Strollerderby : conflict

Two Pictures Of Kids In Gaza

Brett Singer — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Warning: These shots will probably make you want to hug your kids immediately.

For me, the hardest part of any war/conflict/disaster is the human side. Now that I'm a parent, if that human face belongs to a child, it's that much harder to see.

This photo was on the front page of the New York Times today. Here's the caption: "A Palestinian boy with Russian citizenship was among the foreigners whom Israel allowed to leave Gaza on Friday." (source)

Here's another shot of kids leaving Gaza. (source)

MSNBC is reporting that Israeli ground troops are crossing the Gaza border (source, breaking news). Regardless of how you feel about the situation, seeing these photos of kids caught up in the whole thing should make you wish for a speedy resolution to it all. Or at least one that lets the kids get out while they still can. I never really understood the idea of "women and children first", something that I remember hearing a lot on old cartoons and disaster movies (and cartoons that were parodies of disaster movies). These pictures definitely drive that point home.

Photos: New York Times

China Detains Dad of Baby Sickened by Tainted Milk

New Year Morning News

Grieving Chinese Parents Not Allowed To Sue

Boy Saves Brother's Life With Bone Marrow

Infant Twins Safe After Newark Carjacking

Babysitter Made Pornographic Film With 2 Year Old

Teaching Evolution as Theory not fact

Brett Singer — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

An article in last week's New York Times discussed a major hot-button issue in schools across the country: evolution vs. creationism, or its offshoot, intelligent design.

It's a long article, and certainly worth reading. I won't try to summarize the whole piece in this post, but the big surprise for me was that it was less about two competing theories/beliefs, or even about science versus religion. It was about a teacher who, in my opinion, has the patience of Job.

That teacher is David Campbell, who teaches Biology in Orange Park, Florida. The story the article tells is not of him fighting with parents, the school board, or local churches. Actually, he's not fighting with anyone. This quote sums up his attitude nicely:

"He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.

"'If I do this wrong,' Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, 'I’ll lose him.'"

His main concern is not "proving" anything one way or the other. It's teaching.

"'Faith is not based on science,' Mr. Campbell said. 'And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks. But I do expect you to understand it.'"

That, to me, is the bottom line. Campbell's students, although they probably don't think so, are incredibly lucky to have him.

image/source: NYTimes

Are your kids aware of the election?

They Say: no link between autism and measles vaccine

Palin family online - real or fake?

McCain, Palin oppose teen pregnancy aid and sex education

Toys R Us Says Government Safety Standards Not Good Enough

Teaching Abstinence Doesn’t Work: Palin’s Preggo Kid.

Dad arrested for leaving son at McDonald's

Green products that don't work

For a good marriage, women need to stay home

33 year old mom wins silver medal, saves son from leukemia

Kids Learn To Lie By Watching You

Kelly Mills — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:06:00 GMT

There's an interesting article in New York magazine on lying. While parents cite honesty as the trait they want most in their kids, there's a few set-ups that encourage telling tales and denying facts. The author notes that children observe our socially polite "white lies" and essentially get the lesson, "It's okay to lie to avoid hurting others," which they then extend to stuff like telling us falsehoods about their activities to spare our feelings. There's also an interesting discussion of how teens perceive open conflict with parents as bringing them closer to the 'rents, while parents view it as destructive. You can see how this difference in perspective might encourage kids to at least withhold information. Even tattling gets the spotlight: We essentially punish kids for being honest about someone else's behavior, and send the message that we don't care about their problems.

But are all lies created equal, and are all liars just doing what they learned by watching you? You could take certain parenting lessons from the article (which I recommend you read, it's too much to summarize here) like the value of having less rules, but both enforcing them and explaining why they are in existence; avoiding setting children up to lie (asking "Did you do that?" when you know full well they did); and recognizing that protestations of rules are an opportunity for discussion, not defiance of authority. I would add that it might help to soften the value judgement on lying, and recognize that dishonesty both requires creativity and intelligence (as mentioned in the article) and that catching your kids in a lie might be a sign they are protecting your feelings too much. And showing kids that making mistakes is normal and expected is probably valuable in the pursuit of truth as well.

But I think truth is often not as simple as "Did you kick your sister?" There's honesty in recognizing your own motives and feelings, almost independent of other people, though it influences those interactions. For example, what we call stoicism could be seen as a kind of lying at times. And frankly, I also wonder how much dishonesty can be solely attributed to modeled behavior and trial and error. My kid is almost frighteningly honest and direct, even when it would be in her best interests to lie (though I'd be curious to see if this behavior was consistent with other people as well.) I wouldn't say she got that from watching me, it seems more much innate to her. And that honesty can have social repurcussions as well, since she has to work harder to be gracious. Honestly? I guess I think it's pretty complicated.

Mad at Your Partner? Let it Out!

Amy Kuras — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:33:00 GMT

From the "things I already knew" file: Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health found that spouses who express their anger tend to live longer than couples who bottle it up.

Or it just seems like it, yuk yuk.

Professor Ernest Harburg and his colleagues followed 192 married couples over a 17-year period. Their research focused on aggressive behavior considered unfair or undeserved by the person on the receiving end. The spouses ranged in age from 35 to 69.

Harburg placed couples into one of four categories, based on how they responded to anger-provoking hypothetical situations: both partners express their anger; the wife expresses anger or the husband does, while the other suppresses; and both the husband and wife suppress anger.

Only 26 couples, meaning 52 individuals, in the study were "suppressors" in which both partners held in their anger. A quarter of them died during the study period compared with about half that for the remaining couples.

The study didn’t look at styles of expressing anger or of suppressing, just whether people tended to do one or the other, and didn't delve into differing styles, like when what one partner considers a major blowout the other considers healthy communication.

We're teaching our daughter to clearly state when she's angry, and explain to her it's fine to be angry, but not to hit or be mean because of it. How do you attempt to model healthy "anger styles"?

Toy Battles: Who has the Right to Choose?

Karen Murphy — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:08:00 GMT

This column about a grandmother asking whether she needed to respect her son and daughter-in-law's wishes when it comes to choosing toys for the grandchildren reminded me of the battles described by many families I know. I've been lucky in that my parents have always respected my thoughts when it came time to give gifts to my children but I know other families for whom this is a routine and often highly dramatic battle. In the cases I know, the children's parents have specific thoughts about how they wish to raise their children, often avoiding media or commercialized toys or simply trying to cut down on the sheer volume of toys that seems to accumulate and then continue breeding in every home these days. Meanwhile the grandparents have different values or just attempt to show their love for their grandchildren by buying out the entire contents of Toys "R" Us on a monthly basis.

For the children, this has got to be a strain. Certainly they know what the rules are in their own house, yet here are various people who love them, all trying to win their love or fight for their non-plastic, non-Bratz little souls. I remember my grandmother slipping me a $20 once while telling me not to tell my parents, and I felt hugely conflicted. I wanted the money yet she was telling me this transaction was somehow subversive. Fortunately it wasn't a big issue since I only saw her once every few years, but for many kids this is an ongoing and frequent dilemma.

What do you as parents do in this situation? Do you try to instruct your parents or in-laws as to your wishes? (Do they listen?) Or do you hold your tongue while discreetly wincing (and then rush to throw out the junk after they drive away)? Do you feel obligated to honor their right to give a gift (to your kids, with a possibly crappy toy that has to live in your house) as they please? I know families who hand out toy catalogs to the grandparents to give ideas, but this doesn't work for everyone. What do you do, if this is an issue for you?