Title
The President regarding Parents and Responsibility
A New Mother Talks About Play
Mothering Magazine on the Vaccine Debate
Current Research on Nutrition and Behavior
Who’s Parenting Our Parents?
I was asked to respond to the New York Times regarding President Obama's speech to the NAACP about parents.
Yes - Mr. President, we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps – if we have boots.
Yes - we are - each and every one of us - responsible, no excuses. However, the level at which we are able to respond is developmental and human development is ‘experience dependent.’ Our expectation of a five-year-old taking responsibility is different at twelve or twenty year old. This is developmental. Why do we think parenting is any different?
Becoming a parent is a developmental stage of growth and personal development just as challenging as a two-year-old learning to walk or talk. Falling down for lack of mentored support is judged far less harshly and is far less damaging at two than at eighteen failing as a new parent.
Yes – Mr. President parents are responsible. But today’s parents can only give back to life what they have experienced. Look around. If a young mother has only experienced exploitive, aggressive men in her life, if she was abused, betrayed, never really felt safe, accepted, has always been compared and judged, which is implicit in our homes, media and throughout public education, now even in preschool, how will she know what it feels like to nurture her baby - never having been really nurtured herself?
Nature intends, and has been based for millennia, on parents and the immediate family providing the model-experience upon which child development rests. Until very recently this was the case. The experience family represented for tens of thousands of years bears little resemblance to the compulsory mass-education, televised, computerized, liberated woman, media marinated, two or three income family of today. The experiences and the forces that shape the experiences that shape human beings are not what it used to be, partly by chance, partly by design.
It is well documented. The founding fathers of public education (and the private foundations-money that supported them) understood that family represented a major obstacle to social conditioning, dare I say engineering. Breaking the family bond was necessary to homologize and domesticate the industrial and now post industrial society. Young men, and thanks to women’s’ liberation most young women, by necessity, now trot off to work, generating taxable income, leaving the experienced mentoring of the next critical generation to state trained, certified and controlled professionals – by design.
What the social funders and their engineers failed to appreciate was how breaking the family bond, the loss of trusted mentors and collapse of experience based parenting skills would undermine the social, emotional, sexual and cognitive foundation of our society. Yes – Mr. President we are - each and every one of us - responsible, no excuses.
Today being responsible means that those who have the experience, at every level society, must honor, support, enrich, mentor and celebrate the scantily of the parent-child experience. This means Mr. President that continuing parent development is viewed, valued and supported as highly as continuing child development.
Let’s face it. Kids are NOT the Problem! The next frontier in education will begin when we give back to parents what we took away – trusted, inspired, mentored experience.
Michael Mendizza
Founder/Director
Touch the Future
A New Mother Discovers PLAY
A new mother shared that Play was difficult for her, being raised in a family and culture that did not play. She is not alone. Stuart Brown, Founder of the National Institute for Play believes that most of western world is Play Deprived.
Dear S
Being a parent is a developmental stage just as learning to walk is a developmental stage for the child. There is tremendous growth and the development of new perceptions and capacities going on - as you discover and learn what it means to parent. Value and appreciate the experience now. Play with being a parent as your child plays with clay or pots and pans.
Give yourself permission not to know everything. Slow down and wonder.
You are experiencing and learning new things each day - now - being a parent. And the act of learning is play. The playful mind and body plays with life rather than pretending (acting as if) everything must match our conceptions.
Watch your child. Look at the world through her eyes. Then play will come naturally.
Cheers.
M
Dear Michael,
Thank you so much for your supportive response- yes, That is how it feels to me. I feel supported.
Your book also took so much pressure from me, esp. mentioning the different stages a child passes- e.g. that a two year old is fine (without other children) just playing with pots and pans. I used to go to overloaded playgrounds thinking my daughter "needs" the social action and did not see that she was totally overstrained (just as all the other kids).
Now our life is so much more relaxed and peaceful. Just this morning we went to the city on our bike to run some errands and on our way back she wanted to get off the bike and just run down the walkway and finally sat down in the shade to play with stones and sticks. And this is just what we did and felt soooo wonderful it almost makes me cry (even now).
So, again, I thank you and Joseph Chilton Pearce again for the peace you brought into our life.
Best wishes.
S
Heartfelt & Long Standing Hurray for Peggy O’Mara and Mothering Magazine
for their fabulous coverage of the continuing Vaccination Debate. Please see the July-August issue and follow the links below.
Coming to a School Near You: the Swine Flu Vaccine
The Obama administration announced that swine flu vaccines could be available as early as October. Children would be first in line for inoculation at their local schools. Here's what you need to know. Also, learn about your right to access vaccine information and reports.
Be informed. Consider The Vaccine Safety Manual
The Vaccine Safety Manual is the world's most complete guide to immunization risks and protection. It includes pertinent information on every major vaccine: polio, tetanus, MMR, hepatitis A, B, HPV (cervical cancer), Hib, Flu, chickenpox, shingles, rotavirus, pneumococcal, meningococcal, RSV, DTaP, anthrax, smallpox, TB, and more. All of the information, including detailed vaccine safety and efficacy data, is written in an easy-to-understand format, yet includes more than 1,000 scientific citations. More than 90 charts, graphs and illustrations supplement the text. This encyclopedic health manual is an important addition to every family's home library and will be referred to again and again.
http://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Safety-Concerned-Families-Practitioners/dp/1881217353
Barbara Loe Fisher Discusses the Swine Flu Vaccine
Find out more about the possibility of mandatory vaccination against the Swine Flu. http://www.viddler.com/explore/NVICstandup/videos/7/
The government is now suggesting that all school children receive mandatory flu vaccine this fall. Here's what happened the last time. Details: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/670.html
- Brasscheck
The Effects of Nutrition on Brain Function
Eat it Today – Wear it Tomorrow - Or Right Now!
In 1900 Americans consumed about 4 pounds of sugar a year. Today we consume 129 pounds, a 2,500 percent increase. Alter a mother’s nutrition and change her babies body and behavior for life. Changing diet dramatically reduced Alzheimer's, attention deficits and criminal behavior.
I studied nutrition for years. This presentation by Russell Blaylock, MD is the most up to date, simple to understand and informative presentation on Nutrition & Behavior I have ever seen. You won’t regret a minute.
http://www.therealfoodchannel.com/videos/effect_of_nutrition_on_brain_function.html
In-Joy,
Michael Mendizza