The Unknown Effects Of Spanking That Will Creep Up To You

Spanking has been passed down through the years as an effective way to stop children from misbehaving and keeping them in check. Unknown to most, its effect might be noticeable in an instant, but recent research results have shown that spanking does not only violate the rights of the child, but results in academic, health and relationship problems as those children turn into adults.

Has spanking really been effective in keeping children away from trouble? 

Many of the advocates for spanking and those who think it is effective cannot really point out direct ways that it has helped them stop behaving excessively during their childhood, they just believe it was administered for their own good and wrongly believe it made them stop the bad behavior. If that was the point it ended, there would have been no wrong done except to them as individuals, but this lot pass spanking on as appropriate for enforcing right behavior in a child. Following the 2007 UN convention and the call for banning of all forms of physical and mental violence on children, many people are finally starting to heed the warnings of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

What does spanking do to your child? 

The article How Spanking Affects Later Relationships by James Hablin samples the findings of many researches on the effects of spanking. All of the researchers pointed at spanking as a horrible thing that does not just stop at failing to correct childhood excesses, but leads to several academic, health and relationship problems along the line. Most times leading to cancer, heart diseases, and respiratory illnesses at a young age. Child spanking is also linked to aggressive behavior, dating violence and other forms of violence as the child turns into an adult.

What are the alternatives to spanking? 

The article does so much to discredit spanking and provided results from research to back up the claims however; it is not enough to paint is as bad without leaving an alternative in place for people to fall back on. Hablin gathered several alternatives that includes communication and connecting to the child. The truth lies in the fact that these alternatives may not prove to be effective instantly because we live in a fast-paced world with stressors piling up before everybody however, they are sure to yield results for the now and the future when effectively administered. It is also important that this discourse on spanking starts on a national scale and then spread to the very roots of society.

We cannot control the present and as a result, risk losing the future completely. Spanking is outdated, ineffective and creates even more trouble going forward. Instead, teaching healthy relationships and healthy social habits proves positive down the years. The effects of spanking are numerous and devastating.

To read the full article, click here.

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It's Okay For Boys To Be Emotional. It's Actually Good.

Fostering different emotions holds a lot of advantages for health as adults, research has shown. However, it appears we are starting to realise this a little too late. Notably, there is a significant lack of emotional diversity in children, especially young boys. We often box them unnecessarily in shackles that will do them no good when they become adults. These same shackles, we try to break off when they become adults, but it turns out difficult for them and for us to let go as it appears quite often, that we have only managed to shine light on only one part of the emotions they’ve been blessed with, their anger. We leave other emotions vulnerable. We do not teach boys to love and feel loved, to feel compassion, empathy, kindness, etc. Emotional expression by all genders holds great benefits beyond psychological health benefits, unlike emotional suppression that comes with dire consequences.

Our Society And The Dismal Lack Of Paying Attention To Details  

Our society runs an imbalanced script. Most times, you find yourself wondering why beliefs such as the fact that men should be less expressive emotionally could find any root in our society. Interestingly, we take an unwarranted detour and create laws, decrees, code of conducts, etc., to tackle the consequences of our ignorance; the consequences of our regarding a certain gender as the “weaker” gender and another, the “stronger” gender, and we rather play a blind eye at the root causes of many evils in the society.

The fear often arises when we do not embrace emotions as a fundamental part of our being as humans and we believe that we can relegate them to the background or even neglect them totally. Unfortunately, they cannot be suppressed for too long; the fight back is often too brutal and uncontrollable for any of our systems to handle. Yet, we do not admit our failure in this regard.

The Rough Way Ahead Without Emotions 

In the article titled The importance of fostering emotional diversity in boys by June Gruber and Jessica L. Borelli, they admitted thus – “Boys grow up in a world inhabited by a narrower range of emotions, one in which their experiences of anger are noticed, inferred and potentially even cultivated,” and I cannot seem to agree more. Perhaps, this is so because we want to keep propagating that it is a man’s world. What world is there without emotions as guiding compasses? Teaching boys and girls to cultivate their emotions and to know when and how to utilise them is a failsafe venture into the future especially since it will not be with safe hands alone, but safe minds also.

The Way Forward- Focusing on The Things That Matter 

It is about time we focused our discussions on things that matter. While we can be so keen on getting our children educated, I think it is most imperative that we train their emotions first, and allow it serve as premise upon which their judgment and all other cognitive functions rest. We do not have to rely on research to put us in the right direction especially since we have lost it for too long.

Therefore, it is not too late; we can still teach our children (boys and girls inclusive) to experience the full range of emotions. This in fact can be the only way to make our world a better place. I urge you to read the full article here

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Household Objects Cross-Stitched by Ulla Stina WikanderSwedish... crss

Household Objects Cross-Stitched by Ulla Stina Wikander

Swedish designer Ulla Stina Wikander uses household appliances and cooking tools as the base to her cross-stitched sculptures, bestowing outdated objects with a new life. Most of the items come from the 70s, yet the patterns she covers their bodies in are much older. For more check out her website and Instagram.

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Let’s make #CrossConnect the most popular hashtag on Twitter! 

posted by Margaret via

crss

Household Objects Cross-Stitched by Ulla Stina WikanderSwedish...

Household Objects Cross-Stitched by Ulla Stina Wikander

Swedish designer Ulla Stina Wikander uses household appliances and cooking tools as the base to her cross-stitched sculptures, bestowing outdated objects with a new life. Most of the items come from the 70s, yet the patterns she covers their bodies in are much older. For more check out her website and Instagram.

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Let’s make #CrossConnect the most popular hashtag on Twitter! 

posted by Margaret via

90% of People Quit After 3 Months of Hitting the Gym, Here's How to Be the Exception

I manage a fitness center for one of the biggest brands in Switzerland. My prediction for January: We will have more than 130 new members that will join our facility. This is nearly 100.000 dollar revenue – in a single month.

January is the most lucrative month for fitness centers. A lot of the people start a gym membership, because they want to completely redefine themselves. “New Year – New Me!”, they will post on social media. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. More than 90% of these people will quit after three months of going to the gym. We call them the no-shows.

This is not the ideal situation, neither for the person that is going to the gym or the gym itself. I remember my previous boss telling me: “Florian, the no-shows are not your ideal customers. Gyms will always need them to make money. But the people that are training frequently, reach success and then enthusiastically tell their friends about it – these are our true value customers!”

My previous boss had many flaws, but in this aspect he was right. Here are 3 tips that will help you stay training, for months to come.

1. Set Good Goals

Most of the time when clients come into our facility, they haven’t set proper goals. Whenever we fill out the evaluation-form, they write down that they simply want to “lose weight” or “gain muscle”. These two statements are wishes, not goals.

Realistic goals follow the SMART-rule. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Losing weight is not a goal, losing 5 kilograms of body weight in the next two months is.

I want to stress out the realistic aspect of the goal-setting. Start really small. Having big goals will only frustrate you in the long run. Read about it on forums and then determine what is reasonable. Change one behaviour at a time. Make it sustainable.

Also make sure that you will write your goal down. There’s magic behind a written goal. You will be far more likely to stick to it, if your goal is engrained in paper. Remind yourself of your goals daily – write them on a post-it note and put them on your fridge.

2. Find Accountability

Writing your goals down and putting them on your fridge also have the benefits of creating accountability within your family. Your family will support you and ask you how your journey is going. This makes you more likely to stick to your goals.

Have you ever wondered why gyms have group fitness classes? It’s because having a Group Fitness class helps people foster personal relationships. And relationships within the gym increase the chances of the person renewing his membership. The people that train with a friend will generally train more often and harder. They are more likely to reach their goals.

Ask a friend to go with you on this fitness journey. Post your goal on Facebook and create accountability. Use accountability to your advantage.

3. Learn To Deal With Setbacks

The line to your goals won’t be straight. The sooner you accept this and learn to deal with it – the better.

The diet that you will start doing will not always be clean. The workouts that you will be doing are not always amazing. Don’t beat yourself up about it. These setbacks are simply one of the keys of the game that we all have to play. Accept the setback and immediately move on.

Ten years from now, the people that have learned to deal with setbacks will be the people that are blessed with amazing lives. Angela Duckworth wrote a book on perseverance called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Regarding the 770-5 star reviews, it’s definitely a book worth reading.

Focus on progression and not perfection.

Quitting Makes Nothing Better

I am not a believer in the never quit – mentality. Sometimes it definitely is a reasonable choice to do so. No one would argue, that quitting smoking is a bad thing to do. Quitting can be a reasonable thing – but not in the gym.

Remember that you’ve started going to the gym because you had a big need to fill. You wanted to get in better shape or get healthier. Let me tell you two things: 1. The gym works and 2. Getting in shape is definitely worth it.

It’s a good thing to be able to go to the beach, shirtless, with a chiseled midsection. Smiling, when your friends ask you: “How did you do this?”.

It feels amazing to wake up with energy and walk with confidence through life. These are feelings worth fighting – or should I say: training – for. Stick to your new years resolutions, a great life is waiting for you.

Featured photo credit: pixabay via pixabay.com

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How to Spot out Relationship Perils in a Digital World

The digital world has opened our lives up in many ways. Social connections can be made at a click of a button so it’s become a fast and easy place to meet people. This ease means you can reach millions of people, interact and have conversations as well as the control to respond or ignore anyone you want, which can be much harder in the real world. Building multiple relationships at once becomes the norm online with those people living in any corner of the world.

But what’s the downside to all of this? The problem is that, with the ease of building relationships with others, comes the greater the risk of being scammed. According to the Internet Complaint Centre, a whopping $173 million was lost by people scammed by romantic fraudsters just in California alone.^[1]

If the digital world is a great place to build new connections and enhance our lives, why do more and more people fall for these scams online than they probably would in the real world?

How Our Minds Work: The Truth Bias

For our social, career and even governmental relationships to work, a certain amount of trust has to be in place. This is because questioning people’s veracity at every turn doesn’t create harmonious relationships. In other words, it’s become a social default to ignore inconsistencies because we want to trust that what we hear, see and read is the truth. This is known as the truth bias.

And while the truth bias is essentially a peaceful and amicable way to go about the world, unfortunately it provides the average liar with an advantage.

Online presence takes away real life verbal and physical clues that face-to-face communication provides which is one way to fall for a liar’s words. But many people often dismiss discrepancies in order to avoid upfront questioning and would prefer to believe they are speaking to a truthful person.

The internet essentially acts as a mask making it hard to really know who we’re exchanging words with. In the real world, we can get a feel for a person’s energy or body language which helps create a fuller picture. But behind a screen, we are reliant on unpracticed techniques to figure a person out and our brains haven’t been able to build up enough data in order to spot a friend or foe without these physical interactions.

Why the Internet Isn’t What It Seems

Most people have put their stamp on the internet in the form of a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or dating profile and almost everyone is guilty of filtering, photoshopping or adjusting their pictures in some way. In most cases it’s harmless. We often exaggerate our hobbies and interests in order to make ourselves appear better to others. Again this can be a subconscious thing and quite innocent because we all want to build a unique and interesting image in order to attract people.

However, we all know there are people out there that bend the truth when it comes to their profiles which can be hard to spot. Their life seems almost perfect with their top education, multilingual skills and high-earning job. Can this really be true? How can you trust that it’s a genuine person?

How to Spot out Relationships Perils

Building relationships online is a great way of meeting new people and most of the time it’s not all bad. Being cautious, however, is a must because you don’t have these instinctive verbal or physical clues that you’d normally work from.

Having the skills to decode a person’s personality, sincerity and veracity on the other side of a screen is down to getting a feel for the person and making educated guesses.

Educated guesses is an open-minded yet cautious way to go about getting to know someone you may not see in person. If you find yourself building a relationship online:

1. Make a few guesses first. From what you see, try to find both positive and negative sides to them. This will help keep a balanced view without the truth bias kicking in straight away. Look at the overall person, not just what they tell you or what another person tells you about them.
2. Do an internet search on them. This may appear like stalking but it’s helpful to make sure their different profiles show consistency across the board. This includes consistency of information as well as personality in terms of what they share or how they interact.
3. Look for evidence that all information aligns. Look back on your initial guesses about the person and see if they match up (or don’t match up) with any of the information you’ve gathered. After weighing it out, you should be able to see if the evidence supports one guess over the other.

When assessing someone online, you need to be logical instead of relying on instinct which serves us best when we see someone face-to-face. Having a more logical approach will negate the tendency to allow the truth bias to override and therefore reduce the vulnerability of being deceived.

Next time you meet someone online, take a step back and allow yourself to be cautious. While it’s good to trust others, be aware of the truth bias we all tend to use when interacting with others and make sure you don’t make yourself vulnerable to the scammers.

Reference

[1]

^

Sheriff McDonnell and Cyber Investigators: Love Hurts: A Forum and Discussion on Online Dating Safety

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