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Friday, January 31, 2014

Haiku on Travel/ Satire/ String

Travel

A travel brochure
Glitzy pictures, sun and surf
Rained when we were there

On a plane for hours
Travel can broaden the mind
But also the bum

While meditating
Travel to far off places
Happy they're still there

Satire

Struts across the room
In Mum's bra, high heels, lipstick
Three year old satire

Almighty dollar
Satyr of humanity
We bow down to thee

Grand satire of life
We seek happiness in glitz
Miss joy in small things

String

A cacophony
The string section out of tune
Clumsy pianist

Parental discord
Child ties household together
With a ball of string

Heart murmurs in pain
The chord tendineae
Strings ruptured by loss

Monday, January 27, 2014

Positive Parenting 2

In the article entitled: ‘7 damaging parenting behaviors that keep children from becoming leaders’, Dr. Tim Elmore is quoted as saying:
2. We rescue too quickly
“Today’s generation of young people has not developed some of the life skills kids did 30 years ago because adults swoop in and take care of problems for them. When we rescue too quickly and over-indulge our children with “assistance,” we remove the need for them to navigate hardships and solve problems on their own. It’s parenting for the short-term and it sorely misses the point of leadership—to equip our young people to do it without help. Sooner or later, kids get used to someone rescuing them: “If I fail or fall short, an adult will smooth things over and remove any consequences for my misconduct.” When in reality, this isn’t even remotely close to how the world works, and therefore it disables our kids from becoming competent adults.”

‘Today’s generation of young people has not developed some of the life skills kids did 30 years ago because adults swoop in and take care of problems for them.’
This is such a generalisation. ‘Today’s generation of young people...’. Are we discussing Gen Y (aged 20-35) who, as a group, seem to be somewhat arrogant and self-opinionated, self-interested, ‘go-getters’ with little allegiance to others, such high expectations of everyone? The most entrepreneurial generation yet! Or Gen Z (under 20), who seem to be equally self-opinionated, and self-absorbed, dedicated to an online life, and success, with little in the way of moral, religious or ethical hangups, and with nearly as much leadership potential as Gen Y.
Perhaps Dr. Elmore is discussing 5-6 year olds, who (understandably) have quite a long way to go to develop their life skills, many of whom do struggle with the early intellectual and social learning challenges of school.
OK, I admit, I have met some anxious parents of 5-8 year olds who are nervous about their children taking physical and social risks, and do ‘swoop’. But they are in a minority as far as I can see. The majority of parents still have the ‘good parenting’ skill to walk alongside their children, exploring risks, and explaining ways of managing risk. They allow the child to walk on  a low wall, holding their hand – until such time as the child says: “I can manage!” Even then they hover, ever able to steady the child if necessary.
As we well know, there are many parents at the other end of the spectrum – they do not have the experience, the inner trans-generational knowledge,  or the time and energy  to worry much about their kids, so they let them run free.
Of note, our research into conduct disorder, depression, anxiety, and self-harming and suicidal behaviours, has shown repeatedly that it is the ‘overcontrolling’ parents, jumping in to criticise all the time, who are most likely to cause problems. The child is not allowed to learn, because the parent always knows best, and expects them to follow the rules. Within this, ‘highly caring’ overcontrolling parents may cause less damage, but ‘highly critical’ overcontrolling parents seem to have kids who get into more trouble than even the neglected children. Elmore says: “When we rescue too quickly and over-indulge our children with “assistance,” we remove the need for them to navigate hardships and solve problems on their own.” That is not the issue I see clinically time and time again. It is the intrusive hypercritical not-letting-the-child find ways to get on in life that is dangerous.
Sooner or later, kids get used to someone rescuing them: “If I fail or fall short, an adult will smooth things over and remove any consequences for my misconduct.” When in reality, this isn’t even remotely close to how the world works, and therefore it disables our kids from becoming competent adults.”
Again, the children I see with a serious range of problems, are the ones who ‘fail or fall short’, and are jumped all over by tired niggly parents who wish the kid would get out of their hair. There are ‘too soon’, ‘too harsh’, ‘too idiosyncratic’, and ‘too changeable’ ‘consequences for misconduct’. The child never learns how the rest of the world sees these supposed difficulties, and would shrug their collective shoulders, allowing the child to sort it out for itself.
If you want confidant children, then from the beginning you have to love them, enjoy making them laugh, read stories with them, take great enjoyment from each and every success, and guide their pathway to adulthood. You have to be clear about your own set of personal, moral and social rules, and stick to those, gently repeating how you expect your child to behave – and why! You have to be able to gain their respect because they can see you living by your own personal, moral and social rules. If a child sees this repeatedly, they will absorb all the skills for a successful life.

More in a couple of days....

Haiku on Bait/ Observation/ News

Bait

Small hole cut through ice
Hooks baited with wriggling worms
The Kraken Awakes

She spoke, baiting him
He looked up from his novel
"Just got to good bit"

The bully baited
Each day teasing the small boy
Kin Geri fixed it

Observation

Child psychiatrist
Observation on small child
Needs a good mother

Fireworks in Sydney
New Year's Eve observation
Over the top glitz

Life is full of knees
When you are very tiny
An observation

News

Mum told me the news
Going to have new sister
Rather have a dog

What is new in news?
Repeated trumped-up gossip
Same as 'news' last year

Breaking news today
Owning guns causes cancer
'Science Bulletin'

Transverse Myelitis and Stem Cells (2)

I was on a Facebook Transverse Myelitis list yesterday, looking at some responses to my post on this topic, and one of the members told me about this blog from an English man who has TM, and recently went to Germany to have Stem Cell Therapy. His story is only two weeks old, but possibly worth following...

http://stemcellsjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/2-weeks-post-treatment.html
2 weeks Post Treatment | Stem Cells Journeystemcellsjourney.blogspot.com

Monday Free Download: Evaluation Keep Yourself Alive Suicide Prevention

Last week I posted the Keep Yourself Evaluation Training Manual (from the KYA Multimedia Suicide Prevention Kit). This KYA report is the program evaluation for the multimedia community family doctor suicide prevention training program. So few evaluations are completed regarding government suicide prevention programs; this is one exception.

Go To: http://www.familyconcernpublishing.com.au

Then: Resources tab

Download here: *KYA EVAL GP

Beckinsale, P., Martin, G. & Clark, S., 1999.  Keep Yourself Alive: Evaluation Report: General Practitioners.  KYA, Quality Assurance and Continuing Education Unit, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Adelaide.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Transverse Myelitis and Stem Cells. Is this a possibility for the future???

This post is taken from a report on CBS Evening News: "MS patient to take part in pioneering experiment". < http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ms-patient-to-take-part-in-pioneering-experiment/>
The lady in question was formally diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, but her initial symptoms sound very much like Transverse Myelitis.


"One night I woke up and I couldn't feel either of my legs," Quinn said. "Right now, my biggest problem is my hamstring. I cannot get my hamstring to cooperate when I have to walk, so that's my battle right now," she said.
Current treatments only try to stop progression of the disease. Quinn is about to test a new approach: using stem cells designed to actually make MS patients better.
Stem cells can be morphed into any cell in the body. Patients like Quinn have bone marrow removed and the stem cells are extracted and then changed into the kind of stem cells found in the brain and spinal cord.
So watch this space for the outcomes. They may be relevant to those of us with Transverse Myelitis. Is this this a false hope? We just do not know. But in the absence of anything else, we can dream...


Haiku on Target/ Muscle/ Fashion

Target

New bow and arrows
Straw target not yet finished
Trees now have small holes

On fringes of group
She scored less than at centre
Never main target

Bullied at her school
She felt she had a target
Inscribed on her back

Muscle

I can always tell
Small facial muscle twitches
When you are lying

Slaughtered animals
Most of us eat the muscles
Some prefer offal

A bit sad, really
Christmas muscle shirt present
Twenty years too late

Fashion

There is a fashion
To like say 'like'; like a lot
Like, I like haiku

Fashion equals clothes
Not grace, or kindness or love
Just what a girl wears

Its not their fashion
Unicorns don't wear flash clothes
They don't see the point

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Haiku on Rhythm/ Myth&Fire/Service

Rhythm

Lay awake last night
Hearing your breathing rhythm
Then in sync, I slept

Rhythm of our lives
Christmas tinsel disrupted
Better by Sunday

Baby so upset
Muffled clock under pillow
Her rhythm restored

Myth&Fire

A head full of myths
Raging fire in his belly
He went off to war

A head full of myths
Controlled fire in the kitchen
Dreamed of the hero

The hero returned
Legless from enemy fire
Tragedies of myth

Service

Service was boring
I fidgeted quite a lot
Mum smacked me... in church!

Meaning of 'Giri'
Duty to your family
Service with action

Annual service
Pulled into the surgery
Heart, lungs, bum all checked

Positive Parenting

I keep hearing about how parents are failing their children.
Everyone seems to forget that parenting is a complex and consuming task, and pretty difficult to maintain in this era. The external pressures on parents are enormous. Much of this comes from change (in Life, Work, Society, the World) - which seems to be the only true constant.  Or is it? And if change will continue to occur into the foreseeable future, making us less and less certain of our lives, are there key elements in parenting which can be stable in any circumstance, anywhere, at any time?
I recently read an article drawn from the work of Dr. Tim Elmore, a best-selling author with loads of acclaimed parenting books under his belt – many more than I will ever write. He is an acclaimed leadership expert. Well, he may be, but I was affronted by the list of negatives in the article, and the paucity of solutions (except by implication). I thought I might unpick some of his comments.
So, who am I to enter into this debate? Well, we have three grown up children who seem to be pretty successful, and there are 6 grandchildren who seem to be managing their lives. More than that, I have been a psychiatrist for 40 years, and focused on child psychiatry and family therapy approaches for the last 35 years. I have seen change for the better occur in some of the most difficult, complex and traumatised families. I think I can perceive some basic principles which may help us all. So, let me weigh in....
The article was entitled: ‘7 damaging parenting behaviors that keep children from becoming leaders’. So there are a couple of problems to begin with. We are expected to believe that a) all children can become leaders, and b) that it is all the fault of us as parents, if they don’t.
What a lot of rubbish! Can you imagine a world in which everyone is a leader? Who would they be leading, if everyone else was trying to be a leader as well? Can you imagine the chaos of trying to develop any team culture where everyone thought they were a leader? Or the chaos of governing a country with everyone being the President or the Prime Minister? What a nonsense!
The fact is that we all have ‘potential’. Probably more correctly, we all have a number of potentials in differing areas of our lives, and we have the opportunity to reach some or all of these, partly or in total. These make up the complexity of the adult person we become. It is probably trite (given everyone knows this) to say that our genetics, our early experience, our intellect, our physical capacities, our family circumstances, our educational opportunities, our friends, all go some way to decide whether we reach our potentials. There are a multiplicity of influences on the path our life takes. Blaming parents for the fact we are not able to reach our potentials is a monumental oversimplification – plain dumb!
 So let us examine these so called ‘damaging parenting behaviours’ one by one.
According to Dr. Elmore:
“1. We don’t let our children experience risk
We live in a world that warns us of danger at every turn. The ‘safety first’ preoccupation enforces our fear of losing our kids, so we do everything we can to protect them. It’s our job after all, but we have insulated them from healthy risk-taking behavior and it’s had an adverse effect. Psychologists in Europe have discovered that if a child doesn’t play outside and is never allowed to experience a skinned knee, they frequently have phobias as adults. Kids need to fall a few times to learn it’s normal; teens likely need to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend to appreciate the emotional maturity that lasting relationships require. If parents remove risk from children’s lives, we will likely experience high arrogance and low self-esteem in our growing leaders.”
OK, parents should be aware of life’s risks, and take some precautions. If there are sharks in the sea, it makes sense to allow your children to swim between the safety flags, knowing there is a lifeguard patrol, and a shark net out to sea to reduce the risks. We have to actively teach them about risks, but probably more importantly we have to teach our children how they can make reasonable assumptions about risks; this is a key learning of childhood. Most parents take great joy in going in the sea with their children – partly to share the possible risks, partly to have fun with their children, partly to provide some protection, partly to guide any risk-taking behaviour. This ‘sharing with the child’ is critical to their learning process, but also critical to ongoing development of child –parent relationships, and their security.
Psychologists in Europe have discovered that if a child doesn’t play outside and is never allowed to experience a skinned knee, they frequently have phobias as adults.’ Wow, I never heard about that as a cause of phobias! Never seen a case of phobia based in a prohibition to go out and play, either!
‘Kids need to fall a few times to learn it’s normal; teens likely need to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend to appreciate the emotional maturity that lasting relationships require.’ I remember Dr. James Robertson from the Tavistock Clinic in London addressing this issue back in the 70’s. He asked whether a small child should be encouraged to come downstairs on their own, and repeatedly fall down the stairs? The assumption is that after several times, the child may learn not to fall. Of course (he pointed out) the child may have had several fractures, and have been quite traumatised in the process. The suggestion (of course) was that we share the experience with the child. We take one step at a time and, holding the child’s hand we show them how to step down in a safe environment. We grade the experience to the child’s needs and to their physical status and emotional maturity, all the time encouraging and supporting them.
When something adverse happens – like falling and scraping a knee – we help, we cuddle, we clean up, we apply a ‘band aid’, all the time talking through the child’s pain and fright.  It is stupid to say the child ’needs’ to fall. The truth is that children fall. As parents we sort out the consequences, and provide a bit of guidance for the future about cleanliness after the fact.
If parents remove risk from children’s lives, we will likely experience high arrogance and low self-esteem in our growing leaders.’

I am actually unclear what this means. I am not sure the second part follows the first. Arrogance comes from being given everything you want immediately. Arrogance comes from believing you are special, and deserving of the best, without having to care or give in return. Low self-esteem comes from repeatedly being told you are stupid and will never achieve anything. It comes from being neglected, abused or sexually abused in childhood. I know of no connection between parents removing risk from children’s lives and low self-esteem.

We will examine another of the 7 damaging parenting behaviors, tomorrow.