Something’s Gotta Give

July 22, 2020July 23, 2020 David DempseyLeave a comment

Kids have tantrums, awful displays of rebellion. As parents, we are forced to endure them. But why do kids resist in such a predictable fashion?

As a kid, let’s say you want to watch TV. But you need permission to watch it. There are two wills at war, the kid and the parent. And only one can win. Either you end up watching TV or you don’t.

If the parent caves, the kid learns that his will is stronger. So instead of giving in, he could amp up his efforts of resistance. Because if he didn’t get what he wanted yet, He must not have pushed hard enough.

If the kid caves, he learns that the parent’s will is
stronger. There is no reason to amp up resistance, because he knows he will lose.

So next time you’re engaged in a battle of wills, remember what tapping teaches kids about you. Something’s gotta give, just don’t let it be you.

Asking Why

May 25, 2019May 21, 2022 David DempseyLeave a comment

We get annoyed when kids say it, but it’s the most important word in the English language. Why? Because it enlightens.

If your kid asks you why they have to eat broccoli, it tests your logic too. If you just say because I said so, you’re not only selling yourself short, but you’re selling your kid short too. Without the proper logic, they can’t turn chores into habits. So by being lazy with your logic, you’re keeping them from developing reproducible behaviors, and avoiding the question.

If you can’t answer the question, maybe your logic on the subject is undeveloped, or is unsound. So this question not only helps your children learn the reason to do something, but it helps question your logic, which may be the most important part of all.

Turning Chores into Habits

May 24, 2019May 24, 2019 David DempseyLeave a comment

If I choose to make my bed, it’s a habit. If I feel like I have to do it whether I choose to or not, it’s a chore.

If I agree with the logic behind the action, I can accept it and choose to do it. If I can’t agree with the logic, it becomes a chore. That’s why you may hear a kid ask why when a parent asks him to take out the trash or make his bed. While the right thing is probably to just do it, asking why is a way of trying to align logic sets. I want to know why you want me to do this, so I can do it by choice.

Habit acknowledges free will. Chore does not. From the requester’s perspective: habit is hope. Chore is expectation. Because if it’s my habit, you really don’t have any skin in the game. It doesn’t affect you one way or another if I do it or not. But if it’s a chore, you expect it from me. So not only do I have to do it even though I don’t necessarily agree with the logic behind it, and if I don’t, you have a chore-shaped hole in your heart.

So when you’re trying to get your kids to do something, I would first call them habits rather than chores. And to do that, you have to give them the free will whether to do them or not, while providing them with the logic behind the habit itself.

Solving the Gender Mystery

September 10, 2018May 21, 2022 David Dempsey

The next time you go to a gender reveal, this may give you the leg up on which color cupcake to eat. Or maybe you’ll go to great lengths to try to swing the odds in your favor. Truth is, a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure this puzzle out.

I formerly thought that when a tendency to produce the two sexes in equal numbers was advantageous to the species, it would follow from natural selection, but I now see that the whole problem is so intricate that it is safer to leave its solution for the future.

Charles Darwin

Well, what do we know about this strange phenomenon?

Billionaires have more sons.
After wars, many more sons are born.
More men are born in China. Way more. To the point where they are taking drastic measures to equalize their gender birth ratios.
Famine causes a drop in male birth.
Older parents are more likely to have daughters.
If you have brothers, you are more likely to have boys. If you have sisters, you are more likely to have girls.

So can we neatly package all this into one great theory? Eh…kinda. We know that the father contributes [according to the genetic model] the X or Y chromosome, meaning he would determine the eventual sex of the baby. In looking at the strange facts above, the conditions with less stress produce more boys. So the more you reduce stress, the better chance you have of having a boy.

Think about it.

A famine raises stress. After a war, people are at peace. Billionaires have an unusual amount of comfort in their lives. The diet and lifestyle of those in China and eastern Asia is very different than most of the rest of the world.

Older parents would parallel our proof on Down Syndrome. As parents grow older, they have greater brain entropy, which increases their odds in having a girl.

If you have brothers, you’ll have boys. This is a little trickier to explain. But in short, you’d inherit the mindset from your father. It sounds like science fiction, but we already say that anxiety or depression can run in families. I’m not arguing with that. [I’m arguing that these people were not plagued to be unhappy or anxious from the beginning. And that their misery is reversible.]

Short answer: higher brain entropy [in dads] makes more girls. Don’t misread. It’s not only girls. It just tips the scales in your favor. Billionaires have boys 65% of the time. Give me those odds in blackjack and I’d play all day long.

Here’s my take on it: The desired result would typically favor boys. To carry on the family name, to continue the dynasty…whatever. The more stress that is introduced to the lives of the parents, the more unstable that household becomes. By having the more unstable families produce more girls, you actually make the world a better place. If the most stressed parents produced the same amount of boys, we’d naturally trend to a more and more unstable environment for our kids. Men were designed to be the leaders of the households, and those closer to their ground states are more likely to have boys.

Additionally, the people with the most stress in their lives [furthest from their ground state] may not be able to get pregnant at all. It will take us to a human evolution mechanism that we will explore later.

Sources:

Dads cause Dwarfism

June 15, 2018May 21, 2022 David Dempsey1 Comment

OK. So a couple days ago we went through Down Syndrome, and how it is closely tied with the age of mothers, and how that means that we play a large role in causing or preventing it.

Today, I want to talk about the dads. We know that there are some strong correlations between the age of dads and a list of birth defects. We need to know a couple things: are they genetic disorders? Is it the lifestyle of the dads that determines these outcomes? Is it predetermined at conception? Or is it something that can be corrected?

What birth defects are closely correlated to the age of their fathers:

autism
schizophrenia
dwarfism/Achondroplasia
Apert’s Syndrome

We’ve already talked about autism and schizophrenia, and how I think they are both curable and why. So while they are equally important, we’re going to focus on dwarfism today.

B9781455727940000085_f008-003-9781455727940 — Mother’s Age And Down Syndrome [left] and Father’s age and Achondroplasia and Apert’s Syndrome [right] Source

It’s a random gene mutation. But it’s random and we don’t even really know why it mutates. Apparently it’s called epigenetics, which essentially undermines genetics, in my opinion. Think about it for a second, the entire field of genetics is about mapping a stationary code of a human being and predicting his offspring. If that code is not stationary, how can we predict changes in the person or his offspring?

Sometimes we can identify dwarfism during pregnancy. In many cases it can be identified at birth. Because of these two observations, I think it’s safe to say that dwarfism is not reversible. I’m sure you’re thinking that’s obvious, but this is coming from the guy who thinks Alzheimer’s is curable, so I need to be sure.

It’s really pretty simple [if you read my proof on Down Syndrome]: we know the age of the father is closely tied with an increased risk for dwarfism. We know that age is literally just a number, and really begins in the brain. We’ve even shown why and how this happens. And the best part: it’s reversible.

So I get it. You’re not looking to do any more research. You just want answers. You control more about the health of your baby than you know. Get healthy before you get anybody pregnant.

Sources:

Solving SIDS

June 8, 2018June 10, 2018 David Dempsey1 Comment

SIDS is sudden infant death syndrome. For once, I’d call this an over generalization. There are a couple different types of deaths that we call SIDS, and I think that has stopped us from solving the underlying issue. For instance, babies can suffocate, but that’s not SIDS, at least by my definition. We need all cases to be the same to make any progress.

The nature of the name gives us a reason to pile infant deaths together. And I know that I’ve done that in the past with mental illness. In this case, we need to zoom in a little bit to get answers. We’ve confused our own data set here.

Smoking but not breastfeeding, seems to be the major underlying cause. Between all races, classes, and genders. But it does not apply to all cases, because we’ve created such a strange category in infant death.

SIDS is really just an umbrella term we use to describe unexpected and unforeseen infant deaths. There are a couple of main underlying problems, or causes of SIDS. I’m going to divide them into three groups:

Asphyxiation. This group really stands alone. The safe sleep campaign, and back sleeping campaign have helped reduce this cause tremendously. In my opinion, these deaths are not SIDS. But what is SIDS anyways? By our current definition of SIDS, these just don’t apply. I’m glad that we used our own misinformation to save babies, but what I’m trying to do is save more.
Smoking. There is a huge correlation between smoking and SIDS. I have about ten sources for you here.
Breastfeeding. Apparently breastfeeding significantly reduces your chance of SIDS. But knowing what we know now, how in the world is that possible?

So from here, we know that SIDS is a correlation between smoking and breastfeeding. Namely, women who smoke, or expose their kids to smoke, and do not breastfeed are the ones at risk.

Take a look at these SIDS numbers: The rate per 1000 births varies in different ethnic groups in the United States:

Central Americans and South Americans: 0.20
Asian/Pacific Islanders: 0.28
Mexicans: 0.24
Puerto Ricans: 0.53
Whites: 0.51
African Americans: 1.08
American Indian: 1.24

That’s interesting, but so what? You look at these numbers, they are very closely tied to the female smoking numbers of the same groups.

Essentially, the smoking numbers completely explain the disparity, except for the big difference between white and black groups. They smoke about the same rates, but black people are twice as likely to die from SIDS.

So let’s keep looking.

What other “factors” do we have that strongly correlate with SIDS? Breastfeeding. Do black women breastfeed at significantly different rates than white women? Yes. White women are more likely to breastfeed, and are much more likely to be breastfeeding at six months.

In the most recent US National Immunization Survey, only 66.4% of black mothers initiated breastfeeding in 2012, compared with 83% of white mothers and 82.4% of Hispanic mothers. 2 Racial/ethnic gaps in breastfeeding remained significant at 6 months, with only 35.3% of black mothers still breastfeeding, compared with 55.8% of white mothers and 51.4% of Hispanic mothers. Black women consistently remain at the bottom on all breastfeeding indices, although the gap between black mothers and other ethnic groups has narrowed by a few percentage points since 2000, suggesting breastfeeding promotion efforts have helped.

So there you have it: SIDS [less asphyxiation] is essentially caused by smoking or having your child around smoke, and not breastfeeding.

So if we don’t know this, how is the SIDS rate been on the decline for years? Because we identified the main factors associated with it. Our safe sleep campaigns reduced the asphyxiation deaths. No one will argue that. But the other side of SIDS is decreasing too. Here’s why: smoking is on the decline. Overall, fewer people are smoking, and those that are smoking are smoking less. And, more people are breastfeeding. And they’re breastfeeding longer.

Theory: Mothers who breastfeed while smoking actually add some sort of immunization to their milk to help their babies in the less than ideal environment. Continuing, smoking causes SIDS, but more specifically smoking and not breastfeeding.

There’s one more loose end here. Baby boys get SIDS significantly more often than girls. If the deaths are caused by smoking and not breastfeeding, how could one sex be affected more than the other? Here’s why:

Boys mature slower physically, socially and linguistically.

Stress-regulating brain circuitries mature more slowly in boys prenatally, perinatally and postnatally.

Boys are affected more negatively by early environmental stress, inside and outside the womb, than are girls. Girls have more built-in mechanisms that foster resiliency against stress.

So if SIDS is solved, what can I do to eliminate the risk to my baby.

Safe Sleeping. I know we eliminated this from the list of SIDS causes, but it is still something we need to practice. It has saved baby’s lives.
Stop smoking. Do not smoke or have your young children around smoke. No tobacco, no marijuana.
Breastfeed. Smoking or not smoking, you need to breastfeed. Even if it’s supplementary. And most importantly, if you smoke, you must breastfeed. If someone in your family or that is around your child frequently smokes, you must breastfeed. The baby simply isn’t equipped to deal with the strain that the smoke puts on her body. Especially without your help.

Other sources:

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