Walldren's World

The days between Christmas and New Year’s bring up lots of feelings. The wheels are off, so to speak, as the work year winds down and I become introspective about my birthday. Here’s an exploration of some of the thoughts on my mind as of late. The Viral Nature of Neuroses and Virtues Richard Dawkins coined the term ‘meme’ in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. As Wikipedia sums it up nicely, a meme is simply “a self-replicating unit of transmission”. I’ve often wondered “where does this feeling come from?” at different points in my life. Through this lens, emotions, ideas, and beliefs are like genes in that they are transmissible: passed down from person to person, family to family -- generation to generation. Someone or something put them in each of us and they inform the way we are able to cope with all kinds of situations in the world around us. Looking back on how I’ve viewed my life at different points in time, it’s interesting to observe how I’ve felt was colored by how peop...

Being a parent to two children under 4 and caring a great deal about how our kids turn out with respect to manners and courtesy, I am so glad my lovely wife devised a daily rewards system ritual for the kids. The Process The kids need to behave a certain way consistently throughout the day and perform specific chores in order to get stickers. These stickers go into a chart or grid and at the end of the day we review and provide feedback on how the day went. If they fill up their charts, then they get to pick anything they want from the "Treasure Box". The Template Each child gets his or her own chart. The tasks or behaviors are "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). Don't worry, we aren't trying to micromanage our children like the " anal retentive chef ". Here's a link to a PDF of our two kids' reward charts  if you're interested in trying this yourselves. The Review Process We tre...