Wrong way up for children : Tablets & TV

Parents think that their child is a genius, or at least, “is on advanced for his age”.

Thus, a computer tablet looks like perfection : with letters, words, multiplications, that’s very cool!

But many studies showed something : there shouldn’t be a single minutes of “screens” time before the age of 3. And no tablet before 6.

Child development is a big thing. They have to grow so many aspects! TV before 3 and tablets before 6 is messing with motor and language development, socialization skills and empathy.

I talked many times with speech pathologists who say that screens (TV all the time, tablets for preschooler) are a disaster. And they told me it’s becoming a real problem today…

And also this : “High exposure to background TV has been found to negatively affect language use and acquisition, attention, cognitive development and executive function in children younger than 5 years”

In France, one man (Serge Tisseron) studied that for years. He talks about the rule of 3-6-9-12

1. No screen before 3. Not a minute.
2. TV OK, but no video game or tablet before 6.
3. They’re OK, but no Internet before 9, with a parent.
4. Internet OK after 12, with care.

Before 5 years old, never more than an hour a day.

Google : “screen time children development”

What do you think?

 

Pressure & Sabotage, a cessation process

Family. Three kids. Pressure inexplicably put on the eldest boy, who is labelled “brilliant”. “He will become a doctor”, as they proudly say. In the middle of his curriculum, he has a motorbike accident. Or develops an invalidating disease, like sclerosis. As he was not strong enough to say “No” to this pressure, he found another way to stop.

It probably sounds “too easy”, and the accident was just maybe random, but I heard that kind of story so many times that it became really fascinating. So for me it became a dial gauge to watch :

When too much pressure, watch for the accident life will invent to cease it

Pressure can be provided by family or spouse, by the situation, or by… people themselves. When people work too much, sometimes their friends begin to say : “Hey, you’re pushing too far, slow it down, pal!”. In general, they don’t stop. And then you see what life will choose to make them stop.

They suddenly fall apart, have an accident, they become sick. Life brakes for them. From time to time, it’s not even enough! They insist, they don’t understand, they move forward, so they fall more sick or they curiously get hit by a car saying : STOP, for Christ’s sake!

You, my reader, are a reasonable person, but you know… that when you’re VERY upset, light bulbs often explode when you switch on the light. PAF! It not truuuue, it’s impossible, but… it happens all the time, though.

The same way, I saw many times the house stopping people. Too much pressure, too much stress, and there’s a huge leak in the bathroom, a falling chimney, or a fire. The environment is acting silly.

Nooo, can’t be. Right?

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : leahminium

Obedient “to the finger and the eye” is the French “beck and call”

“Obéir au doigt et à l’œil” (“to obey the finger and the eye”) is the French way to say that you’re at somebody’s beck and call.

I found out that it comes from “beckon call”, which makes sense, right? By the way, I learned a word : Beckon – “gesture to come”. 

How do you say that in your language? In common use, what’s the radioactivity of “beckon”? Is it neutral like “to call over”? Or does in imply a little slice of servitude? What are the differences between to yield, to comply, to obey, to submit?

What are the dials and levers here? If you’re at somebody’s beck and call, what does it show? Is it about fear? Power? Is it about persons, or systems, companies?

What about the beckoning person? How come this person expects you to act this way? Has he enough power to get you back in “the right track”? Or does he have to understand that “people are not all obedient”? What a shock!

What happens, in a situation where you’re supposed to comply and you don’t? Failure to comply, disobedience, rebelliousness? Why would you? A frontier has been crossed? Did you change? Did you grow up? Has the whole system changed? Did you change your mind? Why?

In what territory to study this? Kingdom? Management? Spouses? Clients/employees? Politics? Parenting? What are the limits of beck and calling?

 

Kids at 2 in a park : on screen or in life? #parenting

Do this :

1-Enter in a park

2-Sit on a bench

3-Watch around

4-Kids at two

Some :

run, walk, scream, climb, play, laugh, hide, jump in a puddle

Some :

touch mummy’s smartphone’s screen, tied in a stroller

What about yours?

Fleeing Pressure the Wrong Way

A clever kid! His parents want him to be the successful guy of the family. He will become a doctor!! He studies hard, hard, hard, under pressure, and… gets Multiple Sclerosis – or a motorbike accident.

Pressure! There are so many ways to pressure someone. Orders. Injunctions. Work.

There are many ways to shunflee strong moral pressure. If you’re a strong adult you just accept it fiercely, or you quit, you fight, you learn detachment – you protect your mental territory. There are so many ways to resist discreetly : sabotage, inner resistance, sarcasm, preparing revenge or a funny stunt. Escaping ways…

If you are a child, if you’re weaker than the pressure-provider, if you are stuck or prisoner of the situation, you can’t resist.

Then your body takes over.

Your body will find a way to say stop. Can’t stop the source of pressure? He’ll stop you!

Nervous breakdown. Burn-out. Accident. Serious disease. Somatization. It’s just a burst of resistance, and a full stop, most of the time. Against moral pressure, the last shunning way to say “fuque off”.

Tool/dial : Watch yourself. In both ways.

 

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See also : “Be Spontaneous, please”

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Thanks for reading!

“More of the Same Thing”, when insisting is a failure #Watzlawick #Change

More of the same thing is what I call a “wrong tool”. It means : INSIST. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s stupid. Push push and push in a dead end. Seems easy, but we all do the same mistake.

The pattern is simple :

You have a problem. You think you have the solution. You act. It fails. So you think you have to insist, push, go stronger, “more of the same thing”. you fail.

The problem is “you think into the box”, and you are SURE you have the solution, and that if you insist enough, you will get it. And it’s wrong!

It’s an old classic, told by Palo Alto therapy searchers and Paul Watzlawick. If you want to save your couple, if you want to help someone, if you want to flirt, if you want to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk : STOP. The solution? It’s at the end of this article!

The book? Paul Watzlawick : Change. Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution.

The author gives an example (which I translated rapidly) :

A teacher in a class has a single kid “with problems”. She asks to meet the parents and learns that he has huge issues, comes from a broken family and is very lonely all the time. So she tries her best to take care of him and give the boy much more interest; but the solution is worse : his notes crash, he is more alone. She insists and it goes into a dead end. The therapist says that “the more of the same thing” she does, the worse it’ll go (what she does isolates the boy from the other kids, for example). She’s asked to ignore him. Only to compliment him if the notes are good. And it worked!

If a wife asks her husband to talk more to her, spontaneously, about his days or thoughts, he will tell little things as an effort, but he will feel more and more closed, which will… make the wife to be more focused on him, waiting, and “more of the same thing”, arguing continuously about why he doesn’t talk to her enough, which will embarrass him more and more, etc.

Chögyam Trungpa, who was a Buddhist Meditation Master, says that if someone answer “No” when you want to talk with him, you just have to disappear. If you don’t, if you insist, you just transform yourself into a nagging (oh, a new word!) Demon. He’s so right!

Of course you know the story of the bunch of guys flirting everyday with the beautiful lady in a bar, with no success. Only one guy understands the problem (“More of the same thing”). He just sits in the bar, no interest, showing his back to her. And paying her the most neutral way every night. And guess what? He become the only one who gets her interest…

The tool is also a dial :

It’s hard to detect when you insist “more of the same thing” stupidly, because you are SURE you’re about to succeed. Don’t be a demon. And think out of the box. Buy the book, by the way, it’s very good.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

“Be Spontaneous, please” (Can you see my mask?)

“I’m taking a picture of you. Please smile. Nooo not like that! A big, natural, spontaneous smile”.

Everyone understands this example, right? When someone asks you to act… spontaneously, you’re stuck in an awkward grey nauseous mood. It’s called “the be spontaneous paradox”. It can happen anywhere, in a couple, a family, at work : one person requests something that can only be given spontaneously – love, interest, appreciation, desire, tenderness… You’re now stuck in a Double Bind.

Here’s a good dialog from the 2006 movie “The Break-Up” :

• I busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal! And I worked today. It would be nice if you said “thank you” and helped me with the dishes.
• Fine. I’ll help you do the damn dishes.
• That’s not what I want.
• You just said that you want me to help you do the dishes!
• I want you to want to do the dishes.
• Why would I want to do dishes?
• Why? See, that’s my whole point.
• Let me see if I’m following this, okay? Are you telling me that you’re upset
  because I don’t have a strong desire to clean dishes?
• No. I’m upset because you don’t have a strong desire to offer to do the dishes.
• I just did.
• After I asked you!

MMMmhh?

Imagine a club, a private club with big mellow armchairs. The boss enters the room and solemnly criticize the atmosphere, and then asks everyone to be a little more gay and happy, “a few more laughs would be perfect!” – Imagine the disaster!… (I saw this one day from a web forum administrator. I tried to explain him, but without any effect).

Tool 1 : Learn how to detect when someone asks you to “act spontaneously”. And beware of this when it’s meant but unsaid, perversely implicit : it’s worse ! Your answer can be multiple.

• If you try, you just have to put a mask. But it’s not you, it’s theater. Maybe you will have to wear it!
• You can just say no, of course.
• Go meta-communication : talk about this, explain the paradox and that you will not stay stuck into this.

Tool 2 : Do you do it? Putting other people into these “Please change and act spontaneously like this and like that“? If you did, can you detect the desperate unease and awkwardness you put in the other’s brain? Can you see the mask?

I will always remember this example I got from Watzlawick, a father punishing his kid telling him “Go to your room, and come back when you smile”. Horror!