Next, hasten to explain to your partner that of course, you didn’t  mean what you said – your were just joking, or if you like, you were conducting an experiment. Ask her to describe how she felt when you called her an “idiot” (or any other term of contempt you chose to use.)  Doubtless, the reply will be “Awful!”

Then, assuming she’s a person deeply attuned to her own feelings (to be sure, not everyone is), ask if she felt better after you explained you hadn’t been serious.

Very likely, of course, she’ll say that she was a lot relieved. But if she’s honest, she might well tell you that deep down she still feels a certain amount of emotional pain. Pain that didn’t completely dissipate even after accepting (at least on an intellectual level) your assurance that you didn’t mean it.

As one husband once commented: “Whenever my wife hurls an abusive epithet at me – even I know she’s only doing it because she’s under great stress – something inside me always dies…”

Here we’re talking about a case where the target of verbal abuse knows it’s just an act, or maybe he can even sense that although it appears to be an attack against him, the attacker is really shouting at himself! How much more, then, does the victim suffer when she knows that an unfortunate choice of words (to put it in the most charitable way) directed against her is unquestionably intended!

The power of speech, for good or evil, a power almost impossible to over-estimate,  has been the subject of untold volumes and discourses. Yet as much as we pay lip service to this truth, somehow we find it extremely difficult to internalize it.  It just could be that this little story, a remarkable true incident, may help a little towards this end.

Sharon Smith was in her early teens and had everything going for her. She was extremely popular  among her classmates and teachers alike,  was considered  “the life of the party”, and was an outstanding student.

Then her troubles began.  True,  she continued to be well-liked after the episode she regarded as a turning point, and other than her own family and her closest friends, few in the outside world  may  have noticed any change in her at all.  But deep down inside, the change was quite dramatic, and by her own testimony, the effects of the “curse,” as she sometimes called it, were to remain with her many years later.

Bambi was known as the clown of the class.  Slightly eccentric but full of fun (and with the proverbial skin as thick as an elephant’s hide), she could always be relied upon to lift sagging spirits.

One day,  during the recess following a particularly demanding class test, Bambi announced. “Come on girls, I’m a fortune teller. Let me read your palms and I’ll tell you what’s in store for you once we’re all out of this place!”  Her classmates  gathered around Bambi gleefully, extending their palms.

“You, Suzie, will graduate with honors as a lawyer. You, Jane, will be a CEO. You, Pam, will marry a millionaire…You will be a diplomat in a foreign country…”  The girls chuckled with delight.

Finally it was Sharon’s turn. By this time, Bambi probably realized that in order to retain “credibility”, she had better mix in a couple of less possible forecasts too!

Bambi thought for a moment, looked Sharon up and down and announced: “The same thing that happened to Gertie McQueen will happen to you!”

Ever since the girls had been in kindergarten, Gertie McQueen had been the undisputed genius of the class. Then, about two years previously, she had suddenly starting acting very strangely. Each day her conduct had become stranger and stranger,  ultimately leading to a complete mental breakdown. She had been in and out of hospital ever since.

Everybody, Sharon included, enjoyed a good laugh, apparently forgetting that it wasn’t so nice to make jokes at the expense of a poor girl who had lost her mind.

That night, Sharon didn’t sleep much, and the little sleep she did get was punctuated by nightmares. In point of fact, it was the start of one long nightmare that has been plaguing her ever since.

If she slept,  ran the dark thought at the back of Sharon’s mind, would she wake up crazy?  It was a thought that was to give her no rest in the days, weeks and months that lay ahead. She was forced to stay home from school for a few days, claiming that she didn’t feel well. Well, in a very real sense, she certainly  wasn’t well. Not by a long shot.

Eventually,  Sharon forced herself to return to school, but nothing was really the same again.  She  had to keep telling herself that she must hold on to her sanity at all costs.  She felt powerless to stop the incessant, anxious thoughts that were twirling around in her head, which she was convinced would burst open any second!

Before too long,  her closest friends began to notice that Sharon was under stress, although they didn’t suspect any connection with the fortune-telling session.  Eventually, one of them managed to persuade Sharon to confide in her.  The friend tried her very best to reassure the hapless Sharon, and all else having failed, urged her to consult a psychologist.

The sessions at the psychologist did help a great deal,  and she learned to  keep her anxiety under control and carry on with normal life. But there was just no way she could totally shake off those dark thoughts that had taken a such a firm grip on the recesses of her mind.

Today, Sharon runs a successful business and is the proud mother of a lovely family. But ever so often, she is overcome with anxiety attacks that virtually put her out of action for a short while.

Do you think that the words that come out of your mouth, once spoken, just disappear into thin air? If so, it’s high time to think again. Very carefully.

And even if your words are only part of a game!

“Sorry,” apologizes the gatekeeper, “your Daddy’s busy at a very important meeting right now, try later.” The kid does try later, in fact several times “later”, but on each occasion he gets a similar response.

But being, after all, the son of a highly successful executive, he’s not one to give up on a challenge so easily. Eventually, he manages to reach his father on his car phone, as he’s speeding along, already fifteen minutes late, to an urgent rendezvous with a business associate. As he drives, Dad is making all kinds of intricate calculations in his head in preparation for the meeting ahead.

“Oh, it’s you, Ricky,” exclaims an irritated and impatient father. “Don’t you know I’m busy? I’ll be home later….”

“Dad, I won’t keep you. Can I just ask a quick question? How much do you earn?”

“Oh, I don’t know…perhaps $120 an hour..”

“Thanks, Dad.” Click!

As a worn and weary executive walks in the door around 9 that evening, Ricky thrusts a little plastic bag into his hand. The bag contains a bunch of assorted notes and coins totaling about $30.

“This is the money I’ve been saving up, Dad. Can I buy 15 minutes of your time?”

In an earlier post, I discussed an interesting social paradox: as the economies of developed countries grow stronger, the income of the average citizen grows as well. But for the most part, people aren’t any happier than they were before. Why?

I elaborated on one economics professor’s very plausible theory, which is supported by some telling experiments by social psychologists. The real problem is that people are in the habit of comparing their lot with others. If I have a million but you have two million, I have to be feeling miserable. My million is almost worthless to me.

That’s a fine explanation as far as adults are concerned, but what about our children? Why are so many children in affluent countries so darn miserable?

Sue Palmer, a British consultant on early childhood education and author of the best selling “Toxic Childhood”,  cited in a feature in the Daily Mail last year a UNICEF report on “childhood well-being”  that found  that out of 21 nations across the developed world, British children are the unhappiest.

And of course, although the British may technically be winners of this contest that no one  would want to  win,  we have  no reason to believe  that  most other civilized  nations are very  far behind.

Palmer tries  to understand why this should be so.  “Our homes are crammed with labour-saving devices and electronic entertainment that previous generations couldn’t even dream of.  Surely our children should be growing happier every year?” she asks.

She  quotes a  damning survey by the National Consumer Council, which  revealed that children who watch too much television and spend hours on the internet are “greedy and unhappy…These children argue more with their families, have a lower opinion of their parents, and lower self-esteem than other children.”

That explains a little of course, but why are these kids sitting all day in front of the electronic media  in the  first  instance?

Palmer gets to the heart of the matter:  “After researching the state of modern childhood for over five years, I’m convinced that, as our country has grown richer and more “advanced”, we’ve lost sight of certain fundamental truths about child-rearing.

“We’ve come to believe that 21st century children are different from children in the past – that they can get by with less parental time and attention, skip stages in their development and cope with pressures and emotional burdens children shouldn’t have to cope with.

“The brutal truth is that they can’t. Life may have changed enormously over the past few decades, but the human brain evolves much more slowly – in fact, it hasn’t changed since Cro-Magnon times.

“All babies are born as little Stone Age babies, and it’s up to their parents – supported by their wider community – to help them towards maturity, gradually equipping them with the inner strength, skills and knowledge they need to live in a complex technological culture…”

Significantly, Palmer also stresses the  natural obligation of parents to help their children  get a  early start in the mastery of communication skills,  so crucial for successful  emotional and social development.

“As parents sing and talk to their babies, they awaken the language instinct wired deep in the human brain and provide the data through which children will learn to speak their mother tongue.

“But if adults don’t spend time with their children, communication skills won’t develop as they should – and, in a busy modern world, many parents aren’t available to play their part in this process.

“Many children now spend the majority of their day in institutional care.

“At home, babies often sit in front of an electronic babysitter and, as they grow older, there is that problem of older children having TVs in their rooms, which means that even when the family is in the same building, its members are splintered off from each other.

The more than ironic bottom line: in a world where there are more ways to communicate than ever before, parents communicate less and less with their own children!

We will be talking more about  some implications of these heartrending  facts and various issues arising from them in upcoming posts.

Junior High School 22, a hotbed of drugs and violence, was one of the most dangerous spots in New York City. No surprise that it had gone through six principals in two years. And no surprise that the teachers, pupils and parents alike were convinced that the most unlikely new incumbent would be out the door even quicker than his hapless predecessors.

How wrong they were! What were the “secret weapons” that enabled Shimon Warringer to turn the situation around in hardly no time at all? True, one or two things in his personal background proved to be somewhat to his advantage. But above all, this story is a moving testimony to what empathy, warmth and unconditional love, together with a strong, unshakable vision, can achieve.

Watch this video and be moved. And then, don’t just move on to your next task for the day and put it out of your mind. Take it to heart. You, too, can make a difference in this world. At least with your own kids.

A columnist writing in The New York Sun saw evidence of this herself while touring a private school in the city. She saw enough “heavy” students to make her think twice about her plans to raise her children in the city. She quizzed the school psychologist about what lies behind the disconcerting statistics.

“I grew up in New York,” explained the psychologist in reply, “and after school we used to go to the park and throw the ball around…” In other words, in her day, kids got plenty of exercise. More physical activity, more calories burned up, more melting away of any superfluous fat. And today?

“Today, these kids all have tutors. They finish school, go to the tutor, come home and have dinner, and then it’s time for homework and bed.”

“Poor nutrition and low activity levels are the most obvious reasons behind childhood obesity,” comments Sara Berman, the Sun columnist, “but I can’t help but think that for many children in the city, whose parents know all about good nutrition and Little League on Saturday morning, the hours they spend sitting with tutors and in front of computers play a role as well.”

Berman adds that when she searched Google for the term “tutors in New York City”, she came up with 804,000 results. True, other American cities didn’t come even close, but the numbers were significant enough. It seems we have echoes here of the social phenomenon (or should I say aberration?) that I discussed in my previous post. The “superstar” syndrome, powered by an intensively competitive society with a win-at-all-costs obsession, has apparently filtered down to the upcoming generation.

“There is so much pressure on our kids to be great at everything,” a local mother told Berman. “When I was growing up, you were good at math or writing or French. It was okay to be bad at something too. That was normal. Today, if your kid is bad at math, you immediately try to find the best math tutor to fix the problem. It doesn’t matter that she’s also a great writer and captain of the basketball team.”

Berman adds that she understands why parents would want to find tutoring for a son who’s failing in French, or a daughter who’s saddled with the worst math teacher for the second year in a row. “But is it such a problem if your child doesn’t get all A’s? Isn’t there a natural variance in our children’s performance? Don’t the high schools and colleges expect a range of abilities for each child?”

And even if, she says, parents use the excuse that the competition for college placement is much more intense these days, “the madness of these parents” is partly responsible for that very intensity in the first place.

So what’s going on here? Does the way parents drive their kids to higher and still higher levels of academic achievement, much as a jockey goads a race horse to towards the winning post, ultimately produce the productive, polished, well-rounded and well-adjusted citizens their mothers and fathers had prayed for?

I don’t know.

Now, if these youngsters are spending part of their marathon spells under tutelage on sharpening their writing skills, I might be inclined to give their efforts my blessing.

According to a report released in June by the USA’s National Commission on Writing, state governments spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees. And that’s not all: “It’s impossible to calculate the ultimate cost of lost productivity because people have to read things two or three times,” laments one of the commissioners, and another adds that he shudders to think how Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence would have read in standard, government-worker bureaucrat-speak.

One suspects that things are hardly much better in the private sector, and that many other countries have similar problems. Clearly, any investment we make to ensure our children will go out into the big wide world well equipped with essential communication skills, written and oral, would be a most worthwhile one.

But leaving that issue aside, are we doing the right thing by our offspring by depriving them of the kind of childhood we ourselves enjoyed? Do we have our priorities right when we allow ourselves to be driven by the compulsion to raise a new generation of superstars? Do the ultimate benefits of placing heavy pressure on the shoulders of our kids outweigh the drawbacks.

It’s not only a question of getting sufficient physical exercise, important though that is. Many studies over the past decade or two have demonstrated the negative impact of long sessions in front of a computer screen on the development of a child’s social skills and interpersonal relationships.

Perhaps the time has come to give our kids a life.

In one of my articles on the site, I referred to an eye-opening classroom experience that former teacher John Andrew Murray wrote about in Teachers in Focus magazine. It’s worth repeating here.

Murray was teaching English at a private American school and he was using the old television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents to spice up his weekly lessons on plot development. After a few weeks, he decided to stop the show before the end and let the students write their own endings. The kids liked the idea so much that they wanted to read their work aloud in class.

Murray was happy to agree, but after the first three or four students, he put a stop to the reading aloud. Why?

Because what the teacher has heard had horrified and sickened him.

Once he had recovered a little from the initial shock, he began to discuss with the youngsters the highly explicit imagery of violence he had found in their papers. They insisted that media violence didn’t affect them because, after all, the graphic scenes they saw on TV and the movies were “fake.” Murray then asked them how they would feel if they saw a dog on TV getting riddled with bullets.

“How horrible!” they cried out in unison.

Murray concludes that unlike the human carnage they regularly witness on TV, his pupils found animal deaths appalling precisely because they had seldom seen it.

For the first time, they realized how desensitized they had become to violence.

Now you’ll perhaps understand why I refer to the media (and I use the word in the very broad sense: newspapers, magazines, books, TV, computer games, email, Internet, the works…) as the anesthetics of modern society.

It’s a funny thing. When I was a little younger, a major function of the ” press”, as it was then called – a term later largely replaced by “the media” to embrace more modern forms of communication – was perceived to be a public watchdog against corruption and social injustice. In other words, a red flag, a siren to rouse you from your slumber, to alert and sensitize you to communal and social maladies that need addressing.

Hopefully, the media, or part of it, still serves that role. But we see from the above story how the media can do exactly the opposite.

We see, in fact, a numbing effect that can really put us to sleep.

In my next post, please G-d, we’ll examine whether the power of this anesthesia is confined to our natural aversion to violence and similar phenomena, or whether its effects reach further to far more subtle areas.