Family & Parenthood 02 (Jan 10 - Aug 10)

[millionairemind]

Third week of school and I have been fetching my son daily after school. Its amazing (and horrifying to me) to see how (grand)parents nowadays dote on their (grand)kids.

I have seen perfectly healthy and walking children being "wheeled" by maids on strollers back home once school is over.

Young children passing their school bags to their frail old grandmas while they suck on their lollipops and chat with their friends on their way home.

Its small wonder that our kids nowadays can't hold a candle to foreign competition.

[Musicwhiz]

Oh well, haven't you heard of the saying - "Grandparents dote, parents discipline" (I think it's not in English, but you get the idea!).

[millionairemind]

Oh well, haven't you heard of the saying - "Grandparents dote, parents discipline" (I think it's not in English, but you get the idea!).

And if you live with your parents, when you discipline your kids, you get scolded by your mum!!!!

haha....

This is what happened to my friend. Being the only son, he has responsibility to take care of his parents. His parents live with him, but he can't seem to discipline his kids, cos' the grandma is ALWAYS around to "kick his butt"...

[winston]

My younger boy wanted to sleep at 8am so that he can get up early to play computer games on his elder brother's Mac. Supposedly, the games are faster on the Mac than on the desktop..

I told him that 8am is a bit too early to sleep. I then offer to play a game with him of his choice.

He chose Nerf guns instead of Black Jack tonight

[millionairemind]

haha, I am sure you are in pretty good shape to run around the house with him.

[winston]

And if you have boys they also want those Nerf Machines:-




Or Nerf Machine Guns:-




I actually did not want to buy guns for them. But boys will be boys and that's what he wanted for Christmas. And they are already shooting like "SWAT" on their computer games

[iam802]

I want those NERF stuffs as well.

In fact, I think I want to have 2; one for the left hand and one for the right.

[kennynah]

aiyo.... you guys are promoting violence....with these toy guns....

but i did have fun with my cowboy gun, complete with belt, bullets and holster... i remember the "wild wild west" tv series had a great impact...

[Aspellian]

The NERF machine guns look cool!! i also want to play! next time we can all organise and play in those urban warfare game!

[millionairemind]

I read about this study more than 15 years ago and finally found it again. If you have kids, you might want to read this.

Don’t!
The secret of self-control.
by Jonah Lehrer
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... act_lehrer

This is a summary on the same study.

The famous Stanford marshmallow study
Posted Oct 22 2008 4:23pm

When parents ask a common question that is "When should my child start setting goals?"

This question indicates a complete lack of understanding of what a goal actually is. Goal achieving is something that is, or should, be going on every hour of your life.

Here's a story that will help explain this concept...

In the 1960s, Psychologist Walter Mischel and his staff wanted to know to what extent the ability to delay immediate gratification might influence later educational and life success.

The study involved 400 four-year-olds.

Each child was put in a room by themselves with a two-way mirror and filmed. On the table in the room was a marshmallow. The researcher then told each child that, "I've got to leave for about 10 minutes.You can eat this marshmallow now if you want. Or if you wait till I get back, you can have two marshmallows when I get back."

Some of the kids where pretty determined to wait; one child actual licked the table all round the marshmallow but avoided the marshmallow itself. Some could wait a few minutes only. Others gobbled it down immediately.

The researchers continued to track these 400 children throughout their school careers and into early adult life.

The results were dramatic.

"Those who had deferred eating the marshmallow for 15-20 minutes in order to get the bigger prize just a few minutes later were more socially competent, personally effective, self-assertive and better able to cope with the frustrations of life.

They were less likely to go to pieces, freeze, regress under stress or become rattled and disorganized when pressured. They embraced challenges, and pursued them instead of giving up even in the face of difficulties; they were more self-reliant and confident, trustworthy and dependable; they took initiative and
plunged into projects; More than a decade later, they could still delay gratification in the pursuit of their goals."

According to their parents' evaluations, the children who had waited were academically superior, could better put their ideas into words, use and respond to reason, could concentrate better, make plans and follow through on them, were more eager to learn.

This simple little marshmallow test of the ability to delay gratification has shown to be a better predictor than IQ what future SAT scores will be. In fact, the kids who could wait just 15-20 minutes scored, on average, 210 points better on their SATs than the "instant gratification" group.

12-14 years LATER.

You see, discipline is not factual knowledge... it's who you are. You can't get discipline from a book. Most of those pre-schoolers couldn't read a lick.

There is a Chinese proverb that says "If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow."

In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck writes, "Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems."

Good advice? You tell me.

Sadly, today's society is set up to give us what we want now. We're told at every turn that we deserve more now. Take it. Don't wait. Screw patience.

Does this all mean that if we don't have self-discipline by the age of four, we're doomed to a life of mediocrity and failure?

Nope.

At Think Right Now, they've studied this in depth.

They've taken people who can't say no to anything, who are distracted at every turn, who can't keep their minds on their work and helped them turn it around...

So they can get the bigger prizes later and enjoy the process.