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The two things… There are two things that a driving instructor emphasizes to their students that they must avoid doing while driving: hitting a pedestrian and rear-ending another car. These two things can immediately put you at some fault. In our lives there are also two things we must avoid at all cost. Once we avoid these two things, we will see our performance and accomplishments increase. They are excuses and regrets. When we use excuses we attempt to exonerate our actions for a particular reason. If we go through life not needing excuses and accepting responsibility, we find ourselves doing the necessary things that require no excuses. When concerning regrets. We often look back on things that we feel we could've exercised better judgment. If we learn to scrutinize our decisions today and align those decisions with our futures we can easily have less to regret. If we don't implement these two practices in our daily lives we can find ourselves easily charged with failure to yield, stop, following to closely or perhaps more serious charges like involuntary mentalslaughter. ~Devin Robinson
Are teachers failing the kids of our community? Many would argue that teachers are not being as effective as they should be and this is leading to the increased problems with the youths today. With the recent tragedies such as, the Columbine killings, the Virginia Tech Massacres, increased dropout rates, teacher/student sex and yes, those teachers that only became teachers for the summer breaks and other work schedule perks, to the naked eye it really would seem like teachers are corrupting our kids. But let's not let our eyes be naked. Teachers have a great responsibility and limited resource. Education's competition is now 2007 activities and technologies such as video games, Hollywood, music videos, drugs, glamorous lifestyles, sex, etc, yet classroom education is still delivered in the format of decades ago.
This is not the fault of teachers, in many cases their hands are tied. Quite often, teachers have the responsibility of between 30-200 students. Parents don't. Do you see where I'm headed? Teachers must abide by the lesson plan and are typically not given textbooks to teach on important life issues, such as values, ethics (personal and corporate), long-range financial planning, conflict resolution, team-building, criminal statistics, etc but parents can teach these lessons at leisure. Get my drift? I know teenagers are the most difficult demographic to deal with. This is because they are the least bright. They are too old to teach but too young to know. This is the age where conceit takes shape. This is when habits are formed that ultimately shapes their futures.
However, we, as a society, cannot only focus on the act of reproducing kids and neglect the act of producing adults. Many of our kids remain kids their entire lives. They live at home with their parents forever because they were never properly approached and coached. This is a team effort but the parents are the team captains. Teachers' jobs are to apply institutional education but parents must apply intuitive education. The competition (glamour and glitz) is distracting the kids. But if we keep shifting the responsibility, we can expect to not get a response from the children! ~Devin
Watch what you emit! The state Georgia has a requirement for vehicles before they can obtain an annual approved registration. Each vehicle must undergo something called “Emission Inspection”. At these stations, a state certified emission inspector places the vehicle on a mechanism that inspects the emissions of the vehicle. It checks to see if the exhaust the vehicle is putting out is clean and pollution free. The pollution can be so minute that the driver is not aware that he or she is actually polluting the air. (In some cases, the smoke can be seen coming from the driver’s vehicle but the driver doesn’t realize it because his exhaust in the rear of his car and only the driver’s behind him is suffering.) If the vehicle is emitting pollution, the vehicle fails. The vehicle cannot head to the Department of Motor Vehicles for registration unless the vehicle passes this point. You can in fact be emitting pollution and not even know it. Your son or boy around you can be choking from your exhaust. You are in front of the child. He is coming up after you (or behind you). Your muffler can be so toxic that he can hardly see what is in front of him. All he can equate to life is smoke and choke! If you are emitting poor work ethics, a negative attitude, low performing lifestyle, the entitlement mentality, the whoa-is-me attitude or the anger from previous wrong, you will in fact place those values on your young boy. He may either acquire those attributes or be negatively groomed to view life pessimistically. You want to watch what you emit because when you finally stop or slow down as your vehicle ages, you will feel the blunt of your exhaust as it seeps through your vehicle’s windows and doors! In recognition of Ivan Pavlov’s Conditioning theories, there are few things you want to do with your son.
1. Follow through on all punishment. Never send an empty threat. If you breathe the threat, follow through the punishment. Children are much more forgiving than we give them credit for. Adults hold longer, deeper and greater grudges than children and sometimes we believe our children are capable of what we are capable of. Trust me. A 16 year-old boy is just that, a boy. He is still correctable and would prefer you to not only correct today if it saves his life tomorrow.
2. Give Direction. Correction without Direction is a poor Selection and ultimately leads to Condemnation. Don’t just be the Warden of your home. Be a counselor as well. Ensure your son understands why he did something wrong and why he needs to go in the direction you are pointing him into.
3. Never negotiate with terrorists. If he is insisting on participating in risky behavior and is seeking your approval, by no means should you negotiate. The backlash to this is, if his risky behavior costs him severely he will blame you for allowing him to be involved with it. Always be an opposition to his potentially harmful acts. These include, having his girlfriend sleep over, possessing a firearm, driving a car without a license, underage drinking, etc.
4. Give him time not gifts. Sometimes we make the mistake of substituting our presence with presents. Your son isn’t always about fashion and fame. Though he may even believe this, time spent with you will prove to be the greatest fashion statement of his life.
5.
Show Compassion.
Compassion and being a Crutch are two different things. Your son can be
using being a rebel, as a defense mechanism while deep down inside he
needs you emotionally due to some challenges he may be facing in his
life. Once you take these five enumerations into consideration then apply them consistently, you will be able to instill a stable conditioned force in him that proves you are not wavering in actions. He will know what to expect and his expectations will be perceived to be in his best interest. The expectations may not always be in his favor but at the end of the day, they will be in his best interest. ~Devin Robinson
Perhaps our worst enemy… The Babirusa Pig is an interesting animal. It is in the family of pigs and an endangered species. Unlike, regular pigs, it has tusks that grow upward from its bottom teeth toward its skull, opposite direction to that of an elephant. This pig is a delicacy to many aggressive predators (research which ones). However, its threat is not only from the predator. It also preys on itself. Its tusks can grow so long that it can pierce into its own skull and kill it. Like the Babirusa Pig, we are not only at risk from outside elements; we too can be a deadly threat to ourselves. Are bad habits keeping you broke? Do you have a destructive addiction? You are committing one or more of the seven deadly sins to your neighbor or yourself? Being able to realize where our threats are coming from and how we are at risk can be the first step to establishing the necessary protection to us. Extract and discard the threat. Do a root canal. This will lead to more pleasurable lives and give us the advantage we need to avoid accidental endangerment. ~Devin Robinson
Solution for Poverty, Solution for Race…
According to the book
Stupid Black Men, written by Larry Elder, a professor emeritus of
UCLA named James Q. Wilson did a research and then stated, "You need
only do three things to avoid poverty in this country. Finish High
School, marry before having kids and produce the child after the age of
twenty. Only 8 percent of families who do this are poor: 79 percent of
those who fail to do this are poor." His study was conducted on a
mixture of races. This made me think. |