Most of my summer days were spent with my older brother and our younger next door neighbor sitting in an old mulberry tree, lounging, eating mulberries and not doing much of anything. While this did not seem productive, it was the norm for kids in those days, who spent the majority of their free time outdoors. We figured out a lot of things up there without the interference of the grown-ups. They in turn provided us with a lot of stability as well as affection.
Not too radical an idea as a cure for many of the problems that children have today...a stable home with loving parents and LOTS of time to experience nature, and on the child's own terms.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Children and drugs
In its one hour documentary Medicating Kids, FRONTLINE examines the dramatic increase in the prescription of behavior-modifying drugs for children.
FRONTLINE followed several families through time who had been pressured by child care workers and school officials to put their children on mood altering drugs and described their struggle to adjust dosages and reconcile the fact that more and more drugs were added over time to their "regimen" to try to get the proper balance and control side effects. FRONTLINE also showed that after the diagnosis of ADD and ADHD, many children are now being given a new diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, which comes with a different drug cocktail. Some children are being "diagnosed" with these labels at four years or even younger!
Although some psychiatrists were interviewed who wondered if too many children were being diagnosed, or that some were being overmedicated, or that some of the drugs were inappropriate for children, none of them questioned the labeling and subsequent drugging of children. Voices from the minority of psychiatrists who question this practice were not included.
Human beings come into this earth with distinct personalities and some have difficulties both physical and emotional. It is not surprising that many parents feel that they must accept that their child has a "chemical imbalance" when he/she is difficult to deal with. Often for children to behave the way we wish them to in school, they are forced to think and act in certain ways that we deem "normal." (I'm not talking about children acting out violently or being rude)
There are many alternative therapies that can be explored if a parent feels that their child has problems above and beyond normal behavior. A good resource is the writings of Thom Hartmann
But I think we have forgotten what "normal" is. Our parents or grandparents expected children to be children; to be emotional or moody or euphoric one minute and gloomy the next. It is a parent's job to reassure their children and to correct misbehavior, but also to deeply listen to them and accept them for who they are--to respect the beauty of their unique expression of Life itself.
All drugs have side effects. In the case of the S.S.R.I.s, no new seretonin is created; instead, seretonin is prevented from re-absorbing into the synapses of the brain. This creates an amphetamine-like effect, and in the long term might cause less seretonin to be manufactured, leaving the child with permanent negative side effects. The bi-polar drugs have their own set of negatives, including weight gain and heart disease! No drug truly is correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain, unless you think that you can strengthen a delicate rose petal by firing a cannon.
FRONTLINE followed several families through time who had been pressured by child care workers and school officials to put their children on mood altering drugs and described their struggle to adjust dosages and reconcile the fact that more and more drugs were added over time to their "regimen" to try to get the proper balance and control side effects. FRONTLINE also showed that after the diagnosis of ADD and ADHD, many children are now being given a new diagnosis of bi-polar disorder, which comes with a different drug cocktail. Some children are being "diagnosed" with these labels at four years or even younger!
Although some psychiatrists were interviewed who wondered if too many children were being diagnosed, or that some were being overmedicated, or that some of the drugs were inappropriate for children, none of them questioned the labeling and subsequent drugging of children. Voices from the minority of psychiatrists who question this practice were not included.
Human beings come into this earth with distinct personalities and some have difficulties both physical and emotional. It is not surprising that many parents feel that they must accept that their child has a "chemical imbalance" when he/she is difficult to deal with. Often for children to behave the way we wish them to in school, they are forced to think and act in certain ways that we deem "normal." (I'm not talking about children acting out violently or being rude)
There are many alternative therapies that can be explored if a parent feels that their child has problems above and beyond normal behavior. A good resource is the writings of Thom Hartmann
But I think we have forgotten what "normal" is. Our parents or grandparents expected children to be children; to be emotional or moody or euphoric one minute and gloomy the next. It is a parent's job to reassure their children and to correct misbehavior, but also to deeply listen to them and accept them for who they are--to respect the beauty of their unique expression of Life itself.
All drugs have side effects. In the case of the S.S.R.I.s, no new seretonin is created; instead, seretonin is prevented from re-absorbing into the synapses of the brain. This creates an amphetamine-like effect, and in the long term might cause less seretonin to be manufactured, leaving the child with permanent negative side effects. The bi-polar drugs have their own set of negatives, including weight gain and heart disease! No drug truly is correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain, unless you think that you can strengthen a delicate rose petal by firing a cannon.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Great Souls and Universal Principles
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Matthew 5:38-39
"In the 17th century Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, there were no forts, no soldiers, no militia, even no arms. Amidst the savage frontier wars and the butcheries that went on between the new settlers and the Native Americans, the Quakers of Pennsylvania alone remained unmolested. William Penn’s colony eventually gave up the government of the state. War broke out, but only three Quakers were killed, three who had been diverted from their faith as to carry weapons of defense." -from Autobiography of a Yogi
“The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind,” Lao-tzu taught. “The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning.”
The guiding principle of non-violence has been used successfully throughout history by men and women of courage. They have won, through what Gandhi called “soul force,” great victories for humanity.
The life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India’s great spiritual leader and liberator, exemplified the principle of peace through love for all mankind. In India he initially turned to nonviolent means to free India as much out of pragmatism as out of religious conviction. “Great Britain,” he warned, “wants us to put the struggle on the plane of machine guns where they have the weapons and we do not. Our only assurance of beating them is by putting the struggle on a plane where we have the weapons and they have not.”
Violence against another human being contradicted everything he believed about universal human dignity, even if the particular human might be a British officer firing into an unarmed crowd. You cannot change a man’s conviction through violence, he believed. Violence only brutalizes and separates, it does not reconcile. Gandhi records that he reached a turning point in his life when he came across Jesus’ admonition that his followers should turn the other cheek to their persecutors.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who studied Gandhi’s autobiography and teachings, brought those concepts home by fighting violence with nonviolence in the Civil rights movement. He and many others brought sweeping change in laws and attitudes through their courage and refusal to resort to violence. Here is one story as told by James Roberson, who was thirteen years old when the parsonage of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed on Christmas night: “I was home in bed. The explosion was so powerful, I thought the world was coming to an end. The vibration was enormous—if you can imagine fifty times as much thunder as you normally hear…the explosion had knocked all the little ceramic things my mother used to collect, and everything was broken. The windows were out.
“I looked across to the church. The electric wires were still flashing from the explosion. You could smell burnt rags and gunpowder. People were screaming. The parsonage had collapsed on one side. Reverend [Shuttlesworth, a leader of many civil rights demonstrations] was in his bedroom, which was against the outer wall of the parsonage. Between that outer wall and the church was a three-foot walkway. They had put the bomb in that walkway right next to the bedroom wall. A rafter, one of those big ones, went right through the bed. The explosion had thrown Reverend out of bed.
“Reverend got up and came out. He had on an old, long coat, one of those topcoats preachers wear. He did not have a mark on his body, not a drop of blood. That dynamite had blown windows out a mile or more away, but he had no deafness from the sound. He had nothing physically wrong with him. Think about it. The police said eight to eighteen sticks of dynamite went off within three feet of this man’s head. He’s not deaf, he’s not blind, he’s not crippled, he’s not bleeding.
“People had come from blocks around to see what had happened. They had sawed-off shotguns and pistols. Any white man who had gone through there probably would have been hurt. The Reverend stood in the middle of this rubble and talked about nonviolence. He said, ‘Go home! Put the guns away!’ I never will forget him singling out one man. ‘You all get him and take him home He’s got a gun We’re not going to be violent. We don’t want that. This is not gonna turn us around.’ In the middle of that house leaning over, the sparking electric wires, the police on their way, people gathered with guns and hostility, he gave a sermon.”
Another account given by a woman who was 16 in 1964, attending a church meeting to plan nonviolent civil rights activities in Selma, Alabama: “Then we went to a church meeting. It was as black as could be outside, but when that church door swung open and we went in, it was like a bright light. I could see a glow in that church. It was the most unusual sight. It was a s bright and fired up in that church as it was dark outside. Whatever these people are praying for, they got it.”
“I am fighting for nothing less than world peace,” Gandhi declared. “Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world.”
"When Gandhi was dying from the bullets of a crazed assassin, he lifted his hands in the traditional Hindu gesture of greeting, silently bestowing his forgiveness. All the sacrifices of his selfless life had made possible that final loving gesture." -Autobiography of a Yogi
When Jesus was being taken away by the soldiers of the High Priest, he refused to allow his disciples to fight back. Matthew records Jesus admonishing them, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
As we approach yet another cycle of war-like rumblings, with all the attendant rationalizations for violence, let us remember the timeless victory has been won through humility by those who personified Peace on earth, good will toward all. The agony of the cross was necessary because mankind has too often chosen hatred and violence. A few “great souls” have demonstrated what can be done when the universal principles Jesus taught are really followed. Let us give the Master and this planet the gift of our own dedication to peace.
“This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” -John 15: 12-14
In acknowledgment to:
Autobiography of a Yogi
Freedom’s Children: young Civil Rights Activists Tell their Own Stories
My Experiments with Truth (Gandhi’s autobiography)
My Teacher, Rev. E.W. Blighton (Father Paul)
"In the 17th century Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, there were no forts, no soldiers, no militia, even no arms. Amidst the savage frontier wars and the butcheries that went on between the new settlers and the Native Americans, the Quakers of Pennsylvania alone remained unmolested. William Penn’s colony eventually gave up the government of the state. War broke out, but only three Quakers were killed, three who had been diverted from their faith as to carry weapons of defense." -from Autobiography of a Yogi
“The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind,” Lao-tzu taught. “The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning.”
The guiding principle of non-violence has been used successfully throughout history by men and women of courage. They have won, through what Gandhi called “soul force,” great victories for humanity.
The life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India’s great spiritual leader and liberator, exemplified the principle of peace through love for all mankind. In India he initially turned to nonviolent means to free India as much out of pragmatism as out of religious conviction. “Great Britain,” he warned, “wants us to put the struggle on the plane of machine guns where they have the weapons and we do not. Our only assurance of beating them is by putting the struggle on a plane where we have the weapons and they have not.”
Violence against another human being contradicted everything he believed about universal human dignity, even if the particular human might be a British officer firing into an unarmed crowd. You cannot change a man’s conviction through violence, he believed. Violence only brutalizes and separates, it does not reconcile. Gandhi records that he reached a turning point in his life when he came across Jesus’ admonition that his followers should turn the other cheek to their persecutors.
Martin Luther King, Jr., who studied Gandhi’s autobiography and teachings, brought those concepts home by fighting violence with nonviolence in the Civil rights movement. He and many others brought sweeping change in laws and attitudes through their courage and refusal to resort to violence. Here is one story as told by James Roberson, who was thirteen years old when the parsonage of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed on Christmas night: “I was home in bed. The explosion was so powerful, I thought the world was coming to an end. The vibration was enormous—if you can imagine fifty times as much thunder as you normally hear…the explosion had knocked all the little ceramic things my mother used to collect, and everything was broken. The windows were out.
“I looked across to the church. The electric wires were still flashing from the explosion. You could smell burnt rags and gunpowder. People were screaming. The parsonage had collapsed on one side. Reverend [Shuttlesworth, a leader of many civil rights demonstrations] was in his bedroom, which was against the outer wall of the parsonage. Between that outer wall and the church was a three-foot walkway. They had put the bomb in that walkway right next to the bedroom wall. A rafter, one of those big ones, went right through the bed. The explosion had thrown Reverend out of bed.
“Reverend got up and came out. He had on an old, long coat, one of those topcoats preachers wear. He did not have a mark on his body, not a drop of blood. That dynamite had blown windows out a mile or more away, but he had no deafness from the sound. He had nothing physically wrong with him. Think about it. The police said eight to eighteen sticks of dynamite went off within three feet of this man’s head. He’s not deaf, he’s not blind, he’s not crippled, he’s not bleeding.
“People had come from blocks around to see what had happened. They had sawed-off shotguns and pistols. Any white man who had gone through there probably would have been hurt. The Reverend stood in the middle of this rubble and talked about nonviolence. He said, ‘Go home! Put the guns away!’ I never will forget him singling out one man. ‘You all get him and take him home He’s got a gun We’re not going to be violent. We don’t want that. This is not gonna turn us around.’ In the middle of that house leaning over, the sparking electric wires, the police on their way, people gathered with guns and hostility, he gave a sermon.”
Another account given by a woman who was 16 in 1964, attending a church meeting to plan nonviolent civil rights activities in Selma, Alabama: “Then we went to a church meeting. It was as black as could be outside, but when that church door swung open and we went in, it was like a bright light. I could see a glow in that church. It was the most unusual sight. It was a s bright and fired up in that church as it was dark outside. Whatever these people are praying for, they got it.”
“I am fighting for nothing less than world peace,” Gandhi declared. “Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world.”
"When Gandhi was dying from the bullets of a crazed assassin, he lifted his hands in the traditional Hindu gesture of greeting, silently bestowing his forgiveness. All the sacrifices of his selfless life had made possible that final loving gesture." -Autobiography of a Yogi
When Jesus was being taken away by the soldiers of the High Priest, he refused to allow his disciples to fight back. Matthew records Jesus admonishing them, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
As we approach yet another cycle of war-like rumblings, with all the attendant rationalizations for violence, let us remember the timeless victory has been won through humility by those who personified Peace on earth, good will toward all. The agony of the cross was necessary because mankind has too often chosen hatred and violence. A few “great souls” have demonstrated what can be done when the universal principles Jesus taught are really followed. Let us give the Master and this planet the gift of our own dedication to peace.
“This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.” -John 15: 12-14
In acknowledgment to:
Autobiography of a Yogi
Freedom’s Children: young Civil Rights Activists Tell their Own Stories
My Experiments with Truth (Gandhi’s autobiography)
My Teacher, Rev. E.W. Blighton (Father Paul)
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Life in the McWhite House
It's 3a.m. and the phone rings in the Mcwhite house: It keeps ringing and eventually an answering machine catches the call. "It's Joe Lieberman, John. You've got to stop telling people that Al Queda is establishing bases in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge so we should invade with oil drilling equipment. We need a subtler tactic. Look,I'll talk to you about this at lunchtime before your nap, o.k.? Bye."
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