barefoot earlier

Kids at the moment are wearing lots of these charity bands, like Live Strong and Make Poverty History. I wondered whether they think about the charities or just the fashion.

Z says that I and M (10 and 8) rank them by the 'best' charity. That's a pretty challenging discussion to have at any age! Teen chat sites are also full of hot-headed exchanges about why fake ones are wrong. More layers to the issue.

How could I have underestimated the young like that? Had I forgotten what it was like? I was far more politically active and outspoken then. At 10 I campaigned for Labour in a mock election at school and made 100s of red rosettes from first prizes won by my great uncle's sheep! I'll also never forget how much it stung at 16 when my uncle said that he wouldn't talk to me about about politics until I'd grown up and stopped spouting my Dad's views.

How kids construct their 'map of the world' based on questions like 'why is this charity 'better' than that one', or what 'better' means fascinates me. It's an idea I keep coming across at the moment.

The idea is that we have a whole set of values and beliefs that we may not even be aware of. They shape the way that we understand what happens to us and how we respond to it. Imagine that after a bank robbery in which two people are injured, one person says, "I can't believe it, just my luck, it had to be me that got hurt." Another says, "How lucky was that, I survived, and what a story to tell - wonder how much it's worth!" The only difference is how lucky they believe themselves to be.

This has come up in my politics course: ideologies are sets of beliefs that can be used to motivate people politically. Lakoff uses the idea to suggest that it is the absolute opposition of conservative and liberal core beliefs that makes it difficult for each to understand why the other holds the views they do (e.g. why would neo-cons believe in minimal state interference and yet wish to 'interfere' in the constitution to deny the legitimacy of same-sex marriage?)

And the CBT that I'm having with F is all about these beliefs and the impact that they have on our lives when they are unhelpful.

On the mundane: throat-snot is back, antibiotics being tried and nose more frayed than ever.