Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

  Intruder Room My wife asked our grandson about school. As part of his response, he told about the new "Intruder Room." Have you seen them? I used to work as a psychologist in schools. You can imagine we dealt with some horrific situations. Most of us care about our children and all those fine teachers and staff trying to provide a safe learning environment.  I've been in some schools in the past few years and I wondered how safe they would be--especially when a school shooting would hit the news. It's a new school year now. After labor day, students and teachers ought to be engaged in learning again. Now there's something new to learn. How does an intruder room work? How safe is it? I'm a bit skeptical having grown up when we were told to get under our wooden desks in case the Russians dropped a nuclear bomb on us. I asked  Bing's chat-- here's what I got. ____________________________ An intruder room is a safe space designed to protect students and ...

  It is reasonable for citizens of any nation to be concerned about the people entering their territory. Often the boundaries with neighbors were established at a peace treaty following the death of people on both sides. When boundaries change, people with differing loyalties may be trapped and isolated from their relatives unless there is a friendly approach for people to visit back and forth. The citizens of nations with large borders like the US incur considerable costs in monitoring their borders. Presumably, successful nations like the US and those in Western Europe are attractive because of the opportunities for work, education, and a range of benefits. Identifying those who enter the country illegally is no small task. When they mate with citizens and have children, they have created a potentially distressful condition if they are discovered and deported. My concern in this post is the children who were brought to the US illegally. As an immigrant myself, I do not reca...

If you want to scare parents, separate them (or threaten to) from their children. Some applications of immigration policies result in the separation of children from their parents. A recent news story brings the matter of loving and caring for children into focus. Here's a quote from a Business Insider article: When asked by NPR about those who say it's "cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children," Kelly brushed off the question, according to an interview transcript released Friday.  "I wouldn't put it quite that way," Kelly said. "The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long." When it comes to parenting, relationships matter. Caring is important of course. But parents and psychological scientists know that children need love ...