Can we change our personal ethical beliefs?

What happens if we were not taught to be what others deem to be ethical in our youth? Is it too late or can we change?

I think that we are constantly changing in tweaking our minds, sometimes in large ways, usually in small ways.  As we grow and experience new things, and acquire new information, we are able to process this in our minds.  Once the new information has been analyzed we can decide (subconsciously or not), whether or not it is something that we wish to align with our values or ethics.  Surviving a horrific car accident with a drunk driver or being hit by a drunk driver may alter your ethical view of the situation.  You may look at drunk driving, road safety rules and even car safety rules in a new way, or you may hold onto the same ethics.  If you find yourself or someone close to you in an abusive relationship, you may have a new look at the situation.  If you are raped and have to look at possible pro-choice options, it may change your views again.  As someone in a hostile or wartime environment, the experiences you are immersed in are always evolving your ethical view of the world.  We are given a basic ethical blueprint as children, but each layer of life expounds upon and at times changes the ethical values that we hold dear. 

I know that I personally have a strong ethical view of different things to do with women; specifically topics such as abuse, alcoholism, codependence, lack of standing up for oneself, parenting values, marriage, etc.  Living with certain experiences within my own families and of those of close relatives shapes my ethical values of basic things.  I saw a lot of people doing things or not doing things when they should be that felt wrong to the core of my being.  Witnessing this and living through first-hand accounts largely shaped my basic core of ethical values.  However, someone experiencing the exact same things may have come up with completely different ethical values.  While my father is a recovering alcoholic, he did go to treatment and remained in remission for decades, I attended AA meetings with him and learned a lot about the disease that he fought, this helped me know the dilemma in an intimate way.  I could have instead become desensitized to this issue if handled or viewed from another way and not have seen alcoholism as an issue, but rather as a way of life.  There are very few things in our society that do not, in one way or another, include alcohol.  Does that make me anti-alcohol, no, but it could have for someone else.  Our personal ethical beliefs are comprised of the totality of our personal experiences, knowledge and our perception of such.

Jackie: The Adventures of a Little Boy Trying to Grow Up

Jackie: The Adventures of a Little Boy Trying to Grow Up is written by John Tammela and is an autobiography of his childhood as told from the point of view of the boy and an omnipotent narrator.

I have to agree with the sentiment that this is not a fitting cover for the book. Although “Jackie” looks sad on the cover, this book is anything but a sad story. This is instead a look inside the atmosphere of growing up in Niagara Falls, Canada in the 30s and 40s.

Jackie’s family immigrated to Canada from Finland prior to the start of World War II. Jackie’s childhood is reminiscent of the freedom that children used to know growing up. I had many moments that took me back to “A Christmas Story” and I could definitely see Jackie’s adventures with his friends and family being turned into a similar style movie.

Jackie’s live within the book ranges from toddler to fifth grade. During this time his adventures span from school stories, to shenanigans with his siblings, and even overcoming the fears of a small boy.

There are a few “experiences” within the story that will remind you of the growing up in Now & Then, or even Stand By Me which is completely realistic for a real little boy who is growing up into a young man. These are tastefully done and innocently real.

Although the font and the chapter length in the book is reminiscent of a middle grade novel, I found this book to be suitable for all age groups. If you have ever grown up or if you are just now growing up, I am sure that you can find something to relate to within John Tammela’s story of adolescence.

I give this book 4/5 stars. The beginning starts off a little slow and the ending wraps up in a detached way that is not seen in the rest of the book. Otherwise I thought it was well done and I loved the hand drawn maps and associated drawings that brought life to the stories told within the book. Quite the exciting childhood, makes me wish I could allow my son some of the same freedoms that can’t be found in current urban living. If you are interested in child biography, Canada, childhood, growing up, humor, imagination, etc, then this is a great book for you.  Also I have been told by the author that there is a second book in the works, so watch for that to come out in the near future!

*I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Mighty Ducks

This used to be one of my all-time favorite movies as a child!  I had a huge crush on Joshua Jackson (Charlie) back then and I LOVED hockey!  There were a lot of hockey/figure skating movies that came out during my childhood and with the winter Olympics here, it reminds me of how I used to religiously watch all the time.  It was great to receive this great trip down memory lane on this snowy day.  Unfortunately this movie was a bit old for Liam and although I tried to watch it with him a couple of times, it kept getting ejected for things like Rugrats, Curious George, and Rio.  In his defense it is about Pee-Wee Hockey and a little above a 3 year old's head.

In case you missed sharing the Mighty Ducks at the height of it's fame in 1992 when it was released by Walt Disney Studios, let me tell you a bit about it.  It is an American sports comedy film directed by Stephen Herek (101 Dalmations).  It stars Emilio Estevez as a former pee-wee hockey star turned lawyer, who finds himself forced to coach for community service.  The team he is given consists of a cluster of a group of kids that have not yet learned how to work together.  The team includes younger versions of stars who made it big later in life, most notably Charlie who is played by Joshua Jackson.

The Mighty Ducks grossed over $50 million, making it a surprising success with audiences and spawning the beginning of a trilogy and also a spin-off tv show.  Critically this movie was a bomb, but the audiences loved it causing it to continue on into the trilogy with D2 & D3 coming out every 2 years respectively (1994, 1996).  The movie went on to inspire a real-life hockey team owned by Disney to be named after it in 1993, which when sold by Disney was renamed the Anaheim Ducks.






Stars you can find in the movie:
Gordon Bombay (the coach) played by Emilio Estevez (The Breakfast Club, Young Guns, St Elmo's Fire, The Outsiders, Bobby, etc)
Hans (Gordon's mentor) played by Joss Ackland (Kid in King Arthur's Court, Hunt For Red October)
Coach Jack Riley played by Lane Smith (Lois & Clark the New Adventures of Superman)
Charlie Conway played by Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek, The Skulls, Fringe)
Fulton Reed played by Elden Henson*aka Ratliff* (Butterfly Effect, Deja Vu, Lords of Dogtown)
Dave Karp played by Aaron Schwartz (Gossip Girl)
Connie Moreau played by Marguerite Moreau (Grey's Anatomy, Shameless, Parenthood)

The overall movie is about an underdog team!  And I loved it as a child!  Watching it as an adult was still great!  I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.  I do remember that the story gets better and will haev to revisit the rest of the trilogy as there were some holes in this script, and it had a rocky started but it pulled through and ended strong.  I definitely recommend watching it.   I would think kids age 10 and up would definitely be a great audience for it, and even younger if you child is into Hockey!  Also revisit the young Joshua Jackson and what really put him on the map!





Unfortunately there is no really good trailer that I can find so you can check out both of these videos to get an idea of whether or not you would be interested in this movie:

Here is the Disney Wiki Page *Caution it does contain spoilers: The_Mighty_Ducks

TBT: Childhood Moments

As it is a TBT (Throwback Thursday). I thought maybe I would share a few of my photos from the vaults of my childhood.  In case you have never heard of TBT it is what happens every Thursday when people go through old photos and post them for the world to see.  I try to stick with the 5 year rule.  If a picture is not at least 5 years old or older, than it's not much of a throwback.  However some people like to go back to last week or last month, just wanting to add a picture back into the spotlight.  Personally I feel like this defeats the purpose of "throwback," but hey, what do I know?  Anyway back tot he blog, here are some gems from my childhood so that you can laugh at how awesome I looked as a child and how dorky I look now ;)  I would love to see your childhood pics if you are brave enough to share!  Have a wonderful Thursday evening, and thanks again for your support!

Random Liam Moments: January 2014

I had such a great time sharing Liam's random moments from December that I thought it would be fun to share them monthly!  Here are some of the highlights from the last month.

Liam will only wear his Cars Light Up Shoes and his Airplanes zip-up hoodie for a jacket.  It doesn't matter if it matches or not.  We get into a huge fight if I really want him to wear something else or extensive acts of bribery...  Usually I find it's not worth it and just wash them both constantly instead haha.

Liam and I were playing and he told me to go to timeout. At lunch I ate a carrot off of his plate and he told me to go to timeout again. We are watching Despicable Me 2 right now and we always talk about wanting chip hats... I told Liam I wanted a Chip Hat and he said "No I want one, timeout!" Somehow I think this has backfired on me

Liam just let out a really long fart, and then there was silence before he said bless you. I don't know why it was so funny but I just laughed hysterically for almost 5 full minutes.... In case this is funny to anyone else I wanted to share, otherwise I am probably just sleep deprived hahaha. Usually he says excuse me but I think he wasn't sure what to think hahaha


Liam says to me "I have to go potty" as he is playing in his tent so I told him Let's go potty" and we started walking to the bathroom. He informed me "I peed in my pants" He is not one for accidents so I am frantically touching his pants all over looking for a wet spot saying "did you really, how come?" He says "No, ha I'm funny" and laughs hysterically....... Children...

Liam is playing with his food, he had a cheese curd and ripped it in half and one of them was Liam and one was mommy, they were having conversations and playing hide and seek, and at the end they hugged and said "I love you Liam" and "I love you too" and then they were eaten haha. At least they were loving cheese curds...

 Three must be when it starts.... he calls my kisses yucky and now he doesn't want to wake up if I try to wake him up telling me no waking up and that it's time to sleep... 3 going on 13..... And he wakes up wanting chocolate in the morning throwing a tantrum when I won't let him have chocolate for breakfast. I feel like I have a teen girl going through PMS some days haha


 Liam is playing with his food, he had a cheese curd and ripped it in half and one of them was Liam and one was mommy, they were having conversations and playing hide and seek, and at the end they hugged and said "I love you Liam" and "I love you too" and then they were eaten haha. At least they were loving cheese curds...


So a grand maul tantrum ensued after trying to make Liam some oatmeal and he wanted chocolate cream of wheat, so after he calmed down I made him cream of wheat and myself oatmeal.... guess who just gave me his cream of wheat and is now devouring my oatmeal.... little stinker

Liam was watching videos on Youtube and got onto one of making a polymer clay minion from despicable me, he has now been enthralled in polymer clay pixar character creations for the last 45 minutes. I guess this means that it's time for mom to buy Liam some clay or to start making and baking actual objects with the play doh.

 Oh no it has started already at 3, Liam wanted a hug and I kissed his cheek, he just wiped it off and said yuck Where does he learn this? I said No yuck haha

Liam was trying to "cold hands" me while I was making lunch and I made him stop, so then I hear him squealing running around the house so I went to go see what he was doing. He had both hands up the back of his shirt and was saying "cold hands" to himself and squealing haha. I love my child.

This evening Liam and I were watching the second Lilo & Stitch: Stick has a Glitch. Liam has watch all of the Lilo & Stitch movies many times and is very attached to them. He has only seen this one a couple time though and it's been awhile since we last watched it. Towards the end Stitch is running out of power and almost dies, I was watching him and his eyes started to tear up, he was actually feeling emotion towards Stitch and genuinely sad for him and then when their love brings him back to life I was cheering and Liam was happy but his eyes were still wet, if it would have went on for longer I think he genuinely would have cried for Stitch. I found this very interesting because although he knows what goes on in movies now, I haven't seen him get emotionally into something in quite this way. It made me very happy that even though it sucks sometimes I am glad for the decision that I made early on to limit my adult show time to only after Liam was in bed and wasn't watching it. I didn't want him picking up things off of adult themed shows/movies until he was able to better understand what was going on and how to process those things. It is also nice to know that my boy shows compassion towards others even if they are intangible to him.  

 If you want to check out the moments from last month go to:
 Random Liam Moments: December 2013 
 

Liam and Balloons

Liam LOVES balloons!  I think he first discovered this before he was even a year old.  I actually would buy him more balloons, but I don't want him to get hurt by popping them and he always gets so depressed when they last less than a minute before they are popped.

As he is getting older the balloons will last slightly longer.  The other day when we made a trip tot he dollar star for some more stickers for potty rewards.  I came across a mega bag of balloons and bought them.  They have been work 20 times or more than the dollar I paid for them.  We (meaning mommy) blew a bunch of balloons up and had them spread all over the living room floor.  Liam carries balloons all over with him.  He even brought a couple into the bathroom sink and was washing them.  It is always great to have the simple things that overjoy your child the most.  Children teach us early on that it TRULY IS the little things that count!  

I wanted to share some of the hilarious photos and videos of him playing.  Enjoy!

Balloon Party at Liam's!

 

Bubbles & Balloons

 
Balloon Fun!

Getting out the soap

Balloon Washing

Water!