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| Saturday, March 29, 2008 |
| Kids And Energy |
Im not sure why, maybe because its summer, Im getting a lot of questions and stories about kids and energy. Ill put them all under that broad category but there have been several different subcategories discussed: kids and ADHD, kids and anger management, and kids and computers.
Kids and ADHD
Lets start with kids and ADHD. There seems to be a big trend here in the US of drugging our children so they can control their behavior in school. I am NOT in favor of this practice.
Why is there such an epidemic of ADHD diagnoses in our children? I dont want to oversimplify but I believe one reason is that our children dont have the opportunities they had in previous generations to run around and expend their energy.
In years past, kids got to play in the parks, in the streets and in their own yards. Today, that happens less and less. Parents are too afraid to allow their children to be outside unsupervised, and rightly so! There are predators out there who would do your children harm. However, kids still need to expend their energy, somehow.
So, many times the activities available to them at home are sedentary, such as playing video games, watching television, talking on their cell phones or using the home computer. None of this provides opportunity to release energy, unless your children are like my niece who paces vigorously while talking on the phone.
Then we send them to school and expect them to sit down and be quiet. In addition, many schools are reducing the amount of physical education time for our kids and Ive even seen recently that some schools forbid children to run at recess or use certain playground equipment because they fear of physical injury lawsuit. Is it any wonder our children are having difficulty?
Now I know there are parents and teachers out there who have stories of children who have been helped immensely by the addition of Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta or Dexedrine to their daily diet. If you know a child who is being helped by his or her medication, Im not saying to discontinue it but for every child who is being helped, I believe there are at least three others who are still exhibiting all the ADHD behavior the medication was designed to reduce.
There have been studies done on placebo medications that show that in double blind studies, when neither the patient nor the doctor knew whether the patient was getting the actual drug or the placebo, the ones getting the placebo actually did better. Is it possible there is a placebo effect with some children?
If your child displays what you or the teachers believe is an excessive amount of energy, do your best to create situations where that child can expend energy. I have two boys who could both have been diagnosed with ADHD as children. They were very physical. Luckily, I lived in the country during a time when parents sent their kids out the door to simply play. I also spent a lot of my spare time running them around to different athletic eventsYMCA soccer, wrestling, flag football, T-ball, basketball, you get the idea. This definitely helps.
Kids and Anger Management
I spoke with a woman over the weekend whose son is 10 years-old and she says has anger management issues. We didnt really get into his specific behaviors but it caused me to reflect on some inherent differences between males and females.
I think that from very early on, boys and girls deal with their anger differently. As a general rule, girls need to talk about it to feel better, while boys need to work it out physically.
So if you have daughters, you want to teach them verbal skills to be able to work out their frustrations but with boys, you will need to provide opportunities for them to work out their anger physicallymaybe with a punching bag, racquetball, running, or martial arts. The list of possibilities is truly endless but dont expect your boys to talk about it, at least not until theyve had the opportunity to release the anger in a safe physical manner.
Kids and Computers
This week, a mother contacted me about her child disobeying her limits with the home computer and sneaking time beyond her allowed limit.
In this situation, the mother had a need to protect and nurture her child. She wants to be able to loosely supervise her daughters time on the computer to possibly prevent her from falling prey to adults who victimize children by finding their victims on the Internet. She also wants to support her childs need for physical activity so she restricts her computer usage and encourage outside physical activities instead. Is this mother wrong? Absolutely not.
Her daughter, on the other hand, has a desire to be on the computer. All her friends are on there and want to know why she isnt. They dont have limits while this girl does. This girl is quite accomplished on the computer and can build website pages for her friends. She also has a high need for freedom and doesnt like being restricted and the computer is plain fun to her. She gets her love & belonging, power, freedom and fun needs met with the computer. Is she wrong? Absolutely not.
How does it get resolved? I think the way to resolve this issue is for the mother and daughter to sit down and talk about what each other needs and wants in the situation. If the child can convince her mother that she has the skills and knowledge necessary to protect herself from predators and she agrees to engage in other healthy activities each day, then her mother could relax her restriction on the amount of time she has on the computer.
In this case, and many others like it, the daughter wouldnt be able to meet her freedom need with the computer if there wasnt a rule to break. Sometimes we create the very behavior we are trying to stop with the rules we make. When a person has a high need for freedom, they will inevitably break the rules, particularly the ones they dont like or that dont make sense.
Parenting is one of the hardest jobs youll ever do and the stakes are incredibly high. We all do the best we can and hope for good results. Fortunately, when we have good intentions are kids generally survive in even thrive.
Kim Olver has a graduate degree in counseling and works with parents and children helping them with their communication skills ultimately leading to an improvement in their relationships. Sign up for her free teleclass Empowerment Parenting at http://www.therelationshipcenter.biz/EmpowerParenting.htm.
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see more at Randy Blue | 10:51 AM 
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| Breed Profile: American Quarter Horse |
The jury is still out on whether the American Quarter Horse is the first breed to be produced on American soil. Regardless, if it wasn't the first horse to be bred here it was certainly one of the first, and its history traces back to before the earliest days of the American colonies, back to the official royal breeding farms established here by the Spanish.
Today, according to the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA), there are more than 4,000,000 Quarter Horses registered worldwide, and approximately 150,000 Quarter Horse foals registered each year.
The Quarter Horse has a rich and varied pedigree, including Spanish Barbs, Colonial mid-Atlantic Quarter-Pathers, English Thoroughbreds, Andalusians, Mustangs, and Rhode Island Racing Stock, to name just a few.
While the Quarter Horse was established before the English Thoroughbred could have a significant influence on early breeding, the greatest influence on early Quarter Horses was Sir Archy, a distance horse to whom many of the greatest 19th and 20th century Quarter Horses can trace their lineage.
While Quarter Horses were initially used to race in shorter style races on the eastern seaboard, the longer, four-mile heats that came into fashion in the 1850s pushed the Quarter Horse to the sidelines while leggier horses such as the Thoroughbred prevailed. The Quarter Horse may have all but died out if settlers moving West hadn't capitalized on the strength, quickness, and athleticism that made them naturals for pulling wagons and plows, managing livestock, and doing ranch work. As cattle ranching became in indispensable industry in the United States, so did the Quarter Horse.
Quarter Horse range in height from 14.2 hands to 17 hands, and typically weigh 1,000 to 1,500 pounds. The Quarter Horse is known for its short, fine head with small, alert ears and alert eyes set wide apart. The profile of the Quarter Horse is usually straight. The neck of the Quarter Horse is well-muscled, well-formed, and a bit arched. Well-defined withers are set prominently into a short, straight back. The croup is usually strong, muscular, and rounded, and drops subtly to the haunches. The wide, deep chest and long, muscular, and well-sloped shoulders are other characteristics of the Quarter Horse. The legs of the Quarter Horse are usually solid and well-formed, with very muscular thighs, gaskins, and forearms. The joints are broad and clean. Quarter Horse feet are usually strong and sturdy, though they can sometimes be smaller than body size warrants.
The most common color for Quarter Horses is sorrel, which makes up about one-third of all registered horses. The AQHA also recognizes bay, black, brown, chestnut, dun, red dun, grulla, buckskin, palomino, gray, red roan, blue roa, bay roan, cremello, and perlino.
White markings on the face and lower legs are not only permitted, they are quite common. AQHA does not allow white above the knee or hock, and white body patches are also not allowed.
The fact that Quarter Horses started out as short-distance race horses on the East Coast, moved to the West to specialize in ranch work, and now excel in every discipline imaginable is testament to the breed's amazing versatility. While the breed is still best suited for ranch work, short distance racing, cutting, and reining, you can find Quarter Horses in the hunter jumper, dressage, park saddle, pleasure, and trail disciplines. Quarter Horses also have wonderful, willing, and calm temperaments and are good for riders of all ages and abilities.
Ron Petracek is the founder of Equine Internets vast 15 site classified and social network. You can view its amazing size here Http://www.equineinternet.com/network.php or to further your equine habit please visit our forum by clicking here http://www.horsechitchat.com/equineforums and start posting Need to sell a horse or tack? place a free ad here http://www.click4equine.com and always the barn door in left open on purpose.
Cflwaves
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see more at Randy Blue | 10:50 AM
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