Friday, May 8, 2015

The Moral Bucket List

One of those 'if you had a today to live?' articles that shines a little further to us readers today. It is a long article so do take some time to read, with a cup of coffee / tea of course.

Courtesy of the New York Times.

The Moral Bucket List

Credit Rachel Levit. Photography by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

When I meet such a person it brightens my whole day. But I confess I often have a sadder thought: It occurs to me that I’ve achieved a decent level of career success, but I have not achieved that. I have not achieved that generosity of spirit, or that depth of character.

A few years ago I realized that I wanted to be a bit more like those people. I realized that if I wanted to do that I was going to have to work harder to save my own soul. I was going to have to have the sort of moral adventures that produce that kind of goodness. I was going to have to be better at balancing my life.

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.

But if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.

So a few years ago I set out to discover how those deeply good people got that way. I didn’t know if I could follow their road to character (I’m a pundit, more or less paid to appear smarter and better than I really am). But I at least wanted to know what the road looked like.

I came to the conclusion that wonderful people are made, not born — that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue, built slowly from specific moral and spiritual accomplishments.

If we wanted to be gimmicky, we could say these accomplishments amounted to a moral bucket list, the experiences one should have on the way toward the richest possible inner life. Here, quickly, are some of them:

THE HUMILITY SHIFT

We live in the culture of the Big Me. The meritocracy wants you to promote yourself. Social media wants you to broadcast a highlight reel of your life. Your parents and teachers were always telling you how wonderful you were.

But all the people I’ve ever deeply admired are profoundly honest about their own weaknesses. They have identified their core sin, whether it is selfishness, the desperate need for approval, cowardice, hardheartedness or whatever. They have traced how that core sin leads to the behavior that makes them feel ashamed. They have achieved a profound humility, which has best been defined as an intense self-awareness from a position of other-centeredness.

SELF-DEFEAT

External success is achieved through competition with others. But character is built during the confrontation with your own weakness. Dwight Eisenhower, for example, realized early on that his core sin was his temper. He developed a moderate, cheerful exterior because he knew he needed to project optimism and confidence to lead. He did silly things to tame his anger. He took the names of the people he hated, wrote them down on slips of paper and tore them up and threw them in the garbage. Over a lifetime of self-confrontation, he developed a mature temperament. He made himself strong in his weakest places.

THE DEPENDENCY LEAP

Many people give away the book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” as a graduation gift. This book suggests that life is an autonomous journey. We master certain skills and experience adventures and certain challenges on our way to individual success. This individualist worldview suggests that character is this little iron figure of willpower inside. But people on the road to character understand that no person can achieve self-mastery on his or her own. Individual will, reason and compassion are not strong enough to consistently defeat selfishness, pride and self-deception. We all need redemptive assistance from outside.

People on this road see life as a process of commitment making. Character is defined by how deeply rooted you are. Have you developed deep connections that hold you up in times of challenge and push you toward the good? In the realm of the intellect, a person of character has achieved a settled philosophy about fundamental things. In the realm of emotion, she is embedded in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, she is committed to tasks that can’t be completed in a single lifetime.

ENERGIZING LOVE

Dorothy Day led a disorganized life when she was young: drinking, carousing, a suicide attempt or two, following her desires, unable to find direction. But the birth of her daughter changed her. She wrote of that birth, “If I had written the greatest book, composed the greatest symphony, painted the most beautiful painting or carved the most exquisite figure I could not have felt the more exalted creator than I did when they placed my child in my arms.”

That kind of love decenters the self. It reminds you that your true riches are in another. Most of all, this love electrifies. It puts you in a state of need and makes it delightful to serve what you love. Day’s love for her daughter spilled outward and upward. As she wrote, “No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore.”

THE CALL WITHIN THE CALL

We all go into professions for many reasons: money, status, security. But some people have experiences that turn a career into a calling. These experiences quiet the self. All that matters is living up to the standard of excellence inherent in their craft.

Frances Perkins was a young woman who was an activist for progressive causes at the start of the 20th century. She was polite and a bit genteel. But one day she stumbled across the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, and watched dozens of garment workers hurl themselves to their deaths rather than be burned alive. That experience shamed her moral sense and purified her ambition. It was her call within a call.

After that, she turned herself into an instrument for the cause of workers’ rights. She was willing to work with anybody, compromise with anybody, push through hesitation. She even changed her appearance so she could become a more effective instrument for the movement. She became the first woman in a United States cabinet, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and emerged as one of the great civic figures of the 20th century.

THE CONSCIENCE LEAP

In most lives there’s a moment when people strip away all the branding and status symbols, all the prestige that goes with having gone to a certain school or been born into a certain family. They leap out beyond the utilitarian logic and crash through the barriers of their fears.

The novelist George Eliot (her real name was Mary Ann Evans) was a mess as a young woman, emotionally needy, falling for every man she met and being rejected. Finally, in her mid-30s she met a guy named George Lewes. Lewes was estranged from his wife, but legally he was married. If Eliot went with Lewes she would be labeled an adulterer by society. She’d lose her friends, be cut off by her family. It took her a week to decide, but she went with Lewes. “Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have done,” she wrote.

She chose well. Her character stabilized. Her capacity for empathetic understanding expanded. She lived in a state of steady, devoted love with Lewes, the kind of second love that comes after a person is older, scarred a bit and enmeshed in responsibilities. He served her and helped her become one of the greatest novelists of any age. Together they turned neediness into constancy.

Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?

Their lives often follow a pattern of defeat, recognition, redemption. They have moments of pain and suffering. But they turn those moments into occasions of radical self-understanding — by keeping a journal or making art. As Paul Tillich put it, suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you are not the person you thought you were.

The people on this road see the moments of suffering as pieces of a larger narrative. They are not really living for happiness, as it is conventionally defined. They see life as a moral drama and feel fulfilled only when they are enmeshed in a struggle on behalf of some ideal.

This is a philosophy for stumblers. The stumbler scuffs through life, a little off balance. But the stumbler faces her imperfect nature with unvarnished honesty, with the opposite of squeamishness. Recognizing her limitations, the stumbler at least has a serious foe to overcome and transcend. The stumbler has an outstretched arm, ready to receive and offer assistance. Her friends are there for deep conversation, comfort and advice.

External ambitions are never satisfied because there’s always something more to achieve. But the stumblers occasionally experience moments of joy. There’s joy in freely chosen obedience to organizations, ideas and people. There’s joy in mutual stumbling. There’s an aesthetic joy we feel when we see morally good action, when we run across someone who is quiet and humble and good, when we see that however old we are, there’s lots to do ahead.

The stumbler doesn’t build her life by being better than others, but by being better than she used to be. Unexpectedly, there are transcendent moments of deep tranquillity. For most of their lives their inner and outer ambitions are strong and in balance. But eventually, at moments of rare joy, career ambitions pause, the ego rests, the stumbler looks out at a picnic or dinner or a valley and is overwhelmed by a feeling of limitless gratitude, and an acceptance of the fact that life has treated her much better than she deserves.

Those are the people we want to be.

The Fourth Trimester – AKA Why Your Newborn Baby is Only Happy in Your Arms

11:21 AM Parent, PostPreg No comments

Now some of you may agree, or disagree to this. It just makes sense to me most as a mother and provides a relief of course. These poor little things are so thrown off the moment they come to the world. They have just too much happening for their little bodies all at the same time. The first 2 really happens to me often but not always. I know that at the end of the day it's intuition that will guide us all. And of course, spending time :)

See if it works for you too!

Thank you Sarah Ockwell.

“My baby is only happy in my arms, the minute I put her down she cries”

“He sleeps really well but only when he’s laying on my chest, he hates his moses basket”

“She cries every time we lay her on her play mat”

“He hates going in his pram, he cries the second we put him in it”.

If I had a pound every time I heard these from a new parent I’d be a very rich lady by now! What amazes me though is that society in general doesn’t get it, they don’t get why so many babies need to be held by us to settle and what perplexes me even more is that we do spend so long trying to put them down! We spend more than time though, the ‘putting babies down’ industry is worth millions, rocking cribs, battery swings, vibrating chairs, heartbeat teddies and the list goes on………………having been a first time parent who bought all four of the items listed above I am embarrased to admit now it honestly didn’t enter into my head that perhaps the answer was to *not* put my baby down and I certainly didn’t consider why these things might help. It took me a long time to understand and empathise with my baby, to see the world through his eyes so to speak.

“Empathy: the intellectual identification with
or vicarious experiencing ofthe feelings,
thoughts, or attitudes of another.”

To empathise with our newborns feelings we need to put ourselves in their place, to imagine experiencing their world – but which world? The world they have spent most of their life in, their ‘womb world’ or the world they are in now – our world. To fully understand we must appreciate the enormous transition they have made – a concept known to many as ‘The Fourth Trimester’ -some make the womb to world transition easily, others less so and it is this latter group in particular “the clingy babies” we can learn so much from through this concept.

“Birth suddenly disrupts this organization. During the month following birth, baby tries to regain his sense of organization and fit into life outside the womb. Birth and adaptation to postnatal life bring out the temperament of the baby, so for the first time he must do something to have his needs met. He is forced to act, to “behave.” If hungry, cold, or startled, he cries. He must make an effort to get the things he needs from his caregiving environment. If his needs are simple and he can get what he wants easily, he’s labeled an “easy baby”; if he does not adapt readily, he is labeled “difficult.”” – Dr. William Sears.

So lets quickly compare the two different ‘worlds’ your baby has lived in:

Pretty different huh? On top of this the big thing to understand is that in utero the baby’s world was constant, each day was the same, the stimulation didn’t change, but now they are born each day is different – ever changing, ever stimulating!

The concept of the fourth trimester helps us to understand the transition a newborn must make over their first few weeks earthside and once we understand we find so many ways we can help – but to me the most important facet of the fourth trimester is parental understanding and empathy, once that exists everything else will flow naturally.

Here are some common newborn calming techniques that tend to work quite well, but remember each and every baby is different, if you don’t already know, you will soon learn what your baby likes best and that’s what matters, that it is unique to *your* baby. Prescriptive ‘do this/don’t do this’ baby calming lists don’t help anybody – because they forget they are dealing with individuals – both parents and babies! Some things on this list will be inappropriate for you and your baby, some simply won’t work, some you won’t like – and that’s OK! because really it isn’t about these tips it’s about you and your baby getting to know each other!

Movement
The womb is a constantly moving space, Braxton Hicks would squeeze your baby at the end of pregnancy and each time you moves your baby was wobbled around inside. Imagine how walking upstairs feels for a baby in utero! Babies tend to love movement but so often we put them down somewhere completely still. You could try dancing, swaying from side to side, going for an exaggerated quick walk or bumpy car ride.

Skin to Skin Contact

Such a brilliant baby calmer! Being in contact with your warm, naturally (un)scented, skin is heaven for a baby, it helps to stabilise their body temperature, heart rate and stress hormones and stimulates the release of oxytocin – the love and bonding hormone – in you both. Topless cuddles, shared baths, baby massage and bedsharing are all great skin to skin experiences for your baby and you.

Bed-Sharing
Sharing a bed with your baby is an amazing way of getting more sleep for everyone, babies are generally much calmer and sleep more easily if they sleep with you in your bed, yet it is such a taboo topic and although 60% of parents will share a bed with their baby at some point it’s a subject that makes society very uncomfortable, but…it is an *amazing* baby calmer! It’s really important that you think about how bedsharing will work and follow some important safety guidelines HERE.

Swaddling

Imagine how snug your baby was at the very end of your pregnancy inside of you – now imagine how strange it must feel to them after they have been born and have so much space around them! The absolutely best thing you can do is to envelop your baby in your arms, but for times when you don’t want to or indeed can’t then swaddling is an option. Swaddling is becoming increasingly popular, however there are important safety guidelines to be followed if you choose to swaddle your baby, if you are breastfeeding please make sure feeding is established before swaddling and take care not to miss your baby’s hunger cues if you are feeding on demand:

Never swaddle over your baby’s head or near his face
Never swaddle your baby if he is ill or has a fever
Make sure your baby does not overheat and only swaddle with a breathable/thin fabric
Only swaddle your baby until he can roll over**
Always place your baby to sleep on his back
Do not swaddle tightly across your baby’s chest
Do not swaddle tightly around your baby’s hips and legs, his legs should be free to “froggy up” into a typical newborn position.
Lastly start to swaddle as soon as possible, do not swaddle a 3 month old baby if he has not been swaddled before.

** The American Academy of Paediatrics recommends swaddling for babies 0-14wks.

Babywearing

Wearing your baby in a sling is one of the ultimate ways to keep them calm and happy. It increases the time a baby spends in a state of “quiet alertness” – a time of contentment when they learn the most. When a baby is in utero they spend 100% of their time in physical contact with us – yet the moment they are born this is estimated to drop to only 40%! Babywearing also means 2 free hands!

Choose your sling carefully. A good sling will be easy to use and will support both yours and your baby’s spine whilst not placing any pressure on your baby’s growing hips – newborns should always be carried facing inwards with a “frog leg” pose, not a crotch dangle pose so commonly used by commercial baby carriers. Also seek to carry in an ‘in arms’ position – i.e: how your baby would be held if you were holding them! This great picture from JePorteMonBebe highlights this newborn hold position perfectly.

Babywearing is a great way for dads to bond with babies!

It is quite common for a baby to cry once placed in a sling, this does not mean that they hate the sling – it just means that you need to move, so get dancing! As with swaddling,babywearing is becoming increasingly popular, however there are important safety guidelines to be followed, the TICKS acronym below neatly sums them all up:

Position
The “tiger in the tree” position below, taken from baby yoga, is often magical, stopping a crying baby in an instant!

Noise
Babies love sound, but for many not the sound you might think. For many babies a hoover is much more calming to a baby than a lullaby. A special white noise CD, such as THIS, can be played on loop whilst your baby sleeps to help keep them calm.

Feed
If your baby is hungry nothing will calm him, so watch for his hunger cues. Feeding is always better if it is baby led, not led by a routine – whether you are breast or bottle feeding. Remember as well that your baby may not always be hungry for a full feed, they may want a quick drink, a quick snack or just some comfort sucking. Babies also find sucking the ultimate relaxation and comfort tool. Sucking helps a baby’s skull bones to return to their normal position after birth as well as providing them with comfort and security. If you are not breastfeeding you might find your baby will relax when given a dummy/pacifier.

Deep Bathing
The womb is a wet, warm place. The world as we know it is dry and cold! Sometimes a nice deep, warm bath can stop a baby’s tears in seconds – even better if mummy or daddy goes in the big bath with baby too as skin to skin contact is a wonderful baby calmer.

Outside
If all else fails many babies stop crying the minute they hit the open air – I’m not sure if this is because we are usually moving (e.g.: walking over cobbles with the buggy/ bouncing in a sling and the drone and movement of a car) or because of the change in air – but it works!

What have you found calms your newborn?

This Is Why Your Baby Doesn’t Sleep Through The Night

2:10 PM Articles, Parent No comments

One of the answers that makes sense to me. Yes, parenthood qualms and this is definitely a commone question. I have to agree that they DO have a small tummy and it empties really quickly!

See if this works for you :). Some answers may be of relief.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed.

“How’s the baby doing? Sleeping through the night yet?”

This line will be familiar to parents of small children. The unbroken, “normal” night’s sleep is the holy grail of parenting. Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter might have started sleeping through the night from six weeks, but for most families that’s a distant dream.

It’s perhaps the most talked-about topic on online forums, and there’s an entire publishing industry based on the idea that with the right training, babies can and should sleep more.

Here, BuzzFeed News speaks to two leading experts to find out why babies wake up during the night – and why it might actually be a good thing.

View this image ›

Sian Butcher / BuzzFeed

1. Why do babies wake up? Because they’re supposed to.

For Peter Fleming, professor of infant health and developmental psychology at the University of Bristol, the idea that babies should sleep through the night is a 20th-century idea. It’s more natural for them to wake up, often.

“Human infants are not designed to sleep for long periods, it’s not good for them, and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there is any benefit to anybody from having a child that sleeps longer and consistently,” he tells BuzzFeed.

“That’s not perhaps what most parents would like to hear.”

2. In fact, nobody really sleeps through the night, even adults.

Darcia F. Narvaez, professor of psychology at Notre Dame University, says that one of the main misconceptions parents have is that everyone normally sleeps eight hours. We don’t.

“Adults don’t sleep through the night either, they just forget that they’re waking up routinely,” she tells BuzzFeed. “We jam all our sleep into eight hours because we work during the day and that’s just not normal if you look at the history of humanity.
“It’s normal to have periods of waking up and short sleeps. With hunter-gatherers, they sleep for two hours and then they’re awake and that’s for the whole 24 hours.”

3. Human babies are born earlier in their development than other animals – they need close contact or an “external womb”.

“Human babies are born 9 to 18 months early compared to other animals,” says Narvaez. “Other animals are able to walk around and start eating – we can’t do that. We look like foetuses when we’re born and we are.

“So that means you want to keep that baby calm while the brain systems are finishing because they only have 25% of the adult brain-size developed, and a lot of systems haven’t set their thresholds and parameters yet. They’re expecting good care – like in an external womb or nest. We call it the evolved developmental niche or nest.”

4. Babies who wake up a lot are actually associated with higher levels of intelligence and better mental health.

There is, according to Fleming, a link between “very high levels of developmental and intellectual achievement and not sleeping throughout the night,” while Narvaez says that children who are kept closer to their parents and have their needs more readily met have “greater empathy and more self-regulation, they have greater conscience, and one study showed they had more cognitive ability and less depression.”

5. Babies have a much shorter sleep cycle than adults.

“Adults tend to go through a 90-minute sleep cycle and come up almost or perhaps completely to the point of waking up and then go back to sleep,” says Fleming.

“We tend to have two or three of those during the night time before we become aware that we’ve woken and go back to sleep. Babies have a 60-minute cycle.”
What this means is that it’s normal for babies to fidget and wake – and unlike adults, they struggle to get back to sleep by themselves.

6. Babies need their parents to stay calm, and leaving them to cry seriously stresses them out, even if they’re quiet.

A 2011 study found that babies do eventually learn to stop crying when left to settle themselves through “sleep training” or “controlled crying”. But while this decreased the stress levels of parents in the study, the level of stress in the babies went up.

Narvaez explains: “So what you’ve taught baby is that it doesn’t pay to signal. The baby’s body goes through a cycle: At first it’s comfortable, then they start to feel the stress hormones start to increase and hopefully the parent is there to calm them down, which is training them to keep their stress response steady at a calm level.

“If the parent still doesn’t come, the sympathetic system is kicking in – it’s fight or flight, you gotta hurry, you’re going to die here if you don’t get attention. If that doesn’t work then you go into the parasympathetic system and it makes you freeze or faint. That is an extreme reaction, but it’s there so you don’t use up all your energy and die.”

7. Babies sleep through the day and wake up at night to make sure they get your undivided attention.

“Typically, babies love sleeping during the day, and 6pm to midnight is the time they’re going to want to be awake the most,” says Fleming.

“Actually, biologically that’s a big advantage because they will have more attention from their two primary caregivers at that time of day than at any other, because there are fewer distractions. From a biological point of view what the baby is doing is completely normal and sensible. It just doesn’t fit in with our 21st-century expectations.”

8. Babies aren’t supposed to be apart from their parents, whether in a separate room or even in their own bed.

“If we go back to evolutionary history of humans,” Fleming says, “babies spent all their time in close and continual contact with their mum, they get carried around everywhere.

“I’ve quite done a lot of work in Africa and in various other places and babies are carried around with their mother all the time. They’re asleep when they need to sleep and they’re awake when they need to be awake, but they’re constantly with their mother and that facilitates breastfeeding.
“If the baby is constantly with mum, the idea that they need to sleep for long periods of time doesn’t really arise. In most parts of the world and most infants on this planet, that is still the case.”
Fleming says there is evidence to show a higher risk of sudden infant death syndrome (also known as cot death) among babies that are kept in separate rooms.

9. That’s why co-sleeping is such a popular technique across the world: Babies crave personal contact and can get upset when they don’t get it.

Fleming argues that co-sleeping – sharing a bed with your baby – is far more common across the world than some people might think.

“The idea that sharing a sleep surface with your baby is in anyway wrong, abnormal or peculiar is just nonsense,” he says. “Most people in the world would see that view as bizarre – 90% of the human infants on this planet sleep that way every night and over the half a million years of human evolution that’s been the norm.”
Fleming admits that while it’s not possible for working parents to be with their children constantly, there can be compromises, such as being in as close contact as possible while they are with their kids.

Despite what you might hear, and though it might try your patience, it’s natural for babies to wake in the night.

Babies are attuned to having their needs met by a primary caregiver throughout the night, in close contact, with lots of feeding. And there isn’t much we can do about it.

As Fleming puts it: “One needs to remember that society changes faster than biology. A biological pattern that’s taken half a million years to develop can’t just be suddenly ignored and turned around. Particularly when there’s no advantage in doing so.”

18+ Adorable Rat Pics Proving That They Can Be The Cutest Pets Ever

1:50 PM Images No comments

Is this convincing enough? Hehe

Thanks Bored Panda :)

The world could always use more cute pet rat photos, so don't hesitate to submit them to our list. Don't forget vote for your favorite cute rat pictures as well!

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5 Plank Variations

9:03 PM Articles, Exercise, PostPreg No comments

I'm back! I'm back! And here's an easy post. I have been doing this ever since delivary and boy does it goes straight into the entire body as an overall workout.

Time is of scarce these days so workouts have to be smartly compile to maximise output whilst minimising time. Enjoy~

Courtesy of ACE

5 Plank Variations That Will Challenge Your Core

Front, side, reverse, hands or forearms, knees or toes—whichever way you choose to plank, this simple, stationary position is an essential exercise in your weekly fitness routine. When performed correctly, planking strengthens all the muscles that run up and down your spine, which helps you to stand, rotate, bend and lift with ease. And let’s not forget the bonus benefits of strengthening your arms, shoulders, glutes and legs. There’s no better way to multitask than to perform plank exercises.
Planks have endless variations. Subtle changes such as lifting an arm or adding movement can change the degree of difficulty of the exercise, keeping your body challenged and your workouts fun. Ready to fire up your core? These five plank variations focus on lifting the legs and adding rotation to intensify the work.

Plank Set-up
All exercises, except for the last one, should begin in one of the positions described below. Setting the foundation ensures that your alignment is correct and your entire body is connected and engaged so you’ll be ready to tackle these fun and highly effective plank exercises.

High Plank
Position the body face down with hands underneath the shoulders and inner arms close to the body. Tuck the toes and contract the quadriceps and glutes so the knees come slightly off the floor. Engage the abdominals, inhale, and on the exhale press the body up in one unit to high-plank position. You should be in a straight line from head to heels.

Forearm Plank
Position the body face down with the elbows bent underneath the shoulders and the forearms and palms firmly planted into the ground. Tuck the toes and contract the quadriceps and glutes so the knees come slightly off the floor. Engage the abdominals, inhale, and on the exhale press the body up onto the forearms. You should be in a straight line from head to heels.

Forearm Plank With Repeater 3 Taps

-Begin with forearm plank set-up (see above).
-Raise the right leg off the ground and tap the right toes onto the left ankle.
-Raise the right leg again and tap the floor to the outside of the left foot.
-Raise the right leg again and tap the left ankle.
-Return back to center and repeat the sequence with the left leg.
-Repeat this repeater 3-tap pattern for eight to 10 reps. Perform two sets.

Side Riser Plank

This plank variation is a hybrid of a side forearm plank and a high plank.

-Begin with the high-plank set-up (see above). Lower down onto the right forearm and spin the legs so they are stacked with weight on the outer edge of the right foot. Reach the left arm up toward the ceiling.

-Place the left hand down and push the body back up to high-plank position.

-Lower down onto the left forearm and spin the legs so they are stacked with weight on the outer edge of the left foot. Reach the right arm up toward the ceiling.

-Place the right hand down and push the body back up to high-plank position.
-Repeat this alternating pattern for 10 reps. Perform two sets.

Marching Side Plank

Keeping a rhythmic marching pattern is the challenge in this side-plank variation.
-Begin with the high-plank set-up (see above). Roll to the right arm and position the legs in a scissors stance, with the left leg to the front with weight on the bottom of the foot, and the right leg to the back with weight on the outer edge of the foot.

-Lift the right knee toward the chest and release back down. Lift the left knee toward the chest and release back down. Repeat this pattern in a rhythmic fashion for 10 reps.

-Roll back to high plank and then release to the ground to rest. Repeat on the other side, rolling to the left arm, with the right leg to the front with weight on the bottom of the foot, and the left leg to the back with weight on the outer edge of the foot.

-Performing 10 reps on each side is one set. Perform one to two sets.

Fallen Triangle Switch

plank

Inspired by yoga, this plank variation challenges stability and engages the abdominals, arms, and inner and outer legs.

-Begin with the high-plank set-up (see above). Roll to the right arm and stack the legs with weight on the outer edge of the right foot. Reach the left arm up toward the ceiling.
-Kick the left leg forward and hold.

-Draw the left knee in toward the chest and spin the knee underneath the body, rolling to the left side plank, kicking the left leg forward. Reach the right arm up toward the ceiling.
-Draw the left knee in toward the chest and spin the knee underneath the body, rolling back to the right side plank and kicking the left leg forward. Reach the left arm up toward the ceiling.
-Return back to side plank and repeat the sequence.

-Perform one to three reps on the right side and then one to three reps on the left.

Quadruped Hover With Leg Kickbacks

This quadruped plank variation looks easy, but it is very intense for the core.
-Begin in quadruped position, aligning the hips over the knees and shoulders over the wrists.
-Tuck the toes under, engage the core and lift both knees about 2 inches off the floor.
-Extend the right leg back, pointing the toes and hips toward the ground. Return to center and repeat with the left leg.
-Repeat this alternating pattern for 10 reps. Perform two sets.

7 Things Parents Should Tell Their Kids Every Day

8:10 PM Parent No comments

Super useful~ as an alternative to 'I love you'

Here is the summary:

I believe in you
Never give up
Practice is how we learn
Every expert started out as a beginner - just like you
Failure / Fullure is not an option
You gotta learn from every oopsie and ouchie
You are saved and love

Thanks mindbodygreen!

Are you raising nice kids? A Harvard psychologist gives 5 ways to raise them to be kind

3:03 AM Parent No comments

Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist with the graduate school of education, and the Making Caring Common Project have come up with recommendations about how to raise children to become caring, respectful and responsible adults. (The Washington Post)

Earlier this year, I wrote about teaching empathy, and whether you are a parent who does so. The idea behind it is from Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist with the graduate school of education, who runs theMaking Caring Common project, aimed to help teach kids to be kind.

I know, you’d think they are or that parents are teaching that themselves, right? Not so, according to a new study released by the group. (Chat with Weissbourd here.)

About 80 percent of the youth in the study said their parents were more concerned with their achievement or happiness than whether they cared for others. The interviewees were also three times more likely to agree that “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member in class and school.”

Weissbourd and his cohorts have come up with recommendations about how to raise children to become caring, respectful and responsible adults. Why is this important? Because if we want our children to be moral people, we have to, well, raise them that way.

“Children are not born simply good or bad and we should never give up on them. They need adults who will help them become caring, respectful, and responsible for their communities at every stage of their childhood,” the researchers write.

The five strategies to raise moral, caring children, according to Making Caring Common:

1. Make caring for others a priority

Why? Parents tend to prioritize their children’s happiness and achievements over their children’s concern for others. But children need to learn to balance their needs with the needs of others, whether it’s passing the ball to a teammate or deciding to stand up for friend who is being bullied.
How? Children need to hear from parents that caring for others is a top priority. A big part of that is holding children to high ethical expectations, such as honoring their commitments, even if it makes them unhappy. For example, before kids quit a sports team, band, or a friendship, we should ask them to consider their obligations to the group or the friend and encourage them to work out problems before quitting.
Try this
• Instead of saying to your kids: “The most important thing is that you’re happy,” say “The most important thing is that you’re kind.”
• Make sure that your older children always address others respectfully, even when they’re tired, distracted, or angry.
• Emphasize caring when you interact with other key adults in your children’s lives. For example, ask teachers whether your children are good community members at school.

2. Provide opportunities for children to practice caring and gratitude
Why? It’s never too late to become a good person, but it won’t happen on its own. Children need to practice caring for others and expressing gratitude for those who care for them and contribute to others’ lives. Studies show that people who are in the habit of expressing gratitude are more likely to be helpful, generous, compassionate, and forgiving—and they’re also more likely to be happy and healthy.
How? Learning to be caring is like learning to play a sport or an instrument. Daily repetition—whether it’s a helping a friend with homework, pitching in around the house, or having a classroom job—make caring second nature and develop and hone youth’s caregiving capacities. Learning gratitude similarly involves regularly practicing it.
Try this
• Don’t reward your child for every act of helpfulness, such as clearing the dinner table. We should expect our kids to help around the house, with siblings, and with neighbors and only reward uncommon acts of kindness.
• Talk to your child about caring and uncaring acts they see on television and about acts of justice and injustice they might witness or hear about in the news.
• Make gratitude a daily ritual at dinnertime, bedtime, in the car, or on the subway. Express thanks for those who contribute to us and others in large and small ways.

3. Expand your child’s circle of concern.
Why? Almost all children care about a small circle of their families and friends. Our challenge is help our children learn to care about someone outside that circle, such as the new kid in class, someone who doesn’t speak their language, the school custodian, or someone who lives in a distant country.
How? Children need to learn to zoom in, by listening closely and attending to those in their immediate circle, and to zoom out, by taking in the big picture and considering the many perspectives of the people they interact with daily, including those who are vulnerable. They also need to consider how their
decisions, such as quitting a sports team or a band, can ripple out and harm various members of their communities. Especially in our more global world, children need to develop concern for people who live in very different cultures and communities than their own.
Try this
• Make sure your children are friendly and grateful with all the people in their daily lives, such as a bus driver or a waitress.
• Encourage children to care for those who are vulnerable. Give children some simple ideas for stepping into the “caring and courage zone,” like comforting a classmate who was teased.
• Use a newspaper or TV story to encourage your child to think about hardships faced by children in another country.

4. Be a strong moral role model and mentor.
Why? Children learn ethical values by watching the actions of adults they respect. They also learn values by thinking through ethical dilemmas with adults, e.g. “Should I invite a new neighbor to my birthday party when my best friend doesn’t like her?”
How? Being a moral role model and mentor means that we need to practice honesty, fairness, and caring ourselves. But it doesn’t mean being perfect all the time. For our children to respect and trust us, we need to acknowledge our mistakes and flaws. We also need to respect children’s thinking and listen
to their perspectives, demonstrating to them how we want them to engage others.
Try this:
• Model caring for others by doing community service at least once a month. Even better, do this service with your child.
• Give your child an ethical dilemma at dinner or ask your child about dilemmas they’ve faced.

5. Guide children in managing destructive feelings
Why? Often the ability to care for others is overwhelmed by anger, shame, envy, or other negative feelings.
How? We need to teach children that all feelings are okay, but some ways of dealing with them are not helpful. Children need our help learning to cope with these feelings in productive ways.
Try this
Here’s a simple way to teach your kids to calm down: ask your child to stop, take a deep breath through the nose and exhale through the mouth, and count to five. Practice when your child is calm. Then, when you see her getting upset, remind her about the steps and do them with her. After a while she’ll start to do it on her own so that she can express her feelings in a helpful and appropriate way.

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Friday, May 8, 2015