This one is an oldie but a goodie. In fact, after a recent teasing incident this book was read to all the kids in my daughter’s school-followed by a discussion. This book does double duty-it is fun, has beautiful illustrations and packs a powerful message without hitting you over the head.

Take a look at

Giraffes Can’t Dance

and share it with your kids, your kids’ schools and anyone who will listen.!

With respect
Deb

Halloween has become a BIG holiday. The Wall Street Journal reported that Americans will spend over $3 Billion (yes, billion) on Halloween costumes, decorations and other Halloween paraphernalia.

And if my unscientific survey of elementary school girls is any indication it seems that a significant portion of that money will be used to procure Hannah Montana costumes.

I got a chuckle the other day, when my daughter and her friends (all of Asian decent) discovered they were all going to be Hannah for Halloween. The girls starting laughing as the each modeled Hannah’s signature long blonde wig and ‘became’ Hannah. One girl said, “a Chinese Hannah Montana?” They’ll never believe this.”

I am hoping that we will be able to get a photo of the Hannah’s at the annual Halloween party…I am sure Hannah would be proud.

Have a great weekend.

With Respect,
Deb

On Monday, people in 33 of our 50 United States celebrated Columbus Day. Of course, this immediately begs the question “what happened to the other 17 states?” Do they know something we don’t? Or is it purely a bureaucratic oversight?

Not knowing the real answer, I started to look into Christopher Columbus’s story. I had grown up singing “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, thinking that Columbus had, in fact, discovered American.

As it turns out, Columbus ‘discovered’ land that was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of native people that had arrived in what is now the Americas, around 800 BCE via the Bering Strait. Not only that, but Columbus made four trips to the New World,was arrested in his own colony and sent back to Spain in disgrace.

His fourth and final trip brought him within 9 miles of his goal of reaching the Pacific Ocean to get to China and India, but his stubbornness and arrogance caused him to turn around. He didn’t believe the native people knew an overland route to the Pacific.

Columbus was greedy and an incredibly bad leader-his own men and the indigenous people couldn’t stand him. He died broke and forgotten in 1506.

Wow! Who knew? I had always held Columbus in the highest esteem-a hero even. But faced with additional information, I had to revise my position. Columbus, far from being a hero was a failure and by all accounts a miserable guy to be around. Not only did he not find a trade route to the “Indies”, and fail to find the amount of gold he promised Ferdinand and Isabella, he was imprisoned in his own colony and was an all around jerk!

Of course, he was a brilliant sailor and navigator and his contribution to our world is enormous, but at the very least Columbus was a complex dichotomy. Maybe even a bit of an enigma.

With this new information, my bias about Columbus and his endeavors-which up until now were positive-have shifted. I can not just accept the information I was taught as a kid. I must face the fact that there is more to Columbus than meets the eye.

Hmmmm, this sounds familiar doesn’t it. We develop biases based on data that may or may not be accurate and we own them. Ok, we are human. The question is what do we do when faced with additional and/or conflicting information. Do we rigidly hold onto your old beliefs or do you modify based on the new information?

I am suggesting that we teach our children to evaluate their biases and beliefs as new information comes their way. When it comes to the biases that can lead to bullying, rigidity is not something we want to promote.

So, if an when my daughter comes home humming a tune about Columbus, I will tell her the entire story-the good and the bad-and let her make her own judgement about Columbus.

With Respect,
Deb

PS: Max got out within hours of my triumphant announcement that I had fooled him. Back to the drawing board.

Sometimes lessons can come from the most unusual places!

I can sometimes feel a bit like trying to change the course of a river. I look around me and wonder, “am I really making progress”, or “can we really make our future bully-free?”

Yes, there are times that I want to give up and let it be someone elses problem.

But then, something happens.

What happened this time was Max.

Max is our 2 year-old beagle-poodle mix-we call him our designer dog gone bad as Max was in a puppy mill waiting with his head on the chopping block. Max is one determined dog. He likes to roam. I have spent more days and more money trying to keep Max safe and in the yard. Yet Max always finds a way out.

Oh, I can keep him in for a while but eventually he finds another escape hatch and I have to find out where it is and then how to patch it up so that he can’t escape.

You have to hand it to the dog, he just doesn’t give up. There are times when I think he is smarter than I am-or maybe he is just focused on one objective-exploring the neighborhood.

Today, I found his latest path to freedom and spent some time putting up yet another piece of fencing. So far, he appears to be flummoxed, but I know that someday soon he will be visiting his friends on the other side. He just will keep looking and sniffing until he is successful.

This lesson from Max couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It can get tiring and frustrating to carry the bully-free future flag.

But like Max, I am going to keep looking and sniffing-focusing on one child, one school and one community at a time. I know that we can successfully eliminate bias and bullying.

Won’t you join me?

Where do your lessons come from?

With Respect,
Deb

Do you remember that great children’s book-Are you my mother?-where a baby bird falls out of its nest and goes looking for its mother. The baby bird stops to ask the cow, dog, and even a steam shovel if they are its mother. They all tell it no, and he keeps on searching until, lo and behold, he finds his mother-and she is a bird.

But let’s rewrite that story just a bit. A weak and sickly baby macaque monkey is abandoned by his mother. He was found, near death, and brought to an animal hospital. where a white pigeon literally took him under her wing and ‘mothered’ him.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what people look like that we forget that we don’t have to look like anyone to be loved. And isn’t that what we all want-to be loved no matter how we look? Isn’t that the message you want to send to your children?

I know that I do.

With Respect,
Deb

Everyone can relate to this story….it came from http://www.all4humor.com/jokes/kids/index.html

A man observed a woman in the grocery store with a three year old girl in her basket. As they passed the cookie section, the child asked for cookies and her mother told her “no.” The little girl immediately began to whine and fuss, and the mother said quietly, “Now Ellen, we just have half of the aisles left to go through; don’t be upset. It won’t be long.”

He passed the Mother again in the candy aisle. Of course, the little girl began to shout for candy. When she was told she couldn’t have any, she began to cry. The mother said, “There, there, Ellen, don’t cry. Only two more aisles to go, and then we’ll be checking out.”

The man again happened to be behind the pair at the check-out, where the little girl immediately began to clamor for gum and burst into a terrible tantrum upon discovering there would be no gum purchased today. The mother patiently said, “Ellen, we’ll be through this check out stand in five minutes, and then you can go home and have a nice nap.”

The man followed them out to the parking lot and stopped the woman to compliment her. “I couldn’t help noticing how patient you were with little Ellen…”

The mother broke in, “My little girl’s name is Tammy… I’m Ellen.”

So the next time your child is whining and complaining, remember this story…and it might make you laugh.

With Respect
Deb

If you NOT convinced that how we say and do things-even unwittingly-are picked up by our kids, read these REAL stories below…

A little boy was doing his math homework. He said to himself, ‘Two plus five, that son of a is seven. Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine….’ His mother heard what he was saying and gasped,’What are you doing?’ The little boy answered, ‘I’m doing my math homework, Mom.’ ‘And is this how your teacher taught you to do it?’ the mother asked. ‘Yes,’ he answered. Infuriated, the mother asked the teacher the next day, ‘What are you teaching my son in math?’ The teacher replied, ‘Right now, we are learning addition.’ The mother asked, ‘And are you teaching them to say two plus two, that son of a bitch is four?’ After the teacher stopped laughing, she answered, ‘What I taught them was, two plus two, THE SUM OF WHICH, is four.’

It was that time, during the Sunday morning service, for the children’s sermon. All the children were invited to come forward. One little girl was wearing a particularly pretty dress and, as she sat down, the pastor leaned over and said, ‘That is a very pretty dress. Is it your Easter Dress?’ The little girl replied, directly into the pastor’s clip-on microphone, ‘Yes, and my Mom says it’s a b-tch to iron.’

Have a great weekend.
With Respect,
Deb

I spent most of yesterday in technology hell!

It was ugly-but not as bad as these true computer questions collected from different sources:

1. Who do I remove a banana shoved in the optical drive?

2. My laptop was run over by a bus. How long will it take for you to fix?

3. You mean that pop-out tray is not a cup holder.

4. I dropped my cell phone in my kid’s chocolate milk and it got sticky, so I washed it in the sink. Then it was wet and I put it in the oven to dry. Now it doesn’t work and I can’t figure out why.

5.My floppy disk that won’t stay in the disk drive, so I used Superglue to keep it in the drive.

Unfortunately, technology sometimes gets the better of us. But, not to worry, there is always someone who is less technical than you!

Have a great Labor Day Weekend (in the US). I will be back on Tuesday.

With Respect,
Deb

Stereotypes go both ways. They can be positive, i.e. all tall men play great basketball, or negative, i.e. Chinese people can’t run fast, but they are great at sports that require skill like gymnastics or diving.

I seriously didn’t make these examples up! In fact, in the last Olympics a Chinese hurdler won a gold medal-much to the shock of the Chinese press who cautioned the home-country fans not to get too excited because the Chinese-by some genetic fluke-just can’t run as fast as other people. Imagine the surprise when that man crossed the finish line first!

Take a look at this one…and remember kids need to be taught stereotypes!

From “Overheard in NY”

Teacher: And Montana–
Asian girl, interrupting: –Wait, isn’t Montana somewhere near Germany along with Maine?

–Bronx Science

Overheard by: LSB

Have a great weekend.

With Respect,
Deb

Enjoy the weekend.

I hope this gets you off to a good start!

With Respect, Deb

FROM Overheard in New York

Very Similar To The Sound of Hands Clapping

Father to Little Boy: You really don’t have to talk all the time
Little Boy: But I don’t.

Father: Oh, really?
Little Boy: Yeah, I don’t talk in my sleep.

Father: How do you know that?
Little Boy: When I am sleeping I can actually hear myself not talking!