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When do you yell at your kids?
We all get frustrated with our kids; for the things they break and the noise they make. That still doesn’t mean we get to yell at them. If we feel it coming on, its always best to count to 5 (or 20 if you need to) and then talk to them in a firm and quiet voice. Mellow kids come from mellow parents who don’t make everything an emergency.
However, there is one time when you can, and should, yell at your kids: when they are about to do something that might hurt, or even kill them or others. I’ve done this when my son was about to put his finger into the stove and many, many times when both kids threatened to run out in the street. The one that happened recently was finding my son perched on the couch leaning out an open third story window to yell at one of his little buddies. My mind projected into the future as his 7 year old grip slipped, he fell forward and tumbled out the window to the pavement below. I screamed at him to get down and scared the bejesus out of him. Once the danger was gone, I calmed down and instead of spanking him, held him close to me and told him how much I loved him and that his safety was the most important thing to me. I wanted to make sure he knew that I yelled only because I love him so much that a dangerous situation provoked a reaction that he rarely sees in his father.
Why is that important? I think my son knows that mostly broken objects and loud noises upset me less than they annoy me. Annoyance is a trifle. It doesn’t mean anything that can’t be fixed and then forgotten. He definitely knows that if I yell then he better react. He’s heard it so seldom that I bet he associates it with real danger. And ultimately, I want him to remember a childhood where we seldom raised our voices, except to express how strongly we felt about those closest to us.
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Ketchup banned in French cafeterias?
After four years of discussion and recommendations, the rules went into effect this week. The French government has banned ketchup in all schools and colleges, as a way to promote healthful eating. The decision was likely made easier because the French would prefer you don’t put ketchup on your croissant with ham.
I’m sure most Americans will say, “Oh those French…” But food habits start early and putting sugar (yes, ketchup is tomatoes plus corn syrup) on your food just teaches you to eat that way. It doesn’t help parents when schools serve cookies and juice boxes when they aren’t at home.
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Styli to avoid fingerprints on your new iPad
I’m doing more and more presenting on the iPad as we prepare to relaunch Pregnancy Magazine in digital format in December. The iPad looks very good, except when it’s covered with fingerprints. Then it has the look of a greasy toy used by someone who eats a lot of potato chips. Unfortunately, you don’t even get to eat potato chips to have an iPad that looks that way. No one can touch an iPad without leaving messy prints.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way. With a minimum of inconvenience, you can use a special stylus with a fabric tip that actually does a better job of manipulating pages and buttons on the surface of an iPad or iPhone.
Pogo makes a simple one called the Sketch that does the job for $14.95 (or less than $10 on Amazon). Despite the photo here, it is actually smaller and thinner than the other pen below.
If you want to spend a little more, consider the Bracketron Style iT, a stylus that doubles as a nice fine point pen. This pen is the thickness of a regular pen, but a little longer to add the length of the stylus tip. The pen/stylus is $24.95, but you can find it on Amazon for $11.50.
In tests on our iPad, both of these styluses (styli) worked well and kept our dirty fingers off the machine. The Sketch has a greater tendency to get lost since it only performs a specific function, so you may want to opt to spend a bit more and get one that has a pen built in. Be aware that the Bracketron’s cap, however, requires a fair amount of strength to rip off, which may be good for keep even smaller fingers for getting at it.
The Sketch, especially, looks very high tech, while the Bracketron has a more traditional pen-like feel.
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Steve Jobs is Dead at 56
There are few celebrity deaths that strike you. Most die in their time and are often just a nostalgic memory by the time of their passing. However, this one has me reeling. I guess we all suspected that Steve’s days were numbered (how many CEOs does one refer to by their first name?), but I thought we were counting in years and not days or weeks since he stepped down from the helm of Apple, the company he founded, lost, and resurrected.
I’ve long said the Steve Jobs is a one in a million CEO, who will be remembered for a century for what he did at Apple and Pixar. Unlike other star CEOs whose stars immediately tarnishes once the PR budget disappears (Meg Whitman, Jack Welch, some day Donald Trump), Jobs was worth every penny of his salary, which is exactly how much he was paid to come back to lead Apple (in addition to billions in stock options).
I’ve been happy to be an Apple loyalist since my first Mac Power Book in 1992. I lived through the years of declining fortunes and Mac clones, through a succession of CEOs who didn’t seem to really “get” Apple, and through dinner parties when I’d be told I was a naive fool for believing in a company and idea as ludicrous as Apple. But still, I hung on, booting and rebooting my crash-prone machines, but glorying in what a pure joy they were for a non-geek to play with and look at. Ah, the things they could do that were only dreamt of by skeptical friends. Finally, Steve came back and I bought my first iPod, which was a miraculous toy for someone of the generation that still created mix tapes as a romantic gesture.
And now Steve is gone, and we all wonder what next. Apple announced his death after the markets closed, knowing that the news will affect the market’s view of Apple’s future. Hopefully, what Steve created; machines, culture, and a vision of computers made with human beauty, will long outlive him.
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UK town bans hand-raising in class
Ah, imagine a simpler time when people actually had time to invent solutions for problems that don’t exist, instead of sitting around all day fretting about problems that appear insolvable.
Educators came up with the idea during a brainstorming session, as a way to foster a “calmer and inclusive atmosphere in the classroom,” the Daily Mail reports. Students, ages 7 to 11, are instructed to give a thumbs up and cup it with their other hand rather than wave a hand in the air.
[From Can Banning Hand-Raising Promote a Calmer Classroom? - TIME NewsFeed]
Does anyone out there remember anything negative about raising your hand in school? I remember some days being too bored to bother, or being amazed at the velocity of which some kids could throw their arms around, but I don’t recall ever feeling that hand waving was in some ways disruptive.
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