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Family

New Jersey town has the perfect new rule to stop parents from yelling at Little League umpires

"They're not baseball players, they're children."

little league, soccer parents, little league parent syndrome
via Keithjj/Pixabay

A base coach tells a Little Leaguer to run home.

Parents who misbehave at their kids’ sporting events have become so commonplace that it’s forced sports psychologists to come up with a name for the behavior: Little League Parent Syndrome (LLPS).

Parents with LLPS are known for sitting in the stands and verbally abusing other players, parents, referees and umpires during games. This behavior has led to a decrease in the number of umpires and referees in youth sports because volunteers aren’t willing to subject themselves to harassment.

“There has been a huge drop off in the number of available referees and officials in youth sports due to the obnoxious behavior of parents,” says Rick Wolff, a sports-parenting expert, author, and 20-year host of the WFAN radio’s “The Sports Edge,” told The Washington Post.

So what has driven parents to such extreme behavior?

There are many different ways for a parent to be infected by LLPS. One of the biggest reasons is pure narcissism. Parents see their children as part of their identity, so if their kids lose, they feel like they lost, too.

“They often judge the child’s performance as an indication of how good of a parent they are,” Coach and Play Baseball says. “If Johnny hits a home run then ‘I must be a good parent.’ If Johnny strikes out, ‘Then I am embarrassed and I’m going to lay into him for embarrassing me.’”

Youth sports have also become more competitive because many parents see them as a potential road to lucrative college scholarships or professional contracts. Although, the truth is that only 0.3% of high school athletes will ever get a full-ride scholarship to a university.

In fact, many parents wind up spending more money chasing scholarships than their kids would have received if they ended up getting one.

A New Jersey youth baseball organization has found a unique way to combat parents with LLPS who harass umpires. The new rule states: If you fight with the umps during a game, you have to volunteer your time to umpire three games before you're allowed back as a spectator.

Parents who are forced to umpire will not do so alone. They will be paired with a certified umpire to ensure their calls are correct.

Deptford Township Little League President Don Bozzuffi hopes that when abusive parents become umpires, they’ll learn that things look a lot different behind the plate than they do from the stands.

"The main purpose is not for them to be able to call a baseball game, but for them to see what's going on out here, and it's not that easy," Bozzuffi told ABC 30. "They think that the call was bad, which always amazes me that they can see a strike better over there than the umpire can one foot in back of them," Bozzuffi added.

Ultimately, it’s all about creating a positive environment for kids that overzealous parents can't ruin. "They're not baseball players, they're children. So always keep that in the back of your mind and let them play," said Bozzuffi.

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Science

Astronaut shares the profound 'big lie' he realized after seeing the Earth from space

This change in perspective could change humanity.

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Our home, from space.

Sixty-one years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to make it into space and probably the first to experience what scientists now call the "overview effect." This change occurs when people see the world from far above and notice that it’s a place where “borders are invisible, where racial, religious and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.”

The overview effect makes man’s squabbles with one another seem incredibly petty and presents the planet as it truly is, one interconnected organism.

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Identity

Woman’s experience scheduling an EEG highlights the unconscious bias of textured hair

Though her scalp was exposed for the procedure, they still insisted she take her twists out, making it harder to get to her scalp.

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Woman can't schedule EEG due to unconscious textured hair bias.

Getting a medical procedure done can be scary, or at the very least nerve-wracking, no matter how many times you've had it done. It's something that's outside of your normal routine and you're essentially at the mercy of the medical facility and providers. Most of the time, the pre-procedure instructions make sense, and if something catches you by surprise, it's usually easily explained.

Sadé Naima recently had an experience while attempting to get an EEG that wasn't easily explained away. In fact, the entire situation didn't make sense to the TikTok creator who experiences migraines. Naima uploaded a video to the social media platform explaining the sequence of events that happened after her doctor referred her to receive an MRI and EEG.

An MRI uses a magnetic field to generate images and an EEG uses electrodes that stick to your scalp to create images of your brain waves.

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Family

Wife cooks nachos for 'picky' husband who refused to eat her salmon. But she has a point.

Should she be cooking two meals?

via TheMamaBrianna/TikTok

Brianna Greenfield makes nachos for her husband.

A viral video showing a woman preparing nachos for her "picky" spouse after he refused to eat the salmon dinner she cooked has sparked a contentious debate on TikTok. The video was shared on April 26 by Brianna Greenfield (@themamabrianna on TikTok) and has since earned over 2.5 million views.

Brianna is a mother of two who lives in Iowa.

The video starts with Brianna grating a massive hunk of cheese with a caption that reads: “My husband didn’t eat the dinner that I made…So let’s make him some nachos.”

“If I don’t feed him, he literally won’t eat,” she wrote. “This used to irritate me. Now I just blame his mother for never making him try salmon,” Greenfield wrote. The video features Meghan Trainor’s single “Mother” playing in the background.

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Heroic train conductor spots and saves 3-year-old autistic, nonverbal boy lost on tracks

He was dangerously close to the third rail.

via MTA info/YouTube

An MTA employee rescues a 3-year-old child on the tracks.

Five Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees are hailed as heroes for their quick thinking and diligence in the April 6 rescue of a young boy. Locomotive Engineer William Kennedy was operating a southbound Hudson Line train near Tarrytown, a few miles north of New York City, when he noticed an unusual object on the northbound track.

That “object” was a 3-year-old boy.

Kennedy sent an emergency call out to all trains in the area, catching the attention of a northbound conductor, Shawn Loughran, and a trainee. Loughran slowed down his train as he approached the child, who was straddling the electrified third rail.

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Health

Here’s how we can use the power of awe to make our lives more fulfilling

Being amazed by things outside ourselves is tremendous for our mental health.

via Benjamin Davies/Unsplash

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Most of us love having at least a few of these experiences and believe they help us grow. But now, a team of psychologists has explained why cultivating a sense of awe can benefit our minds and bodies and how we can create these experiences ourselves.

Maria Monroy and Dacher Keltner posit that a sense of awe can help solve the crises of individualism, excessive self-focus, loneliness and a culture of cynicism, and can even improve our physical health. They explain it in a research article titled “Awe as a Pathway to Mental and Physical Health.”

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Woman flawlessly breaks down how luxury bags—and other designer brands—keep people 'poor'

"They're targeting the people who want to look rich—middle and lower class folks who don't have a lot of money or savings. That is the bread and butter of designer brands."

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Not worth it.

It feels safe to say that we are all hoping to be more mindful about how we spend our money these days, whether it’s to be kinder to the environment, align better with our values, improve our finances or simply exercise free will against the siren call of consumerism.

That’s why this video essay created by Cara Nicole (who gives all kinds of financials and sustainability education on her Youtube channel) feels so timely.

In just under twenty minutes, Nicole astutely breaks down how luxury brands like Hermes, Louis Vuitton and Rolex create the fake illusion of wealth through “manufactured exclusivity” and getting free marketing from celebrities and influencers—who often don’t even pay for the products themselves. Meanwhile, most real rich people wouldn’t be caught dead in the flashy brands, and in reality consider them "overrated." But still, the illusion persists. Because advertising.

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