How to Raise a Child, Teach Your Children Well

 It would be easy, on first glance, to dismiss Madeline Levine’s “Teach Your Children Well” as yet another new arrival in a long line of books that have urged us, in the past decade or so, to push back and just say no to the pressures of perfectionistic, high-performance parenting. But to give in to first impressions would be a mistake.

For Levine’s latest book is, in fact, a cri de coeur from a clinician on the front lines of the battle between our better natures — parents’ deep and true love and concern for their kids — and our culture’s worst competitive and materialistic influences, all of which she sees played out, day after day, in her private psychology practice in affluent Marin County, Calif. Levine works with teenagers who are depleted, angry and sad as they compete for admission to a handful of big-name colleges, and with parents who can’t steady or guide them, so lost are they in the pursuit of goals that have drained their lives of pleasure, contentment and connection. “Our current version of success is a failure,” she writes. It’s a damning, and altogether accurate, clinical diagnosis.

Levine’s previous book, “The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids,” opened with the image of a “bright, personable, highly pressured” 15-year-old girl with wealthy parents, who seemed, on the surface, to have it all. But a glimpse at her forearm revealed that she had also carved the word “empty” into her flesh with a razor. Teenagers like this, and adoring if preoccupied adults like her parents, haunt the pages of “Teach Your Children Well.”

One academically talented girl in Levine’s care is knocked off her feet by self-loathing and grief after she’s rejected from a particularly desirable college. She “lies in bed for days,” Levine writes. “She will not get up, and when I visit her at home, all she can say through her streaming tears is: ‘It was all for nothing. I’m a complete failure.’ ”

Other kids cheat, take drugs, drink, shut down or, worse still, keep up their tightrope act of parent-pleasing, Ivy-­aiming high achievement while quietly, invisibly dying inside. “The cost of this relentless drive to perform at unrealistically high levels is a generation of kids who resemble nothing so much as trauma victims,” Levine writes. “They become preoccupied with events that have passed — obsessing endlessly on a possible wrong answer or a missed opportunity. They are anxious and depressed and often self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Sleep is difficult and they walk around in a fog of exhaustion. Other kids simply fold their cards and refuse to play.”

Levine has spent 30 years with these unhappy children, as a therapist and a mother of three sons who attended high-pressure schools. And now, it would seem, she’s had it. She’s had it with schools that worship at the altar of high achievement but do everything they can to undermine children’s growth and well-being: eliminating recess; assigning mind-deadening amounts of homework; and ranking, measuring and valuing kids by narrowly focused test scores, while cutting out other areas of creative education in which large numbers of students who don’t necessarily test well might find success and thrive. And she’s had it with parents who profess to want nothing more than “happiness” for their children (“Kids laugh when I tell them that their parents don’t mention money as a measure of success; they think I’ve been snowed,” she divulges) while neglecting the aspects of family life that build enthusiasm and contentment, and overemphasizing values and activities that can actually do harm.

These are parents who run themselves ragged with work and hyper-parenting, presenting an “eviscerated vision of the successful life” that their children are then programmed to imitate. They’re parents who are physically hyper-present but somehow psychologically M.I.A.: so caught up in the script that runs through their heads about how to “do right” by their children that they can’t see when the excesses of keeping up, bulking up, getting a leg up and generally running scared send the whole enterprise of ostensible care and nurturing right off the rails.

This message — that, essentially, every­thing today’s parents think they’re doing right is actually wrong — is the most noteworthy take-away from the first two-thirds or so of this book, which otherwise spends a bit too much time consolidating and restating (without, unfortunately, adequate footnotes or in-text credits) a great deal of previously published wisdom on the dangers of ­winner-take-all parenting.

Source: nytimes.com

 by Madeline Levine

Food for life and life of food

Food is the basic requirement of the life. It can be considered as the most required thing for the life. Food provides with the essential energy for the functioning of the body and acts as nutrition. There are many possible types of food habitats in the world. Some are of herbivorous type as they eat vegetables and grains and cereals etc and do not eat any form of flesh or non vegetarian items. Some are non vegetarian food eaters as they have the food consumption in the form of flesh of chicken, mutton and fish etc as well. Non vegetarians are habitual for both types of food habits as they eat vegetables, grains and cereals with flesh. With such food habits, people get their regular supply of nutrition and energy. Each food item has its specific amount of which it should be eaten. More of that amount may cause some trouble in digestion. Normally very few people know about the specific amount of the food one should consume. That is the reason why one must follow specific way of eating the food in which the amount and procedure of consumption need to be understood and should make it like a habit. Here are some tips that can makefood fun:

Allow toddlers to touch and feel their food. This is part of the learning experience and helps develop a positive attitude to a nutritious diet which in turn promotes healthy eating habits.

Children respond to different colours and shapes, so supply them with a mixture of foods in all textures, colours, shapes and sizes.

Use different types of bread to make sandwiches. For example: one slice of white and one slice of wholemeal; wraps; or mini rolls. Offering variety helps children develop healthy eating habits.

A healthy childhood diet should include a variety of fruits and vegetables and the following ideas can help make them attractive to children.

Make a face with salad vegetables on a plate (e.g. cucumber slices as eyes, grated carrot hair, cherry tomato nose and celery mouth). This is fun and can contribute to child’s healthy diet.

For breakfast, always ensure that fresh fruit is available for your child. Healthy eating starts with the first meal of the day. You can add banana, sultanas or apple to their cereal or simply cut up different fruits and serve them in a side bowl.

Fruit and vegetables make healthy snacks for your child’s lunchbox. Snacking on a bag of celery or carrot sticks or a bag of small tomatoes instead of a bag of chips offers children healthy eating alternatives.

Use avocado as a substitute to butter in your children’s sandwiches or dried biscuits and always try to include a vegetable in their sandwiches.

Snack time at school should be exciting for your children. Healthy eating can become a treat if you provide a range of textures and colours in their food. Children respond to new and exciting sensations. Provide them with an assortment of colours such as slices of cheese, apple, carrot, sultanas, watermelon, grapes and strawberries.

Have a visible bowl of fruit available for your children. Healthy eating habits will increase if fruits and vegetables are the closest option available when your children are hungry.

Offer fresh fruit in preference to fruit juice or processed fruit bars.

Children’s healthy eating habits will stem from the subtlest changes in their diet. When they ask for a snack before dinner, offer beans, snow peas or carrot and celery sticks rather than pre-packaged foods.

Offer your children a choice of three or four vegetables with dinner. If they are able to choose the vegetables they are served, they may be less likely to refuse them.

It is important that you introduce a variety of fruits and vegetables from a young age.

  

Even though it is possible to restore the strength of digestive fire and the process of digestion, at the same time disorders caused by the improper way of food habits, one should always try to follow the proper way of food consumption so that the body should get the necessary nutrition, strength and energy for good functioning and better life.

Future foods: What will we be eating in 20 years' time?

Volatile food prices and a growing population mean we have to rethink what we eat, say food futurologists. So what might we be serving up in 20 years' time?

It's not immediately obvious what links Nasa, the price of meat and brass bands, but all three are playing a part in shaping what we will eat in the future and how we will eat it.

Rising food prices, the growing population and environmental concerns are just a few issues that have organisations - including the United Nations and the government - worrying about how we will feed ourselves in the future.

In the UK, meat prices are anticipated to have a huge impact on our diets. Some in the food industry estimate they could double in the next five to seven years, making meat a luxury item.

"In the West many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat," says food futurologist Morgaine Gaye.

"Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap."

So what will fill such gaps and our stomachs - and how will we eat it?

Insects, or mini-livestock as they could become known, will become a staple of our diet, says Gaye.

It's a win-win situation. Insects provide as much nutritional value as ordinary meat and are a great source of protein, according to researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. They also cost less to raise than cattle, consume less water and do not have much of a carbon footprint. Plus, there are an estimated 1,400 species that are edible to man.

Sonic-enhanced food

It's well documented how the appearance of food and its smell influence what we eat, but the effect sound has on taste is an expanding area of research. A recent study by scientists at Oxford University found certain tones could make things taste sweeter or more bitter.

"No experience is a single sense experience," says Russell Jones, from sonic branding company Condiment Junkie, who were involved in the study. "So much attention is paid to what food looks like and what it smells like, but sound is just as important."

Lab-grown meat

Earlier this year, Dutch scientists successfully produced in-vitro meat, also known as cultured meat. They grew strips of muscle tissue using stem cells taken from cows, which were said to resemble calamari in appearance. They hope to create the world's first "test-tube burger" by the end of the year.

The first scientific paper on lab-grown meat was funded by Nasa, says social scientist Dr Neil Stephens, based at Cardiff University's ESRC Cesagen research centre. It investigated in-vitro meat to see if it was a food astronauts could eat in space.

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In the beginning it will taste bland... we will need to work on the flavour ”

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Could vegetarians eat a 'test tube' burger?

Ten years on and scientists in the field are now promoting it as a more efficient and environmentally friendly way of putting meat on our plates.

A recent study by Oxford University found growing meat in a lab rather than slaughtering animals would significantly reduce greenhouse gases, along with energy and water use. Production also requires a fraction of the land needed to raise cattle. In addition it could be customised to cut the fat content and add nutrients.

Algae

Algae might be at the bottom of the food chain but it could provide a solution to some the world's most complex problems, including food shortages.

It can feed humans and animals and can be grown in the ocean, a big bonus with land and fresh water in increasingly short supply, say researchers. Many scientists also say the biofuel derived from algae could help reduce the need for fossil fuels.

Some in the sustainable food industry predict algae farming could become the world's biggest cropping industry. It has long been a staple in Asia and countries including Japan have huge farms. Currently there is no large-scale, commercial farm in the UK, says Dr Craig Rose, executive director of the Seaweed Health Foundation.

"Such farms could easily work in the UK and be very successful. The great thing about seaweed is it grows at a phenomenal rate, it's the fastest growing plant on earth. Its use in the UK is going to rise dramatically.

                                                                                                                                  Source:-

                                                                                                                                  By Denise Winterman

                                                                                                                                  BBC News Magazine