I’ve been meaning to have a wee rant re the whole “Twelve Pubs” thing.
I know many young (and not so young) people who are about to go on this new-and-not-so-noble tradition of mass alcohol poisoning with a view to consuming at least one unit of alcohol per pub (X12) in a few short hours.
I have a bit of a fascination with the origins of words. As I grew up every new word I asked about was explained to me by my mother in terms of its origin – origin, from the Latin ‘Origo’, meaning beginning, source, rise. You get my drift…
The word ‘discipline’ originates from the Latin to teach, or instruct. When the Middle English folk came along it morphed somewhat into the punishment, ‘mortification’ scourge flavour we are more familiar with today.
And I find that the words discipline and punishment (from the French Punir meaning rough handling) are often used interchangeably. Which isn’t a great thing, because we now know that punishment isn’t necessarily a good way to discipline. SoI prefer the original meaning of discipline, it’s more effective as a means of changing or adjusting behaviour in the long term. FAR more effective.
So I wrote a piece on the (real life and practical) differences between discipline and punishment, with some ideas on how to do the former more effectively.
I was catching up on my Facebook messages earlier and this post sent to me by a friend really caught my eye. It’s a meme from one of those humour pages on Facebook. Judging by the comments it resonates with most people and they think it’s really funny! (It is too – I mean who hasn’t waited years for a plumber?!!)
Setting boundaries and creating rules that feel reasonable and workable is a real challenge for parents. In recent years, one of the toughest challenges is what to do with all the tech in our homes.
What exact rules can we set? Not just for tweens and teens – but for ourselves too?
This topic emerges on an almost daily basis for me – professionally but also socially. And so I wrote this piece as an offering of guidelines – they are just guidelines. There is no right or wrong, and every family is different. I’m hoping this piece might help and inspire you if you are finding it hard to decide what rules to set with your own kids.
In my next piece I’ll describe in more details how to decide what consequences to use when rules are broken – and as always please feel free to comment and give me your own tips!
You’ve probably already heard about the new Calvin Klein advertising campaign. It’s worked, that’s for sure, in that Twitter and Facebook can’t get enough of complaining about it. And of course the pro-sexism and creepy factions can’t get enough of defending it and lashing out at people who recognise it for what it is – blatant sexist glamourisation of and dismissal of sexual harassment.
Last year, Leinster and Ireland prop Jack McGrath helped to launch the IRUPA’s Tackle Your Feelings campaign by revealing that he had suffered in silence for five and a half years following the tragic death of his brother in 2010.
Well.. Ok.. there are probably many things they are not telling you but there’s one in particular we’re talking about here.
One of the benefits of having an almost crystal clear memory (of the horrors) of being an angst-ridden teen is that it helps when you’re an adult to empathize with teen concerns. And whatever your role, parent, teacher, therapist, when you’re trying to help, empathy is far more useful than irritation, helplessness, anger or frustration (speaking from personal experience, that is). You’ll probably be familiar with those feelings..?!
This is Suicide Prevention Month 2015, indeed as I type this it’s World Suicide Prevention Day. Twitter is alive with useful information and resources, talks and seminars are taking place all over the world – and it’s great. And for me, every day should be suicide prevention day.
I listened to Dr Harry Barry speak today about how to reach our young people before they consider suicide. It was great to hear someone echo my thoughts, and those of my fellow professionals. Prevention is key.
Bottom line: we need to “get to” children before they start down the road of hopelessness.
Not a week goes by that a therapist doesn’t hear about a client or a client’s friend self-harming. This is particularly true of therapists who work with teenagers – lately it feels like something of an epidemic.
After first hearing about self-harming behaviour – which usually takes the form of cutting, scraping, hitting or otherwise causing injury to the self – parents and friends usually react in one of two ways:
I think it was Goodfellas, definitely a mafia film, where I saw the following scene: This guy owed our hero, his friend, $10. Our hero was having a lot of trouble retrieving the money, he kept on trying but his ‘friend’ was creative with excuses.