Kids, Home and Nature

The lifestyles of families and children are changing as exercise and activities in the fresh outdoor air decline.

As a kid I couldn't finish supper quickly enough so that I could go outdoors to play softball in the vacant lot or join the street hockey out front. There were many near zero cost, fresh air activities like roasting marshmallows at the back of the lot or exploring the neighborhood with the other kids that were always out doing something. There were an endless number of things to do and we seemed never to be bored; and it was pretty well all healthy. As we grew older there was fishing, hiking, swimming, skiing and hockey using up our free time and none were very costly.

Much of these pastimes would continue for many years and the memories too. In the winter there was an outdoor rink one block from home where we skated and played hockey in the evenings. As the temperatures were often well below freezing we regularly made trips to the adjacent wood hut where a pot bellied stove was humming. With our skates off we would rub our toes to ease the thawing as we chatted.

This kind of fun is still occurring in varied ways with families today, where they are able to, and inclined to make it happen. But it has also been made much more difficult. There are parents' busy days with work and commuting, so often required to maintain the 'in' lifestyle, for those that are tuned in to this very common trait in our society. Some sports can be an expensive part of kids' healthy entertainment today, but there are activities out there requiring little or no expense. Meeting in the park or on the road with a neighbor family for casual chat or to kick the ball around, Hiking or playing any outdoor game or working on a garden or other project with family can often be of no interest to many, yet such a valuable event going forward in life.

In the 40s we were also missing out on so much that is available today. We didn't have all these conveniences and technology, some of which are so wonderful, like the home computer. Having owned one for 25 years I would not want to do without.

Health wise perhaps some of the new wonders are not so wonderful, especially when the time that it consumes does not include outside exercise, learning, mixing with friends nor involve family time together. Being addicted to video games for example, does not add any value to one's life as this can gobble up hundreds of hours, but in small doses can be very entertaining.

Television is another story as the young, and old too, are often glued to the box for many hours a day. There are many drawbacks to watching stretched out programming that pumps commercials into the room telling us all about what we are missing and must have. Sadly many kids today may be stuck at home with this electronic companion.

In Green Living Ideas Reenita Malhotra Hora provides insight and suggestions in an interesting article:

Eco Kids, the Sustainable Generation
As you integrate green living choices into your own life, you might be wondering how kids fit into the equation. What does it really mean to have a "green kid?" Greening your children is about going beyond the things that you do to create a green lifestyle for your family—it is really all about education. Today’s kids will soon rule tomorrow’s world. The best that we can possibly do to prepare the next generations is to consistently teach them about the green living values that are critical for their own survival. After all, they do share a common future with our planet.

It goes on to list tips
Outdoor Education with green kid activity ideas.
Travel Time and exploring nature ideas.
Green at Play - giving kids some positive directional suggestions.
Green Media Toolbox - make less use but good use out of TV.

Above all, have your kids do as you would do yourself. The truth is kids learn more from there their parents than anyone or anything else—if living green is important to you, then rest assured they too will pick up the habit. You are without doubt the most important person in their life, and chances are they will want to do what you do. Remember though, you won’t have them for a very long, so while you do—teach your children well!
more . . . . Read the article by Reenita Malhotra Hora at Green Living Ideas.

This article is a revision and extension of an earlier post as per Article Blogs and Reposting.
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Selling Bad Health to Kids

Only in a mean society.

The marketing of cheaply produced, unhealthy junk food to kids is another blight on our prosperous society. It does not make sense: advertising and selling food products that are known to cause health problems later in life - directly to children.

How is this acceptable to caring people?
Where has the corporate friendship and ethic gone?
Why aren't governments more concerned about kid's lives?

I do not believe that the fault lies entirely with parents. Partly because they may have been brainwashed too, after many years of being subject to the massive corporate persuasion efforts. But the finger is commonly pointed to moms and dads, especially by business when confronted about their crude marketing tactics. Parents should know all about unhealthy food choices and the grief that can follow later in life, and they should educate their kids. But there are armies of advertisers with a wide ranging supply of tricks to conscript tots and teens to a life of poorer health with such as diabetes and stroke.

This is free enterprise but it is a flawed and cruel system if it can be used in this way. Allowing big business to reap profits from promoting product sales that knowingly cause personal harm should be severely restricted or made unlawful. But the will of politicians does not seem to be there. There is always the commercial connection popping up when there is discussion about troubling situations and government's lack of positive action on an issue.

Governments and corporations of this era will not be looked upon favorably in the history books.

Picture the big juicy burger with added cheese and dressing, or a tall, icy, sugar laden refreshment - appearing repeateadly during youth and child TV programming.

How about the cereal aisle in the supermarket, cartoon alley easily gets the attention of the little ones.

The continuous efforts of marketers are coming through strongly to kids and adolescents via many hours of watching TV or surfing the internet. The cleverly designed ads also show up in print, on buses, food packages, clothes, toys, and wherever it will get good exposure to children. The young will eat it all up; they don't have the experience to know better. They are ripe picking!

With all the finely tuned slick methods marketers use how easy can it be for parents to compete with the onslaught on their young loved ones? Even with good intentions there is peer influence, all the other kids are into it. Yes it is possible but difficult, and requires serious effort.

The emphasis and pressures that corporations put on kids for current and future sales revenue is by far a most lucrative selling technique that many companies now rely on. Catch the kids young and hold them for life. Establishing brands for food, clothing and tech gadgets at an early age can last a lifetime - very profitable and increasingly popular with the big manufacturers.

Sugar, salt and fat, the big bad three in food, they taste good and bring in lots of money. These ingredients and other additives can be very unhealthy when consumed in excessive amounts, yet they are very commonly over used in packaged foods and in restaurants, especially fast food outlets. They can be there to preserve product or simply to enhance taste.

The junk food industry has produced an epidemic of childhood obesity and other serious ailments. Even with food related health problems now well known they keep rising as the greedy efforts to market and sell more continues. It is the most 'rewarding' strategy used for increasing profits now and well into the future. But why isn't this a crime?

And where is there a balance? Campaigns for healthy eating exist but big money is not behind them, it is directed to the merchandising strategies that make the quickest profit. One suggestion is make unhealthy food costlier through taxing, and good food cheaper with subsidies. But why is there no action?

Free enterprise needs adjustments to fix this and provide our kids, future parents, a life free of avoidable sickness.

Speak of it when you can.

A few resources.
There are numerous related posts on this site.

The FCIC has a nice site with informative articles: The Road to a Healthy Life. These are the basic guidelines for eating a healthy diet and being physically active and may be viewed online and downloaded from the Internet. Topics include:
Go back to your roots: Eat all types of healthful food each day!
Food groups, using the Nutrition Facts label.
Nutrition and calories count! How many calories do you need?
Physical activity, food safety, and more.

A Scripps Research Study Shows Compulsive Eating Shares Same Addictive Biochemical Mechanism with Cocaine, Heroin Abuse.

Short url to this page http://goo.gl/Qe0Et
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Sleepless Society

Sleep tips and resources in times of stress and worry.

In a healthy environment where there is good food, work and income, exercise and rest, nature and very few worries, a sound sleep should arrive easily every night. Many of those conditions aren't available to those participating in today's fast paced, never-have-enough social environment.

Sleep should be there for us to rest and re-energize for the following day, but it's not so easy for many. I have had my share of sleep problems, mostly when younger. In my experiences thoughts are the cause of toss and turn nights. Kicking around some upsetting or puzzling situation, past, present or ahead can be a whirring circle that does not want to stop.

These are the solutions to achieving adequate sleep that have worked well for me.

Trying to sleep has the opposite effect. I quit trying to go to sleep! Trying does not work!

Acceptance plays a big role in life once again. Accepting that a restless night is not be a big problem takes a great big load off my mind and quite often it's possible to carry on normally the next day with just that little bit of sleep. And even better, realizing that this is note a dire situation will so often result in a restful sleep just a bit later.

Counting very slow deep breaths is good because it is healthy and relaxing. Often it is difficult to get past 4 or 5 because that 'thing' keeps returning and then the turmoil is restarted.

Problems or worries need to be shut down completely at bedtime. I can think about that stressful experience - or I can sleep. It's a choice, sort of. It is a known fact that I cannot think of two things at the same time so a change of thoughts in order with recurring turbulences.

But changing thoughts to something pleasant and peaceful, real or imaginary, or dull and stationary can really work. A peaceful walk by a calm lake with still waters, or a speck on the wall can do it.

Yet holding on to calming thoughts may not always be easy and the worries can keep intruding if they are strong.

It might be necessary to concentrate on a topic that is not serene but not worrisome either, along with a change in physical position to make this work. It almost always helps me to shut down the agitating windmill completely when I get out of bed and do an easy crossword, watch some dull quiet TV, with or without a light snack. Even 1-2 hours lost from bed at 2am seems unacceptable at first, but if a solid sleep returns for the remaining few hours it's worth the effort to climb out of a warm bed. Often an hour's sleep just before rising can be very deep and satisfying.

Quietly relaxing in the latter part of the evening is most helpful in preparing for a restful sleep. Daily exercise, physical or mental, is part of a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately it can be very stimulating if done approaching bedtime and might create a wide awake state that will not unwind easily. Watching violent TV movies or upsetting news is not the right preparation either.

A soothing alcoholic nightcap relaxes but normally results in waking up a few hours later, and an alcohol induced sleep is not a relaxed sleep.

Note: This is not meant to be advice to others. It works well for me but underlying causes could be very serious and complicated. Professional help should always be a consideration as with all medical problems.

Other resources

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep has a series of articles:
Sleep: A Dynamic Activity
How Much Sleep Do We Need?
What Does Sleep Do For Us?
Dreaming and REM Sleep
Sleep and Circadian Rhythms
Sleep and Disease
Sleep Disorders
The Future
Tips for a Good Night's Sleep

The Mayo Clinic: You may not be able to control or eliminate all of the factors that interfere with your sleep, but you can create an environment and adopt habits that encourage a more restful night. Try these suggestions if you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep: 10 tips for better sleep.

Other Self-help posts here at S-F

Anti-Wrinkle Treatment

The New Anti-Wrinkle Treatment
by Mary Desaulniers

We are bombarded on all fronts with new anti-wrinkle treatments and new sophisticated skin regimen that are supposed to take years off the face—microdermabrasion, botox injections, face lifts and laser resurfacing. More than ever, we are harnessing the powers of technology to create a Brave New World of ageless boomers. And while I have no objections to wanting to look young (who doesn’t), I do think that being young is more a state of mind than a state of “looks.” Looks can be artificially manipulated; a state of mind can only be cultivated.

Even the word “cultivation” tells us that the process of staying young takes time. And time is something our society seems intent on making dispensable. Yet the best things in life take time. Think of your children through the lenses of the family album; it is the changes tabulated in those pictures that make them so rich in character and experience now. Time deepens the experience; time ages the moment by filling it with layers made accessible through memories. Without time, we are like ants—filled only with a pale and surface instant. Living the moment is a call for cultivating the layers of time within the moment.

And so with the face; the layers of time that wrinkle a face are tributes to its resilience. It has weathered the helter-skelter twenties and it has survived the frantic pace of the thirties (when most of us had full time jobs and children). The marks of having lived a life rich in love, struggles, failures and successes are written all over our faces and it is these we need to embrace because they are not signs that we need anti-wrinkle treatments, but signs that we have struggled, we have loved and we have lived. They are the marks of a life that is extraordinary in its ordinariness.

These marks on our faces are not the things we need to fear; they are not the signs of age. The signs of age that we need fear are those that speak of a life unlived—a terrified urgency to keep everything as is, a fear of learning new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things, a fear of going beyond right and wrong, or more specifically, a fear of understanding the world and its events from the heart without the prescriptive lens of right and wrong, a fear of change, of investing heart, mind and soul into someone or something lest it goes “wrong,” a fear of making mistakes, of having to start all over again because those mistakes showed you a new and different path, a fear of pitting yourself against the wisdom of the ages because you have a need, a passion to find out for yourself what is right for you.

I have seen age in twenty-something eyes and endless youthfulness in people over 70.

So what are my anti-wrinkle treatments?

1.Find something you love and pursue it to the end. Ignore all nay-sayers; just follow your heart.

2. Begin each morning and end each day with exercising your mind; a half hour or twenty minutes of meditation on all that is right in your world and what you have to be thankful for.

3. Cultivate the long-term vision; see the layers of possibilities within each moment in time; with such long-term vision you will never be unsettled by an individual event because you are open to what it will bring in its wake.

4. Eat healthy foods and exercise; a strong body will empower your sense of self so that you can sustain the courage to do what is right for you.

5. Honor yourself and honor the world and all that lives, breathes, moves in it (including rocks, trees and skies).

6. Honor your desire which is a calling for change. Most people dread change and end up on the sidelines wishing wistfully for something better. They have not learned to honor their desire. Desire as Dr. Lee Pulos states in “The Biology of Empowerment,” ”is the purest of potential seeking manifestation or change.” Be open to change.

Last but not least, know in your heart that you will have no regrets because being young is knowing that you can start all over again.


A runner for over 30 years, Mary is interested in the relationship between physical exercise and the creative self.
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