Neuro Enhancement

Written by Jeff Schoener

Fear without reason?  Bravado without awareness?

Much of society will get hung up upon obsessing with who is at fault.  Victim empathy often leads to newspaper sales.  In this witch-hunt of victim and victimizer, we can easily get lost in the facts and then fail to realize the issues.  Letting our children run wild with only partial lessons makes it even more difficult for young ones to figure life out.  There are ways for a child to learn about dangers and at the same time teaching them flexibility in their thoughts and behavior in order to navigate through the trials of life.

Earlier a young boy in Utah was found alive in the woods.  He might have been found earlier still if his parents understood the way he learns and would have taught him a more valuable lesson on who is a stranger and who is an individual who is attempting to help.  He might have been found sooner if he would have recognized that people were not attempting to do him harm.  He could have looked for a badge and then made his presence known.  He also might have learned the difference between when he is at play and when he is in more serious trouble.  This could be why people don’t always ask for help when they are in trouble and they fail to learn the difference often when it is too late.

For weeks news from Aruba made the front pages because a girl went missing.  Tragic yes, and all parties are seeking answers.  Who is responsible?  Is it the people who may be involved in foul play?  Perhaps it was the girls’ responsibility to listen to her friends and perhaps even her parents’ advice.  In my humble opinion, the responsibility lies with the girls’ parents.  Even though she had turned 18, here is a young woman, who with limited life experience and with the only true self worth of that of what she had already accomplished in the halls of academia.  Her parents, while well meaning, failed in her most important lesson.  What was her value to herself?  This will explain why she went off with strangers on the final night of her high school class trip.

This single dimensional thought and action process limits us all.  By claiming not to have the time, experience or the wherewithal to imagine all possibilities and work through each, no matter how seemingly silly will help to bring awareness as well as character to the front.

The responsibility lies in the way we learn to communicate with to our children.  If we are limited in our understandings, we limit them and perhaps also put them into harm’s way.  They are young people who are far cleverer than we wish to give them credit.  They learn how to deal with life through the role models that we give them.  They observe how we handle conflict and resolution and will generally latch on to similar patterns.  They grow up and then teach their children in the same way they were taught.

While it is the role of each of us to model and embody the behaviors that we would instill in our children, many times we fail.  What we intend to say and to teach is often times a different message as it is received.  The phrase ‘You know what I meant’ may not always apply, as your communication skills may fall short.  How different would life be as we became aware of how our messages are being received?  Imagine a world where husbands and wives understood each other, where laughter came easily and fear of crushed egos would no longer be an issue of any sort.  Children would be happy, innocent and aware.  Political correctness would become a thing of the past because we would be human friendly without being over sensitive.  A good relationship, it has been said, begins with good communication.  I strongly suggest exquisite communication, if not for each other, for the sake of the children.

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