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?

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.

This step-by-step plan not only reduces stress, it builds life-long love, teamwork, life skills and responsibility.

• Five expectation sets are realistic, gradually building complex skills.
• Children master adult skills almost painlessly.
• They are rewarded for every right choice.
• Negatives are minimized, releasing energy for building and bonding.
• Motivational rewards are simple, fun and educational.
• Parents and children grow accountable in a bond of love.

Endorsements

William C. Reeves, Ph.D. Human Behavior writes: “Stress Free Discipline presents some great ideas that have been successfully used to help children mature.  Setting up positive rewards for good behavior is presented as the best way to help children learn self discipline and appropriate behavior.  Children are also presented with the reality that poor behavior results in unwanted consequences for them.  Behavior is tracked by a point system that allows the child to understand the results of both good and improper actions.”

Charles Jeter, Combat Veteran, Software Engineer writes:  “Stress Free Discipline has valuable strategy and rules of engagement.”

John Demas, attorney writes:  “Stress Free Discipline has worked with my children.  Judith has a gift.”

Gary Kirk, pastor, publisher, counselor writes: “As the father of a son with special needs, I feel your book should be required reading for everyone involved in an IEP—educators and parents alike…From many years of being a small group pastor and counselor, I consistently see the need for parents to find the kind of equipping that you have offered in your book.”

Contact Judith to purchase the book ($17.95 + shipping), or contact legacylinepublishing.com.

Does your nine-year-old leave after you tell him to stay home?  It is a common event.  The problem here is that parents think their leadership skills are good when in fact those skills are ineffective and obsolete. Group dynamics can help the whole family.

Group learning has a big impact.

Knowles and Bradford state that “groups can induce learning in individuals of a kind and depth that an individual teacher cannot, by himself, induce (Knowles & Bradford, 1952, 12).”   To expand on that idea: group learning often has more impact than a nagging parent, lecturing or coercing a child into following rules.

The interaction between your child and your family may be more productive with group activities like role playing, buzz groups and reflection, listening teams, and personal summaries of group action.  These are big challenges for your leadership.

Play “You be the parent, I’ll be the child.”

Ask neutral questions when in doubt about who did what:  questions like, “What happened?”  “Could it have been done better?”  “What could be changed so everybody wins?”  “How could we share so it is fair to everyone?”

According to Knowles and Bradford, “One of the primary educational objectives of the leader, in fact, is to train members to take over functions that once were reserved as the exclusive prerogatives of the ‘leader.’

Parents are really training children to be independent first, but then to form interdependent family teams of lifelong learners.

Why should parents give up their power as children grow more mature?

A child’s judgment is only trained through experience in making judgments and seeing results.  Sometimes children learn from other people’s experience, sometimes only from their own experience.  Children grow as parents explain the consequences of behavior.

“If you bite your playmates or do not share being the boss, they will not want to play with you.”

The next step is a well disciplined, self-governed child.

Knowles & Bradford put it this way: “The more mature and self-directing a group becomes the more effective it is an instrument for producing change in individuals.”

Ideas for development of parent leadership skills are clear. The goal of parents is to raise children who are self-reliant, lifelong learners, choosing to work as a family team with their parents.

The team dynamic created as children grow toward self mastery and interdependence will provide functional group dynamic skills useful in the world of work.

Few parents welcome change in their habitual methods, but positive family dynamics reward those who do make positive changes.

Knowles, M. S., & Bradford, L. P. (1952). Group methods in adult education. Journal of Social Issues, 8(2), 11-22.

When families malfunction they may not know how to do target correction.  Do not play the blame game!  Use win-win techniques.

Agree on some ground rules for your quarrels. 

Quality Progress (Redmond, 2007, 80) moves people closer to a solution in 60 minutes with four basic tools. Redmond’s suggestions are similar to those made by Richard Feder and John Mitchell nineteen years earlier in a ‘4-day task force’ (1988, August).

Rule 1 – Agree on time management

Both sources argue for the restriction of time as a key to efficiency.  While some problems may require more urgency, sixty minutes is an arbitrary time in which Redmond demonstrates problem solving.

Please do not vent for hours without allowing some kind of decision to be made.  Repeating your beef over and over just makes your family more “hard of hearing” each time you speak. 

It is hard to respect someone who chooses not to be rational.  Vent to an older friend who can talk with you like your grandmother might.  They’ve been down that road and have seen what works or does not work.

The following are simple, but not easy ground rules for problem solving.

Rule 2 – Agree and define the problem

Redmond and Feder and Mitchell all advise businesses to start with agreement on and definition of the problem.  That idea works for families also. 

Both sources presuppose data collection. 

Rule 3 – What are the facts? 

What are the trends or habits which need to be corrected or changed in order to solve the problem?

Rule 4 – Brainstorm solutions

Redmond suggests working out a consensus on the most prevalent root causes of the problem with brainstorming of potential solutions. Felder and Mitchell have the group focus on creating a list of solutions, brainstorming and gaining insights into attitudes enough to form a “hunch list”.

Both methods then choose the best ideas, probing participants “for relevance, importance and uniqueness.”(Feder & Mitchell, 1988, 21). Redmond presents an effort/benefit matrix.

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.

On volatile family hot buttons, I suggest you do this process with a third person.  Perhaps a pastor, experienced friend or counselor.

Rule 5 – Decide and Act on the solution(s)

Work is assigned to specific individuals and deadlines set. Follow up makes sure tasks get done. If an intervention is called for, do it.

These methods have been working for business teams for decades. Any team will benefit from choosing this method before problems arise, then using it after conflict arises.  You do want family teamwork, don’t you?  Slavery and selfishness do not work in the long run. 

References

Feder, R., & Mitchell, J. (1988, August). ’4-day task force’ more efficient than traditional problem-solving. Marketing News, 22(18), 21.

Redmond, M. (2007, February). 60 Minutes to a Solution. Quality Progress, 40(2), 80.

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.

,

I really could not understand Max’s hatred. He hated Reading, Blacks, Native Americans, Jews, and Catholics and a long list of other things. He had poor skills and no patience.  He was only fifteen.

He actually had no interests but hate. None. As a public school teacher, I knew it was a mistake to ignore, reject or force forgiveness on Max. I chose to accept him as he was. He had no friends, after all. Other students ignored him.

This is beyond negative. Perhaps your child has shown aggressive, anti-rule behavior.

Her revenge, grudges and criticism have given her power over others.

She seems unapproachable. While she has some sympathetic followers, she creates constant tension. She is unsuccessful and defensive in ways that hinder growth. Your son may do all of the above in a defensive, loner way.

Perhaps you worry about your child’s continuous and total lack of interest in activities. Your child cannot work well with others, and your usual discipline techniques are not effective.

You are angry, on edge and on guard, but must act in love if you want results.

Professional counseling is part of your plan. Stress Free Discipline is another part. Used consistently, Stress Free Discipline provides the acceptance, pain relief, trust and status these youth need.

Hate is distilled pain. A small hurt can become a wildfire of hate.

Never ignore it, react personally, judge or trivialize your child’s problem. Never discuss him with other children or think you know how he or she feels. Consider how God treats our bad temper, greed, power grabs, and pride.

Counseling is unavoidable.  Choose wisely.  What you have been doing until now needs an upgrade.  It has not been working.

A good counselor will take one or two hours to test all family members for anger management styles, personality differences, communication styles and problem solving techniques.

With those tools you and your family can work through the tough times.  Stop your entertainments and time wasters and focus on healing work.

Memorize the tools.  Learn to use them. Get help when times are tough.  Sacrifice time and effort for teamwork and lifelong love relationships.  You do not have forever.  Every day that passes makes healing more difficult.

When my sons were pre-teens we had a small jail visitation ministry and they saw first-hand the consequences of writing a lot of bad checks. This experience was very motivational for them, and part of training in conscientiousness (a key element in long life according to research by the U. of California at Riverside, U.C. Berkeley Wellness Letter, Feb. 2004, ).

Consider involving children early in the process of helping you write checks and balance the checkbook. A second grader can help you add and subtract. Grocery shopping is a time you can give cash for your child to pick his or her favorite fruit and vegetables.  As soon as computer skills become important to your child, have them watch you with QuickBooks, then watch them as they help you enter expenses, sorting out tax items as you go.

A three or four year-old can learn how you choose what you buy at the market.  Soft fruit, green fruit–teaching the gentle squeeze helps with defining what is O.K. for pet handling as well as fruit choices. Unit pricing on the shelf tags can be a learning experience for older children.  As soon as children can understand what money is, they can use a dollar to find a toy at the 99-cent store.

The idea is to help them understand real world limits and luxuries.  Real Consequences are essential.  You don’t have to grow your own food, but you do have to afford it.

When one of my sons was five years old, he scratched his name all over the outside wooden paneling of the preschool building. I explained to him that since I could not pay a painter and had the skills, my consequence was to refinish that wall.

His consequence was to pay a fine: his weekly “donut money” (routinely given by a sweet church senior). He paid in person to the principal for three weeks.

While the principal said it wasn’t necessary, it did teach a well-remembered lesson. When he was six and bowed in a plate glass window by leaning on it, all I had to say was “WOW!  Look at that window bend. If it breaks, that is A LOT of donut money.” He jumped away from the window like it was a hot griddle.

Children can remind you to set aside savings.  Play “You be the parent and I’ll be the child” to test learning. Teens can help you to prioritize your spending.

You model and teach them important concepts. What is important long term that needs to be saved for?  What sacrifices now will make a big difference later?  They master the concepts through practice.  They minister the concepts through service to you.  Remember that learning needs reinforcement to become mastery.  Sacrifice is part of love.

Money management concepts are crammed into one or two classroom hours of Senior Economics class in public schools.  Sacrifice and love are not taught there.  An economic survey course is useless when students need many hours of practice and discussion. Most of them won’t absorb enough financial vocabulary and basic ideas at school to prepare them for success in life.  You are responsible for teaching money management.

Buy Ron and Judy Blue and Jeremy White’s book: Your Kids Can Master Their Money by Tyndale House Publishers.

My book just touches the surface of what can be done to give children financial skills.

Be aware also that many states impose severe consequences on parents for their child’s misbehavior.

For example, your state may fine or jail you for letting your child participate in theft or gangs. Clearly you want to establish the kinds of bonds with your child which will prevent their need for re-parenting by gangs.

In many states you can be evicted from public housing if your child is using or selling drugs. Laws constantly change, so it is good to educate yourself on juvenile law.

Prevention of criminal behavior depends on showing your child the consequences of not following the rules. Rule-following behavior is something you teach early in life.  Your three year old needs consequences every time he or she disobeys a rule.  Rules need to be simple and posted in print.

I recommend a family trip to the courthouse, jail or D.A.’s office. It is very educational for all of you. Interview the D.A.  Ask about common errors teens make that get them in trouble with the law.  Your children will never forget a real lesson.

Check out the American Bar Association’s Division for Public Education (www.abanet.org).

Crime prevention is all about consistent consequences. One way to teach consequences is to have a mini-jail ministry.

Part of good parenting involves teaching what to do. Another part is teaching what not to do. It is up to you.