Babies watching babies

(c) 2011 P. Lynne Designs

Status report from my Facebook page….” Sad news and a question. I was reading trends a few moments ago, and this is one of the reasons why I don't need to read nor see the news, but a 19-month old died in Houston, TX, because her siblings (two 3-year-olds) put her in the oven and she was severely burned. The oven was on. Now my childless self-wanted to know what was so damn important (sorry for the language), that the mother and the boyfriend had to leave these 4 children alone in the house? Nothing was that important. Ladies, unless you are passed out on the floor, there is NO REASON to leave a child under the age of 12 along in the home. NO REASON. if it is that important, CALL A BABYSITTER OR RELATIVE to watch your kids. Heck, take them to a police or fire station. Anything just does not leave them at home alone. Kids are too smart for their own good these days. Having them sit in front of a television set or computer while you are out for 5 minutes or longer does not cut it for these kids. There is so much stuff for a child to get into. You cannot have a baby watch a baby. There is a blog post coming, so I will continue my rant there. Be blessed.”

This is probably one of the hardest blog posts I have written on My Ambiance Life.  It comes with sadness, because I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I am a compassionate person, among my many flaws.  It is a flaw that I proud to have, and I feel that this is one of my character strengths, but it also comes with a price, I cry too easy.  Even though I have not cried about this particular case, I have cried about others in the past with the same ending…. Child dies while another sibling is caring for them, because parent is so in love with SO (Significate Other), too lazy to call or text an adult, or too crazy to call or text another adult to watch their children.  The child who is doing the watching usually is a sibling, who is next to the child who dies.  In this case, it is two 3-year old twins (I assume), and I guess, as the most cases are) the 19-month was crying, and they were trying to find a way to quiet the child.

Now there was supposed to be a fourth child in the home, and I wonder where was that child and how old that child was.  If that child was slightly older than the two 3-year olds (age 4-8), that would explain why the mother put that child in charge, but it still does not excuse for the absenteeism of the mother and the boyfriend.  It happens all too often.  A few weeks ago, an 8-year old was put in charge of a 1-year old, I believe, and the 8-year old beat the baby to death, again trying to quiet the child.

As I explained in my post on Facebook, I am childless, and even I know not to leave someone that young in charge of a baby (yes, at 19-months, they are still babies in my eyes).  I am not saying that a child cannot watch another child, but as an adult, you need to be within earshot range to grab the child and go into protective mode, should they get into harm’s way.  Some of the helpful ways that an older sibling under 12 can be helpful are:

·         Listen out for the baby when they should be waking up from a nap.

·         Alert parent when the baby is hungry or needs a diaper change.

·         Entertain the baby with you nearby, not out at the corner store.

·         Feed the baby with you nearby.

·         They can also briefly hold the baby while sitting down.

Again, I do not know nothing of this case, and my prayers go out to all involved.  I am not sure if the mom briefly left the children before, or if this was a first.  Either way now is not the time to criticize her (despite my rant on Facebook).  She has a long road ahead of her, by first laying her child to rest, then dealing with children services, who have no sympathy for the neglect of a child.  After all, even if she and the boyfriend were in the house, which could happen too, it was neglect in children services eyes.  People have left children before, and it will happen again in some other part of the country.

My prayer for parents has always think before you act, and this includes leaving children with others, especially with another child.  Make sure that child is responsible for taking care of that child, and it should be a child over the age of 13.  I did not mention 12 because that age is so awkward.  You are not a little child, but you are not a teen either.

I feel better, and I hope that everyone starts doing a little more thinking.  

Pros and cons to Instagram and Pinterest

I just pinned the last post onto my board.   It looks like this: 

My blog pin board (c) 2015 Pinterest.com.
Photo by P.Lynne Designs

Simple, right?  No so fast, and there are pros and cons to Pinterest. Some facts about the two websites:

1.      Did you know that not everyone is a willing participate?  Shocking but true.  There is this annoying law throughout the land called a copyright law, but in some cases, it can be very helpful, especially if you do not want something to be shared.  It is now required that all sites like Pinterest to have a code, that the person can place on their page that prevents another person from sharing that site’s images. 

2.      This from the Digital Marketing:  There are 70 million users on Pinterest (including yours truly), 85% are female, and 42% are adult women.  So if you are wondering how and who to market to as well as where to market at on social media, there you go.   But not so fast.  The numbers for men are growing.  In addition to those stats, keep this in mind as well:  4.8% are Americans who use Pinterest during work. The average time spent on Pinterest:  14.2 minutes.  So for marketers looking to engage in this group (and a few bloggers), you have 14.2 minutes to impress someone to pin your photo and read your post or ad.  That is a monthly average of 98 minutes. 

3.      Pinterest is very easy to use.  You set up an account, set your boards, and start pinning.  You fill out an application with all your info (except your street address, which I do not recommend you do, unless you order something and have it delivered), and you ready to start pinning.

4.      Time waster.  I will save this for later when I conclude all of the social media platforms, but, yeah, Pinterest is up there with Facebook as one of the biggest time wasters.  You can sit there, pin one or two ideas, and 30 minutes have gone by.  If you are that person, who can sit for hours and pin, set a timer on phone.  When those minutes are over, please stop, and resume your scheduled activity.  If this becomes a problem, I suggest you take a time out from the social media.

5.      It's your style.  I do not have to say that you need to have your boards like mine, because if you do not like my tastes, that is OK. 

Instagram pros and cons

1.      Facts: it one of the favorite social media among millennials (18-30). There are 300 million monthly active users, amongst those numbers, there are daily users of 70 million.  Surprisingly, 9% of teen girls have said they have been cyber-bullied through Instagram.  26% in the US use Instagram.  Among adult males and females, only 15% (male) versus 20% (female) use Instagram.  So again, thinking about this as you write your posts, and there is a way to get readers through Instagram.

2.      It is the best social media platform for sharing photos, next to Pinterest.  You can share what you ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a movie you just saw, a craft project you just made, your child’s reaction to the latest movie trailer, a sunset…anything.  BUT…there is also this thing called over sharing. Please, for all things good and just, as must as people love Instagram, enough with the food porn.  If it is a great recipe you have tried to make, fine.  If it a new restaurant that you want everyone to try, good.  BUT, if it is your normal everyday routine of cereal, toast, and coffee, and you shared it for the 9^th time in a row, please stop. Not everyone is that into your daily routine.

3.      Instagram is private.  Please when you sign up for your account, do not put your street address.  You are not ordering anything, so therefore, they do not need your street address.  If you must put an address, please use city and state (no zip).  Otherwise, they do have privacy settings.

4.      Instagram is a positive influence.  I can hear the grumbles, but hear me out.  When you post a picture on Instagram with a positive message, you can generally “likes”.  It can brighten someone's day or life.  It can make a person feel good about themselves.  I have a whole subject to talk about this, but this is the very reason why a person should not cyber-bully.  Now who wants to see a picture of a puppy?

5.      Tagging a location.  If this an account for a minor, and I do not believe in anyone under the age of 18 having one, because of child and teen predictors,  but that is my opinion, please do not put even the city and state on their account.  Please educate your child on what to do, and how to it, if someone approaches them.

Some may wonder why I did not include you tube.  These two Social Media platforms are different than YouTube, which is in a whole different platform, since it is a video sharing program.  I will have something to say on this one.

6.)  (Update:)  I found a major con with Instagram.  People can get to your photos, copy them, and use them as their own outside of Instagram's website without your permission.  This week, A so called photographer named Richard Price, takes other people's Instagram photos, and alters them so that he can call them his own personal masterpiece.   He posted some recently in a gallery in New York, and one of them was sold for $90,000.  He cannot be sued, and it is out of Instagram's hands, because he is doing it outside of the site.  My opinion to this is, if you are going to share photos that contains you or the people you know faces on Instagram, be very careful, because they could end up somewhere without your permission, and there isn't anything you can do about it yet.   I hope the government is working on it.  As for now, I deleted all family pictures on Instagram, and sticking to places I have been, what I eat or the projects I have created.
I am not saying to stop using Instagram or to or don't have an account, I am just saying, be careful about what photos you share to the world.  I still like Instagram, because they are not the problem.

The next post will focus on how I use these platforms to gain likes and traffic.(Update:  May 30, 2015...)  Since I first posted this, I have decided to add the gain likes and traffic to this post.

Being a follower is the best way to gain likes and traffic to your own feed.  One of the things I like about both Pinterest and Instagram is once you follow a person, chances are that they will follow you back, and their photos will be on your wall, and likewise your photos will be on their feed.  You may even gain a new follower from one of their friends.  When you get that request, check them out before excepting.   There isn't much work you can do on these two platforms, in order to gain followers, but keep posting.  Do not post just one time, and forget about it.   Posting is your friend.

That is it for this series.  I decided not to post anything about Facebook, because for one, it's complicated, but not so complicated that you cannot just jump right in.  Just complicated to explain in two posts.  On word of advise in case you want a Facebook account or do not know what to do with the one you have, Stay away from the games.

Monday musings: Research tip

(c) 2014 P.Lynne Designs

Before I get to today’s post, I want to give an apology to those who have been following this blog:   I goof up again.  I am trying to make my life a little easier by automatically uploading blog posts from Blogger to pinterest.  I often use a website called Ifttt.com to perform little tasks for uploading stuff.  Unfortunately, instead of getting a recipe that uploads my posts after I publish them to my pinterest board, it is posting everything I repin from my feed (like a greeting card idea I like), and posting it to Blogger on this blog.  It is not doing it to my other blogs.  It has gotten traffic, just not the traffic I wanted for this blog.  The ones that were repined, should be for my P.Lynne Designs blog, NOT this one.  

If you are here to learn about different writing techniques and my musings, I again apologize, and if you do not mind the posts, ignore my apology.  Either way, I have stopped the recipe from automatically posting pins that have nothing to do with my post.  I am, however, learning to create one on my own, and not rely of others.   With that being said, I hope you will enjoy today’s post.

Research can be a bear (I had another name, but I am trying to keep it G).  In case you have lived under a rock, this is how research used to be:  Come up with a subject.  Narrow down the subject.  Go to the library.  If your family was lucky, you had a set of encyclopedias and you looked up information that way.  You wrote out your information of 3x5 cards (10 points if you showed it to the teacher as proof you did it).  You arranged your cards in order of appearance in your report (essay, dissertation, thesis, Et. all), and that was the hard part.  Now, you have to write the little bugger.  Typing was, and still is not my strongest skill, so using the typewriter was really grueling, and you spell check was the dictionary (my parents had Webster’s, the only game in town according to them).   If you messed up, you had to either use whiteout, a typewriter eraser, or rip the whole thing out and start the page over again.    Thank God I had caring teachers who did allow students to write the report in their own handwriting.  When I was a teen, computers were introduce to the home, and life got a little simpler.

Today, I do not know how we got along without computer.  You do not have to go to the library, take notes on a 3 x 5 index card, and so forth.   I do not remember the last time I was in a library.  I just look up my information on Google to research my subject, type out my post (or article), but what do you do with all that information you find.   Well you can store it on an external drive, your internal drive on your computer, or on a cloud drive.  How about your browser?   If you have not made this discovery, let me show you have it is done.

I am using Google Chrome, but any browser can actually do this.  You just have to know how to save.

(c) 2015 P. Lynne Designs

First of all, make your folder.   On Google Chrome, go to bar which is right under the URL bar.

 Click the right button on the mouse to bring up the menu, and go to “add folder”.

This should bring up a menu like this:

(c) 2015 P. Lynne Designs

Type in a name such as “research”, “musings” (you come up with the name)

And your folder should look like this on the saved bar (what I am calling it from now on)

Next, you want to save the website that you are researching on, so highlight the URL.

Then drag it to the new folder.

(c) 2015 P.Lynne Designs

Now if you need to go to the website, instead of typing in the URL each time, just go to your research folder in your browser.   It saves time, no need to think of the URL each time, and a bunch of trees (no more little pieces of paper with the URL floating around your desk).