All posts tagged: boundaries

‘Children need boundaries’: Readers weigh in on gentle parenting row

‘Children need boundaries’: Readers weigh in on gentle parenting row

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the Well Enough newsletter with Harry Bullmore for tips on living a healthier, happier and longer life Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore Get the Well Enough email with Harry Bullmore The debate over “gentle parenting” has clearly struck a nerve – and Independent readers are split on whether it nurtures well-rounded children or leaves them without the boundaries they need. Following a report from Charlotte Cripps, who spoke to authors and professors arguing the problem lies not in schools but in a lack of rules at home, many readers agreed that insufficient discipline is fuelling poor behaviour, with children given “too much freedom” too early and struggling to cope with authority. Others strongly disagreed, sharing success stories of calm, respectful parenting producing confident, high-achieving children. A common thread, however, was that the issue goes beyond labels. Many readers stressed that consistency and clear boundaries matter most – whether delivered gently or firmly – and that problems arise when parents fail to enforce them. Here’s what you had to say: Gentle parenting …

Women Who Are Done Saying Yes To Everything Usually Have 11 High Value Traits

Women Who Are Done Saying Yes To Everything Usually Have 11 High Value Traits

Published by Jenni Sidey

Many women are socialized into agreeableness and saying “yes” for the well-being of others, even if it comes at their own expense. Even experiencing a fear of missing out, often coined “FOMO,” lies in that people-pleasing realm where people worry about being ostracized and socially excluded by not following societal standards of falling victim to peer pressure. However, the more internally gratified someone’s self-worth is, the more willing they are to follow their own wisdom, meaning, and care. It’s women who are done saying yes to everything and stop feeling FOMO who usually have high-value traits like this, and are tired of living life for everyone else. Women who are done saying yes to everything and have no FOMO usually have 11 high value traits: 1. They know their worth Kinga | Shutterstock When a woman’s self-worth comes from inside, she stops saying “yes” to things she doesn’t want to do and tolerating misbehavior for people who don’t deserve her time or effort. She crafts alone time, routines, and relationships that allow her to feel an …

Crossing boundaries: Aygo X Hybrid

Crossing boundaries: Aygo X Hybrid

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get our weekly Drive Smart newsletter for motoring news, reviews and advice from EV editor Steve Fowler Get motoring news, reviews and advice from EV editor Steve Fowler Get our EV editor’s weekly Drive Smart newsletter How do you make the Toyota Aygo X (pronounced “cross”, btw) one of the nicest little cars on sale, even better to own and drive? Well, if you’re Toyota, the natural inclination is to turn it into a hybrid, and so here we are: the Toyota Aygo X Hybrid, which means that all Aygo models sold in the UK now have this pseudo-SUV chunky styling plus “self-charging” full hybrid technology as standard, like a Prius (but no heavier plug-in hybrid options for the Aygo). The result? More power, superior performance and updated, sharper looks than the outgoing model. Better still, if that were possible, this smallest car in the Toyota range has been given a mild sporty makeover in the GR Sport variant, in which I had the pleasure of scooting around for a few days. It was a …

9 Reasons Someone Deeply Irritates You & You Don’t Know Why, According To Research

9 Reasons Someone Deeply Irritates You & You Don’t Know Why, According To Research

Published by Jenni Sidey

We’ve all interacted with someone or a group of people who somehow manage to always get under our skin. Even though they haven’t done anything wrong, you still feel yourself rolling your eyes and having to bite your tongue so you don’t lash out at them. You can’t quite put your finger on why you feel this way. But if someone deeply irritates you and you don’t know why, research shows it’s probably for one of these specific reasons, whether it’s rooted in jealousy or overstepping boundaries.  Psychotherapist Kaytee Gillis explained that while irritability can be influenced by a variety of factors, including biological, psychological, and environmental influences, a lot of people who struggle with feeling irritated by others all the time usually have deeper reasons. Traits that you may find annoying in someone else are usually just things that you’re uncomfortable confronting in yourself, or other people’s traits might just be triggering for you. Whatever the case is, it isn’t always about the other person acting with malicious intent. If someone deeply irritates you …

How Anthony Leggett pushed the boundaries of quantum physics

How Anthony Leggett pushed the boundaries of quantum physics

Published by skeptic

Sir Anthony Leggett was a giant in the field of quantum physics University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/L. Brian Stauffer In my first year of graduate school, I briefly shared an office with a quiet, older graduate student. When we finally managed some chit-chat, I learned that he was “working on theory of glasses with Tony.” Two things became clear: cracking the physics of glasses was difficult, and I really ought to have known who Tony was. I met him soon enough. A polite British man in his 70s, he spoke with the cadence of a life-long teacher and an incontrovertible twinkle in his eyes. His full name was Anthony James Leggett: a Nobel laureate, a knight of the British Empire, winner of countless prizes, an expert on the ultracold denizens of the quantum world, and a theorist who co-developed an influential test for probing just where that world might end, a question he pursued for decades. He passed away on 8 March, survived not only by his family but by countless inspired researchers to whom he …

Whitney Biennial Artists Explore Boundaries Between Human and Machine

Whitney Biennial Artists Explore Boundaries Between Human and Machine

Published by Jenni Sidey

As I stood in the Whitney Museum’s sixth-floor gallery for the opening of this year’s Biennial, I found the eye of a surveillance camera, iridescent and round as a soap bubble, staring back at me. It was implanted in a rectangular body the color of aging plastic, decades-old desktop computers, and exposed bone. There was also a small embedded LED screen marking hours, months, days, and years, but since what was not clear. I was about to walk away, confused, when the voice of an elderly woman echoed out, full of warmth and experience. “It was a combination of too little sleep, too many chores, and a teeny tiny toddler,” she said cheerily. “Not to mention the supermoon!” I laughed, first in surprise, a wave of affection bubbling up that was quickly quashed by wariness. Related Articles The work, Estate (July 10, 2022), by Cooper Jacoby, surfaces an emergent genre of horror seeping through the mass consciousness: that of measurement and quantification. Jacoby made the work by scraping text from deceased creatives’ social media and …

Parents Want To Set Boundaries With Their Crying Infant

Parents Want To Set Boundaries With Their Crying Infant

Published by Jenni Sidey

Okay, it’s official: There is such a thing as too much therapy. A pair of new parents have taken to the internet in search of advice on how to “set boundaries” with their infant, who cries incessantly whenever he wants something. For decades, we all suffered under the collective lack of knowledge about psychology and mental health terminology. Now, we seem to have swung the pendulum much too far in the other direction. To the extent that we are trying to do boundary-setting with infants. Help. New parents asked how to ‘set boundaries’ with their baby who won’t stop crying. Prostock-studio | Shutterstock Now, in fairness to these new parents, nothing about babies is easy, and much of it isn’t particularly intuitive. And that’s before we even delve into the impacts of having to listen to an infant shriek all day and then keep you up all night, too. But these parents seem to really fundamentally misunderstand what they signed up for, seemingly viewing their relationship with their infant as more like, say, co-workers than, …

Setting Boundaries in Your Romantic Relationship

Setting Boundaries in Your Romantic Relationship

Published by Jenni Sidey

Relationships are regulated by rules and expectations about how to act, which define what is expected and appropriate behavior within the relationship. Rules, or boundaries, are believed to serve several functions, including regulating behavior and facilitating trust and cohesion in the relationship. Relationship research has shown that there are implicit and explicit rules in romantic relationships as well as a hierarchy of boundaries, where some boundaries are given more importance. For example, research participants generally report infidelity as a more serious boundary violation, whereas not respecting a boundary related to time spent on hobbies was less serious. Signs that setting or changing boundaries in your relationship would be helpful include: The relationship feels out of balance in terms of the degree of autonomy and dependence You feel like you have lost your sense of self Feeling more irritable, stressed, anxious, angry, or resentful toward your partner Boundaries can help build security and trust, and having security and trust also makes it easier to set, implement, and respect boundaries. How to Set Helpful Boundaries First, take …

Therapists Warn Of Red Flag Signs You’ll Clash With Your In-Laws

Therapists Warn Of Red Flag Signs You’ll Clash With Your In-Laws

Published by Sam Flores

When it comes to managing life with future in-laws, it’s not always easy to determine what those dynamics will look like. Various circumstances, from the introduction of grandchildren to the equation or geographic location (and proximity), can also play a role in the dynamics you have. Relationships can change over time, and behaviours can totally evolve as people grow more comfortable with one another. That said, there are a few factors to consider when trying to determine whether or not your relationships with your in-laws might pose a challenge for you and your partner down the line. We turned to family therapists to find out what some of the red flags might be, how to navigate them with your partner and how to cope with any lingering negative feelings. Tom Stewart via Getty Images It can be hard to tell what you will be to one another when you first meet your partner’s family, but experts warn these red flags point to potential conflict down the line. Here are three major signs that might predict …

Microbe with the smallest genome yet pushes the boundaries of life

Microbe with the smallest genome yet pushes the boundaries of life

Published by skeptic

Symbiotic bacteria live inside specialised organs called bacteriomes within insects. This image shows a cross-section of the planthopper Callodictya krueperi, with fluorescent probes labelling three microbes: Vidania (red), Sodalis (yellow) and Sulcia (green) Courtesy Anna Michalik et al Symbiotic bacteria living inside insect cells have the smallest genomes known for any organism. The findings further muddy the distinction between cellular organelles like mitochondria and the most barebones microbes in nature. “Exactly where this highly integrated symbiont ends and an organelle starts, I think it’s very difficult to say,” says Piotr Łukasik at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. “This is a very blurred boundary.” Planthoppers are insects that subsist entirely on plant sap, and supplement their nutrition thanks to an ancient relationship with symbiotic bacteria. Over many millions of years, these microbes evolved to live inside specialised cells in the planthoppers’ abdomens, producing nutrients that the planthoppers can’t get from their sugary diet. Many of these bacteria are totally dependent on their hosts and have let their genetic toolkits deteriorate to a fraction of their ancestral size. Łukasik and his colleagues were …