Many parents have learned the hard way that what sounds like open communication is often the very thing that closes a youngster's ears and month. One common mistake is The Lecture, the long monologue that often starts with “When I was your age….” Eighteen-year-old Kelly calls lectures “long, one-side discussions in which I don't say much.”

    Kids reflexively（条件反射地） shut down in the face of a lecture. Their eyes glaze over(呆滞), and they don't register any incoming information. Listen to 13-year-old Sarah describe her least favorite times with her mom and dad. “First, they scream. Then comes the ‘We're so disappointed' speech. Then the ‘I never did that to my parents' lecture begins. After that, even if they realize how ridiculous they sound, they never take it back.”

    Lines like “When you have children of your own, you'll understand” have been seriously said by parents since time immemorial. But many of our expert parents, like Bobby, a registered nurse and mother of three, feel that by falling back on clichés（陈词滥调） to justify our actions, we weaken our position.

    Since kids are creatures of the here and now, the far-off future has no relevance to them. Therefore, good communicators like Bobby suggest, “Give specific reasons for your actions in present language: ‘I'm not letting you go to the party because I don't think there will be enough adult supervisions（监护）.'”

    Betty, who lives in Missiouri, uses an indirect approach. “I find that warnings are accepted more readily if I discuss a news article on a subject I am concerned about. My husband and I talk about it while our children absorb the information. Then they never think I'm preaching.”

    This really helped when Betty's kids began driving. Instead of constantly repeating “Don't drink; don't speed,” she would talk about articles in the paper and express sympathy for the victims of a car crash. Betty made no special effort to draw her kids into the conversation. She depended on a teen-ager's strong desire to put in his opinions-especially if he thinks he isn't being asked for them.

Three Feet From Gold

    Darby's uncle was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to dig and grow rich. After months of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore (矿石). He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. So, with the “strike”, he returned home. And with the help of Darby, he borrowed a lot of money. After buying the machinery and having it shipped, Uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

    The first car of ore was mined. And the returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Uncle and Darby!

    Then something happened! The vein (矿脉) of gold ore disappeared! They drilled on, but all in vain. Finally, they decided to quit and sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars. The junk man called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer's calculations showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! The junk man took millions of dollars in the vein, because he knew enough to seek expert's advice before giving up.

    Most of the money which went into the machinery was borrowed through the efforts of Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.

    Long afterward, Mr. Darby made another discovery that desire can be changed into gold. This discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance. Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, for he stopped three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say 'no' when I ask them to buy insurance.”

    Darby sold more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his “stickability” to the lesson he learned from his “quitability” in the gold mining business.

Best Smartphone Games To Put Your Brain To Test

    I am a fan of blood shedding MMORPGs. But sometimes I play brain games. Here are four games for you that will surely put your brain to test.

    Real Chess

    Chess has been bursting brains for over 14 centuries, and this virtual variant of chess really brings a new taste. It's a 3D virtual chess that lets you play with users from all around the world.

You can chat with opponents, play with AI, get newbie tips and much more. The animations and 3D structures are really cool as well.

    Juice Cubes

    Juice Cubes is a light and colorful game full of fruity juice cubes that you need to connect to pop and clear levels. There are multiple types of challenges, powerups, and over 550+ levels to keep you addicted.

    It might seem easy at the start, but it will burst your brain when you reach higher levels.

    WordBrain 2

    A really fun word game where you need to guess words based on the number of letters provided. Each word puzzle has a theme category, such as food, human body, color, or even space.

    And you can also use hints to solve the level when you get stuck. Your vocabulary is sure to be challenged in it.

    Puzzlerama

    Puzzlerama basically joins some of the top puzzles in one single app, making it a perfect app for puzzle lovers. It lets you play popular puzzle games such as flow, jigsaw, unblock, pipes, tangram, and more. There are hundreds of levels available for each puzzle type and things get really tough as you advance.

    The game interface is also very colorful, and smooth animations make the game fun to play.

    "Do you like my dress?" She asked of a passing stranger. "My mommy made it just for me." She said with a tear in her eye.

    "Well, I think it's very pretty, so, why are you crying?"

    With a tremble in her voice the little girl answered. "After mommy made me this dress, she had to go away."

    "Well, now," said the lady, "with a little girl like you waiting for her, I'm sure she'll be right back."

    "No Ma'am, you don't understand," said the child through her tears, "my daddy said she's up in heaven now with Grandfather."

    The woman realized what the child meant, and why she was crying. Kneeling down she gently gathered the child into her arms and together they cried for the mommy that was gone. As the woman intended to go, the little girl grabbed her sleeve, pointing to a spot on her dress, saying, "Here is where my mommy kissed my dress, and here," pointing to another spot, "and here is another kiss, and here, and here. Mommy said that she put all those kisses on my dress so that I would have her kisses whenever I cry."

    Then the lady realized that she wasn't just looking at a dress, she was looking at a mother who knew that she was going away and would not be there to kiss away the hurts that she knew her daughter would get. So she took all the love she had for her little girl and put them into this dress. She no longer saw a little girl in a simple dress. She saw a child wrapped in her mother's love.

    I'd like to share a story that happened when I was four. I remember it clearly. Our loving family dog was nearing the end of his life. My father picked him up and put him in a little bed we had made for him. Our dog, my companion, whom we had cared for, bit (咬) my father when he tried to help him. How could he? Why? I couldn't understand it. I didn't like him anymore.

    I hadn't thought about that story for a long time but something that happened last week brought it back to me. I went to speak with a friend. When I knocked on the door, I met an angry look and a few harsh (尖刻的) words. When the door was slammed (砰地关上) in my face, I stood there shocked, and in a rush, I was reminded of my dog bit my father 20 years ago or so. What brought that story back was that same feeling of betrayal (背叛).

    Both stories taught me something the next day. You see, when I got up in the morning and was told my dog had died, it became clear to me that he must have been in great pain. For him to have bitten a family member, he could not have been himself. Much the same for the other story when I learned that my friend's wife had just left him.

    We are all beings of our environments, our opinions and feelings. And all of those things can cause you to say and do things that can't be understood by those who are not in the same situation with you.

    If you meet someone either behaving out of character or acting in a way that doesn't seem to fit the situation, put out your hand and be patient when you think it is least possible for him to do so. You may turn around a story that has a sad ending simply by your actions.

"Given that signs of Alzheimer's disease (老年痴呆症) start to accumulate in the brain several decades before the disease begins, understanding the connection between sleep and cognition (认知) earlier in life is critical for understanding the role of sleep problems as a risk factor for the disease," said study author Yue Leng, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco.

The study involved 526 people with an average age of 40. They were followed for 11 years. Researchers looked at participants' sleep duration and quality. Participants wore a wrist activity monitor for three continuous days on two occasions approximately one year apart to calculate their averages. Participants slept for an average of six hours. Participants also reported bedtime and wake-up time in a sleep diary and completed a sleep quality survey with scores ranging from 0 to 21. A total of 239 people reported poor sleep with a score greater than five.

Researchers also looked at sleep fragmentation (碎片化), a measure of restlessness during the sleep period expressed as a percentage. The higher the value, the more sleep is interrupted. Participants were divided into three groups based on their sleep fragmentation score. Of the 175 people with the most interrupted sleep, 44 had poor cognitive performance 10 years later, compared to 10 of the 176 people with the least interrupted sleep.

After adjusting for age, sex, race, and education, people who had the most interrupted sleep had more than twice the possibility of having poor cognitive performance when compared to those with the least interrupted sleep. There was no difference in cognitive performance at midlife for those in the middle group compared to the group with the least interrupted sleep.

However, due to the small sample size, the researchers were unable to fully investigate potential race or sex differences. "More research is needed to assess the link between sleep disturbances and cognition at different life stages and to identify if critical life periods exist when sleep is more strongly associated with cognition," Leng said.