Sara’s Weekly Update #4
Welcome to my newsletter! I write down my thoughts & opinions on the topics I read/watch in the last week. My topics of interests are wide, please feel free to skip to the topic you like.
Happy new year! Hope everyone had a good holiday break & charged up for 2023! Many things happened since I wrote my last newsletter, will highlight some of the things that caught my attention.
CES 2023 (#tech)
A couple of new EV cars are introduced, Ram 1500 & Sony/Honda Afeela are notable.
German Bionic Apogee looked interesting, it may help people who are doing physically demanding work be productive and not get hurt.
https://www.engadget.com/best-of-ces-2023-winners-220009997.html
Nvidia & Foxconn partnership is something interesting for me, as I work closely with the AV team in Nvidia. Foxconn is going to use Nvidia’s Drive Orin system for its Electronic Control Units.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/01/05/nvidia-drive-ai-transportation-ces-2023/
This one caught my eye too, it can let us know a lot about our health.
Speaker Election (#us-politics)
It’s a historic Speaker election! Usually speakers are elected in the first vote, but this time it took 15th vote to elect the Speaker. The last time this happened was in 1923, 100 years back! Trump still has great influence in the GOP, looks like he made some calls & convinced them to vote for McKarthy.
Jan 6 committee’s recommendations (#us-politics)
It’s a historic recommendation and I think the committee has done their job best at this difficult case. Pressure is on the DOJ, to vet the facts and see if it's not politically biassed and act on this. I am not a judge, but I always believe we need to have consequences if we do not want something to repeat. If we don’t want another Jan 6 incident, then people responsible for it have to face consequences. And this will teach lessons to others not to follow some of these footsteps in the future.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/23/1145209559/jan-6-committee-final-report
Update to the Electoral Count Act (#us-politics)
Good that they got this done! This might help stop another Jan 6 fiasco.
The update passed by the Senate would clarify that the vice president's role in the proceedings is purely ceremonial.
As it stands now, it takes just one member of the House and one senator to challenge a state's electors and send both chambers into a potentially days-long debate period, even without legitimate concerns. The new legislation would raise the threshold for an objection to 20% of the members of each chamber.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1139951463/electoral-count-act-reform-passes
School Shooting by a 6Yr old
Six year old shooting at a teacher intentionally, this is bad, very bad! Where does he get this idea from that he can shoot someone to hurt at this age? Is it because of too much violence in the movies & games? Easy access to guns? This needs to be studied to understand what influenced him to do this, so we can make sure these don't repeat.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/us/virginia-shooting-richneck-elementary.html
Have You Filled a Bucket Today?: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids (#book)
I was a little worried on seeing some of the behaviour from older kids these days and it felt like kids are so consumed with themselves and not thinking about others. Just then I started reading “How to raise a successful person” and the author said the same thing. Kids are trained these days to only think about themselves a lot. We parents ask the kids how much they score in the test, how they do in the sport, etc. This trains them to think only about their score. We had a Coffee time with Nila’s school principal and she was talking about how they use bucket filler systems to encourage positive characters. I immediately bought that book & read it, it puts it in simple terms on how to think about others feelings. Read it couple times with kids. There’s a lesson for me too. I need to fill other buckets and not drain them.
How To Raise Successful People (#book)
I read chapter 6, 7 & 8 in the last few weeks. here are some highlights
Don’t Dictate, Collaborate
Try to avoid nasty fights with your partner (count to ten) and certainly don’t have them in front of your child. But the annoyances and disagreements of daily life? Don’t hide them. Seeing how you deal with them is exactly what your child needs. Kids learn from observing people airing their grievances and coming to some resolution. Don’t hide the fact that you’re upset, but model how to disagree in a way that helps resolve the issue.
There’s no shortage of challenges that kids face on a daily basis. Every parent knows this: there’s always some kind of problem to solve. The best thing we can do for our kids is to guide them and support them in their decision-making instead of telling them what to do. We have to be patient, and we need to stop being so judgmental.
Children Hear What You Do, Not What You Say
A 2010 study published in Behavior Research and Therapy found that children whose parents modeled anxious behavior and thinking showed greater anxiety and avoidance behaviors on academic tests—exactly what I’ve observed over the years.14 Other studies show that children learn to regulate their emotions through observing their parents, and that if parents are able to express a wide range of emotions, children are better equipped to manage their own emotions. Your child really is your mirror, for better or worse.
One of the great gifts of parenting is that it makes you a better person. It’s challenging and frustrating at times, of course. You have to grapple with long-held beliefs and patterns. You have to confront things about yourself that you might not like. But in the end, the experience of being a parent transforms you. It’s the greatest opportunity available to us for positive change.
I agree to this ^^. I look at life with a different perspective now.
The best way to teach the importance of family is to have fun together. The more positive experiences, the more support the child feels. It can be just playing a board game, or going to the park, or jumping on a trampoline.
If you ask me, the single most important life skill we model for our children is our ability to have functional relationships with other people. The happiness we experience in life is determined by the quality of our relationships. This, perhaps more than anything else, sets our children up for success or failure as adults. For many of us, our most significant relationship is with a spouse or partner.
Kindness
We’ve fallen victim to the dominant style of parenting—helicopter parenting—that places no importance on kindness. Too many parents are focused on winning. Our main goal is to make our kids successful, and our main fear is that they can’t succeed without our help. We’re convinced that if they’re not perfect, they’ll fail in life, which is bad for them but even worse for our own anxieties and insecurities. When they fail, we fail—and we can’t let that happen. Kindness has disappeared from our parenting goals.
we’re paying a price by focusing on individual success and perfection. We are inadvertently raising narcissistic children who lack kindness and empathy. We don’t mean to do that, but that is what is happening. They don’t have time to think about other people: they’re too focused on performing. If they don’t excel, they might not receive the love and acceptance they need from you, the parent. How kind is that? So they funnel all their energy into succeeding, which might produce perfect grades but does nothing for their independence and sense of empowerment, let alone their kindness toward others. And when it’s all over, our kids end up entitled and self-obsessed in a society that values individual achievement above almost anything else.
Do you yell? Okay, we all yell at some point, but are you inadvertently teaching your children that yelling is an acceptable way of communicating? Do you curse but get mad when your kids use foul language?
Based on what I’ve seen, a lot of kids today don’t know what gratitude is. Perhaps it is because we are so focused on making sure our kids are happy. We do things for them all the time, and they take us for granted. One of the main issues that parents of teenagers have is that they regret having spoiled their kids by giving them too much. It is a common problem. The kids are not grateful for anything because they just expect all. They want more. It happens even in low-income families.
Family Updates (#family)
Holiday times are fun, gathering with friends, drinks, food & games.
Opening presents on the Christmas mornings are fun! Surya & Nila were waiting for their gifts for more than a month and they keep dreaming about the gifts and behave in best manners to make sure they are in Santa’s nice list :-)
Nila wrote what all the kids want for Christmas & stick it on their beds
Watched Christmas Chronicles & Home Alone with kids. And went to Avatar’s Way of Water with Nila, visually mesmerizing. She was afraid in some of the fight scenes but enjoyed mostly. As an Immigrant in different culture, I was able to relate to it so much & had tears in some scenes :-)
my favorite dialogues are
Wherever we go, this family is our fortress.
A father protects. It’s what gives him meaning.
And there it was. We are sea people now. This is our home. I can’t save my family by running. This is our home. This is our fortress. This is where we have our stand.
I got goose bumps on this last dialogue ^^