Finding Children's Entertainment

If you are going to be holding a party for your child and other friends that your child may have, chances are that your mind has wandered from everything about cups and plates and the snacks they'll eat to the entertainment that will be at the party. Trying to figure out what kind of games and entertainment will be at the party, however, is probably the most important aspect of planning a child's birthday party. There are many games and fun things that you can plan, but the key to planning a successful birthday party for children is to find something that will keep them entertained and occupied for hours on end! Here are some easy suggestions for a successful birthday party if your idea list is coming up short.

Magicians and Clowns

Among the many genres of children's entertainment, magicians and clowns have to be among the most popular. Children usually always love magical illusions where the magician will pull a bunny out of a hat or make a coin disappear into thin air. For children, paying an amateur magician would not be all that costly for only a few hours of their time. In addition, clowns are a great addition to a child's party because there are so many options available with clowns. A clown hired to be at a child's birthday party should be able to give the children painted faces, create balloon animals, and provide other various ideas for entertainment for the kids.

Games, Games, Games!

While having magicians and clowns at a child's birthday party is almost sure to provide hours of fun, plenty of game ideas should be used at the party as well so that children won't get bored too easily. A couple inexpensive options for games to keep children occupied are scavenger hunts that lead children on a quest to find prizes and treasure, interactive games like "Twister," and other creative games like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" or breaking open a piñata to expose plenty of candy for everyone! In addition, making up your own games for the party can also be fun, but most games for children should be focused on energizing them with lots of interactions!

Children's Disc Jockeys

One idea that's not frequently used is the hiring of a children's disc jockey. Even though disc jockeys are usually known for playing loud music and creating dance themes, there are various children's disc jockeys that can be hired that will create entertainment for the children attending the party by playing silly and interactive music. These entertainers usually know how to keep kids occupied and they should give hours of fun to the children at your party!

As you can see, there are plenty of entertainment options for the next party you'll hold for your kids. Whether you want to hire clowns to make animal balloons, magicians, children's disc jockeys, or a combination of the three along with providing some game time for the children, your party will definitely be a hit if you use some of the suggestions listed above!

Dad Site - Because Dads Don't Always Think Like Moms

Try this. Search 'parenting' in any search engine and you'll be surprised to see that almost all the results featuring websites created for moms. Not only is the shortage of good information on dads frustrating, but also the status quo for dad sites is not the same. The fact is that most parenting websites conveniently ignore dads.

Feeding this is the stereotype that dads are always "away, earning the bread" while moms play the all-important role of nurturing kids. Thankfully, with changing times, terms like 'stay-at-home-dad', 'gay dad', 'single dad' don't attract puzzled stares that would have been the case just a few decades back.

Why a Dad Site
Dads are as important as moms in the lives of their children. According to research, children with little or no contact with their fathers are more likely to drop out of school and become involved in drug, alcohol abuse, crime, and violence. Even many fathers who are around their children are not emotionally present.

Dads' parenting style is quite different from moms. One is not better than the other. In fact, research has revealed that kids develop more completely when the parenting styles of dads and moms complement each other. It is important to understand that fathers parent differently because dads don't always think like moms.

What most dads need is a single place to discuss parenting issues and experiences with each other and improve their parenting skills. That's where a good dad site comes in. A good parenting website built by and for men can help them become the dads their children desperately need.

Dad Site for the New Age Dad
Clearly, men are from Mars which is why most parenting issues are alien to them. The new age dad is now grappling with new terms like ectopic pregnancy and pregnancy calculator that his forbears would have been careful about discussing in public. Considering this shift in attitude, a dad site needs to cater to common but embarrassing questions such as "is sex during pregnancy bad?" and also provide fathers with information on how to deal with the overwhelming experience of being a father.

As Paul Banas, founder of GreatDad, points out, "Many dads today are more involved in parenting but have limited resources from a man's point of view from which to better understand the challenges of their changing role." It was this thought that led Paul to start the only online parenting resource with a dad's point of view. In fact, GreatDad.com is the only dad site to offer a pregnancy newsletter for fathers.

How Your Brain Lies to You

By Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt
Source: New York Times

False beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found.

Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer’s hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man’s curled pinkie finger.

But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don’t remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like “I think I read somewhere” or even with a reference to a specific source.

In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility.

Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position.

Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.

Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to “stop the smears,” the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.

Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students’ impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.

In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true.

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes’s ideal.

Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, are the authors of “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”