Jon Henshaw

When friends plan to visit Nashville, TN, they often reach out to me to find the best things to do. My list of recommended things hasn't changed much, so I figured it was time to finally write a post that I could point friends to in the future. This is my list of the best things to do in Nashville.

1. Broadway: Broadway is Broadway. If you want to drink and dance and listen to live music, that’s the easiest thing you’ll do here. This review is as good as any.
2. Ryman: If you can time it with a good Ryman concert, that will significantly enhance your trip. If not, hitting a smaller venue like Exit/In or Marathon Music Works can be fun, too, if they have a band you like.
3. Museums: The museum scene is decent. Especially if you like music history.
4. Hatch Show Print: You’ll want to check out Hatch Show Print. I can almost guarantee that you won't leave there without buying a print.
5. Beer: If you like beer, there’s a decent brewing scene in Nashville.
6. The Catbird Seat: My favorite fancy pants amazaballs restaurant is The Catbird Seat. The food and experience are absolutely worth it if you can snag reservations.
7. Margot Cafe: My favorite all-time local Nashville restaurant is Margot Cafe.
8. Prince's: Go to Prince’s if you want the original Nashville hot chicken (Hattie B’s is good, but it’s not the original).
9. Martin's: Everyone has their favorite BBQ place, but mine is Martin’s. I recommend the dry-rubbed wings with white sauce.
10. Goo Goo Cluster: Lastly, you can make a custom Goo Goo Cluster which is fun and delicious.

⚠️ Disclaimer: What I'm sharing is something that has worked well for me, and may or may not work well for you. This article is not medical or health advice. Everyone's body is different, and you should consult with a medical professional about concerns you might have regarding exercising in extreme heat. You should also educate yourself about how to avoid and recognize the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Always listen to your body and don't take unnecessary risks.

A few years ago I was looking for cooling materials and stumbled upon MISSION's cooling apparel. I bought one of their hats and gaiters. The hat performed well while walking, hiking, and doing yard work outside. The gaiter also did well doing the same activities, but it didn't help much when I ran.

In an attempt to have the gaiter perform better, I wet it, wrung it out, and then froze it. That kept the gaiter cooler for a little longer, but not long enough. But it gave me an idea that has worked out very well. Instead of wetting and freezing it, I started putting ice cubes around the bottom and then rolling it up. I found when I put it on my neck, it would slowly melt during the run and my body would heat up slower and I could run further.

I think this life hack works well for a few reasons:

1. Some of the ice sits over my carotid arteries and is likely helping to cool my blood.
2. The circle of ice significantly cools the area around my neck and helps make my head noticeably cooler.
3. The ice melts down the front and back of my shirt and it has a constant cooling effect on my torso.

How to add ice to the cooling gaiter

Step 1: Fill a bowl up with ice cubes and turn the gaiter inside out.

Step 2: Fill the inside of the end of the gaiter with ice.

Step 3: Wrap and roll the ice up about halfway up the gaiter.

Step 4: Take the other end of the gaiter and wrap it around the bottom part that has the ice. Flip it over and pull the end without ice up.

Step 5: Pull it over your head and put it around your neck.

After I put it on, I like to shift most of the ice around to the back of my neck, but I leave a few cubes resting over both of my carotid arteries. As I run and the ice over my carotid arteries melts, I will usually move some of the ice on the back of my neck forward over my arteries.

Additional tips for running in the heat

Make sure your body is cool before running. If you've been doing things that would make you even a little warm, your body will likely heat up faster. I prepare for running in the heat by doing the following:

• Drink plenty of water during the hours leading up to the run. Being well hydrated before you run is very important. Drinking a lot of water right before a run is not being well hydrated. That's not how the body works.
• Find a cool spot in your home. I work remotely and my small home office has a mini-split air conditioner. Before I run in the heat, I will usually turn the unit on and set it to 68 degrees until I feel cold. My setup isn't typical, but the important thing is to find a place in your home that isn't warm and where your body can feel cool.
• Reduce movement. As you hydrate and remain in a cool spot, don't do much with your body. I typically use my computer, but you could also use the time to read, meditate, or lay down (without falling asleep).

I passed a dead possum on the road today. Its face was turned towards me and its eyes were open, staring at me, with stains of blood that had poured out of its eyes when it was dying.

What is this possum’s life worth? What is our own life worth?

As someone who no longer believes in the existence of an afterlife or an omniscient invisible being that’s pulling all of the strings, I have a new perspective on the meaning of life. The answer for me has merely become to live.

Living is being in the moment; observing nature; focusing on your breathing; tasting food; smelling pleasant scents; drinking water; intimacy; rest; and feeling the sun give you warmth.

As humans, we allow our complexities and higher reasoning to stack, smother, and obscure what it means to be alive. We build and participate in social constructs that enrage us or cause us severe depression. We become chronically anxious and will either eat too much or not enough. We commit ourselves to debt for things we don’t need, enabling what we owe to become the master of our future actions.

Am I that possum? Are we all that possum after you strip away all of the social constructs that forever occupy our minds?

For me, the possum is a reminder that life is short and our bodies are fragile. It’s a reminder to step away from the fictions we’ve created and participate in, and to reset my body and mind with things that are simple and true, like breathing, resting, smelling, feeling, helping, and loving.

I will continue to create, participate, and do all of the things that I just mentioned that make life messy. But I’ll also try to be mindful and attempt to remain tethered to what is simple and real.

If you’re living life as fully as possible, it will be a mixed bag of emotions and will most certainly involve uncertainty and risk. Some of those decisions will result in miserable failures, while others will reward you with unimaginable joy.

I’m thankful for my failures. They help keep my ambitions in check. And if left unchecked, might adversely affect the lives of others. That is a regret I do not want to visit again if I can avoid it.

I’m thankful for my successes. They give me hope that my dreams and ambitions are attainable.

After many failures, I was able to experience the success of helping build a company from nothing to a growing SaaS. A lot happened during those 12 years. There were many highs and many lows. Throughout it though, I never gave up, and I survived. Much of my survival is thanks to my business partner, Scott Holdren, who fought alongside me. We also survived because of the extraordinary people who chose to be a part of the Raven family.

Time and experiences have a way of changing you. For me, I felt finished with Raven and was ready to start a new adventure. Scott was in a similar place, but he, of course, had his own reasons. That’s why we decided to sell it. So we could eventually do something new and different with our lives.

We were fortunate to find an interested company that knew Raven well. They were a good fit and could take good care of it. They were generous and kept all of the employees, and gave us a chance to continue working with them. Ultimately though, my heart wasn’t in it anymore, and I was ready for a change. I will be forever grateful to them and wish them the best as they continue to grow their company.

So what’s next?

I want to do what I enjoy most, and one of the things I enjoy most is SEO. And by SEO, I mean all of it: IA, content strategies and tactics, finding untapped opportunities, killing it in organic search, testing new technologies, experimenting with new ideas, outreach, networking, link building…ALL OF IT.

I’ve found a place to do that and more at CBS Interactive. I will be a Senior SEO Analyst and it's a dream job for me.

I’m still an entrepreneur at heart, and I have something I’m cooking up in my own time that I’ll be debuting in the coming months. For now, though, I’m looking forward to what will hopefully be a long ride with the genius search team at CBSi.

Once you hit your mid-to-late-thirties, things start to slow down. It’s an interesting time because it coincides with you feeling fairly confident about yourself and the world around you. As in, you don’t give as much of a shit about things, because you’ve realized how insignificant those things actually are.

If you’re like me, 🍺, 🥃 and 🍸 also start to taste better and you find yourself consuming them more often than not. That has been my case for several years now. I’ve fought off the unpleasant effects of alcohol (making me fatter) by 🏋️, 🚵 and 🏃‍♂️. However, an unexpected thing happened to me as soon as I hit 40-years-old. I started to develop chronic insertional achilles tendinitis (IAT).

IAT would make it impossible to walk for weeks at a time, which also kept me from 🏋️, 🚵 and 🏃‍♂️. Without exercise, I found myself drinking more often, especially when I felt more stressed out. I also started to notice that I was becoming more physically depressed. I felt more tired and my brain felt slower. It became a vicious cycle, similar to how overweight people (myself included) relieve themselves emotionally with unhealthy food over and over again.

🏃‍♂️ is my zen and 🏋️ makes me feel strong, but with IAT I was stuck. So after three years of off-and-on-again IAT, I finally sought out a specialist and got an MRI. I found out that absolutely nothing was wrong with me. There were no signs of arthritis or problems with my achilles. Everything looked completely healthy. After ruling out all of the other possibilities, my doctor diagnosed me with gout.

This was shocking to me, because I’ve always imagined gout as being an old person’s disease where they have this giant swelled up foot and ankle. After learning more about gout and how it first usually presents itself with a swelled up big toe knuckle, I immediately remembered the two times that happened to me in my right foot and I couldn’t walk very well for a week each time. Holy crap! I’ve been fighting gout all this time!

I learned that gout is caused by purines (which sounds completely made up to me) which are found in high quantities in 🍺, 🥃, 🍸, 🐮, 🐔, 🐷, 🐟 and 🦐. That’s basically my entire diet. Consuming any of those on a regular basis and in high volume can cause gout. In addition, not staying well hydrated can cause gout.

In most cases, gout is hereditary. It wasn’t until after I was diagnosed that my Dad said, “Oh yeah, your Mom and I have had gout several times.” That would have been good to know a long time ago 😕.

Bottom line, the cure for gout for me was to give up 🍺, 🥃, 🍸, 🐮, 🐔, 🐷, 🐟 and 🦐, and to stay💧. So that’s what I did, 🥶🦃.

Since I’ve stopped drinking alcohol and have only been eating a vegetarian diet, my symptoms have completely gone away. I’ve been exercising regularly again, and I have yet to experience any of the old symptoms. The other thing that’s changed significantly is what I call my brainergy. I feel more alert and energetic. I had no idea just how much alcohol was physically depressing my body and my mind. I’m sure it’s also because I’m eating healthier now, but not drinking alcohol has made my mind significantly more sharp and intellectually motivated. So in a weird way, gout has been a blessing.

It's become rare to find comment threads on news articles that are civil and thoughtful. Instead, most comments are full of people calling the opposing side names and telling them why they're wrong. People who reply typically use the same tone and defend their own points with religious-like vigor. Nobody is listening and nobody's minds are being changed. As a result, people who could positively and constructively be contributing to the discussion are vanishing.

Last week Google debuted a new toxicity detecting service for online discussions called Perspective. While some people see this approach as an affront to our freedom of speech (which it is not), it is an affront to intentionally contentious and pugnacious commenters.

The goal of the Perspective API is to bring back some semblance of online civil discourse. To help create it, Google partnered with the New York Times and Wikipedia and analyzed their comments data.

It analyzed the Times moderators' decisions as they triaged reader comments, and used that data to train itself to identify harmful speech. The training materials also included hundreds of thousands of comments on Wikipedia, evaluated by thousands of different moderators.

I tested Perspective and was impressed by its results.

While Perspective is promising, it's still no panacea and it is a form of censorship. Machine learning and algorithms can only go so far when it comes to human language and intent. Not only will there be false positives, but some of the incorrectly filtered comments may also end up being the most profound and irenic messages that nobody will ever get to see or consider. And like most technology, it can be gamed. Civil and relevant dissent may be filtered, while useless and sardonic comments may slip through undetected.

Perhaps, over time, weighting can be applied to authors. The algorithm could take that weighting into consideration and highlight conversations by authors who engage in civil discourse, regardless of their positions and ideology.

Civil discourse is how we progress as a people. The internet presents the most incredible communication medium of our time and we're currently squandering it with our inability to speak intelligently to each other. My hope is that technologies like Perspective will help save online civil discourse without censoring diverse ideas and perspectives.

Information is the enemy of religion. There's a direct correlation between access to dissenting, logical information about religion and one's beliefs and devotion to it. This becomes exasperated when you introduce cultural phenomena, like the mixture of politics and religion that are incongruent with each other and society as a whole. This is especially true for younger believers whose minds are more capable of plasticity.

My philosophical status as a None[s] came from a direct result of religion mixed with politics. I was an Evangelical Christian for the first three decades of my life, but something significant happened in the early 2000s. I watched in dumbfounded despair as Christians across America were mindlessly controlled by fear-based rhetoric from our President and his Administration. It resulted in Christian books being published about when war was okay with God and the politicization of the pulpit. At the time, it was obvious to me that not only was the Administration lying, but the idea of rushing into the war was incongruent with my beliefs and scripture as I knew it. It was the first time I had ever witnessed firsthand the power of fear and groupthink.

That moment in time – a lying President, fear-based rhetoric, and blind devotion – was the catalyst for my six-year-long deconversion away from Christianity. The internet played a significant role in my ability to find and access information. However, there was also an agnostic and atheist book publishing Renaissance during that time. Some of the books I read were considered heretical, like Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, which shed light on the origins of the Bible and questioned the validity of Jesus. While others were thoughtful, provocative, and atheistic in nature, like Christopher Hitchens' god is not Great and Sam Harris' The End of Faith. Without the internet and access to those books, it's possible that I could still be clinging to my faith and suffering from even worse cognitive dissonance.

It's now 2017 and one month into Trump's presidency. Trump brings an entirely new degree of incongruence between his ideology and Christianity. Taking into account 1) the continued trend away from religion; 2) access to more philosophical and dissenting views via the internet and books; and 3) the coupling of the Trump presidency with conservative Christians (a true deal with the devil), I expect a new wave of Nones as a result. If you want to know how to kill your own religious relevance within society and among an entire generation, all you need to do is sit back and watch how conservative Christians are self-destructing through their myopic worldview and desire for theocracy.

In a world of games like Candy Crush, game creators borrow from psychology to intentionally make their games as addictive as possible. Players then allow these games to rob them of their precious time. Time away from socializing, relating, loving, and even creating.

If the game creators are lucky, they can make a lot of money. The end result is a profitable company and a sea of people who wasted their time and potential on nothing.

And then you have Flappy Bird.

The creator of Flappy Bird wrote the game in a week and over time, it became one of the most successful games on iTunes. At its peak, it was making $50,000/day in advertising. And then Dong Nguyen, the game's creator, removed it.

Dong Nguyen told Forbes:

“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.”

“But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

Lan Anh Nguyen, Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App 'Gone Forever' Because It Was 'An Addictive Product', Forbes

So there you have it. Dong Nguyen is the only person looking out for your best interests in this cold and dark gaming world. He would rather you do something with your life than allow himself to get filthy, stinking rich.

Update March 11, 2014

Rolling Stone caught with Dong Nguyen and was able to get him to further elucidate his decision to pull the game.

But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart.

By early February, the weight of everything – the scrutiny, the relentless criticism, and accusations – felt crushing. He couldn't sleep, couldn't focus, didn't want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, "worried about my well-being." His tweets became darker and more cryptic. "I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine," read one. "But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it." He realized there was one thing to do: Pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. "I'm master of my own fate," he says. "Independent thinker."

David Kushner, The Flight of the Birdman: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out, Rolling Stone

Near the end of the article, the author, David Kushner, asked him "will Flappy Bird ever fly again?" His answer was maybe, but it will have to come with the warning, "Please take a break."

My son just turned eight and he wanted to have a Minecraft-themed party, so I figured why not throw a LAN party!

Minecraft Server

If you're going to have a Minecraft LAN party, you might as well run the server locally. I chose to go with McMyAdmin, because it's easy to use and also runs on OS X.

I installed it on an old Mac mini and had the server up and running in a few minutes.

Computers for Playing Minecraft

Finding enough computers for guests will probably be the hardest task for most people.

I highly recommend having a computer for everyone, otherwise, people will feel left out and will probably get bored. In most cases that will mean reducing the number of people you invite (which is actually a good thing).

At our party, we used my laptop, my wife's iMac, the kids' old iMac, and the old Mac mini running the server. We were short one computer, but one of the kids was able to bring his parent's laptop.

Everyone will need a Minecraft account, so make sure they know that in advance. And if they're young, get the login info from their parents before the party. Otherwise, you'll be stuck either setting up accounts or with some very disappointed kids.

Setting Up the LAN

I have a good WiFi network, but I wanted the network and gameplay to be super fast. So I set up a wired gigabit network!

I bought Netgear's 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch and hooked everything up with Cat6 ethernet cables. Needless to say, there was NO lag! :)

Minecraft Party Activities

When the kids showed up, they were greeted with Minecraft music. And by Minecraft music, I mean all of the random people who have changed the lyrics to popular songs and turned them into Minecraft songs.

I was able to do this by pulling up Spotify on my iPad mini and playing one of the numerous Minecraft playlists that were available. I used the awesome Big JamBox by Jawbone for the speakers.

We also took regular black and green balloons and Minecrafted them!

There was even a dance room, because why not!?

Before we started the LAN party, we had the kids create Minecraft objects using the Melty Beads Animal Friends kit.

We then found patterns online for them to use.

After the bead project, we started the main event. I'm pretty sure they could have kept playing for days. Lucky for us it was just two hours :)

For the finale, we made a Minecraft Pig cake out of homemade cupcakes. The boys didn't mind that it was pink, because it was a pig...and it's cake!

All-in-all, it was a great party.

If you’ve never heard of Cards Against Humanity (CAH), then you’re probably a boring, prudish person with boring, prudish friends. And that’s okay, I’m just saying.

CAH is what Mad Libs would be if it was turned into a card game and everything was dirty and awful. Basically, it’s the best card game you’ll ever play, aside from Texas Hold’em.

Black Friday Special

For their Black Friday deal, they decided to raise their prices, instead of offering the expected discount. It worked and they had amazing sales.

While that was brilliant, it didn’t come close to their amazing old-school postal mail campaign.

12 Days of Holiday Bullshit

CAH presented anyone with $12 to burn the opportunity to get twelve random gifts from them in the mail. It was dubbed the 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit (via Internet Archive). I of course immediately threw my money at them.

What followed were twelve envelopes sent over several days to my home. I don’t know how much they spent on this campaign, but between the postage and what was in the envelopes, it had to be well over the price I paid for it. On top of that, 100,000 people participated in this campaign! That means they received $1.2 million dollars and it probably cost them $1.5 to $2 million to do it. Thems big numbers!

The campaign was very memorable, and now their brand is laser etched into my brain. Well done!

Here’s a list of my favorite gifts, which also include the personalized card they made with my name on it (as seen at the beginning of this post).

A custom made cartoon newspaper

A new game I’ll never play

Some cards with a little political edge

The best card of all, a donation to DonorsChoose.org

You can see their latest holiday ridiculousness at holidaybullshit.com (via Internet Archive).

My parents taught me that I was God’s creation and that I was loved unconditionally by Him. They told me that the Bible was God’s Word and that it was perfect (something the Bible conveniently states about itself). They made it clear that all things good come from God, that Christianity was the source of all morality and that everything good in this world comes from it. I later learned that was all bullshit.

My parents never told me the full story.

Misinformed

In the first few years of my deconversion from Christianity – something that didn’t happen until my early thirties and took about six years – I had the feeling that I had been lied to. Lied to by my parents. Lied to by the church. Basically lied to by all of the people I trusted most.

Why hadn’t anyone told me about the full history of the Bible? Like how exaggerated orally transferred stories had made their way onto paper and were altered countless times. How this religion was historically used for political purposes to unite people under a single god and belief system. How Christianity is a fairly new religion, borrowing and stealing from the traditions of other mystical belief systems that came before it.

As far as I knew, Christianity had been around for a long time, everything else was a false religion, and that’s all I needed to know.

Inherited Ignorance

If you tell a lie, but don’t know it’s a lie, is it still a lie?

Coming to the realization that I was just another victim of generational ignorance — not a vast conspiracy perpetrated by those I loved the most — greatly improved my feelings about being lied to. Without the intention of lying, I didn’t feel lied to. Instead, I felt misinformed by those who had also been misinformed.

My parents never got the full story. Their parents never got the full story. I realized nobody ever gets the full story.

I can’t haz Enlightenment

Obvious examples of misinformation include news sources like MSNBC, Fox News or the bat shit crazy Glenn Beck. Less obvious examples include any source I implicitly trust. In the same way I implicitly trusted my parents and the church, I must accept that whatever enlightenment I think I have now is ultimately still an illusion.

For example, Sam Harris’ general philosophies resonate with me today, but it’s doubtful he communicates the full story through his writings. He most certainly leaves out details that he thinks are insignificant to the arguments he’s making. He also has probably never been a true believer of any religion like I have, and therefore lacks the ability of knowing what it’s like to feel the presence of God.

Sam Harris is incapable of telling the full story, just as I am incapable of perceiving and comprehending it. It’s part of the human condition.

A Fullish Life

No matter how much I read and learn, I will most certainly die not knowing the full story. The best I can do is to continue to seek out truth, as best as I can comprehend it.

If I can do anything with this knowledge of my chronic lack of knowing, it’s to be more patient with those I don’t agree with, and to try to be less of a dick.

Some of the simplest and shortest sayings that people use in U.S. culture are actually overly complicated and philosophically wrong. They're used to comfort those who are anxious or emotionally stressed, much like the religious institutions they are connected to.

Take for example the saying, "everything happens for a reason." It's something that people tell others to imply that God has a hand in certain (or all) events, and it's okay, because the circumstances must be connected to something bigger than them – a master plan.

As a freethinker – one who espouses logic, reason and science – a more correct saying would be:

"everything happens for a reason"

While coincidences occur in practically everyone's life, in most (if not all) cases the things that affect us are a response to stimulus from an incomprehensible system. There is no plan as the superstitious would have us believe. Everything just happens, period. We must deal with it, whatever it may be, if we can.

There's another saying that's become popular near where I live, and that's, "it's gonna be ok." Or better known as IGBOK. The "ok" part means it will be okay after death, when you're in Heaven, blah, blah, blah. Not exactly helpful for the here and now, unless of course you long for death and can't wait to live in your fictitious resting place for eternity.

I prefer the more existential statement of:

"it's gonna be ok"

At the root of these sayings is a desire to provide comfort to another person (which is obviously not a bad thing in and of itself). However, in the same way that all religions are used as a coping mechanism for our limited and sometimes miserable existence, all these sayings really do – philosophically speaking - is provide false hope.

I was thinking about ignorance today. I realized – I doubt for the first time – that ignorance is not just one thing. There are different types of ignorance. Different reasons and circumstances for why people experience ignorance.

Incapable of knowing ignorance

Some people are ignorant because their life circumstance doesn't permit them to know. They could live in another country and be ignorant of a cultural folkway – one that's never been discussed on the Internet or in any book. Or they could be mentally incapable of understanding something.

Choose not to know ignorance

This is the "ignorance is bliss" type of ignorance. This can be conscious or unconscious denials of facts. A mother who refuses to accept that her son is gay or a Christian who refuses to follow a logical thought pattern for fear of finding an answer that is inconsistent with their beliefs.

Influenced to not know ignorance

Then there are people who are suffocated by those around them. A religious family that shuns any education that isn't inspired by their own canon and rituals, forcefully and intentionally keeping their children from experiencing a world view that would deviate from their own family traditions.

Not knowing how to know ignorance

There are those who lack the tools and skills to research, learn and build upon their knowledge. Even if they wanted to know more, they wouldn't know where to begin.

Stupid ignorance

Then there are those who refuse to live mindfully, and allow their impulses to drive their behaviors and are unable to take the time to experience empathy or understand the world around them. They experience the worst kind of ignorance. The kind that makes everyone's lives a living hell.

My wife and I were spanked as kids – me more than her :( – and we seem to have turned out as relatively healthy adults. Of course, neither of us liked being spanked, and I never took well to it. Even as I near 40-years-old, I have vivid memories of being spanked, not understanding it, and hating every moment of it.

We have two children, and we chose early on to not spank them. The main reason is that we have 18 years to prepare them to become independent adults, and there's no place in our society where physically hurting another person to get your way is acceptable, let alone legal. If we're to do our job as parents, we're to find a way – as adults – to discipline and guide them towards more acceptable behavior without hitting them.

Now it appears there's another good reason to not inflict physical pain on your child. A new study has been released that suggests physical punishment is linked to mental disorders in adulthood. Researchers in the American Academy of Pediatrics reported:

Results: Harsh physical punishment was associated with increased odds of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, and several personality disorders after adjusting for sociodemographic variables and family history of dysfunction (adjusted odds ratio: 1.36–2.46). Approximately 2% to 5% of Axis I disorders and 4% to 7% of Axis II disorders were attributable to harsh physical punishment.

Conclusions: Harsh physical punishment in the absence of child maltreatment is associated with mood disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse/dependence, and personality disorders in a general population sample. These findings inform the ongoing debate around the use of physical punishment and provide evidence that harsh physical punishment independent of child maltreatment is related to mental disorders.

The study defined harsh physical punishment as pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, and hitting. So an argument could be made that this doesn't affect children who are spanked. Especially, if the spanking is done in a controlled, quasi-loving manner. However, I would personally add spanking to the list if it's done out of anger, including quick pops or demeaning spanking.

Hitting another human being creates emotional distress (regardless of the severity) and inflicting pain on an adult in order to get your way is unacceptable in our society. So why in the world would it be okay to do (and thus teach) children it's okay to hurt them to get our way? If your answer includes tradition, "I turned out okay" or religion, then you probably haven't thought very deeply about this, and you probably should.

Update 1/12/2018

David Roberts wrote on Vox about how spanking doesn’t work, and it teaches all the wrong lessons. He writes:

There are two basic arguments. The first is drawn from social science, which shows that spanking does not work to produce better behavior or healthier kids. The second is a moral argument, about violence and what it does and doesn’t teach children.

Since I originally wrote this article in 2012, a lot of research has come out from studies about spanking. Some of the research cited in the article includes:

• Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses.
• Spanking for Misbehavior? It Causes More
• Spanking and adult mental health impairment: The case for the designation of spanking as an adverse childhood experience

One of the best parts of the article was something that's actionable for parents as an alternative to spanking:

1. Get Calm
2. Take Time for Yourself
3. Be Kind but Firm
4. Give Choices
5. Use Logical Consequences
6. Do Make Ups
7. Withdraw from Conflict
8. Use kind but firm action
9. Inform Children Ahead of Time

You can read more about what those actions mean on Kathryn Kvol's article, 9 Things to do Instead of Spanking.

Since my wife and I became freethinkers – we were formerly evangelical Christians – we've had many discussions about the culture our children are growing up in. We are Southerners, and we live in a neighborhood that is predominantly protestant. Almost everyone we come into contact with goes to church, and their kids are active in church-related activities. While this concerns my wife, it doesn't concern me. The main reason is the Internet.

Since the mainstream adoption of the Internet, I've been predicting that it would forever change religion – especially for teenagers and young adults. The main reason for this is access to knowledge.

My wife and I grew up protected from dissenting views of our faith. We were lied to (or not told enough information) about the origin of the Bible and the true history surrounding our religion, let alone all religions. Our parents and our churches used an age-old method used by all religions, which was to relentlessly educate us from a young age with a myopic worldview – one that was severely sanitized.

That approach still happens today, but something now changes when those kids become teenagers. They gain uncensored access to the Internet.

My prediction has been that access to knowledge on the Internet will forever change the religious landscape in the US. Unlike when I was a teenager, there are now numerous resources like the ExChristian.net and Think Atheist communities, books like Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and The God Delusion, and movies like Religulous.

Based on new research by the Barna Group, my prediction (a prediction that is not unique to me) may be coming true.

Researchers found that almost three out of five young Christians (59 percent) leave church life either permanently or for an extended period of time after age 15.

While it may take another decade to see real change in our traditionally superstitious society, I believe the demise of make-believe in American society is now only a matter of time. This not only gives me hope for society, but it also gives me hope for my children.

I live in a neighborhood (just South of Nashville, TN) with a lot of evangelical Christians. This seeming majority belief in my community is usually not a big deal. The only time it gets annoying is when leaders force a truly evangelical prayer onto the festivities – something that was done a few weeks ago at our neighborhood Fourth of July celebration. It's completely inappropriate and insensitive to those who believe differently, but in the grand scheme of things, it's still not a big deal to me. For me, it's no different from having a leader thanking a Sun god or asking for a blessing from ancestral spirits. It's all just modern-day mythology, and I'm just happy nobody is sacrificing a goat or worse a virgin.

While I tolerate the evangelical god-speak at community events and in neighborhood email newsletters, there is one thing that has me continually irritated, and that's IGBOK. It irritates me because it's a patronizing statement based on false hope.

It's gonna be

The first part of IGBOK I agree with. At least they recognize what I would call the ineffectiveness of prayer.

God's "o.k." doesn't mean that the cancer will be healed, the relationship fully restored, the physical pain or emotional ache will go away in this life.

However, the second part – the O.K. part – is based on delusional false hope. The hope that even if life is a giant ball of shit, you will still spend a blissful eternity with God.

It means that because He has entered and overcome our brokenness...we can live this life with real hope — a hope that knows one day everything will be set right forever in the life to come.

Hope is the drug of choice for Christianity and many other religions. Similar to antidepressants, the false hope of life after death is meant to mask reality so you can better cope with your problems. All you have to do is believe.

Is religious hope a bad thing? I don't have a good answer for that. If the hope for a better afterlife helped keep my daughter from killing herself, or my son from living in despair now, then I would be more accepting of it, regardless of my own philosophical differences. That's simply based on wanting my children to be happy and to thrive.

However, like most drugs, there are side effects. In order to sustain hope powered by religion, a person must fully immerse themselves into its religious dogma. That means a denial of what is rational and logical (from a scientific perspective), and buying into a worldview that perpetuates exclusion and hates onto other people in the name of love.

Philosophically, I think the only true statement that can be made is, "It's gonna be."

As I've written before, the idea that anyone can explain the existence of life, let alone what happens after we die, is greater than or equal to bullshit. For me, clinging to a mistruth during a time of grief is both living on false hope, and dishonest to your being.

If you take away all of the things that cannot be observed – the superstitious beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation, and whose origins can only be attributed to human imagination and creativity – we are left with existentialism. There was a time when we didn't exist, and now a time when we do exist. And like all living things, we will return to the same state as before we existed. There is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise, even though our survivalism mixed with higher reasoning would have us believe otherwise.

"It's gonna be." There's nothing that comes after that, and that's O.K.

This Easter was especially enjoyable because it was spent without either of our parents (don't get me wrong, we both love and enjoy our parents). There was no pressure to go to church, have our children confused by the absurdity of Christian theology (including the belief that a half-human, half-god came back to life, and if you don't believe in him, you'll go to hell for eternity). Instead, we did an Easter egg hunt at our city zoo, and on Sunday we decided to go to a local park to enjoy and celebrate the real life around us.

The freethinking blogs I follow had some interesting thoughts for this Easter that I connected with. Jody Milholland posted thoughts about past Easter morning services.

Now, with Christianity a mere reflection in the mirror of my past, I am sure it was the serenity of being with the earth at that early morning hour, and with my mom, that made it so special. Because now, I can say with true freedom and gladness that my religion-inspired guilt, shame, and fear are buried. When I rolled away from the rock of spiritual oppression and bondage, I emerged a new person. I was raised from the dead, resurrected in new life. The old is gone the new has come. I have welcomed the change, the metamorphosis of leaving behind superstitions and fears and welcoming the experience of living fully in the present. No longer with remorse for my past sins or fear of an impending doomsday, I embrace my life with enthusiasm.

Marlene Winell exclaims it is we who are alive.

We emerge from the coma of conformity and stand blinking as we get our bearings. And then we realize “We’re alive!” Here and now, in this world. We pat our own bodies and notice they are real. We pinch ourselves. We look around and see the natural world and we allow ourselves to be moved, perhaps weeping with amazement.

Not to be outdone, Atheist Revolution posted an entry called Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend. While it's a little over the top–and by over the top, most definitely offensive to many Christians–the point made is very good. Like zombies, Jesus came back to life to claim our minds, err hearts.

There are laws that make up our universe – some of which we still don't understand or know even exist. As best we know, we're part of a great expansion. From the Big Bang, we are the consequences and the results of time and matter. Everything exists because of a natural structure to things.

If we are all on a continuum of some kind of great expansion, are we simply a reaction to a stimulus? Is our existence, our thoughts, our actions, simply nature playing out its natural, violent rhythm? I think the answer is yes and no. Yes, in that everything we are and do is a result (a reaction) of the structured, lawful existence of everything. No, in that the future is unknown and unlived.

There is a dichotomy between our existence and our behavior being predictable in hindsight, and the unknown chaotic future powered by our choices. A future that is most certainly predestined by the structured chaos of our universe and its mysterious properties.

For me, it reinforces the meaning of life. That is, to fulfill the purpose of our existence – to live vigorously to the end.

Religion masks our primal need to be safe, comforted, and to live forever, with the promise of the supernatural. However, when you strip away human nature, and the mind's capacity for imaginative thought and limitless denial, all that is left is the reality that what you're worshiping only exists inside your mind. Such is the case for prayer.

Prayer, like the belief in a god or gods, is a cultural and mental phenomenon. Part of my self-deprogramming from my Christian upbringing was to see what would happen if I stopped praying. While it wasn't scientific, because it was so subjective, it did show me that nothing changes significantly in your life when you do or don't pray. In fact, the only thing I experienced was a feeling of peace and freedom from the tyranny of having to worship and talk to an imaginary friend.

There have been several studies about prayer, most of which have been all over the place. Unsurprisingly, most studies were flawed or unduly influenced in some way. Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute conducted a meta-study on prayer, which concluded that there was no statistical difference between people who prayed and those that didn't. In some cases, prayer seemed to cause more harm than good.

A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.

The other interesting thing about prayer is how it affects your decisions. I was reminded of the insidious nature of prayer by a recent post, The Deceit of Prayer. Not only does prayer deliver nothing, it also promotes inaction.

it traps a person into non action, into a pattern of passive waiting, of believing they are not able to control their lives, of waiting on someone/thing else to solve problems. To the extent that some people are unable to make any decisions without first waiting on god. How many people are trapped in destructive marriages waiting for god to heal their partners, to change their personalities, to make things better. How many wait for years, praying for god to get them the right job, and not taking control and going and doing whatever it takes? How many times have we read about children dying for lack of medical intervention - while parents pray and believe god instead?

While prayer may seem like the healthiest and best thing for a person to do, it may actually be a deterrent towards living a full life – similar to the mental and emotional shackles that religion imposes on its followers.

Until we understand how anything could exist – the beginning and cause of matter as we know it – there is no reasonable explanation for how or why we exist.

Theology presents an imaginative fabrication of our existence, quenching our mind's desire to never die. Our inherent superstitious tendencies attempt to accept a metaphysical meaning that has no grounding in reality. Yet, for all human cultures, there is a clinging to folklore, and a suspension of rational and logical thought for explanations that serve three prevalent desires.

1. We desire to know why we exist
2. We desire to know the purpose and meaning of events in our life
3. We desire the ability to live forever.

The latter is experienced by all living animals, in the form of conscious and unconscious survivalism. However, when higher reasoning is introduced – present in all fully-functioning human beings – all three desires become what a psychologist might call unresolved conflict.

Religions provide the most cohesive and tangible answer to these desires. For the superstitious, answers provided by religions are logical and reasonable. This is true, but only when considered in ignorance of facts and history, and void of true critical thought.

Science has shown us attributes of our observable universe and has exposed religious explanations for what they are, complete bullshit. The interesting thing about science is that it doesn't quench our desires, it only strives to answer them. Science says that we can physically observe a universe that appears to have evolved, and was most likely started by something called The Big Bang.

Science doesn't explain or offer any factual explanations as to why we exist. It's not that science doesn't want to know these answers, because it most certainly does. The reason it takes this position is that based on our current knowledge, to provide an answer would be greater than or equal to bullshit.

One of the most challenging things about leaving the faith of your parents is raising their grandchildren as freethinkers.

Freethinkers who have come from evangelical homes, like me, know the intense social pressure that comes from their extended family. This is especially true when the grandparent believes you're leading their grandchildren straight to hell!

There's a song by David Bazan – someone who has also gone through a major faith transition – that fully understands the position that freethinking parents find themselves in. His song, Bearing Witness, captures exactly how I feel as a parent, but also repurposes religious vernacular to offer encouragement to those who have chosen a rational and logical belief system, and parenting style.

I clung to miracles I have not seen
From ancient autographs I cannot read
And though I've repented
I'm still tempted, I admit
But it's not what bearing witness is

Too full of prophecy and fear to see
The revelation right in front of me
So sick and tired of trying to make the pieces fit
Because it's not what bearing witness is

When the gap between
What I hoped would be
And what is makes me weep for my kids
I take a cleansing breath
And make a positive confession
But is that what bearing witness is

Though it may alienate your family
And blur the lines of your identity
Let go of what you know
And honor what exists
Son, that's what bearing witness is
Daughter, that's what bearing witness is

Lyrics from the song Bearing Witness on the album Curse Your Branches by David Bazan

The last paragraph is the most powerful statement for me. Every parent that has experienced a transition from make-believe to freethinking, has felt the alienation from their family, and initial blurring of their identity. For me, it includes a loss of intimacy. I no longer have the ability to talk deeply or philosophically with my parents, because the foundation of our belief system and world views are so deeply opposing.

I feel fortunate and hopeful though because I'm in the unique position to help stop the superstitious beliefs that have accompanied my family lineage for as long as anyone can remember. Bazan put that reality into a more concise statement, by naming his album Curse Your Branches.

When I first started seriously questioning the validity and truth of my now past faith, I created a list of hard questions. These were questions that I didn’t have the answer to, and most, if not all of them, held the potential to dislodge my worldview. One of those questions was:

“What’s the difference between Jesus and an imaginary friend?”

The question at first seemed absurd, but I knew it had to be answered. When I initially researched it, I found out that the official psychological term for it was “imaginary companion.” I thought companion was a fitting word for how I and most Christians view their relationship with Jesus.

The more I pondered my own belief in Jesus, and what it meant to have an imaginary companion, the more it looked exactly the same. I would constantly ask myself how this could be. How could so many people have the same imaginary friend? Not only that, how could rational adults believe in an imaginary friend, let alone, the same one?

Imaginary friends, which are usually experienced by children to combat loneliness or an emotional deficit in their lives, have names, unique characteristics, and most of all, provide companionship. Even though imaginary friends can’t be seen by the person who is imagining them (except in some rare hallucinatory cases), the person fully believes in their existence. They talk to them, depend on them, and often love them. The alternative to life without them is loneliness, and in some cases, despair.

In Christianity, if you bring together groupthink, a tendency to be superstitious (which includes every human being), religious doctrine, and the desperate need for hope and meaning in your life, then congratulations, you’ll be getting a new imaginary friend named Jesus.

The idea that everyone perceives Jesus, in the same way, is a fallacy. Jesus is experienced differently by everyone, even for those who are indoctrinated in the most homogeneous of religious sects. While the experience of Jesus may appear identical, that illusion comes from a religious group’s structured archetype of Jesus. The who and what of Jesus is a well-defined social construct. The rest is completely up to your mind’s imagination. That’s why Jesus talks to people in different ways, and why they ultimately experience their relationship with him in very unique ways.

During my journey into becoming a rational, logical freethinker, I had the opportunity to meet with a very popular Christian author. This person is very intelligent, has a background in psychology, and is someone who I continue to have great respect for. We met privately, and I presented him with my list of questions. As with most of the questions I presented to him, he didn’t have a reasonable answer for it. When I asked him what the difference was between an imaginary friend and the belief in a relationship with Jesus, he quickly conceded that there wasn’t a difference.

When I first came to Sitening, the company that built Raven, I had a lot of ideas — none of which included the creation of a Web-based SaaS. Instead, I focused on providing client services, like Web Design, Software Development, Information Architecture, and Online Marketing.

But soon I wanted to build an automated tool that would help me with sales. My idea was to create a parser that would analyze any Web page, and then provide a score between zero and 100, along with a results report card. For me, it was the original Website Grader, and we called it the SEO Analyzer. It’s now a minor tool that we included in Raven, and it’s called the Design Analyzer (a much more accurate name).

The SEO Analyzer was incredibly popular worldwide. Scott Holdren, the developer who coded the tool, also created small score badges that users could post on their websites. Thousands of people did just that, sharing their pride with visitors. It was a neat concept and one that ended up being repeated and enhanced by several other SEO tool providers in the industry.

The Creation of Raven

The popularity of the SEO Analyzer, and the subsequent skyrocketing SERPs, traffic, and business, encouraged us to make more tools. We created simple ones, like a PageRank Checker, and more complex offerings, like our SERP Tracker. We also made the tools free–for the sake of marketing–until the day two things dawned on us:

1. It was getting too expensive to give the tools away.
2. We could provide a much better set of tools if people were paying for it.

My vision for the new toolset wasn’t to just build something better. It was also to solve some of the problems inherent in online marketing tools—problems that persist even now. They include:

1. The inability to communicate with each other. Instead, those tools were (and still are) disparate and incapable of having useful data relationships.
2. Lack of support for multiple users. There was no easy way to allow team members to conduct and share their work.
3. No clouded, shared data storage. They could run basic reports, but the reports weren’t saved, and the only way to use the data was to export it to a spreadsheet. (This is still common in some of today’s most popular SEO tools.)
4. Absence of branded, professional reports for clients. Online marketers were forced to export data from different tools, collect data from their team, and then spend anywhere from a day to a week piecing together client reports.

When we first started building what is now known as Raven, we knew that assuming we were successful, a toolset like this would ultimately be used by our competitors. We would most likely be in a position of arbitrage, giving our competitors tools to compete with our own services. And while arbitrage was a financial challenge, there was also an ethical one: The data we were storing from other companies could technically be used by Sitening to unfairly compete.

The Ethical Dilemma

The problem of providing both tools and online marketing services has been on my mind since the beginning of Raven. Even though I knew we would never use that data for our own gain, there are people and companies who would if put in our shoes. As Raven grew, we started to lock down the information even more, and also separate it as much as possible from employees who worked on Sitening services. Later, we decided to split up employees within the company, so that they either worked on Raven or on Sitening services, but not both. This removed any temptation someone might get from the pressure to perform.

From time to time, I’d get email messages from prospective Raven users looking for assurance that we wouldn’t use their data for our own gain. While I could promise that we took the privacy of their data seriously and that we were a highly ethical company, the elephant in the room was always Sitening’s online marketing services.

The End of Services

We've always known that for a company like Sitening–one committed to running and supporting a major online marketing software platform–the most ethical course of action is not to provide services that compete with our customers. Unfortunately, this has been no easy task. Sitening, and more specifically Raven, is funded mostly by the income earned from these services. Everything that has made Raven possible has come from our own bootstrapping.

Unlike most of our main competitors, we are not VC-funded. It has been a struggle both financially and emotionally, but we have been fortunate enough to have a core team of partners and employees who have helped make the vision of Raven become a reality. We’ve also been incredibly lucky to have professional agencies from around the world take a chance with us. They are the early adopters of our software, whose patience and guidance have helped make Raven what it is today.

Thanks to Raven’s explosive growth over the past few months, I’m proud to announce that Sitening is now in a financial position to end all of Sitening’s services. That means we will no longer be offering any more online marketing services and will have our entire staff focused 100 percent on growing and making Raven even better. We hope this move will instill more trust in us from agencies that may have been on the fence about storing their data on Raven. We also hope it will show that we are, as we have always been, committed to privacy, data integrity, and ethical business practices.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study on the religiosity of states. It measured three things; worship attendance, frequency of prayer, and belief in God. Unsurprisingly, the Southern states—also known as the Bible Belt—were found to be the most religious.

I thought it would be interesting to look at the five most and least religious states and compare statistics related to education, poverty, health, and death by firearms.

Five Most Religious States

1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Tennessee

Five Least Religious States

1. New Hampshire
2. Vermont
3. Alaska
4. Massachusetts
5. Maine

When I compared the top five religious states with the top five lowest religious states, the results were dramatic. The most religious states were, on average, the least educated¹, poorest², and unhealthiest³. People in those states were also twice as likely to be killed by a firearm⁴. The differences were even more staggering when you removed Alaska from the least religious list. For example, you are almost three times as likely to be killed by a firearm.

Based on these correlations, one could conclude that there is a relationship between being religious and being less educated, having less money, being less healthy and owning, or at the very least, being killed by a gun. All four of which, even without including religion into the mix, usually have a direct relationship with each other.

Religion & Education

Education and access to knowledge have always been the enemy of religion. When critical thought, logic, and historical reference are applied to theology, it tears holes into its very foundation. It is no wonder that a culture that is better educated, especially philosophically, would be less religious.

Religion & Poverty

Desperation and fear create the greatest need for hope. Religion provides a pseudo-hope that people can easily cling to. Religion can be used both as a coping mechanism and an explanation for their current state of affairs. Poverty is often related to poor education, and both of those are often related to poor health.

Religion & Health

While education and poverty can have a direct influence on health, attitudes — specifically religious attitudes towards life — can influence health too. For example, if life after death will be angelic and perfect, there's really no need to concern yourself with living a healthy lifestyle. Especially if that means you'll get to heaven quicker ;)

However, I tend to think (from personal experience), that most people in the South comfort eat in order to get relief from the neurosis caused by following and believing in illogical superstitions.

Religion & Guns

At the core of most people's religious beliefs is fear. Fear of damnation and fear of death. It's that fear that makes it easy to believe in make-believe and it's that same fear that gets people to unnecessarily arm themselves.

Conclusion

While this article is intermingled with correlations (which aren't all that scientific), speculation, and personal opinion, I do think there are significant patterns within cultures that can be attributed to — both as a source and symptom — superstitious beliefs.

References

• ¹ "This fourth Smartest State designation is awarded based on 21 factors chosen from Morgan Quitno’s annual reference book, Education State Rankings, 2005-2006. Morgan Quitno Press, 2005
• ² Percent of People Below Poverty Level in the Past 12 Months (For Whom Poverty Status is Determined). American Community Survey 2004
• ³ Health Index by state. "The Healthiest State designation is awarded based on 21 factors chosen from the year 2005 edition of our annual reference book, Health Care State Rankings. Morgan Quitno Press, 2005
• ⁴ Number of Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population, 2002. statehealthfacts.org

Related Articles

• Does More Education Lead to Less Religion?

If you're a parent with a child between the ages of one and three, then you're probably experiencing what many parents are experiencing — toddler tantrums and difficult child behavior. The American Academy of Pediatricians perfectly describes this phase in your child's life.

Strong emotions are hard for a young child to hold inside. When children feel frustrated, angry, or disappointed, they often express themselves by crying, screaming, or stomping up and down. As a parent, you may feel angry, helpless, or embarrassed. Temper tantrums are a normal part of your child's development as he learns self-control. In fact, almost all children have tantrums between the ages of 1 and 3. You've heard them called "the terrible twos."

As every parent knows, this behavior is very stressful and it can affect your relationship with your child and your spouse. Fortunately, there are solutions. Much of the difficulty we experience with our children is related to how we communicate with them. Oftentimes, we are frustrated with their non-compliance, and much of what we say in response to our children may make sense to us at the time but is totally ineffective.

Terrible Two Tips

Avoiding and Preventing "Terrible Two" Temper Tantrums

• Provide Limited Choices — Just like adults, children prefer having a choice. In the child's case, you may not be offering them great choices, but having a choice (any choice) can mean the difference between a complete meltdown versus an ornery child. A good example is when a child won't move. You can give them the choice to go on their own or to be carried.
• Regular Routines — Most children thrive from having routines in their life. When daily life becomes random and chaotic, children will often act out and throw tantrums. Routines help make children feel safe and under control. Not having routines in your child's life is like walking around with a behavioral time bomb.
• Lead by Example — You may not recognize it yet, but your children observe your behavior intensely. Sometimes they mimic you (without you even realizing it), while other times they test you. How you react and handle situations has a direct impact on how your own child will deal with stressful situations.
• Positive Reinforcement — What's the best way to train animals? Through positive reinforcement. Your kids might be human beings, but as you already know, they're also animals (in every sense of the word!). Children will respond to consistent, proper positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement can be as simple as a compliment for good behavior, or as big as a new toy for behaving well for a significant period of time. Over time, you won't have to always provide positive reinforcement, because the behavior will become a good habit.
• Encourage Some Independence — If you're trying to have complete control over your children, then you're doing it wrong. A parent's job is to prepare their child for adulthood and independence. Independence is also exactly what your child wants (separation anxiety excluded). Therefore, your parenting style should include a gradual push towards independence, and it all starts when your child is capable of making the simplest of choices. Allowing a two-year-old to do some things on their own — without your interference or correction — can go a long way towards avoiding tantrums and enabling them to feel independent.
• Healthy Eating — Having your child eat healthy food can be a difficult problem in itself, but you can take steps towards the foods they have access to. Food can have a direct impact on blood sugar levels, their emotional affect, and how they respond to stressful situations. Eating well can go a long way towards your child behaving more appropriately.

Dealing with "Terrible Two" Temper Tantrums

• Enforce Reasonable Consequences — If your child throws a temper tantrum, then there should be a reasonable consequence. For example, taking away a toy for a period of time, or physically removing them from the situation, are reasonable consequences for bad behavior. They will learn over time to better control their behavior if they have to consistently suffer the consequences.
• Don't Give In — Whether you like it or not, temper tantrums are grudge matches. They are also a test of your parenting resolve. The moment you give into a tantrum, the child knows they can get their way in the future by exhibiting that behavior.
• Stay in Control — It's incredibly easy to get sucked into the out-of-control behavior that's exhibited when your child is throwing a tantrum. Depending on the situation, you can feel any number of emotions, like embarrassment, anger, and frustration. The problem occurs when you start to take their behavior personally, because you exit the parenting role, and engage them with the same negative energy. The best way to approach your child's temper tantrum is to separate yourself from the behavior emotionally. Instead, look at them as the child they are. Try to understand what they might be feeling, and what led to their eruption. Then use that empathic knowledge to influence how you should deal with the situation. The key to staying in control is to not take their behavior personally.
• Remove from Public — One of the most embarrassing things a parent can experience is when their child throws a tantrum in public. If you've exhausted your options, like giving your child choices, then you should take your child to a private place. That may be your car, a room in a home, or even a dressing room (if you're in a mall). The key is to reduce stimulus, remove them from having an audience, and to calm them down. When they do calm down, discuss what happened, and talk about behavior alternatives.
• Be Consistent — Being consistent is probably the number one rule in parenting. When it comes to children throwing temper tantrums, be consistent with your reaction and the consequences you assign as a response to their bad behavior. Every situation is unique, but if your child knows that every time they throw a tantrum there will be a consequence, it will make them think twice before throwing a tantrum again.

When trying to prevent and deal with tantrums, it's important to remember that behavior doesn't change overnight. It usually takes many months before a child's behavior starts to dramatically improve. If you find that you're not seeing any changes in behavior, experiment and try different approaches to behavioral consequences. Just make sure you aren't changing your response and trying new things every time they have a tantrum. Be patient and be consistent.