Back in the dark ages when I was at school my teachers employed this wacky notion of telling us whether or not our school work was great, good, bad or otherwise.
They even gave us grades.
And when my report cards were bad my folks got mad at me… not the teacher.
Crazy, I know.
Surprisingly I didn’t die from this… or suffer any irreparable damage.
Sometimes kids even failed a subject.
Interestingly, none of them died either (as a result of that failure).
Some of them even went away, studied, worked harder, passed the next semester, developed some new skills and learned a lot from the experience!
Is it just me, or does is dawn on anybody else that the rampant over-protection of our kids (and not just in a school setting) doesn’t really help them at all?
It’s not always an advantage but often, a significant disadvantage?
I’m not a kid-ologist (made that up) but I do own a kid’s gym and do observe lots of parents in action and it seems to me that some parents are so paranoid and over-protective that the very thing they don’t want… they end up creating; kids who can’t cope, can’t adapt and don’t fit in.
The world is a messy, lumpy, bumpy, unfair, nasty, unpredictable place.
Perhaps we should let our kids experience a little pain, discomfort, adversity… life.
Source: http://craigharper.com.au
Daniel Gilbert is he Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Hedonic Psychology Laboratory. He is generally considered the world’s foremost authority in the fields of affective forecasting and the fundamental attribution error.
In 2002, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin listed Gilbert as one of the fifty most influential social psychologists of the decade, and in 2003 one of his research papers was chosen by the editors of Psychological Inquiry as one of four “modern classics” in social psychology. He is the author of Stumbling on Happiness.
Watch this video about affective forecasting and the fundamental attribution error at TheEdge.org
“The problem lies in how we imagine our future hedonic states. We are the only animals that can peer deeply into our futures—the only animal that can travel mentally through time, preview a variety of futures, and choose the one that will bring us the greatest pleasure and/or the least pain. This is a remarkable adaptation—which, incidentally, is directly tied to the evolution of the frontal lobe—because it means that we can learn from mistakes before we make them. We don’t have to actually have gallbladder surgery or lounge around on a Caribbean beach to know that one of these is better than another. We may do this better than any other animal, but our research suggests that we don’t do it perfectly. Our ability to simulate the future and to forecast our hedonic reactions to it is seriously flawed, and that people are rarely as happy or unhappy as they expect to be.”
There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure in the outer game…Tim Gallwey
Are you aware of your inner game and how it manifests externally?
This is another of Chris’ terrific Light Cards to share with your friends. I hope you’re remembering your friends by making use of these cards daily! 
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If my blog posts are a few days late, it is because I’ve been a little pre-occupied.
The last couple of days I’ve been creating the monthly Triggers ezine for 1 April, a page of favorite links for my website and a page for my articles, also for the Forward Steps website.
Enjoy all those wonderful new resources. I’ll have a book to offer you soon also. Working on that in the background.
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