New Civilization News - Category: Children, Parenting    
 Long Deployments Breaking Up Families13 comments
picture12 Dec 2008 @ 15:48, by jerryvest. Children, Parenting
Ask any veteran how life is after war. Most likely in their own words (and ways)they will tell you how it imprinted lasting marks on their minds and souls. Some will let you know all the different ways their war never ends. Many will not even begin to talk about it because they feel that nobody would ever understand unless they had been there too. For the people back home...they need to understand that it is most difficult to fathom how things have changed for their returning troops. After all, how can anyone see inside of a duffle bag that still goes unpacked? Some troops may never unpack it completely, and we cannot expect them to. Down Range to Iraq and Back by Bridget C. Cantrell, Ph.D. & Chuck Dean

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As many of you know, I work with injured Warriors in the US Army's, Ft. Bliss Restoration and Resilience Center as a clinical social worker. During this past year, I meet with soldiers in individual, couple and family therapy while also coordinating Meditation, Water Polo and Health Education activities. Our R & R Center is an experimental center for soldiers who have been diagnosed with PTSD and many who also have experienced concussions or Traumatic Brain Injuries and other physical wounds. We have 2 young soldier who have completed 5 tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of our soldiers have been away from their families for 2 to 3 years and when they return they are often unrecognizable as they have serious mental health issues that prevent them from relating and interacting with their loved ones as they did before they were deployed.

I believe that we have the best program and staff in the world and yet, it is very sad for us to see how our families struggle every day to sustain their relationships. Do read these stories that describe the challenges on military families despite our best efforts to help. [link][link]

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As wars lengthen, toll on military families mounts

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — Far from the combat zones, the strains and separations of no-end-in-sight wars are taking an ever-growing toll on military families despite the armed services' earnest efforts to help.

Divorce lawyers see it in the breakup of youthful marriages as long, multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan fuel alienation and mistrust. Domestic violence experts see it in the scuffles that often precede a soldier's departure or sour a briefly joyous homecoming.

Teresa Moss, a counselor at Fort Campbell's Lincoln Elementary School, hears it in the voices of deployed soldiers' children as they meet in groups to share accounts of nightmares, bedwetting and heartache.

"They listen to each other. They hear that they aren't the only ones not able to sleep, having their teachers yell at them," Moss said.

Even for Army spouses with solid marriages, the repeated separations are an ordeal.

"Three deployments in, I still have days when I want to hide under the bed and cry," said Jessica Leonard, who is raising two small children and teaching a "family team building" class to other wives at Fort Campbell. Her husband, Capt. Lance Leonard, is in Iraq.

Those classes are among numerous initiatives to support war-strained families. Yet military officials acknowledge that the vast needs outweigh available resources, and critics complain of persistent shortcomings — a dearth of updated data on domestic violence, short shrift for families of National Guard and Reserve members, inadequate support for spouses and children of wounded and traumatized soldiers.

If the burden sounds heavier than what families bore in the longest wars of the 20th century — World War II and Vietnam — that's because it is, at least in some ways. What makes today's wars distinctive is the deployment pattern — two, three, sometimes four overseas stints of 12 or 15 months. In the past, that kind of schedule was virtually unheard of.

"Its hard to go away, it's hard to come back, and go away and come back again," said Dr. David Benedek, a leading Army psychiatrist. "That is happening on a larger scale than in our previous military endeavors. They're just getting their feet wet with some sort of sense of normalcy, and then they have to go again."

Almost in one breath, military officials praise the resiliency that enables most families to endure and acknowledge candidly that the wars expose them to unprecedented stresses and the risk of long-lasting scars.

"There's nothing that has prepared many of our families for the length of these deployments," said Rene Robichaux, social work programs manager for the U.S. Army Medical Command. "It's hard to communicate to a family member how stressful the environment is, not just the risk of injury or death, but the austere circumstances, the climate, the living conditions."

An array of studies by the Army and outside researchers say that marital strains, risk of child maltreatment and other problems harmful to families worsen as soldiers serve multiple combat tours.

For example, a Pentagon-funded study last year concluded that children in some Army families were markedly more vulnerable to abuse and neglect by their mothers when their fathers were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the latest survey by Army mental health experts showed that more than 15% of married soldiers deployed there were planning a divorce, with the rates for soldiers at the late stages of deployment triple those of recent arrivals.

For the Army, especially, the challenges are staggering as it furnishes the bulk of combat forces. As of last year, more than 55% of its soldiers were married, a far higher rate than during the Vietnam war. The nearly 513,000 soldiers on active duty collectively had more than 493,000 children.

Jessica Leonard at Fort Campbell says family support programs there have improved since her husband's first combat tour, helping her feel more self-reliant. Yet she's convinced that domestic violence and divorce are rising at the base, which is home to the 101st Airborne Division.

"Infidelity is huge on both sides — a wife is lonely, she looks for attention and finds it easier to cheat," she said. "It does make even the most sound marriages second-guess."

Among soldiers coming home, whether for two-week breaks that often end with wrenching good-byes or for longer stays, she sees evidence of lower morale and rising depression.

"They come home, and find that problems are still there," she said. "Instead of a refreshing R-and-R, a nice little second honeymoon, it's battle for two weeks."

There have been some horrific incidents shattering families of soldiers back from the wars — a former Army paratrooper from Michigan charged with raping and beating his infant daughter; a sergeant from Hawaii's Army National Guard accused of killing his 14-year-old son as the boy tried to save his pregnant mother from a knife attack by the soldier.

In one of the saddest cases, a recently divorced airman who served with distinction in Iraq chased his ex-wife out of military housing with a pistol in February before killing his two young children and himself at Oklahoma's Tinker Air Force Base. Tech. Sgt. Dustin Thorson's former wife had sought a protection order against him, saying he threatened to kill the children if she filed for divorce.

Officials at Tinker, while confirming that Thorson had been getting mental health care, would not say whether those problems related to his service in Iraq.

His brother, Shane Thorson, a sheriff's deputy from Pasco, Wash., who also served in Iraq, has no doubt Dustin's war experiences contributed to the tragedy.

"He didn't want to go — he was afraid, but he had a job that he'd signed up to do and he went and did it," Shane said. "I do think it led up to everything that happened. ... It opened up a world of death and chaos and uncertainty."

Shane, who is married and has an 8-year-old daughter, is sure the deployments have damaged many marriages.

"My wife and friends, they tell me I'm not the same person before I came back — not as loving," he said. "You really realize how insignificant you are in this world, and life moves on whether you're there or not."

Overall, the Army says its domestic violence rates are no worse than for civilian families. However, critics say there is a lack of comprehensive, updated data that reflects the impact of war-zone deployments and tracks cases involving veterans, reservists and National Guard members.

The Miles Foundation, which provides domestic-violence assistance to military wives, says its caseload has more than quadrupled during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.

"The tactics learned as part of military training are often used by those who commit domestic violence," said the foundation's executive director, Christine Hansen, citing increased proficiency with weapons and psychological tactics such as sleep deprivation.

Jackie Campbell is a nursing professor at Johns Hopkins who served on a Defense Department task force examining domestic violence. She says the military's data on the problem is based only on officially reported incidents, and should be supplemented with confidential surveys such as some that were conducted before the Iraq war.

"They have no clue what the rate of domestic violence is — they only know what's reported to the system, and that's always lower than the actual rate," Campbell said. "I'm disappointed.... I know the system is stressed to the umpteenth degree. But I do think they need to do the right kind of research so they can keep up with this."

One complication, she said, is the high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among service members returning from war. She said PTSD raises the risk of domestic violence, yet many soldiers and their spouses don't want to acknowledge PTSD or any domestic crises for fear of derailing the soldier's career.

"They know the power of the military will come down on them," Campbell said. "The women are often reluctant to have that happen."

At Fort Campbell, Family Advocacy Program director Louie Sumner — who's in charge of combatting domestic violence — has encouraged people to report suspected abuse, to the point where many allegations turn out to be unsubstantiated.

But Sumner said his program, though considered one of the Army's best, should do more outreach with the majority of families who live off the huge base, in subdivisions, apartments and trailer parks where many couples' troubles may go undetected.

Sumner is sure that the repeated deployments heighten the risk of family violence. "When the soldier goes overseas three, four times, the fuse is a lot shorter," he said. "They explode quicker, and the victim gets hurt worse."

He marveled that some of the hasty marriages by youthful soldiers survive the rigors of deployment.

"My wife and I have been married 38 years," he said. "I'm not sure we could have stood being apart 30 of the next 42 months at the start of our marriage. That's a long time when you're real young."

The independence that wives develop at home alone leads to friction when a returning husband seeks to restore the old order in household decision-making.

"Somebody who's violent and controlling of his partner before he leaves will spend a lot of time while he's away wondering what she's doing, worrying that he doesn't have that day-to-day control," said Debbie Tucker, who co-chaired the Pentagon's domestic violence task force. "He comes back with the attitude that it needs to be re-established as firmly as possible."

Despite the stresses, a study published in April by Rand Corp. concluded that divorce rate among military families between 2001 and 2005 was no higher than during peacetime a decade earlier. But the study doesn't reflect the third and fourth war zone deployments that have strained many military marriages over the past three years.

Maj. Mike Oeschger gets a closer look at struggling marriages than he'd like in his role as rear detachment commander for the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Campbell. Dealing with family crises while the brigade is in Iraq is a critical part of his job.

"The biggest problems usually revolve around money — the husband may not have given the wife access to funds," he said.

Oeschger, a husband and father who served in Iraq himself, has seen infidelity in multiple forms. Some wives at the base are preyed on by men who know the husbands are overseas; some war-zone soldiers pursue extramarital affairs over the Internet.

"Often the guy comes back, tells his wife, 'I'm not interested in you any more. I think we're done,'" Oeschger said.

He'd rather stay out of his soldiers' personal lives, but that's not always an option.

"There's almost nothing that's private in the Army," he said. "Once it starts to affect performance, I'm involved and want to know every detail. It's miserable stuff ... but it's my job."

Col. Ronald Crews, one of several chaplains called from the reserves to help with family counseling, said long-distance marital crises became so severe for two Fort Campbell soldiers recently that they were sent home from Iraq to handle them.

"Their commander said they wouldn't be of any use until the problems were resolved," Crews said. The soldiers were required to meet with him weekly. One returned to Iraq and the other did not.

For some time, chaplains have been conducting marriage workshops for soldiers back from deployment. Now, says Crews, married soldiers also are being required to attend such workshops before they leave.

"Deployments don't help in strengthening a marriage, but they do not have to kill marriages," Crews said. "That's a choice a couple has to make."

Medical personnel, meanwhile, have been directed to be more aggressive in screening spouses of deployed soldiers for depression. More than 1,000 "family readiness support assistants" are being added, as are dozens of marriage and family therapists. A respite child care program is expanding to provide more relief to stressed mothers.

However, for families living off-base, there are often far fewer support programs readily available.

Advocacy groups also say more must be done for families of wounded and traumatized soldiers who leave the service. At a recent congressional hearing, Barbara Cohoon of the National Military Families Association suggested the Veterans Administration is not meeting these needs, and said the anguish of wounded soldiers' children "is often overlooked and underestimated."

Stacy Bannerman, an anti-war activist whose husband served with the Washington State National Guard in Iraq, says many Guard members and reservists don't get adequate treatment when — like her husband — they are diagnosed with PTSD.

"The families are scattered everywhere, and we don't have the support networks that active duty does," Bannerman said. "There's very little attention paid to reintegration — bammo, you suddenly go back to your civilian life. I haven't spoken to anyone who hasn't experienced some degree of stress on a marriage."

Her own marriage nearly became one of the casualties. She and her husband, Lorin, were separated for more than a year, but now — after finding a counselor outside the military — are working at reconciliation even as Lorin faces a second deployment to Iraq in August.

"It's been a long, arduous process," said Bannerman, who has moved to Oregon to work at an animal sanctuary which is seeking to involve traumatized veterans in its programs.

Many returning soldiers experience some form of depression, lapsing into substance abuse, sleeping fitfully, withdrawing from family activities. Children may feel their father is too distant, or unsettlingly changed.

"The kids may not really recognize their parent," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general. "Their expectations build up, and then expectations aren't met."

The Army would like to beef up psychiatric care for children, Ritchie said, but is hampered by a national shortage of child psychiatrists.

"The children of these families are suffering damage emotionally and a lot of them aren't getting any help," said Lee Rosen, whose North Carolina law firm handles many military divorces. "We're going to have fallout from this for a long time."

Rosen says the breaking point for many couples often arrives with a second or third deployment.

"To go off for one deployment for a year is difficult, but when that soldier comes back, people are able to adjust, to heal," he said. "When you go a second time, and are threatened with the possibility of a third, it's just devastating."

Yet many marriages don't survive even a first deployment.

While 1st Lt. Mike Robison was serving in Iraq in 2003-04, his wife, Candance, depicted him as a "good, brave man" in a letter she wrote to President Bush. But the marriage fell apart after Robison's return home to Texas. Candance said they argued over her role managing the household and how he treated her 10-year daughter from a previous relationship.

"It absolutely changed him," Candance said of his deployment. "I still struggle every day — that year has affected every single aspect of my life."

Andrew Brown, an Army Reserve sergeant from Pennsylvania, says his marriage failed to survive the effects of his Iraq deployment in 2004-05. Returning home, he was diagnosed with PTSD and deduced that his wife, lonely in his absence, had been having an affair.

"With the mental state I was in, I was relying on her to provide support, and she wasn't ready to do that," Brown said.

"What I went through is not an isolated incident," he added. "Guys came back — they'd shut down, turn to the bottle, have lots of fights with their spouses."

At their small ranch house near Fort Campbell, Staff Sgt. Brian Powell and his wife, Krystal, expressed determination to keep their marriage on track as they raise two young sons and as Brian faces a second deployment — this time to Afghanistan — starting in December.

Brian was in Iraq when his eldest son, Jamison, was born in 2006. He got home on a brief leave three days after the birth.

"It was just two weeks," Brian said. "You don't want to get attached because you know you have to go back."

"It's a really hard transition, coming back from blood, death, corruption to a wife and baby. You feel you don't know each other," Krystal added. "But if you have faith, you get through it."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Share this story with friends and others who wish to support our soldiers and their families.

Note: This amazing picture of a Bradley Tank that SFC Scott Milligan served as commander, shows how vulneable our warriors are, even enclosed in our military's best weapon systems. When they are struck by these powerful explosive devices they may survive, but the injuries are extensive. It is amazing that Scott and two team members survived this devastating blow, but he did experience 3 broken vertabrae and a concussion that is still being evaluated.

SFC Milligan has given me permission to show his pictures and his Expressive Art work on my website. [link]. Scott is a great soldier and leader and I am honored to serve as his primary therapist. He wishes to show these pics so that others may learn how war impacts their lives, health and relationships.
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 OLD SOUL AT HOME: BOON TO SOUL EVOLUTION4 comments
30 Mar 2008 @ 09:34, by erlefrayne. Children, Parenting
At this moment I wish to share my reflections about the great boon that an Old Soul would bring to a household. And baneful it is for a certain household to have a lack of or throw away an Old Soul most specially an authority figure who’s the Light of the home.

As already clarified in previous article, an Old Soul is one had evolved way ahead of the rest of the population. We mystics call them ‘evolved souls’ while ancient Chinese call them ‘old souls’. Being evolved, they are those who can coach and mentor other younger souls—the ‘laggards’ (or ‘young souls’) and the ‘middling souls’ (no more laggard but short of being an old soul)—so that the latter can hopefully evolve faster in their respective Paths.

For a planet like Earth that is considered ‘fallen’, or trapped in dense energy veils (e-veils or evils), it is such an enormous boost for all souls to have old souls among them. Needless to say, in the micro-setting, a family would perform optimally in the evolutionary path if an authority figure of the old soul type is present.  More >

 My Dad17 comments
picture 24 Feb 2008 @ 21:18, by ming. Children, Parenting
My Dad died this week. I didn't really know him very well, so it is hard to know what to feel. At first I didn't feel anything. And the loss I feel now is maybe more abstract than it is about him in particular.

It is important to have a father. Mine got divorced from my mother when I was 1 years old. I mostly didn't think about what it would mean to have a father, because I didn't really have one who was there. My mother married again, but I never considered the new guy my father, even though he obviously was a continuous male presence.

And I didn't see my real father much. Maybe a total of 2 or 3 times as I was growing up.

I liked him. His particular way of speaking, Copenhagen dialect, from I'm not sure what exact part of town, made me feel somehow safe and comfortable, as if I was used to it from when I was a baby, even though I don't really remember. And not that he ever really acted much like a father, even though he always was friendly.

He didn't do anything in his life that will make any history book. He was a fireman for a while, a taxi driver for a while, and an assortment of other odd jobs that didn't last overly long. I have no problem with that, I'm kind of proud of coming from a simple working-class family.

I wish I had inherited his hair. He still had a full head of wavey dark hair last I saw him, whereas I'm close to bald.

I maybe wish I'd have a lot of memories to talk about. Although maybe it is better not to.

What I'm sad about is maybe the thought of the importance of having a father. I wish I had had a father more. And maybe it reminds me that I haven't always been as present with my kids as I could be. Oh, I'm still here and haven't gone anywhere, but one could of course always have done it better.

At any rate, I'll be in Denmark at the end of the week for the funeral.  More >

 Don't be a sucker, man - face the cougar, baby !10 comments
picture13 Jan 2008 @ 13:16, by jhs. Children, Parenting
"What nonsense are you telling the kid?" I challenged the rabbit the yesterday.

"If you'll be a child again, you'll understand." was his dry response.

"No point in ACTING OUT polarities if it's enough to raise the energies in oneself," I said.

"You got that right, But there is a gray zone where one must start to act, at least starting, in order to convince the soul that the spirit is serious about its claims. After all, it is not that you as a philosopher would be a friend of Sophia, it is that SHE is befriending YOU. And sometimes she only arrives if you're willing to demonstrate in action what you raised in your mind."

"You mean the attitude is the cause of events, NOT the other way around, like people say. Or, a lil' sloppy: Shit happens only if you are ready to be pissed off"...  More >

 A Crappy New Year from the rabbit...4 comments
picture2 Jan 2008 @ 16:42, by jhs. Children, Parenting
I overheard the following conversation, shortly before the rabbit escaped from the kitchen... guess who was his little helper...

Little Anthony: Happy New Year, Big Ear, peace and success!

White Rabbit: Crappy New Year to you, Buddhinho, war and lots of failures!

Little Anthony: Huuh?

White Rabbit: aah, I forgot, no pain, no gain! Therefore I'm wishing you lots of suffering as well.. so that may you gain more than just weight...

Little Anthony: well, thank you rabbit. You're so thoughtful today...

White Rabbit: I know, I know, don't mention it...  More >

 A Child Is Given9 comments
picture24 Dec 2007 @ 08:25, by jazzolog. Children, Parenting
Trust shows the way.

---Hildegard Of Bingen

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

---Friedrich Nietzsche

The invariable mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the common.

---Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was sitting yesterday morning in the balcony with the rest of the choir at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. In our robes from there each Sunday we sing the Introit, then hustle downstairs to process with the first hymn. It was about 10:30. Marsha Reilly was concluding the second organ prelude, John Ferguson's particularly mysterioso setting of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. That would be our entrance hymn too on this 4th Sunday of Advent. Suddenly my wife appeared next to us up there, urgent but smiling. "You became a grandfather about half an hour ago," she whispered. In the service a bit later, a prayer of thanksgiving went up from our congregation for the birth of Nina Marie.

Winter Solstice and Karen's labor had arrived at the same time, a little after 1 AM Saturday. The Cold Moon was nearly full. When the couple was sure her body and the baby were in agreement about the hour of beginning, quiet helpers were called to their little home. Well, Nina was sort of in agreement about it. She would turn her back on the situation eventually, and require at the last a sure hand to go in and turn her gently around for the final slide into the birthing pool. They were in the water by then, 24 hours had passed, and contractions were in the hours of intensity. Karen said yesterday each exhalation was a battle cry.

Dana, Ilona and I entered their living room of peace and silence at mid-afternoon. Jeroch was in a large chair, holding the baby as you see them here. Karen walked in, radiant and welcoming as always. We felt worshipful here. These young people have matured with the months of the process, guiding us and each other with trusting hands of love. We grandparents had come to know each other quickly and better. Karen's mother, the children's book author Erica Magnus, had flown in from LA a couple weeks earlier. Already we had become friends with her father, David Thomas of the OU film department. Karen's sister and her partner are here from the world of New York theatre. Has there ever been such a wondrous Christmas for all of us!  More >

 Let Kids be Kids!!!9 comments
picture8 Sep 2007 @ 16:10, by jerryvest. Children, Parenting
Scientific inquiry, research investigation, "finding out," and the like, all have their beginnings in the explorativeness of the child, a neotenous trait of supreme value, which is a never-failing mark of the active mind and the youthful spirit. (Ashley Montagu, Growing Young)

I have been reviewing the literature and writing short articles on the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) and the dangers that exist with this diagnostic classification system for all populations. However, it seems that our children are increasingly being labeled ADHD as having this disorder related to their attention span. I suspect that rather than examine the teaching methods of our schools and the cloning that is applied with the testing services, the kids are being blamed and targeted with having a disease so that they can be medicated and put to sleep. [link]

I am interested in learning if our academic programs, school social workers, teachers, parents and mental health workers in our communities are investigating this scam that is cooked up with the drug industry, psychiatry, the DSM Board and clinical psychology who are the beneficiaries of this disease model? It is estimated that 20% of the child population are diagnosed with this "disease." Over 12 million kids are taking these drugs for a disease that does not exist. Dr. Baughman describes the harmful affects of these drugs and tells us that "...they (the kids) will never be the same.

I have a personal example of these harmful labels when my grandson was identified as having this invisible ADHD disease. For example, he was completing his classroom assignments much quicker than the others in his class so he became fidgety and on edge. Thus, the teacher had a session with his parents and recommended that he get tested for ADHD. My grandson was taken to a medical health center for testing and was greeted by a social worker who indicated that her son probably had ADHD.

My daughter is also a social worker and knows the indicators for this fabricated disease and the dangers of labels and drugs. Also, she knows how enthusiastic her son is about learning. She requested that he be given an intelligence test and consequently, the results demonstrated that her son was very high in the 'gifted range'. My daughter said that she helped the teacher by sending additional books and resources that she knew would keep her son happy and actively engaged in learning.

Now my grandson is placed in a gifted classroom and is no longer being judged and labeled. Don't you wonder about parents who don't have the knowledge and skill to advocate for their kids and who trust their teachers and professionals who are giving such damaging labels? Drugs?

I prefer what Pink Floyd has to say about the kids in school who are treated as "just another brick in the wall" and advises the teachers to "...leave those kids alone!" Let kids be kids.

Do read this message and click on the link of this interview with Dr. Baughman, a pediatric neurologist, willing to speak out about this scam and epidemic of ADHD.

I am interested in learning if other parents, grandparents, educators, mental health workers or counselors in our forum are concerned about children being labeled and drugged. Are any discussions taking place in the university classrooms about this abusive behavior and cohabitation of the drug, education and psychiatry industries?


Summary and other Recommended Links-

A sensitive human being could become very sick to their stomach knowing that helping professionals are drugging our kids for money. Many others are in on the decision to drug our kids, but no one will stand up for them. In this website, Dr. Baughman Jr., MD, a remarkable medical professional is making this fraud known. Do pass these messages and links on to your friends and others so that we can voice our protest of this disgusting act of aggression against a whole generation of kids. The kids are hyper because their adult 'models' don't have a clue about how to relate and engage them in children's activities. Learning can be fun. Let the kids be kids.

Also, when 0(zero) tolerance for touch policies are established in schools, our kids will not be meeting their basic human need requirements for giving and receiving physical interaction and love. Common manifestations for lack of touch for seniors/elders maintained in nursing homes are agitation, confusion, hyperactivity, anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, depression, loneliness, isolation and despair. Are not these symptoms also evident with children forced to be in classrooms for long periods of time with minimum physical interaction and nominal physical activities? Our health promotion teams using our 15 MinuteStressout Program, with elders and with youth, have provided relief of stress, anxiety and depression by administering safe, skillful and nourishing touch with these groups.

Finally, I am curious as to why people need to identify themselves with a disease model or a belief that they have a deficit or disordered mind. I would suggest that you may be more accurate to say that your mind is overly active and you have difficulty in concentrating or focusing. I suggest that if these conditions exist, begin observing your thoughts and activities of the mind with meditation. Get to know how your mind works and behaves. Observe your breathing and allow your mind to become open, accepting and allowing. You can free your mind of judgments and labels by designing a daily health plan and practice mindfulness while engaging in exercises that improve your whole being--physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

I have learned from clients that labels tend to be as difficult to overcome as the psychotropic meds. You can even make your mind more confused and anxious by accepting these labels as real--they are not. One of my favorite mantras is: "The natural state of the mind is void." (Oscar Ichazo)

I hope that I am not upsetting anyone who believes in these negative labels that are given to them by psychiatrists and psychologists. I believe that creating labels is just a game that is invented to promote and advance their business of treating these symptoms. I suggest that you at least attempt to become mindful and examine integrative or holistic health practices before you fall into the trap of becoming dependent on drugs for relaxing the body, mind and spirit.


[link]

Get the real story of press releases and other activities carried out by Dr. Baughman. [Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD: this makes it perhaps the biggest health care fraud in history, but does not a thing to validate it as a disease. Where is the first case report of ADHD-the disease. There is none]

[link]




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From: NewsTarget Insider
Reply-To: insider@newstarget.com
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 07:18:23 -0700
Subject: NewsTarget report: ADHD fraud exposed - Dr. Fred Baughman
NewsTarget Insider Alert (www.NewsTarget.com)
Online reports / book announcements
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Dear readers,

In the last 30 years, the field of psychiatry has transformed childhood into a disease through the label of ADHD. That's exactly what Dr. Fred Baughman, a pediatric neurologist and fellow of the American Association of Neurologists explores in this downloadable interview from Truth Publishing.

Dr. Baughman is one of the few neurological experts that is willing to come forward with the truth about ADHD and the mass drugging of America's children. Have you ever wondered why other countries don't have this explosion of mental illness in their kids? Have you ever wondered why people in your parent's generation didn't have these problems? The answers are all right here in this interview.

Plus, Dr. Baughman shares his latest book on the subject, and a DVD warning to parents about the latest epidemic of childhood diagnosis, who is profiting from it, and how the label could hurt their child for life -- not to mention the risk of heart attack, stroke, drug abuse and all the other side effects that children on ADHD drugs experience.

Read all this and more in "Live with Dr. Fred Baughman," available for downloading now at:

[link]



Dr. Baughman shares startling facts such as:


o What group wants four out of every ten children diagnosed as ADHD

o How brain "disorders" lack an objective standard

o Why an ADHD-labeled child will have trouble getting healthcare coverage, getting a job, or getting into the military

o How diseases are created by a "show of hands"

o How parents, teachers and school districts are getting paid for ADHD diagnoses

o How many psychiatric experts are owned by the pharmaceutical industry

o The law the Bush Administration put into action that will REQUIRE your child to be screened for ADHD

o Adult ADHD "recruiting" centers where 80 percent are diagnosed as ADHD

o How the FDA lobbied another country to keep dangerous ADHD drugs on the market after fatalities occured

o Why your grandparents were never diagnosed with ADHD

o What percentage of kids walk out of their first psychiatric visit with an ADHD diagnosis

o How taxpayers foot the bill for every ADHD diagnosis

You'll want to pass this information on to everyone you know with children or grandchildren, so they don't become just another vehicle of profit for the drug industry. The risks are just too great, and too many parents and children have suffered already.

Download "Live with Dr. Fred Baughman" right now and read it for yourself:

[link]  More >

 Heavy With Child28 comments
picture19 Aug 2007 @ 11:07, by jazzolog. Children, Parenting
Let us dig our gardens and not be elsewhere;
Let us take long walks in the open air...
Let us bathe in the rivers and lakes...
Let us indulge in games...
Let us be more simple: simple and true in our gestures, in our words, and simple and true in our minds above all. Let us be ourselves.

---Robert Linssen

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you should begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

---Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't ask if I've ceased my wanderings;
already I've trampled all over the south.
Understanding should be what you yourself understand.
Mind is not someone else's mind.

---Ch'i-Chi

Karl Brulloff. Italian Woman Heavy with a Child Examining a Shirt and her Husband Making a Cradle. 1831. Watercolour on cardboard.

There is a great benefit in writing...and it's not just another chance to tell people what to do. It's not even to inform friends and relations what you've been up to. The gift of writing your words is in the opportunity to collect your thoughts and work on them thus. Maybe you'll share it, maybe you won't. Here, in this writing, I will be heartfelt.

Presently my family is enjoying the presence in our home of the lady our son has chosen totally. And she has chosen him. They have been friends throughout their schooling in this town, and in recent years discovered their feelings were true love. They felt even more freedom together in that realization, and became joyfully radiant in celebration. Everyone around them knew it to be so and benefitted in their presence. Jeroch and Karen are a couple and you can see it strongly.

A few months ago a child decided to be born out of them, and Karen carries her now to fruition in December. They have a charming house chosen for this beginning, and they await final preparations for them to move in...probably next month. In the new style of American youth---that some elders are tempted to call cart-before-the-horse---they haven't gotten around to the stupendous wedding occasion that is sure to come. For one thing, her older sister also is getting married, and Karen is deferring to her in mutual agreement to have the first wedding. And who's to say the horse can't be in the back, pushing or something?  More >

 Genealogy9 comments
picture 6 Aug 2007 @ 20:17, by ming. Children, Parenting
I somehow got hooked on online genealogy research.

My brother and I had talked for a while about researching our family tree, and he had gathered a bit of information from relatives, but it was only after somebody introduced me to geni.com that it really got anywhere. (Thanks, Thomas!)

There are many genealogy websites on the net, but Geni does it in a more accessible Web2.0 kind of way, mainly through a flow chart kind of display one can scroll around in continously. Article about geni in L.A. Times yesterday.

Now, I used to think that family history was an extremely stuffy thing to be into. My stepfather once got very interested in his family tree, filled up a wall with old photos of sour-looking ancestors, and bragged to no end about his 10th great grandfather being Christian IV, king of Denmark. I thought it was so not interesting. Who cares about boring long dead people.

Now my own immediate family ironically thinks I'm equally nutty, happily spending hours looking for ancient ancestors. For those who don't find genealogy interesting, it often seems like a particularly offensive waste of time.

But I'd say it ought to be of some kind of concern, where one comes from, genetically speaking. I wouldn't be here without my parents, and they of course wouldn't have been there if it weren't for their parents, etc.

I've learned a variety of interesting things from this new time-wasting hobby:

- There's an enormous amount of information available on the net. Lots of people have uploaded their family trees. Countries have scanned in and uploaded church records, census records, immigration records, etc. And the Mormons have created enormous online databases of just about anybody's ancestors they can get access to. The result is that I often can look up the name of some ancestor 5 or 10 generations ago, and he or she actually shows up in Google. Wheras my contemporary relatives mostly are invisible on the web, my older ancestors are not necessarily. There's something surreal to being able to track the lives of unknown nobodies of hundreds of years ago from my computer.

- Researching history is an interesting puzzle of trying to piece together what really happened based on a few sketchy visible traces in bad condition. The source materials are hard to find, and their information is often hard to decipher or erroneous. In this case, the gothic writing in church records from the 1700s is a bit of a challenge, and census records are sloppy with the spelling of people's names. Yet, if you find several pieces of information, you can triangulate approximately what happened.

- There are websites like ancestry.com that aim for gathering a database of everybody who ever lived that there's a record of, the One World Tree. How's that for a collaborative application of the Internet?

- This is essentially social networking for dead people, which is kind of weird. You track down people from many years ago, add stuff to their profiles, link them together, and make the whole thing public on the net.

- Imagine how over time more and and more historical information will be digitized, and better search mechanisms will be developed, including for fuzzy searches. In principle, if there's enough data, and the search algorithms were clever enough, a computer program would eventually be able to build your family tree for you, or do similar feats with other kinds of fuzzy historical information. That connects in with the inevitable capability to record and index everything about our own lives in the not too distant future, and the interesting part is that it also can include historical information, from before anybody thought of such things.

- Despite it being fascinating to find them, I must so far conclude that I have had a rather undistinguished family. All the way back to the early 1500s, I find almost nothing but plain people who've been poor, unskilled workers. A relatively few of them have had a profession, like blacksmith, and the most distinguished have made it to be land-owning farmers or civil servants. Nothing wrong with that, I'm quite proud of being working-class, but I'd have expected to have found some kind of nobility by now. Which in part would be fun because I right away would find a lot of ancestors there. But, no, we're mostly talking day laborers who all got 12 kids, half of which became servants for more well-off people. Many died young. If the husband died, the rest of them ended up in the poor house. Life back then seems somewhat depressing seen from here, although I don't know what people actually felt about it at the time.

Anyway, there's (only) around 350 people in my family tree so far, so a lot more to find. So far it has lead from Denmark to Norway, Sweden and Germany, and the earliest ancestor is so far a farmer named Eivind Stangaland from Norway, born 1505.  More >

 Healthy Kids have enormous energy 8 comments
picture26 Jul 2007 @ 12:44, by jerryvest. Children, Parenting
It is--the need to love others and to be loved; the qualities of curiosity, inquisitiveness, thirst for knowlege; the need to learn; imagination, creativity, openmindedness, experimental-mindedness; the sense of humor, playfulness, joy, the optimism, honesty, resilience, and compassionate intelligence--that constitute the spirit of the child. Growing Young, Ashley Montagu


Do we have the 'spirit' to stay up with our kids and grandkids?

I'm not sure how much energy I have left today to write a log on "staying up" with kids. As we know, when all of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual systems are in balance, an abundance of energy manifests in all four realms--so it can be great fun to engage our grandkids fully. In a day's time, we play ball, write a "Daily Family Newsletter," go golfing, swim, play cards, go biking, play video games, review the Tarot, and still have time to eat three meals, take pictures and make a video. What a Day this Makes!!!

I am truly amazed at how much energy kids have and how they love to express it with their whole being. It is no wonder that school is so hard for them when they must curtail their physical activities and sit for a long period of time without being able to express themselves fully. It is obvious that their minds are wide open and in the moment so they can express their creativity and joy in living with their whole being when given the opportunity. They laugh, sing, dance, drum, and play freely without any inhibition or limitation. Oh, once in awhile they have some usual sibling rivalries, and the age differences present some challenges: however, the honesty and innocence of children's expression of emotions allows them to get angry, upset and they usually get over it just as quickly as it comes. Hmm, if only we adults could be so skillful and flexible.

Anyway, this is a short article I will expand upon as we enter our 2nd. week of vacation together with our grandkids--Ari (age 9), Beau (Age 8) and Daeja (age 5).

During some quiet times, Ariana made several short videos related to being Mindful: "Learning the difference between Mindfulness and Accidents"- [link]  More >



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