best answer to your question about wearing black would be to take a poll of men!  My husband says black connotes mourning to him, and he was attracted to me because I dressed modestly but had color.  People in the eastern U.S. wear more black and neutrals than people on the west coast.  Color to them may mean something entirely different.  I feel that personality is expressed with color more than with excessive black, although color mixed with black is quite expressive. However, I’m 66 years old, and by definition am out of the 30-something crowd. There is a non-answer to your question!

How can we create a family of dignity, equal worth and unified purpose?  Doing what comes naturally (nothing) will not do it.

As Zig Ziggler said:

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,

How do you plan?

Start with the end, the goal, in sight. That’s good advice from Stephen R. Covey, planning expert (stephencovey.com). If you want to stress-proof your family life, you must make a family plan. Here’s a start.

Consider what we have to know in order to create the best family life.

We need to know what every family member considers most important, and what each person needs to do and be (willing?  organized?) in order to get there.

To do first:

1. Make copies of my “What is Family” list below.  Feel free to distribute this plan to others if you give me credit and list my blog address.
2. Have each family highlight the words which describe your family now.
3. Have each person circle what your family should be when you work your plan.
4. Brainstorm ways to eliminate the negatives and accentuate the positives in each list.

Brainstorming rules are few:

• First, respect each person’s opinion, no matter how much you disagree or how crazy it sounds.
• Secondly, find agreement on rules for eliminating those ideas which are unrealistic or outside your family values.

Your Family Vision: An Essential Foundation for building a strong family

Find the purpose of your family.

(To be read out loud in a quiet place…each family member separate from the others).

Is family a place where, when we knock, they have to let us in? A resource? A refuge? A learning center?

Is family a millstone,

touchstone,

milestone,

bulwark?

(If you don’t know these words, look them up.)

Is family a burden, a standard, a fortress, something you pass by on your way to personal fulfillment? Is it a source of enrichment?

Is family a labor force which produces leisure for us? A safety valve for venting? A nuisance? A service organization? An embarrassment?

Is family a critical, negative, no grow force? A hostile communication environment? A place where nobody cares? A bad example? A lost childhood? A fragile identity? A den of thieves?

Is family a sense of roots? Is family something we use and abuse? Is it security in the midst of our adventures? A fantasy? A team? A sacred duty? A place to go when we are old and broken? A warrior-priesthood band of brothers?

Is family a survivors program? A listening post? A source of bragging rights? Who, on their deathbed, ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office?”

Tell me if you can: what’s the point of having your family?

Now, work through what you have to be and do in order to bring about your family plan.

1. Write down and post the positive ideas in several places around the house. Move them (slightly) often so they are noticed better.
2. Review them daily together.
3. Give three cheers and a group hug to the family member who can identify the most positive or negative behaviors.  No blame for the negative, just identify it.  Write it down for consequences later.  See if it persists three weeks before judging it as deliberate sabotage of the family plan.
4. Remind each other that love is emotion in motion. Unlove is obstructing lifelong love and growth. Pray.
5. Create positive peer pressure for your friends.  After they get over being jealous, they will want what you have and you can share it with them.  Dignity, equal worth, and unified purpose are extreme strengths.

peer pressure,violence,pain,sex,power struggles,self-confidence,attention,parenting

A bad mouth and a bad temper with pushy behavior are marks of a bully.  We may feel the bully cannot change.

That bully may be any age. He or she rules a corner of the world by constant harsh “put downs” or taking advantage of others.

A bully feels peer pressure to change, but is stuck in a hard place.

Confrontations are constant when the rights of others are squashed and they fight back.  This may be the bully’s only way to relate to others!

The bully may be a loner or a gang leader, since he or she looks for trouble and responds to all interactions by fighting, criticism or arguments.

Sometimes a psychologist will suggest that the bully sit next to or work with the opposite sex in school if relationships are obviously off base and needing modification.  Good counseling is essential if your child has progressed from small bully behavior to serious criminal behavior.

The bully rules by intimidating others but sometimes protects weak friends from other bullies.

At school, the bully often has learning problems caused by emotional distress.

At home, siblings become emotional and easily upset.

The bully leaves a whirlwind of pain behind his or her own pain.

Parents may be promoting fighting, saturating the bully in violent media or setting a bad example by dealing with problems by violence.

Parental Responsibility In Bullying Behavior

If parents are weak in discipline or too harsh, inconsistent or belligerent, they may be training their child in the dynamics of bully behavior.

The father who is permissive while drinking and harsh when he is hung over is a bad example.

Parents may express their own pain with bullying behavior. Your temper fit only shows your failure at impulse control. You ought to be trying to teach impulse control.

Does Mother only “mean it” when she is in a screaming temper fit, throwing things or smacking a seven year old around?

Does Dad punish without clear rules and a carefully crafted love relationship?

All possibility of teamwork is gone while time is wasted with fighting. Be consistent with discipline but gentle.

The bully becomes special by abusing power.

While some may be frightened by a bully, others may think this behavior is funny. At home and school the bully stops all teamwork, learning and positive interaction. The bully enjoys attention he or she gets from peers and adults, even if that attention is negative.

Even though a bully knows abusive relationships are wrong, he or she needs to escape the pain of failure in relationships, insecurity or a poor self-concept.

Bully behavior could show a lack of coping skills and fear of failure in relating to others.

Bully behavior makes a person feel independent and in control of life.

Parents, do not assume your bully is tough or an extrovert for being loud and pushy.

Your bully may be in the 25% of Americans who are introverts, made uncomfortable in social situations or by our cultural hyperactivity.

Is your bully pushed by you into awkward, failing situations?  Are you expecting your child to be your clone, forcing her into situations she cannot possibly enjoy?  When did the bully behavior begin?

Explain, if your bully is school age, that bully threats have consequences. When any threat is made, require the child to stop and think in a “cooling off time” first.

Make it clear that if bully chooses to fight after cooling off, fighting is then “premeditated,” and will carry a harsher penalty.

Dissolving the Bully

Since bullies accept bigger responsibility well, give him or her an impressive job that builds higher status into their self-concept. At home it will be something that only adults have done up until now.

Do be gentle but consistent. Use only as much power as necessary. Your best tool is loving time spent one-on-one until your child moves out of this phase.

Also, suggest that your bully say, “My parents won’t let me fight” at school or home. That will let bully back out gracefully from useless confrontations.

If the confrontations have been with a teacher, help your child identify the triggers for these fights and quietly identify your child’s own unrecognized character flaws.

Always carry through. Never let a rebel win.  Be consistent with discipline but gentle.

If you have trouble with this, get counsel.

Praise every step in the right direction. Love is spelled T-I-M-E.

Make your own transparency and vulnerability clear as a pattern for your bully to follow. It is strong to express your need for help, feelings of stress, and desire for teamwork.

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!

As manager of a senior apartment complex, I learned a lot about the pressures, perks and pitfalls of aging.

One resident, call her Mary, has focused for years on life according to her feelings. She dwells on her son’s murder, her husband’s infidelity, T.V. and slurs, imagined or real, on her heritage. The bipolar critic who lives downstairs has added to years of unforgiveness, swelling Mary’s bag of complaints. Mary drops that bag on anyone sympathetic enough to stay in range.

Victim-hood for Mary has become a comfortable cloak for reality.  For half of my 64 years I created my own reality like that.  It doesn’t work.  It is not real.

At U.C. Berkeley I majored in fiction and creative writing while getting my degree. Picture Berkeley in the 60’s: the Vietnam War, Student Rights, Free Speech, Kennedy’s assassination. To that heady brew I added Buddhism, self-hypnosis, automatic writing, Transcendental Meditation. Did you know that if you are adept at T.M. you can levitate?

My liberal friends and I felt that a group of loving people with our intelligence could resolve the world’s problems. Our parents had been too materialistic, unaware, uneducated. People were, after all, basically good.

It was only a matter of culture—American culture—that enslaved their spirits. Not a Christian at that time, I felt that Christianity was just a mythical crutch to make weak people feel better.

Generosity and service to others would shore up the life style and attitudes of those downtrodden unfortunates who were victimized by our culture.

Hiring quotas, pay equalization, more welfare and social engineering were our answers when my peers and I wore the power hat.

Teaching, my profession, progressed during the 19 years I was in it through a series of stages.

Grades were a problem.

The military and business worlds needed some useful kind of sorting device to categorize high school graduates so they could do their jobs: defend our country and raise the bottom line for shareholders. They needed some sort of predictability.

But grades were a big problem. Grades discriminated between educable mentally retarded and high level thinkers.

People FELT bad when they were labeled with a grade, and they aimed lower in life. They got depressed and discouraged.

Grades pounded the life out of a person’s self image and thus their future. No caring educator wants to do that.

Coursework and in-service education for teachers stressed solutions to self-worth problems in order to bring teachers into an enlightened interaction with students. Sarcasm, negative body language and other destructive baggage were rightfully removed from the student-teacher relationship.

However, drop-out rates, drug use and teen suicide kept climbing. It did not compute.

Schools were not making a positive difference.  More administrators were added in order to help teachers do their job. Curriculum gurus lowered P.E. requirements and dropped art, music and vocational education in favor of academics.

After all, academics were high status and status made students feel good. Everyone ought to be able to attend college, gaining high status and bigger pay, if they so desired. Even my remedial fisherman in Alaska, who could not grasp basic concepts of Senior Economics, had to be dragged through the course with incredible accommodations, hints and outright answers to every test question. The Special Education teacher saw to that.

Nobody was left out: an excellent fisherman had to get a diploma just like everyone else. His goal was to be an attorney. His true inability and our failure to be truthful doomed him to years of fruitless accommodation until the Bar Exam truthfully rejected him.  Did we do him a favor by eliminating realistic boundaries?

Reality and truth were not our objectives as educators.

Our questions given any choice were not “Is it true? Is it right?” but “Can we make it work? How will it feel?”  Feeling good about your self was the objective.

However, drop-out rates, drug use and teen suicide have kept climbing.

Our true levels of practical life skills such as Math, English, and Science have dropped dangerously in relation to students around the world at the same age and stage.

Our students cannot compete in a global marketplace where “feel good” has no place.  Furthermore, we now find that false self esteem is tied to school shootings (April 2001, Scientific American), low production and skyrocketing divorce.

America has done such a good job of shoring up self image that unrealistic expectations rule the home, schools and workplace. Feelings have gained control of thinking: they play ping-pong with the brain.

Mary was so disturbed by her feelings that she became more and more unhappy.  Finally her unhappiness threatened her ability to remain in an independent living apartment.  The “brain-pong” had to stop.  Mary accepted the county’s offer of counseling and has changed her attitude.

What Mary, educators and I did not realize was that feelings are the culprit.  Emotions in the driver’s seat cause life wreckage.  The brain-pong has to stop before the damage is permanent.

Christianity has become for me a standard for measuring truth about our selves.  We are born greedy and selfish, and only the Lord’s input can made us generous, unselfish and happy.  What do you know!

In giving, we receive.  In loving we become beloved.  In submission to Christ we become powerful.