Chapter 7

I have had a similar experience with my cats as Pavlov did with the dog, of course at the time I did not know that is was called classical condition. I have had teach my cats what the word “eat” means.  The uncontrolled stimulus was the cat food and the conditioned response was my cats running into the kitchen meowing at me every time they heard me poring food. I need to somehow change their conditioned response to one that was not annoying to me. Then I used a controlled stimulus and started to say eat whenever I shook the box. Then they learned whenever I said “eat” to run down stairs and sit by the bowl and wait for me to walk down and feed them. As a result they no longer harassed me whenever I would shake a box. For example, before I could be pouring cereal into a bowl and they would practically attack me and jump onto the table.

Chapter 5

The past two chapters have me thinking a lot about my nephews development and how he is in the pre-operational stage now . After reading this chapter I thought about how he went through accommodation. One of his first words were  "Car"and  "cat". At first he would call every vehicle he saw a car, and he would call every animal a cat. He would call our dog a cat, and a few days later he learned how to say dog. Finally, he learned how to say the animals names. Then the challenge was to teach him that every dogs name is not Blue, and every cats name is not Simba. The same with the word car, it didn't take him long to catch on when I would point and say truck, motorcycle, or bus. Now he will grab my hand, walk around the house and point to everything so that he can repeat the words I say.

Chapter 4

SEX!!!!! It seems to be somehow incorporated in every movie. In fact you can barely look at a gum commercial without seeing it. This seems to be a big topic in the conversations I have with my friends. 


Yesterday I  was baby sitting my two year old nephew. While we were standing in the kitchen he started to point to the cereal on top of the refrigerator and said "that is mine". I looked down at him and said "no you need to eat some grapes instead". Well that did not go over so well with him because he got an attitude and started to scream at me. For some reason what bothered me more than him screaming at me was the fact that he had his hands placesd on his hip while he yelled at me. So instead of reprimanding him for screaming at me I said " don't you ever put your hand on your hip like that again".  This incident made me think about gender roles and the expectations for masculine and feminine behaviors.

Chapter 3

As odd as it may seem last might I had another Jurassic Park dream. Like always I was being chased by a velociraptor until I get to the edge of a cliff, jump off then wake up right before I get to the bottom. Why this particular movie?  Well when I was little this was me and my brothers favorite movie, we even had it on VHS, but I can’t figure out why a dinosaur would be chasing me. I’ve had similar Nightmares where during REM I am being chased but whatever it is, it has no definite figure and no face and if it sounds creepy to you just imagine how scary it is for me. It never fails, whenever I have this nightmare I jump up out of my sleep  and  look around to make sure I am safe. I have noticed I have the worst nightmares when I am suffering from sleep deprivation or insomnia.