For my sons, Memorial Day 2011

God Bless America blared from the flag waving Harley as boy scouts, soon to be men, marched between white lines. Memorial Day, a national glance inward to mourn the lives mangled and lost ‘serving’ freedom and civic liberty. I almost wept, not out of patriotic duty and honor but for the deep feeling of shame and betrayal that this and past pageants endure.

While I honor the ultimate sacrifice brothers and sisters have made through the ages, some urgent, some heroic and necessary, so many lives, however, have been mangled for reasons – that had they known – they would have wept too.

After viewing our interview with Jean Liedloff a parent said, ‘Jean talks about the effects of over protective parenting. I am so guilty of this. My son is much more capable when he is on his own than when he knows I am looking. I am wondering how I could undo this?

Great question, join the club.

As Jean pointed out in the swimming pool example, when the child does not know the parent was looking, the child demonstrated their true capacity. When the child feels a parent is watching – they express the adult’s helpless expectations. And this pattern is established very early. It becomes a reflex.

The guiding principal is to ‘assume competence’ from the beginning. Then the child’s innate capacity and the adult’s expectation are in sync instead of being in conflict. Imaging what this means lifelong!

Hi Lisa…
Interesting and common challenge.
Mentoring a real man in today's world.
 
Every young man is unique. One shoe definitely does not fit all.

I do not know of a rite of passage group that might fit the need.

What does it mean to be a man in today’s world?

I think we need to know where we are pointing before drawing a map.

What are the skills, wisdom and capacities needed to be such a thing?

The Way of the Superior Man : A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire by David Didea
And
Fire in the Belly by Sam Keen
Would be good reading for you and your partner to help you formulate your own views.

How can you draw a map if you don’t know where you are going?

It is amazing that it takes an assassination and senseless mass murder to rile tolerant people. What follows are excerpts from today’s Climate of Hate by New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman.

As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

Please understand – if there wasn’t an egger market for violence it would not appear in the script. While in India I discovered that at least one rape in most films was mandatory. Joseph Chilton Pearce was to be a consultant on children’s TV programming until the sponsor insisted on a steady stream of violence or there would be no show! That’s show business.

What follows connects the dots between a recent interview with Jerry Mander, activist and author of The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, today’s assassination attempt and a discussion on how politics have changed with Senior California Senator John Vasconcellos.

OK… Here we go.
Democratic Congresswoman Shot in Assassination Attempt

I recently released the third edition of Magical Parent – Magical Child co-authored with Joseph Chilton Pearce. If you have not read it – I encourage you to do so now.

From the forward to the third edition:

Magical Parent – Magical Child began with a simple insight; The Future Is Now. If I am aggressive or kind today chances are I will be the same way tomorrow and my children will be too. If I want to bring about real change, a new pattern or possibility, a baby step forward in evolution it must take place now, this moment. By changing how I think, feel and act - now - I create a different next moment. If I don’t change now - I will be tomorrow what I am today.

Gandhi said; ‘be the change we want to see in others’. This insight brings that change, which is the future, into the present. Right now is where all the action is. Now is the only chance we’ve got.

Joseph Chilton Pearce added depth to this basic insight when he described the ‘model imperative’ in his bestselling book, The Magical Child. Each of us represents vast capacities, more and greater than ever imagined. The awakening and development of each capacity requires a model-environment to serve as a catalyst for that potential’s opening and development. No model – no development. That is the ‘model imperative’.

Becoming a Magical Parent is not really different from becoming a world class athlete or singer. All we need is a safe space to practice and experienced mentors (the model-imperative). Magical Parenting means really playing the game called being a parent. When we are really playing, that is, in the state of authentic play failure isn’t possible. Unlike high stakes testing or the World Series, given a safe place to practice and experienced mentors, meeting every challenge becomes an opportunity to expand and develop our capacity to meet every challenge. There are no right or wrong answers. The score of the day is irrelevant. Rather, the goal is continuing expansion of capacity and potential which takes placed naturally in the optimum state called play.

An educator used Magical Parent – Magical Child as the text for her class. She asked a few probing questions. You may find them of interest.

Rachel wrote:
I have a question around bonding/brain/skin-to-skin.  I have a 7 week old, that I am attachment parenting...carrying in arms, co sleeping etc.  I spent a lot of the first 4- days with skin to skin, however since then hardly any skin to skin (as it is winter and I have two other children so it's not convenient.)  Can you give me some information around whether the skin to skin I did for the majority of the first 4-5 days was sufficient for optimal brain development/bonding or whether I should still be doing this?  Thank you. LOVE the website and the work you are all doing - it's the best thing for the world!

A follow up to our

Virtual Reality is Sensory Deprivation
The Emerging Technology Disaster in Early Childhood Education

Commentary by Michael Mendizza
On Fast Companies’ Article - A is for App

see: https://ttfuture.org/files/2/pdf/mm_A%20is%20for%20App.pdf

The Emerging Technology Disaster
in Early Childhood Education

On Fast Companies’ Article - A is for App
See: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/144

To the Editor of Fast Company, Anya Kamenetz, the author, and Paul Kim, CTO, Stanford University School of Education, quoted on the cover.

Just look at Eliana and Germma Singer on the cover, both age three – so cool, so hip, learning their ABCs on the iPhone - the next Technopolitan cover girls. Next to them bold – red “The Real Smart Phone Revolution, How Tech Is Making Kids Smarter Everywhere.”

Sirs and madam, technology cannot and does not make kids smarter. Nothing can be further from the truth. Intelligence is innate, not learned or accumulated, and universally present in every cell of the body and all of nature. To suggest that an iPhone will improve this vast innate intelligence is dehumanizing. How dare you? 1, 2