The Psychology of...

One of the most paradigm shifting books on parenting out there these days has got to be "The Awakened Family" by Dr. Shefali Tsabary. I admit not everyone will agree with everything she presents but overall I find it immensely helpful as a parent and a professional in regards to developing a philosophy that will guide my parenting. I am working on writing a full review on her book but in the meantime I wanted to quickly share a portion of her book that I felt was appropriate for a brief post. The idea here is that, contrary to popular parenting philosophy, parenting is not about the child. It's about you the parent. Parenting is about raising yourself. What's meant by that, as best as I understand it, is that we often bring our own insecurities into the parent-child relationship and allow that baggage to obstruct the progress of our children. Parenting often becomes most effective when we turn the corrective focus from our children to ourselves. Tsabary uses a hum

We live in a capitalist society. There are a few harsh realities that go with the capitalist flow. Primarily that while this system is effective at mobilizing and motivating many people to grow and work hard, the truth is that we are all vying for a portion of the same pie. Yes the pie gets bigger and bigger but ultimately, your financial well-being, your quality life relies just as heavily on someone else's misfortune as it does your own fortune. Think about it. You do well in school. You work hard. You gain a post-secondary education. You dream of owning a home and raising a family. You become a professional, let's say a teacher. In this system you should be able to live comfortably, provide for your family, and enjoy a modest quality of life as long as you keep working hard... right? Well that depends on the distribution of incomes in your market. In a normal distribution your salary should put you close to all central tendencies ie.mean (average), median (the actual midpo

Is my child normal? (cringe) What is normal really? Do you even want your child to be normal? OK, all anti-main stream philosophical arguments aside, I think most of us parents are interested in at least some kind of baseline mean that gives us an idea as to how our children's behaviours stack up against their peers. This can help as we may become worried about certain behaviours that might be completely developmentally appropriate. Method Don't be impressed. I have quite crudely amalgamated a few of the most accepted and researched developmental theories into one, hopefully, cogent and cohesive table. I have looked at theories from Erikkson, Piaget, Freud, and Kohlberg. This is not to be taken as psychology gospel but as a one-stop cheat sheet of what we are likely to expect of our children's psychological development. Approximate Age Key Developmental Factors What to expect 0 – 23 months Trust vs Mistrust; Sensorimotor developmen

Thesis: death education should be implemented in the health curriculum. Rationale: Let me ask this first... Does doing well in school translate into being a successful human being? Yes... but the correlation is not as strong as we would hope. We have people like myself who do well in school but then felt incredibly under-prepared for life. In the research world we call that a Type I error. A false positive. The test (my schooling and more particularly my grades) says that I will be successful but then the outcome is less than expected (I'm doing ok now but for a while it wasn't going so hot). Then there is the Type II error, or false negative. People who struggle to get good grades in school but then do remarkably well in career, family, health, and pretty much every other metric we might use to evaluate the overall awesomeness of one's life. I think our system makes more Type II errors than Type I personally. You might say, "yeah but nobody said school was

If you haven't already googled it. Pronoia is a made up word. I know that because my spellchecker is giving me grief every time I type it out. Pronoia means the opposite of paranoia. So wherein paranoia is the belief that people, governments, or the universe overall is conspiring against you, pronoia is the belief that everyone is secretly conspiring to benefit you. Call me naïve but this is how I honestly operate. Now I should say that I'm not narcissistic enough to think that everyone else is secretly concerned about me specifically. The few people who are even aware of my existence are going to be mostly indifferent to the ins and out of my life but I honestly believe that there isn't anybody plotting against me in anyway. If they are then they are doing a terrible job because my life keeps getting better and better. In fact, the evidence that I observe suggests that most people and systems are looking out for my best interests. There are people who dedicate time

True patronisation: to think so little of people's capacity of intelligence, you no longer tell them they are being idiotic. - Alain de Botton If you ever happen to find yourself inside the octagon for a mixed martial arts fight there are a few rules you should be aware of. No low-blows. No eye-gouging. And you can't kick or knee your opponent in the head when he is down. To define a "downed opponent" they use the three-point stance or in other words, if there is any part of the body other than and in addition to their two feet touching the mat (finger, knee, buttock, etc.) then you cannot kick or knee that opponent in the head. This leads to a technique that fans and fighters alike detest. That is that competitors, sensing the dread of getting kicked in the head, purposefully drop to a knee or place a finger on the mat. The intention here is not only to avoid a strike but sometimes it is to bait their opponent into hitting them anyways, causing a disqualificat