Ski Racing: Your First Days Back on Snow
Greetings from beautiful Loveland, Colorado, where the air is thin, snow is amazing (kudos to John Hale and his crew!), the nights are cold, and the days are warm and sunny (in other words, ideal conditions for early season skiing). I’m out here this week and again next week working with racers as they put […]
Read MoreHealth: The Scary Connection Between TV and Life Expectancy
I just read a sobering study that found that television watching, which is one indication of a sedentary lifestyle, has a significant negative impact on life expectancy. Read about the study here.
Read MoreParenting/Popular Culture/Technology: Are Media Creating a Generation of Narcissists?
The externalization of children’s self-identities caused by the omnipresence of popular culture and social media today, that I discussed in my last post, has resulted in an unhealthy internal focus on the self among young people these days. Do you recall the story of Narcissus? The handsome fellow in Greek mythology who, because of his […]
Read MoreParenting/Popular Culture/Technology: Is Facebook Creating a False Self in Your Children?
In my last post, I described how new media is causing the externalization of children’s self-identity. The result of this externalization may be your children developing a false self, in which they internalize the messages of popular culture and media, such as valuing themselves based on their wealth, appearance, or popularity, and those messages become […]
Read MoreSki Racing: “Money in the Bank, Baby!”: Final Prep for Race Season
It’s hard to believe that we are only weeks away from the start of any ski season. The snow guns are blasting in Colorado and I will be on snow with athletes in ten days. For some of you, I’m sure you’re excited to be able to snap into your skis again after being off […]
Read MoreParenting/Popular Culture: Media’s Externalization of Your Children’s Self-identity
“To all of Chris’ friends: This is his father. My son carelessly left his account logged in so I decided to snoop around. Upon reading my son’s personal information, I would like to clear a few things up. My son is not a ‘gangsta,’ he will not ‘beat a ho’s ass’ and he will most […]
Read MoreParenting/Popular Culture: The Disturbing Sexualization of REALLY Young Girls
Whenever I think popular culture, and the companies that control it for their own profiteering ends, has gone as low as it can go in its wanton disregard for basic decency in general and children in particular, it always seems to find a way to dig deeper within itself and discover new depths to plumb. […]
Read MoreSports: Young Athletes Forced to Choose Between Club and High School
I see this dilemma constantly in youth sports. Young athletes who aspire to be the best by playing on a club team, but also want to enjoy the competition of high school sports, must often choose one or the other. Is it fair? Is it necessary? Here’s a great article that describes the conundrum that […]
Read MoreSports/Business: Is Goal Setting Over-rated?
I’ve have found it to be so. Here’s an interesting take on goal setting:
Read MoreGive Your Children the Gift of an “Unmediated” Life
I want to provide you with a “big picture” sense of the kind of life that I believe your children should lead during their formative years. This life should result in their developing into children who have both the “old-school” values, attitudes, and tools and the “new-school” skills (i.e., technology capabilities) that will enable them to thrive in the 21st century.
Unmediated Life
At the heart of this life that I advocate for is that your children should live a largely unmediated life in which they can have direct access to their experiences. When I talk about unmediated, I intend it in two ways. First, so many children these days are forced to view their world through the “lens” of popular culture, whether the things they eat, wear, or play with that have merchandising tie-ins or simply the presence of popular culture in everything they see, watch, read, and listen to. It doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to see how these popular culture filters would have a significant impact on how your children come to view themselves and their world. You want your children to see themselves and their lives unencumbered by these lenses, in which they can experience life in a pure and unbiased way, allowing them to decide for themselves on its meaning and how it might affect them.
Second, as the research on the astonishing amount of time that children spend in front of screens suggests, so much of their day is spent viewing the world through a screen, whether television, computer, video game console, or smartphone. As I will describe shortly, this mediated experience—a screen is always between them and life—has significant limitations with real implications on their development. You want your children to experience most of their life directly without what are really virtual representations of life as rendered through a screen.
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