Well. In addition to being a total babe devoted to learning more - sometimes at great personal cost - our Goddess does appear in podcasts.

Check this one out, with Michael Shermer!

Cool a TED talk.

I and some other Virginians are walking on air. Still hoping for NJ but VA was a hard fight.

I and some other Virginians are walking on air. Still hoping for NJ but VA was a hard fight.

NoVa?

As some of you probably know, the most distant ancestor of the Northrop-Grumman B-2 Spirit was the XB-35, first built in the late 1940s. While none of the planes exist today, BigPlanes over at YouTube shows us his replica, built entirely from Lego!

NoVa? Yep at least for the time being

From a 2009 thread, here:

Me:
"As Dr. Rosemond would put it, modern parents often have the mistaken idea that if they do everything right, their kids will never do anything wrong. This is untrue. Even dogs, who are born wanting to please others (unlike humans), cannot be so easily controlled, because even they have free will. Parents who can't grasp this therefore assume that every criticism of their child is either a lie or an attack on the PARENT. In the past, Rosemond said, when kids misbehaved, most parents understood that it was merely time to lower the boom on the kid, not assume that they, the parents, must have done something wrong, and that chances are, they might eventually have to punish the kid again for something completely different."

Crella said:
"...that's precisely the attitude I see, and I never understood it! My sister is her daughter's best friend, and her daughter can do no wrong. It seems to be endemic in my sister's age group,her friends and the mothers of my niece's classmates. Anytime anyone tells them anything about their kids, they shoot the messenger. 'Not my kid!' 'Who the hell do you think you are?'followed with 'You wouldn't do anything like that, would you dear?' to the child. It drives me crazy.

"I can't tell you the grief I feel watching this whole situation the last few years....I can see major problems, both now and on the horizon as consequences of the situation as it stands, but you can't say anything as it's 'criticizing'. I am going to read some of Dr. Rosemond's writings, to see if I can get my head around what I'm seeing. The insight you've given me today has brought the situation somewhat into focus.

"Sometimes I think I should wash my hands of it completely, seeing as her actual parent is unconcerned, but I can't quite give up, it bothers me so much."

Me:
"I suspect, unfortunately, that it's a vicious circle - many people DO assume that if the neighbor's kid did something bad, it must be something the parent did wrong."

______________________________________

Why did I quote all that?

Because Rosemond recently spelled out, again, the need for parents to realize that they aren't in complete control and never CAN be.

https://www.indexjournal.com/lifestyles/columnists/john-rosemond/john-rosemond-no-need-to-nitpick/article_db28b70a-5d8b-5c38-a403-c3a3683f9295.html

Q: A friend recently pointed out that I constantly nitpick my 9-year-old son’s behavior. Her words were, “You’re on his case all the time.” Why do I nitpick and how can I stop?

A: Nitpicking a child’s behavior is almost always the consequence of “personalizing,” which is believing that any fault in your child reflects a fault of equal or greater magnitude in yourself.

Many if not most of today’s parents — moms, especially — have fallen prey to the myth that childrearing is deterministic. Why moms, especially? Because mothers are the primary consumers of childrearing materials, and overwhelmingly so. And because many a Modern Mom believes in childrearing determinism, she personalizes. And because she personalizes, she is beset by anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Thus, she complains that childrearing is “…the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

We have come full circle. Mothers, because they read entirely too much, believe in psychology. Because they believe that childrearing is deterministic, moms are more likely to “personalize” when their kids behave badly. Because they “personalize,” they nitpick. Nitpicking is a form of micromanagement, all forms of which are driven by anxiety.

People believe in psychology the same way they believe in any other unproven hypothesis: to wit, psychology has been marketed such that most people believe it is a science and, therefore, full of facts. Psychology is not a science. That’s a fact. It is a philosophy of human nature. It is also a fact that none of psychology’s theories concerning human nature have ever survived the scrutiny of the scientific method. They are speculations. In fact, whenever a psychologist says that someone is behaving a certain way because ___________ (fill in the blank with a psychological explanation of human behavior), he is theorizing/speculating. He cannot prove that what he is saying is true.

When mothers did not read parenting books, they did not say things like, “Raising a child is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” And by the way, a mother who says such things is not thinking straight because raising a child, approached with a proper attitude (i.e., one that does not give credence to the musings of professional psychological speculators), is a simple matter.

I am a psychologist who writes parenting books. More accurately, I write books on mere childrearing, which is very, very different from what we now call “parenting.” The reason so many parents these days are experiencing so many problems is because they are “parenting” — a post-1960s aberration based on bogus psychological theory. Mere childrearing is done with common sense, which most parents still have unless they have been “parenting” for so long that they can’t break the bad habit. The difference between the two approaches is a matter of their goals. The goal of “parenting” is to raise a child who is happy and successful. The goal of mere childrearing is to emancipate a responsible citizen in the shortest possible time.

All of which is to say, if you stop parenting and begin merely childrearing, you will relax, stop nitpicking, and have a much happier parenthood.

(end)