Teaching Children Without Humiliation

Today I was shopping in an area Target and saw something that made me gasp.  As I was waiting in the checkout line, I noticed this young girl (and I'm not good with ages, but I'm going to guess she was around 7 years old).  She was sitting in the shopping cart.  I really didn't pay that much attention to her but out of a glance, her eyes caught mine.

Then all at once, the mother slapped the little girls legs rather hard and the minute she did, she put her legs together.  Up until that point, I had not even noticed that this girl was sitting that way.  Of course, nothing was said, but you could get the feeling that the mother was saying, don't you dare open  your legs around a man.

Before you think I'm any kind of a pervert, I'm not.  So, please don't be reading that into any of this because you would be so far off from the truth, it would be sad.

The thing that got me though was what the mother was teaching the little girl.  First of all, the physical part of this makes me cringe.  While many may say, oh it is for their own good, or it doesn't really hurt them, I would beg to differ.  When that girl's reaction was so immediate and automatic, the neural pathway in her brain has already been forged together.  She knows exactly what the message is, but more importantly the cells and tissues of her body know what the message is.  When that happens, it is a long lasting life event for her.

Damage By Jet Lag And the Night Shift

I'm amazed at how we take care of our bodies and while some of it is unavoidable, there are steps we can do to minimize the impact of stress on our physical body.  In an article in The Telegraph, they discuss some of the research that is being done to understand how we are affected by jet lag and the night shift.

In both of these events, they disrupt the normal circadian rhythm and actually throw gene sequences out of sync when the sleep patterns deviated from what was the norm in these people studied.  Our bodies are biologically made to operate in a certain way and although we may interrupt that schedule, this is a biological reality.  The body can adapt, but each adaptation often brings stress with it.  Remember that stress can be positive or negative and stress is anything that causes change to the body.


From work I've done and what I have experienced in my own life, I believe that if you take the time out to really recharge your batteries on a daily basis, some of this is not an issue.  I would love to be able to test this idea fully.

Opinions Become Facts

I constantly watch and listen to people around me.  I've always been a people watcher because sometimes it provides plenty of free entertainment.  Today while traveling, I heard someone making statements as if they were fact.  Of course, these statements were nothing but this person's opinion.  There was absolutely nothing to back them up.

In our world, there is so much of this type of behavior.  It happens in all walks of life.  It happens in the media, in the office, at home and just about every place in-between.  We often point the fingers at others and call them out on their own opinions, only to close our blind eyes to our own shortcomings.

One could say that my blog is just nothing more than my opinions.  I'm sure you could make a case for that and I probably could not defend every statement I make on here or elsewhere in life. I try hard, but I also fail. Fortunately there are people in my life that will call me out on it when I jump overboard into the sea of my own opinions.