As we are having Moon Festival long weekend, I am aware of the importance of deep sleep although I still a lot on my plate….
There’s nothing quite like a good night’s sleep. What if technology could help us get more out of it? Dan Gartenberg is working on tech that stimulates deep sleep, the most regenerative stage which (among other wonderful things) might help us consolidate our memories and form our personalities. Find out more about how playing sounds that mirror brain waves during this stage might lead to deeper sleep — and its potential benefits on our health, memory and ability to learn.
As teachers, we have a huge amount of influence on our tiny charges. But six hours is only one-fourth of a day. Parents, the other 18 hours belong to you… and your parenting choices have an enormous impact, either positive or negative, on your little scholar and by extension, their teacher.
Parenting choices that DON’T help
1. No consistent bedtime
2. Early use of social media without parental supervision
3. Lack of manners
4. Not teaching kids to be independent
5. Not expecting kids to be accountable
Kids make mistakes. Every day. Mistakes have both predictable and unpredictable consequences. This is a normal, human, necessary part of growing up. When parents fail to allow children to own their mistakes, to be accountable for them, and to make amends, they are stunting their child’s emotional development. It is part of a teacher’s job to teach children how to be good people. Parents who blame the teacher or other kids for their own child’s actions make this so much more difficult.
Parenting choices that DO help
1. Modeling and teaching respect and gratitude
2. Supporting with homework
3. Appreciation for diversity
4. Resilience through adversity
School is tough. Let’s face it, LIFE is tough. Parents who allow their children to fail, and encourage the grit it takes to persevere and try again, are demonstrating that hard work matters. When times get tough, and they will, it’s children with resilience who will come out on top. Students who tackle hard problems with enthusiasm, and attempt new solutions when the initial ones failed, are a teacher’s dream. News flash – these often aren’t the high achievers either. They are the stubborn ones, the creative ones, the out-of-the-box thinkers. A family that values these traits over high grades is one that sets their children up for true success.
Genuine apology goes beyond remorse, says legendary playwright Eve Ensler. In this frank, wrenching talk, she shares how she transformed her own experience of abuse into wisdom on what wrongdoers can do and say to truly repent — and offers a four-step roadmap to help begin the process.
The first is you have to say what, in detail, you did. Your accounting cannot be vague. “I’m sorry if I hurt you” or “I’m sorry if I sexually abused you” doesn’t cut it. You have to say what actually happened. “I came into the room in the middle of the night, and I pulled your underpants down.” “I belittled you because I was jealous of you and I wanted you to feel less.” The liberation is in the details. An apology is a remembering. It connects the past with the present. It says that what occurred actually did occur.
The second step is you have to ask yourself why. Survivors are haunted by the why. Why? Why would my father want to sexually abuse his eldest daughter? Why would he take my head and smash it against a wall? In my father’s case, he was a child born long after the other children. He was an accident that became “the miracle.” He was adored and treated as the golden boy. But adoration, it turns out, is not love. Adoration is a projection of someone’s need for you to be perfect onto you. My father had to live up to this impossible ideal, and so he was never allowed to be himself. He was never allowed to express tenderness or vulnerability, curiosity, doubt. He was never allowed to cry. And so he was forced to push all those feelings underground, and they eventually metastasized. Those suppressed feelings later became Shadowman, and he was out of control, and he eventually unleashed his torrent on me.
The third step is you have to open your heart and feel what your victim felt as you were abusing her. You have to let your heart break. You have to feel the horror and betrayal and the long-term impacts of your abuse on your victim. You have to sit with the suffering you have caused.
We don’t want men to be destroyed, we don’t want them to only be punished. We want them to see us, the victims that they have harmed, and we want them to repent and change. And I actually believe this is possible. And I really believe it’s our way forward. But we need men to join us. We need men now to be brave and be part of this transformation. I have spent most of my life calling men out, and I am here now, right now, to call you in.
Neuroscientist and pediatrician Kimberly Noble is leading the Baby’s First Years study: the first-ever randomized study of how family income changes children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development. She and a team of economists and policy experts are working together to find out: Can we help kids in poverty simply by giving families more money? “The brain is not destiny,” Noble says. “And if a child’s brain can be changed, then anything is possible.”
