|
|
 31 May 2007 @ 14:49, by jerryvest. Children, Parenting
Everyone needs appropriate encouragement-
As I have been discussing in my Learning to Learn & Play with Children blog, it is essential to support children with what Ashley Montagu describes--"Appropriate Encouragement." Dr. Montagu beautifully describes this concept as follows for all ages:
"Babies are new to themselves, and all that surrounds them is novel. Children of all ages feel much the same way; it is a feeling and a view of life that can last a lifetime. To see the world always with a fresh eye means that one brings encouraging things to every experience a habit of feeling, of experiencing, a not-taking-for-granted the everyday scene, but finding something new in each time one encounters it. And this can only come about naturally by encouraging the child, at every age, to be interested, curious, and experimental minded. This is what babies and children are, and what all humans are capable of being all of their lives, if only they receive the appropriate encouragements." (Montagu, p. 222)
I believe that Professor Montagu is one of our most outstanding human development specialists, yet few professional social workers and allied health professionals are aware of his contributions to understanding and applying his concepts of "neotenous traits." I wrote a previous article introducing these 26 basic needs that are so very important for the development of the child and for the adult to maintain and support throughout his/her evolution.
All of these basic needs are elegantly described in Growing Young and in this article I am focusing on the importance of teachers, families, care givers and other adults to support and encourage this basic need for children to sustain their interest, curiosity, and experimental mind throughout their lifetime. It appears that many children in our schools are abandoning this requirement for healthy living as they enter secondary schools and become more like or emulate adults. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps if we could be more enthusiastic about our children's work while continuing to encourage them and support their interests they would continue to improve, learn and advance their knowledge and skills.
I have found that using photography and theatre offers a great means for children to learn to express themselves and also provides encouragement for them while sharing their creativity with others. This past weekend, Ariana introduced her art work with us. Daeja, her younger sister and I, served as photographers. We posted this short introduction on Google Videos so do let her know about your impressions of her work and you can apply this concept and contribute "appropriate encouragement."
[link] More >
|
|
|
|
 2 May 2007 @ 20:37, by jhs. Children, Parenting
Well, at 7:28 on a beautiful morning, our first grandchild arrived safely in our midth with a big smile and a contagious serenity!
Vesakh, the first full moon in Taurus was at 7:09am here in Brazil. He nearly got out at that time but then decided to retract and wait another 20 minutes.
He wanted to stay in his bag (amnion) when entering this world, like any decent Buddha would do, but the umbilical cord was twice around his neck, so our daughter's midwife decided to make the maneuvers to help the amnion to open in order to remove the double-strangle, and, all the time with the help of Heloisa Helena, she managed to do so.
Statistics:
Time of birth 7:28am BRT
Place: in a Sacred Grove in the Alta Serra forest near Sao Roque, Brazil, elevation 1050m.
Weight: 3,340 grams
Length: 50 cm.
Name: Anthony.
Constellation: Sun, Mercury, Ascendent in Taurus, Neptune and Chiron in Midheaven with Saturn lurking from below. Together with Lilith nearly a Star of David. Uranus and Mars, two wild guys on the loose, challenging the establishment already, opposing Jupiter squarely. Venus, Lilith, and Neptune are forming a triangle, with Jupiter Retro a 'kite'.
Big smiles everywhere around here. A great thanks to Dr.Leboyer for his inspirations and promotions of Natural Child Birth, to Gary Craig, creator and relentless promoter of EFT which played a vital role in today's success story, to Vilma Nishi, considered the 'top-of-the-line' midwife in Sao Paulo, and to the daddy of Anthony who helped immensively.
Did I mention Heloisa Helena's heroic role in all of this? A work of Hercules. Beyond words.
Thanks to the Orisha who worked overtime to ensure a safe arrival (all of them!), and to all our friends in the world who called or e-mail with their best wishes!
And, of course, new Mama Maira who laboured all the time throughout Labour Day (May 1st) to deliver in time for Vesakh 2007! More >
|
|
|
|
 19 Apr 2007 @ 03:41, by jhs. Children, Parenting
(from Helo)
My personal observation in relation to male doctors in Brazil coroborates fully the observations stated by a-d, an RN from Scandinavia, in the commentary to the previous article by Max.
Furthermore, these are not just some isolated behaviour patterns. There is an entire image with all of its interrelations that intrigued me ever since I was confronted by it, at first academically (at the University), then in my years as a psychologist, and especially during the births of my three children.
Here are some of my basic observations:
- the male doctors are unable to confront the existence of the vagina, this magic opening out of which springs life and out of which they themselves emerged as a child.
- With the take-over of the birth process by clinical medicine in the recent decades, male doctors replaced the traditional midwife and this basic problem proliferated dramatically. As one of the consequences, the number of unnecessary Cesarean births went up to scandalous dimensions.
- the male doctor takes seemingly total control of the birth process, posing as if it was him that was producing the baby and NOT the woman. In the case of the Cesarean, he even pretends to create the equivalent of the opening of the vagina by opening the belly of the woman. With his hands and tools he digs out the newborn as if it was his own creation.
- the compounded agressivity versus the female is culminating in the agression versus the newborn (more about this in a future post). The hate of most doctors in this process is typically so strong that is cannot be concealed any more.
- the more uneducated and socially disadvantaged the woman, the more she is subject to this total domination. She is not able to confront what is happening to her. The exception from the rule are women with the archetype known as Oya. These (wo)men will try to take control of the process themselves but then fall into the same trap of non-confronting their own femininity. For example, they will make an appointment for a Cesarian already weeks before the expected day birth. They will schedule this "event" right after the hairdresser, the only feminine aspect in this context, and then proceed with a taxi to the hospital all by herself. She will be likely to command the doctor around, and, obviously she already will know, if she will bear a female (preferably) or a male child.
- the macho doctor's behaviour is embedded in the context of contemporary INVASIVE medicine, with predominantly phallic tools and objects. The phallic symbolism continues with the premature cutting of the cord with a knife. This destructive act will take the basic support of the newborn away and endanger gravely the health of the baby. But this in turn will justify the "work" of the male doctor, not only for the moment but for many years to come. My own work with the Rebirth Method provided me with countless examples of this.
- it should be mentioned that the rare female gynecologist typically emulates the behaviour patterns of the average male doctor completely. One personal experience for me was the birth of the first of my three children. The doctor was a woman with a male biotype, attractive but with a small beard. She appeared all OK but when the time of birth arrived she showed her true face. Which was the face of her woman profoundly unhappy about herself as a woman.
- at this point I would like to emphasize what I already mentioned briefly above: at the time of the birth, the hour of truth has come, literally: none of the participants can hide their true face, neither the doctor nor the woman. Often neither the father of the baby, present or not. Especially the woman is not her 'normal' self: she feels and acts like a wild animal giving birth. (I should add that the midwife of our daughter has made exactly the same observation in more than 30 years of professional experience with childbirths).
- the archetype of the typical surgeon of our times, like Ed Dawson pointed out, appears to be Ogun, with all his attributes, the knife, his postures during the process, and his medicines (the name for allopathic medicine in Yoruba is oogun!). But for me there is still an open question in respect to the script enacted during the actual process of birth. We should not forget that Ogun is defending the pregnant female unconditionally. What I know of personally is the dramatization of the super archetype of the male dominator of this Universe, already conditioned by the academic institutions, who uses masks to hide his true identity. In the very moment of childbirth he is stepping in, using a mask of a combination of saviour and creator archetypes but is in truth himself, acting against the archetype of the grandmother, trying to assume control of the creation, pretending to be the sole creator of everything.
ThIS IS PART OF THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT OF THIS UNIVERSE.
(from Helo)
pictures from the online book of Frederick Leboyer Birth Without Violence More >
|
|
|
|
 21 Mar 2006 @ 07:49, by jazzolog. Children, Parenting
Father and daughter at the mighty Allegheny River last summer.
Please subdue the anguish of your soul. Nobody is destined only to happiness or to pain. The wheel of life takes me up and down by turn.
---Kalidasa
Eliminate something superfluous from your life.
Break a habit.
Do something that makes you feel insecure.
Carry out an action with complete attention and intensity, as if it were your last.
---Piero Ferrucci
To the mind that is still
the whole universe surrenders.
---Lao Tzu
The century is soft and the year yet new in my daughter. Her 14th year half over, Air France flight 8701 begins descent at this dawning hour over Paris. For the next 80 days part of me will be here in the Ohio River Valley and part will be reaching out 6 hours ahead to Ilona living and studying in France. A few hours ago, after weeks of preparation, her mother and I entrusted her to the care of the family who invited her to go with them. There have been agonizing moments of uncertainty, but finally we committed and several hours ago wished her bon voyage. Just before we left Athens Ilona sent out this email message~~~
"Before I depart, I wanted to share with all of you my love and graciousness
for your love, support, prayers and comfort as I leave for France. It has
been so wonderful for me to know that I have so many people to love me.
Thank you all!
"Thank you all for your support, it's helped me to take a deep breath in
order to embark on this life changing and beautiful experience.
"GROS BISOUS! (=
(Big Kiss)" More >
|
|
|
|
 12 Feb 2006 @ 10:42, by jazzolog. Children, Parenting
The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn is you're the same fool. Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I regain consciousness.
---Ray Bradbury
I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector.
---William Stafford
One day a student asked Taiga, "What is the most difficult part of painting?"
Taiga answered: "The part of the paper where nothing is painted is the most difficult."
---Artist Zen
Graduating from Middle School last year, Ilona and Keenan, with one of his sisters Ameena.
Yesterday I was sitting around the faculty lounge of one of the Ohio University colleges with a friend. He's a professor and director of graduate programs there. We were drinking some coffee, eating chocolate, and watching the Winter Olympics. Mostly we were talking though. Maybe that combination got us into the topic of early love affairs, but that's what happened. We were comparing our high school experiences. They were rather different, as he was born in Bangladesh.
This morning I'm trying to think back to my very first days of spending time with girls. One time, possibly during the summer vacation between 4th and 5th grade, I went over to see what my little blue-eyed, blonde-haired girlfriend (that my mother approved of a lot) was doing...and as usual her kinda large, faithful, possessive friend Jeannie was there. They were playing house. Being the open-minded, already-liberated guy you know, even in the late '40s, I offered to play. Well...I asked if I could play. Carol and Jeannie whispered together a while, and then said yes. They said I should get up on the porch railing and stand there. I could be Air.
One autumn day in 7th grade social studies class, Miss Weatherly seized a note Carol was passing to Jeannie...and made her stand up in front of the class and read it. She turned the color of a strawberry and with trembling voice did so. It said that her mother didn't want her to be my girlfriend anymore and that she was making her break up with me. Mom feared it would get too serious and we were too young. Then she sat down, put her head in her arms on her desk, and wept ferociously. I was shattered---and part of me still is. Carol married a guy from West Point...and I don't know what happened to Miss Weatherly. More >
|
|
|
|
 9 Feb 2006 @ 09:33, by jazzolog. Children, Parenting
There's no need to discuss the principles of koan study;
just listen carefully
to the wind outside
the pines and cedars.
---Ryonen
Someone else
looked at the sky
with the same rapture
when the moon
crossed the dawn.
---Izumi Shikibu
What silence can there be,
What lack of sound compare
to a snowfall from dark air
falling quietly to sea?
---H. D. Eshleman
The lovers last summer, together in Kinzua, Pennsylvania.
Yesterday a letter arrived from Espana. It is from a university student who has become very dear to our family these past several months. She is my son's young lady, finishing her advanced degree in Pamplona. He remains here, helping to manage his business. They both are 22.
How well I remember separation at 22. I was at Harvard and she was in Maine, not so far apart as Jeroch and Karen (pronounced KARR-in, as they do in Norway---although few in her life have learned to say it that way). There was a 4-lane highway a few miles outside Cambridge that went right up there. Maybe that made it worse. I only had a bicycle though. Some nights I used to ride it all the way out to that road, and just stand on an overpass, looking North...howling at the moon. More >
|
|
|
|
 18 Nov 2005 @ 05:22, by judih. Children, Parenting
a love poem to my daughter
serenades the house
her essence scents the room
the couch begs her to stay
She enters the door
and silence starts to sing
fear dwindles, life lightens
the idiocy of others fades into irrelevance
What is love
till this daughter arrives?
It pales even sighs in dim peaks
what is happiness
till this daughter returns?
a low thud in a sinking heart
rise, oh soul felt laughter
as daughter walks this silent floor
the earth is her living room
the sky her endless trail
november 18th
judih More >
|
|
|
|
12 Mar 2005 @ 18:01, by litelizard. Children, Parenting
Children are the future! More >
|
|
|
|
 15 Jun 2004 @ 05:50, by scotty. Children, Parenting
(the art work is from [link]
"It matters not Who you love, Where you love, Why you love, When you love, or How you love, It matters only that You love." ~John Lennon
A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from a friend of mine.
The usual news of old friends - and then she told me about a problem she was having with her nephew - B !
Her message to me went along the lines of ... 'I am going to see B, he is a bit mixed up at the moment.
He is going through the teenage years I guess, a bit later than a normal boy would!!
He's always been desperate to have a girlfriend but because of his problems he has never been able to have one.
Now to his way of thinking if he can't have a girl, he'll just become gay and have a boyfriend, and this is leading to all sorts of problems.
As you can imagine, I don't want him hurt, or taken advantage of.
Also there has been a man phoning him up at nights, and B will not talk to me about him.
I have managed to find out where this guy is phoning from but I haven't been able to find out if his intentions are good or bad yet! So i may have to get the police involved... this would be a last resort though! I am going to try once more and see if he'll open up to me and tell who his friend is.'
My friends sister died a little over ten years ago and since then B has lived in assisted/protected housing - he has recieved special education and training and can in fact work for a living.
The whole idea is to help him to lead as normal and indepentant a life as is possible and as you can see from my friends message - a love life isn't totally out of the question ! In fact she's all for it !
Many people don't agree - my friend is going against the popular thinking that often takes the view that these special people should be seen and not heard - and not seen too would be even better !
Is Love Enough .... [link]
AN art gallery .. [link] More >
|
|
|
|
21 May 2004 @ 14:36, by sharie. Children, Parenting
I remember a time when I was four years old, standing in my parents' bedroom and being acutely aware of their unhappiness with one another. This had been an on-going misery, but on this particular day it struck me that this would be commonplace, and simultaneously I was crystal clear that I could not count on them to teach me about life. "Adults don't know what they're doing," I thought. They seemed so mis-guided.
The underlying sense was that their unhappiness with their life was because they were either choosing to be miserable or they were stuck and didn't seem to know how to live a happy life.
My general disposition had always been calm and content, and by stark contrast was this pervasive agony that the two of them managed to manifest.
So I made the decision then and there, at that ripe old age of four years old, that I would just figure out for myself how to live in this world... and so I did.
Several months later, our family moved to a new home out in the country, surrounded by trees and valleys. There was a moment there when I suddenly became aware of standing in our house, and feeling inundated by the tension in the air, a tension so thick it was beginning to penetrate my being. I immediately judged that tension to be "unreal". I would not acknowledge their human misery as anything "real".
I walked outside to the green waving grass and the green trees blowing in the wind and the beautiful blue sky, and I felt the power of life permeating me, and I thought, "This is Real!"
As I embraced this magnificent life force of Nature, the physical realm faded from view and I saw the brilliant light of the spirit of life, the eternal presence of the immortal intelligence, so beautiful and true that I immediately knew the physical world was merely an illusion that fades with time.
Beyond the illusion of time, space, energy, and motion is the eternal reality of the spirit of life. And this spirit communicated to me in the language of light, making its promise of radiant opulent abundance that would always be mine if only I kept faith in the light of truth.
I knew this light to be the God of all life, and I knew my God as my friend, the Creator of all that exists. It was a beautiful God. I looked to my God as my guide throughout my life, and since my parents were rarely present in my life, I looked to the spirit of life for my happiness and peace.
There exists a home movie of my family, my aunts, uncles, and cousins all walking along together, somewhat droning along, and here comes little Sharie, skipping through the crowd with such exuberance that to this day I can't help but burst out laughing just thinking about it.
I was a happy kid. I taught myself to swim, I taught myself to ride a bike, I taught myself to play the organ, I was an accomplished flutist in the band, was driven to do acrobatics of all kinds, and became known for my flexibility - splits all three ways, backbends, walk-overs, and hand-springs, I became the chess champion of my school, won an award for demonstrating an exhaustingly impressive memory, I won a ribbon for track, and I won the art award. This was the extent of my accomplishments by age eleven, with little adult supervision.
I've always remembered the intelligence and insight I had at four years old, and have acknowledged all children to be inherently brilliant.
As an adult, I worked with children for seven years. From babies to teenagers, and even college kids, I enjoyed their intelligence and humor, their keen observations and their many questions.
When my twin daughters were two years old, I was taking them for a walk one day when a woman passed asking, "How do you do it!"
"I treat them like intelligent beings... and they act accordingly," I answered with a snappy happy melody.
As I walked on, I thought of what I'd just said. I knew that's why my daughters were almost always happy. They never ever threw a fit, and very, very rarely cried.
They loved people and people loved them. They were always friendly and out-going, and very engaging to be with, and such great company.
I remember a time when they were just toddlers and we were out at the playground, and we could hear another toddler crying. And my daughter said, "Ahhh..." with such a tone of compassion that I was in awe of her awareness and empathy. She was only about 15 months old at the time.
I'd learned about a child's conscience from Little Lisa, a precious toddler I'd known years before I had children of my own. Lisa's conscience was so highly developed, her behavior so alarmingly bright that I remembered becoming aware that we must never violate a child's conscience, never violate the integrity of a child's presence of being.
Children are a precious gift. Please take care that you always respect them.
|
|
<< Newer entries Page: 1 2 3 Older entries >> |
|
