Sometimes the closest people to us are the hardest to communicate with.

We want so much to help them that we don’t realize our well meant advice is perceived as criticism.

Communication is a two way street. A message is sent and received and then sent back as it was perceived.

But have we really understand the meaning of their message.

Written communication is also easy to misunderstand. For example;

If I write a comment on someones serious article and then put LOL, they may be offended.

They don’t realize something in their article has made us sad andtrying to cheer myself up.

If all parties could always say, I am sure they only had the best of intentions, then hurt feelings would cease.

Human nature sometimes makes us think the worst of others rather then giving them the benefit of a doubt.

Good communication is effective if it is two way both the one listening and the one speaking.

must be accountable in making their words clear and free of stress.

Each person must listen actively by using open ended questions or feedback because,

without feedback there is no effective communication. Verbal communication also includes;

tone, pitch and the pacing or speed of our speech. There is also non verbal communication.

By this I mean attitudes and physical gestures, such as rolling of the eyes or frowning etc.

Lets really hear with a caring attitude and listen in a non judgmental way.

1.   Your boss looks at you with his demon eyes.  He gestures for you to come into his office at once.  He breaks a pencil while doing it.

2.   Your mother-in-law announces that she is coming over to your house this afternoon.  She plans to wear her rubber gloves and do a complete cleanliness inspection.

3.   Your hair is falling out.  Baldness is taking over.  Wrinkles are invading your forehead.  All of a sudden, you have a sudden urge for a laxative.

4.   You bet $2,000 on your football team to win.  They are losing by the score of 84 to 0.  It’s only half time.

5.   You’ve just gained twenty pounds on your sure cure diet.  Your doctor is shaking his head when he looks at your waistline.

6.   You’ve just received a letter from the IRS.  It is marked in deathly red.  The word AUDIT is in bold print.  Your life is over.

7.   You’ve been cheating on your wife.  You’ve just been discovered.  You can’t think of any good excuses.  You bury your head in the sand and hope no one is looking.  Your wife is holding a lamp over your head.  In a moment, it will be lights out.

8.   You’ve just gotten into a major car crash.  Fortunately, you are healthy.  Unfortunately, you failed to renew your auto insurance policy.  Plan on riding to work on a bike for the next ten years.

The thing that people need to remember is that these exams are here to test the success of the school, not the success of each of the children individually. This is why so many of the teachers push the children as hard as they possibly can, because they know that a poor result would reflect badly on them, and this is something that obviously they don’t want as it would be bad for their career as a teacher.

Some of the schools that I know set far too much work for the children. Whereas a child should be set half an hour each evening at that age to cover everything including reading, spelling and maths, children around the time of their SATs are being made to work for four or five hours each day, which is far too much for a child of that age. If the child does not do the work, then they get into trouble for it and might miss break and lunch times in order to catch up. This is the very time that the child should be playing outside with their friends without a care in the world, not sitting in the classroom catching up on work that they really don’t want to do.

A lot of teachers are worried about the exams, and rightly so as they are a measure of how well the school is doing, however they allow this worry to be perceived by the pupils which is something that is compeltely and utterly unacceptable in my opinion. Teachers should be putting the children at ease, not making them worry about things that have to be done whether they’re stressed out about it or not.

If a teacher has taught a child well throughout their education, then really, there should not be any need for revision. SATs are not like GCSEs where there is a lot of information to get through in one go. There are simple questions which test just the things that the children should be able to do automatically by that stage of their education. By forcing a child to do more homework than they have ever had to do in their life, they are making them stressed, and no child should have to be put under that amount of pressure at such a young age. 

There has yet to be a study that can find any solid link between violent video games and people committing violent acts. So do video games really make us more violent? Youth violence often gets blamed on video games, but not other violence. In fact, violent video games may even reduce aggressiveness by acting as a safe outlet for anger and stress.

The battle over violence in video games has been going on since the 1970’s, when a game called Death Race was released. The purpose of the game was to run over “gremlins” that many claimed looked too much like humans. Ironically, people protested by dragging Death Race machines out of arcades and burning them, that is violent in itself. Almost every time there is a major violent crime, the blame is placed mostly on video games, especially when youth are involved. There have been many attempts to pass legislation against violence in video games, with few being successful. In 1994 the video game industry voluntarily established the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to try to avoid government involvement. As video games continue to become more realistic, so does the concern of the effects of such graphic violence.

One of the biggest concerns most people have about violence in video games is how they affect youth. Parents are concerned that children are playing video games that are too violent for their age. Whether violent video games effect teens and adults or not, many fear that younger children may be more easily influenced by the violence. If this is true, it should be the parents’ choice and responsibility to decide what they allow their children to play. Letting your child play with knives may not be in their best interest either, but there is no specific law against that. It is just common sense that the parents would not give knives to their child. Since there is little research that effectively decides if violent video games affect us, it is the parents’ choice to make. Video game historian Keith Feinstein notes that: “the Columbine shooters played with pipe bombs in their basement and no one stopped them from playing Doom. But no one stopped them from building pipe bombs in their basement, either”. As for the rest of us, we will not be turning into mass murderers anytime soon. Research has found some negative effects of video games pertaining to violence and aggression, but these effects are minimal, and are comparable to many other sources of violence in our society, “some media-violence researchers recently published an article suggesting that reading passages from the Bible with violent content increases “aggression” in much the same way that video games supposedly do. So if video games have to be restricted from children, apparently so do at least some portions of the Bible”, “And, of course, videogames aren’t the only pastimes that could lead to aggression: dodgeball, paintball, and a bad beat in Texas Hold ‘Em can heighten arousal, too. Dr. Vincent Mathews, a radiologist at Indiana University who has studied the brain’s response to violent video games, suggests that the effects of these other activities would be comparable. “I would think that paintball or dodgeball would show similar results,” he says. “But no one is calling for these games to be banned””.  We are surrounded by violence, so why pick on one source that is no worse than the rest?

There has been a lot of research done to try to prove violent video games do make us more violent. Many claim that their results show this is true. However, most studies have produced varied and inaccurate results. Publication bias is a huge issue, “Admittedly, publication bias (the tendency to publish articles that support a hypothesis and not publish those that do not) is very likely a widespread problem in the social sciences and is not unique to video-game studies”. In my own research I found it more difficult to find articles defending video games than I did articles that accused video games of more than just making us more violent. Publication bias can also be linked with over exaggeration, “social scientists may be too prone to make big and frightening pronouncements from weak results”. Other studies have been flawed due to factors like using outdated video games, “Reading the fine print in the Dill and Anderson study, for example, reveals that the researchers used outdated, mismatched games and required an absurdly brief amount of actual playtime from the subjects”. In addition, for some reason there has been very little long term research done. How can we possibly determine the effects video games have on us if we do not conduct studies that last for more than an one or two hours at a time? If there were to be any drastic effects of playing violent video games they would not all be instant. Dr. Dmitri Williams of the University of Illinois said “You can’t study people for 20 minutes and know what’s going to happen to people in society 10 years later”. Another obstacle that hinders any research done is the inability to replicate or allow for actual acts of serious violence. Although it would be effective, we can’t give test subjects a loaded gun and see what they’ll do with it after playing a video game for 10 minutes.  ”We can’t have people assault, rape, or murder someone” in the lab, says Dr. Brad Bushman, a University of Michigan psychologist who studies the effects of media violence. After sorting through all the studies that have been done, and take the above issues into consideration, there remains no significant proof of any link between playing violent video games and becoming more aggressive or violent, “My meta-analysis concluded that there was no evidence to support either a causal or correlational relationship between video games and aggressive behavior”.

            If video games have been accused of making us more violent for many years now, and no one has successfully been able to prove it, why are we still worried about it? To fully understand where this fear of violent video games came from, you must first understand who the people that have this fear are. Looking back in history, there has always been something that parents of a certain generation were afraid of because they thought it would harm the youth of that generation, “Like Elvis in the 50s, or Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, videogames are still viewed as the dangerous scourge of youth culture”. It is mainly the last generation, who are unfamiliar with video games that blame them for the youth violence they see on the news. Many are intimidated of video games because they do not understand them and the complex culture and effects that surround them; “when people are frightened, oversimplifying a complex problem becomes attractive as a quick, easy fix to an otherwise imposing cultural barrier”, “it is the underlying technology that frightens older generations who can’t comprehend the fast changing mechanics shaping the way the world interacts”,”They do not understand the modern language. They become frightened of what they do not understand.” says video game historian Keith Feinstein. What a lot of people have forgotten is that it is not just youth who are playing violent video games. Many people in their twenties and thirties have grown up with video games and continue to play them. However when there is a violent crime committed by an adult, no one questions if video games are to blame, “We are for some reason more interested in violence when it is committed by young people. But we didn’t ask what kind of music and video games Tim McVeigh [the Oklahoma City bomber] was into” said Sociologist Karen Sternheimer, specializing in pop culture and youth at the University of Southern California. This is the perfect example of how we can blame video games for our problems without looking at the bigger picture. Violent video games have essentially been stereotyped.

One thing I have found odd about all this video game controversy is that we have overlooked our own intelligence. If we are smart enough to conduct studies about their effect on us, then are we not smart enough to know when a game is a game, and not to try to relive it in real life? “Video games, like the rest of the media, form a faceless specter that we have called into being with our own internal desires for sex and violence, yet can turn against when we need a straw man to blame for our own recklessness”, maybe we need to stop blaming video games, and take a look at ourselves: “people who had previously filled out questionnaires reflecting an even-keel personality were less aggro after playing a violent game. Those who had a more aggressive disposition were more susceptible to these heightened emotions”. So there is hope for our intelligence yet, it seems that violent people are more affected by violence in video games. Thus one can assume that people who commit violent crimes are just violent people, not mindless killers brainwashed by Grand Theft Auto. So what does that make the rest of us who play video games? Normal, “The British Board of Film Classification conducted a survey that found that “the violence helps make the play exhilaratingly out of reach of ordinary life…. Gamers seem not to lose awareness that they are playing a game and do not mistake the game for real life.”.

            What if we have this backwards? What if, instead of thinking violent video games causing us to replicate that violence in real life, replicating violence in video games actually stops us from committing said violence for real? It is not a completely absurd thought. Maybe when we are angry and feel like punching the next person who says something to us, we can go blow someone’s head off in a video game and that will take the anger away. Although it probably depends on the type of person you are, I fully believe that taking your anger out on video games is very effective, as well as safe. I personally can relate to this. I also find playing all video games relaxing regardless of the level of violence in them. Now some people may agree with this, some may not, but there is one thing that may support this actually being true, “The numbers do not lie. Violent crime is down, but violence in video games is up”. Violent crimes have been going down over the same time period where video games have been growing more popular and more violent. No one knows if this is because video games help prevent real world violence or if the two facts are unrelated and just a coincidence, but how can video games be making us more violent if the facts prove the opposite? “Could you imagine how far the debate on global warming would have gotten if the earth’s atmospheric temperatures were decreasing while pollutants were being released?”

            With all the research that has been done, it is still unclear if video games do make us more violent. What we do know is, if there are any effects at all, they are minimal. Since it remains a matter of opinion, the only thing we can do individually is make our own personal decision on what to play, and what to allow our children to play. Researcher Craig Anderson, chair of Iowa State University’s Department of Psychology said it best in my opinion, “It’s society, not science, that must decide how to deal with the negative effects of violent video games”. Is this going to stop me from playing video games with violence in them? No, so if you don’t mind, I will now go back to peacefully playing Call of Duty.

Students look at a section of the exposed Wasatch Fault, a classic normal fault located in North Salt Lake, Utah. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It was their clothes

The length of their dress to the floor

Whether they were a boy or girl

The victim’s fault all plaster on the news door

It was their sexy manner

That causes their problems

By being in the wrong place and scene

It the victim’s fault that many folks see

The ability to say what on your heart

Or act in a manner that question your behavior

That places you in the victim’s image

It is your fault so just forget it

Your fortune is you’re alone

Because your destiny is in someone else hands

No need to cry society’s woes

To blame the victim is so easy now

The victim’s fault with no time for foes

Look away and close your eyes

There no need to hear the victim cries

Mercy for none and pity for less

The victim is a person under today stress

Recent explore scientists at La Trobe University in Melbourne Continent indicates, crapulence five or many cups of tree per day can direction to hallucinations. In one enquiry, volunteers who drank alkaloid altissimo levels of audile hallucinations. They demand to be heard chanting as if the punishment, but the song was not played.

The scientists describe that alkaloid is a typewrite of hallucinogenic substances are victimised widely. According to them, this research indicates the importance of warning of a eudaemonia essay if exhausted to redundant brown.

“The compounding of caffeine with a disposition to stress can refer a organism experiencing psychosis-like symptoms,” said Academic Economist Crowe, from La Trobe Lincoln.

In his explore, Prof Crowe involving 92 volunteers experiencing punctuate that is healthy neither sick nor big. Volunteers are also relinquished varied types of tree with caffeine levels motley. As umpteen as 15 proportionality of the volunteers reported experiencing hallucinations or delusional experiences such as opportunity voices, sightedness phantoms, or seek the telepathy.

“If you guide the emphasise and drunk levels of alkaloid, you may be experiencing something that is not factual, see things that are not there,” said Crowe.

It seems likely that there would be an automated recovery process that happens during certain stages of sleep to save us from ourselves. Sure, there are those who engage in substance abuse in order to find relief from stress, which often ends up being counterproductive. Then there are those who use more proactive methods such as Yoga, meditation, music and so forth.  Even when a person spends many hours awake without any type of rest, the body will begin to dwindle and it becomes less and less capable of supporting itself. The body will eventually force itself to sleep in order to restore its vitality.

It said that dreams happen during the REM stage of sleep. REM standing for Rapid Eye Movement. Maybe the rapid movements are associated with the brains attempt to synchronize with the constant imagery that happens during dreams. Out of all the physical senses, the eyes are the highest receivers of sensory input. Could REM be a physical interpretation of the data being sent from within a dream as its applied to various areas of the body with a healing effect? Maybe this process can be tuned and applied in ways that would afford a person longer periods of wakefulness; Even direct those healing energies to a specific area altogether.

Cover of Reducing Stress (Essential Managers)

I’ve written often on the advantages of meditation; it calms the mind and body, reducing stress which can cause illness, and improves the quality of life. Scientists have now, however, discovered that meditation might actually alter the way your brain is constructed and wired, leading to better reasoning and cognitive abilities.

For half a century, researchers have been studying the effects of meditation on the mind and body, and they have discovered that the frontal lobes of those who meditate are thicker than in those who don’t meditate.  The frontal lobes of the brain are the seat of the higher order functions of concentration, focus, goal-directed behavior, impulse control, and higher order reasoning.  The thicker and more folded the areas of the brain, the better signals are passed, and the better that region functions, therefore, those with thicker frontal lobes would ordinarily reason better than those without. This is another way of saying, folks, that people who meditate are not only calmer, but smarter, than other people.  They are more self-aware and in control of their physical and emotional reactions than other people.

Scientists have shown through research that people who meditate for 30 minutes per day for eight weeks have measurable changes in gray matter density, with increases in the hippocampus; the region associated with reasoning; and decreases in the amygdale; the region associated with anxiety and stress.  Just how and why these changes take place are not clear, but the evidence is conclusive; people who meditate have thicker brains in the areas that have a positive impact and thinner in the areas that cause trouble.

The bottom line here is; if you want to have a calmer, healthier, more productive life, one of the things that should be added to your regimen is a daily period of meditation.

Anxiety is a standard part of the divorce process. Indeed, stress is usually under acknowledged by divorcees as the top reason for troubles. Too often, people key in on anger and depression complaints, rather than investigating some fairly basic things they are able to do to deal with pressure. Comprehending how pressure has an effect on you may help you to properly and successfully navigate the divorce process. 

Stress is essentially our reaction to change. It is more complex than that, but at the core of almost all stress is change. There are occasions in our life when we ought to be anxious. Those times typically revolve around vital life adjustments such as death of a loved one, occupation modifications, moves, modification in standard schedule, health related challenges, and alterations in family make up. Plainly, divorce can bring some or all of these modifications to the table. So, it makes sense that tension plays a necessary part in the entire divorce experience. 

Knowing what’s happening with you may help you to choose the right system to cope with things. When important change enters our lives, control turns into an important part of the equation. Once we feel out of control and helpless, tension levels usually rise, and truly you will discover few life instances outside of divorce where you are going to feel more powerless. Needless to say, when somebody feels out of control, they have a tendency to attempt to control something or many things. Regularly, divorcees and kids in divorce make an effort to control what is occurring around them, and very routinely they make an effort to control other people.

Controlling what you can will make a difference. The more things you place with each other, the more control you feel you have of your life, even when many significant things are beyond your control. Therefore, the next time your ex is doing something you do not enjoy, your divorce attorney fails to return your email, and your child refuses to follow your directions, take a moment to control some things you might deal with and your anxiety levels will inevitably drop. The largest mistake you can make is trying to control issues that are beyond your control. Understand those things that are beyond your power and do not make an effort to alter them. You will have more success when you are sensible about what can be controlled and what cannot.

When you are going through a divorce, your first resource for information on dealing with stress, including the names of counselors, will be your divorce attorney. You should make every effort to talk with them what you are experiencing so that they may provide effective service to you.

Author:

Garrett Law Group, PLC in Virginia Beach, VA. (757) 422-4646

Virginia Beach Divorce Lawyers

Virginia Beach Divorce Lawyer

“Come on! It is just part of growing up!” This is what an adult might say to a child if a child complains about being teased at school. Teasing is not usually harmful when done in a friendly and mutual way, and when both kids find it funny.  However, when teasing becomes hurtful, unkind, and constant — it already crosses the line into bullying.

Bullying is a deliberate act. It is a desire to hurt or threaten or frighten someone. These usually verbal harassments can come in the form of words or actions. It can be done by one person or more, and can vary in the degree of severity. It can be an “on-and-off” thing, but it usually involves repeated actions by a child or a group of children. It can range from hitting, shoving, name-calling, threats, and mocking to extorting money and treasured possessions. Some kids bully by shunning others and spreading rumors about them. Others use email, chat rooms, instant messages, social networking websites, and text messages to taunt others or hurt their feelings. It can be one or a number of these, however, verbal abuse is the most common form of bullying.

Being a victim of bullying can cause emotional and psychological damage. The effects of ongoing bullying can be long-term, with the harm to the health and well-being of the bullied person lasting into adult life. It damages self-esteem, increases anxiety and can cause serious depression. Bullies are more likely to continue with the aggressive behavior and engage in delinquency and violence.

Research shows that bullying can have long-lasting effects, but particularly when it begins in adolescence. People subjected to either verbal or physical bullying are known to be at greater risk for developing depression, anxiety disorders or to behave violently. But not everyone reacts in this way. Children bullied for the first time before they hit puberty seem to get over it, but those who are victimized for the first time late on in puberty seem to become more aggressive or are more likely to turn to drink as a means of coping. People who were bullied revealed slightly higher levels of stress, but while those bullied earlier in life seemed to respond normally to provocation, people bullied for the first time late in puberty are more withdrawn and sensitive to violence.

Bullying is a significant problem in schools and is associated with a range of problems, including poor mental health and violent behavior. Other studies have shown that bullies are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior later in life, particularly assaults and rapes. A research also shows that victims of bullying experience headaches, stomach aches and colds more often than students not involved in bullying.

Research into the source of bullying from the perspective of the bully has also begun to focus on vulnerability. Many researchers have suggested that bullies are often themselves victims of bullying and that they may be repeating a pattern of the learned abuse. Equally, it has been suggested that they may be projecting dislike or anger with themselves onto others.

If a child approaches an adult and talks about being bullied, focus on offering comfort and support. Children are often reluctant to tell adults about bullying. They feel embarrassed and ashamed that it’s happening. They worry that their parents will be disappointed. The best solution in all cases is strong social support, whether from friends, family or school. Those with no one to share their problems with usually suffered the most. 

True, that bullying is part of growing up, but bullying can be as upsetting for a child and a family, however, there are a lot of people and resources that are available to help.