A positive parenting style can help protect young people from becoming involved with substance use, delinquency and violent behaviour, a new study suggests.

The 87-page report released Tuesday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information analyzed various research and policy initiatives and crunched data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth from Statistics Canada.

“One of the things we wanted to do with this is really sort of step back and through a lens of mental health examine some of the factors that are associated with youth delinquency and criminal behaviour,” said Jean Harvey, director of CIHI’s Canadian Population Health Initiative.

Young people who never reported engaging in aggressive behaviour had high self-esteem, good stress management and self motivation, she said.

“Those were found to be sort of the protective factors around not being involved with delinquent behaviour and criminal activity.”

In terms of risk factors, those aged 12 and 13 who reported hyperactivity and depression were more likely to report high levels of aggressive behaviours, and high levels of delinquent acts involving property.

When parents nurtured and monitored their children, those kids had fewer contacts with peers who were engaged in criminal behaviour, Harvey said.

And not surprisingly, kids who reported positive school experiences were more likely to report not being aggressive than youth who reported fewer positive experiences.

“Children that are connected to the school and they feel a positive bond to their community and their society … had reduced delinquency,” Harvey said.

She said the report, entitled Improving the Health of Canadians: Mental Health, Delinquency and Criminal Activity, is intended to help policy makers with decisions, but the findings would also be of interest to the general public, parents and the school system.

Source: The Canadian Press, TORONTO
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gx3K6tO23TUDYyQ5AkgmST3gaPcQ

I wrote a glowing review of the new Grand Theft Auto game in the Chronicle today. Like most of my video game coverage, the writing is aimed in large part for people who don’t play. I figured out a long time ago that there are a lot more non-gamer parents and grandparents reading the print edition of the Chronicle than 18-year-olds or even people my age.

I loved the game, and have long believed that the GTA series is grossly misunderstood and demonized by people who don’t understand it. It reminds me of the people who said that listening to Elvis would make us all sex addicts and that Dungeons & Dragons was going to make me a serial killer. Still waiting for that to happen …

When I started writing about video games in 2002, I felt like there was no one else in the mainstream media that felt the way I did. But now I can recommend a lot of places where parents can get video game coverage that doesn’t seem like it’s written in a foreign language and isn’t run by some right-wing religious nuts who just want to ban games that they haven’t played.

Here are some of my favorites …

Whattheyplay.com: Started by two guys who helped start the video game site 1UP.com, Whattheyplay is the only parenting site I know that was founded and is run by gamers. They stick to just the facts, clinically listing the specific sex, violence and other content in video games. They also run a lot of features to help demystify games for non-gamer parents — such as advice on how to get hard-to-find consoles like the Wii. Here’s an article I wrote about them.

Commonsensemedia.org: I don’t agree with everything they do, but their core mission — educating parents about games and other kid-oriented media — is extremely important. Politicians and anti-game activists should stop trying to criminalize video games and treat them like other forms of art. Common Sense seems to get that and advocates for parents with a minimum of judgement.

N’Gai Croal’s video game blog: I don’t usually plug the competition, but the fact is that maybe 10 percent of my job involves writing about games, and I’ll never do it as comprehensively or successfully as this Newsweek writer/blogger. N’Gai Croal’s blog Level Up has become an important bridge between the mainstream media and hard-core gamers, writing intelligently and concisely about important issues. He’s also a very entertaining writer. Whether you play games or have kids who do, bookmark his site.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, USA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=29&entry_id=26113

More than half (54%) of fathers feel it is a battle to fulfil their role in 21st century Britain, a survey found.

Meanwhile 51% of fathers interviewed felt they did not get enough recognition from society for their role and 46% believed that a lack of father-friendly support contributed to their difficulties.

Also, more than one in three fathers (38%) said it was a struggle to be seen as important as their child’s mother.

Duncan Fisher, Director of the Fatherhood Institute said: “People’s instincts about parenting back up what research has been telling us.

“It’s clear that parental leave and services do not meet the needs of the modern family. Government and policy makers need to catch up with reality because involving dads has a huge impact on a child’s well-being and life chances.”

The findings, which are also supported by the TUC and charity Families need Fathers, are complemented by a photographic exhibition - Fathergood? - which was opened by the NSPCC.

The exhibition, being held in Shoreditch, east London, involves photos taken by 40 young people who were asked to capture what fatherhood meant to them. The images range from hearts, orange juice, and medals, to empty wine bottles, road signs, and broken branches.

Chris Cloke, NSPCC head of child protection awareness and diversity, said the exhibition “highlights how vital it is for the Government to encourage and support fathers to create lasting bonds with their children.

Source: The Press Association
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ivJ5mO38xTHK7JjMjbLH0KVqPquw

A bout of the baby blues is traditionally seen as an affliction that strikes mothers.

The babies of depressed men are twice as likely to suffer problems ranging from anxiety to hyperactivity at the age of seven, a study of thousands of families revealed.

The Oxford University research found men, like women, can struggle to cope with the changes a new addition to the family brings.

The cost of raising children, the changed relationship with their partner and the responsibility of fatherhood can all take their toll on mental health.

Add to these a lack of sleep and the burden of extra housework and many men feel overwhelmed.

Researchers followed the mental health and behaviour of more than 8,000 children born in Bristol in 1991 and 1992.

Their fathers’ mental health was assessed after their births and they were tested for behavioural and psychiatric problems as they grew up.

Almost 4 per cent of the fathers were deemed to be depressed eight weeks into fatherhood.

Youngsters whose fathers had the baby blues were also more likely to suffer behavioural problems and find it hard to get on with other children, the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry reports.

Oxford researcher Dr Paul Ramchandani said: “Perinatal services, where they exist, focus on mothers.

“Although we recognise the primacy of the maternal role, it is important to consider broadening the focus of such services.”

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/3tn6xj

As the graduating class of 2008 enters the workforce, they may be surprised to find that even before setting foot into an interview, they’ve already been judged.

Generation Y, the name given to people born predominantly in the ’80s and ’90s, has had somewhat of a negative connotation.

The attitude that today’s young people are more self-centered and narcissistic has been publicized by articles in newspapers and magazines with headlines that read, “For today’s kids, everything is all about them,” “Is Gen Y Really All That Narcissistic?” and “The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work.”

Dr. Jean M. Twenge, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, has conducted research on Generation Y and has written a book based on her 13 years of research and the responses of 1.3 million young people who completed questionnaires, that have been given from the ’50s to today.

According to her Web site, “Generation Me” is different from previous generations in that it believes that individual needs should come first. “Generation Me” has grown up with phrases such as “Be yourself,” and “You must love yourself before you can love someone else,” she stated on her Web site.

The encouragement that “Generation Me” has grown up with contributes to the disappointment they experience when faced with the reality of a competitive world, Twenge said on her Web site.

Generation Y has received a lot of attention, but is this generation really that different? Are Baylor students anymore different then past generations of students?

Diaz-Granados couldn’t say whether students are really more narcissistic today, but recalled when he played sports as a kid and how rewards were given based on accomplishments.

“In my day and age, when I was playing sports, there were clear winners and losers,” he said.

Diaz-Granados acknowledged a difference with young kids in sports today.

Using his own children’s soccer games as an example, Diaz-Granados said, “Anybody that plays half the time gets a trophy.”

Dr. Sara Dolan, assistant professor in the psychology and neuroscience department and core clinical faculty member, remembered her childhood years as different from kids growing up today.

“My parents’ theory of my success is that if I work hard enough, I could achieve what I wanted to, but they certainly encourage me to do things that I have a natural talent for,” she said. “I do feel like students today are certainly more confident in themselves than the people of my generation.”

The pressure is on for today’s generation, who has grown up with a mentality that anything is possible, Dolan said.

“I do feel like there is a lot more pressure for students these days to achieve these goals whether they are attainable or not,” Dolan said.

When students realize that they may never be able to achieve certain goals, their reaction to reality may be catastrophic, Dolan said.

Cynthia Wall, staff psychologist, deals with eating disorder cases at the counseling center and has witnessed the downside to the can-have-it-all mentality.

Though she said she has seen conflicting data on whether or not perfectionism in body image can be associated with generational differences, Wall recognized that today’s youth face pressures that can lead to unhealthy eating habits to attain the “perfect” body.

“I do think there is a significant amount of pressure put on the younger generation to have it all,” she said.

Genetic differences play a role in the build of one’s body. Sometimes no matter what a person does, they may never be able to achieve the “perfect” body that they desire, Wall said.

Does this mean that parents should stop encouraging their children to shoot for the stars? Not always, Diaz-Granados said.

In the case of sport rewards, he sees the positive sentiment.

“You don’t want to make a child feel like a failure,” he said.

With that said, Diaz-Granados said he found encouragement of children to be a nice sentiment, but not always beneficial.

“I do think that it is a very nice sentiment to say that anything is possible, but I don’t think you can argue with the fact that there is a difference in aptitude,” he said.

There have been times where Diaz-Granados said he had to give students a reality check on their expectations.

For instance, when a student with a low grade point average decided that he was going to go to medical school, Diaz-Granados would have to tell him, “No, you’re not.”

“There’s some benefit in encouraging, but if it drives an individual to persist in something they aren’t good at, it can be very damaging,” he said.

There is definitely a distribution of talent among all people, Diaz-Granados said.

Diaz-Granados also said he tries to be realistic when students come to him with questions about their major.

“When students ask me what they should major in, I tell them that you should major in something that you have an interest in and then consider aptitude,” he said.

Rewards given that aren’t based on performance have been criticized with instilling a sense of entitlement among children. According to some, this attitude has carried on into the work force as these children become adults and could pose a problem in how Americans workers rank compared to foreign competition.

According to a 2007 study conducted by CareerBuilder.com, 87 percent of the 2,546 surveyed hiring managers and Human Resource professionals working in industries across the board concluded that “Gen Y workers feel more entitled in terms of compensation, benefits and career advancement than older generations.”

In comparison to other generation of workers, the survey also showed that 55 percent of the employers over the age of 35 feel that Generation Y have a problem responding to direction and authority.

In his book The World Is Flat, Thomas L Friedman calls attention to the problems of today’s American workforce.

In a section titled, “Dirty Little Secret #3: The Ambition Gap,” Friedman addresses the poor work ethics of American students by including correspondence from a college professor named Mike Arguello who worried that Americans are losing high-paying jobs to more qualified foreign competition who will work harder for less pay and benefits.

If the assessments of American workers are inaccurate, then the effects of such a label on an entire generation could be detrimental, Judy Bowman, senior lecturer in economics, said.

When little differences causes employers to assume something about an entire group, “It’s statistical discrimination, and it’s quite unfair,” she said.

Bowman sees some difference but not an extreme difference in the attitude of Generation Y from her generation.

“I don’t think you are more narcissistic than we were,” she said.

Instead of taking spring break to party, there are kids who go and volunteer, Diaz-Granados said.

“I see this generation being really aware of the planet, and that is not the case with putting me first,” he said.

New technology has given birth to Facebook and MySpace for Generation Y to use as a new form of self-promotion, but it does not prove that they are more self-centered.

It’s a different outlet for student to promote themselves, “but it doesn’t make a statement of wholesale personality change,” Diaz-Granados said.

A problem that Bowman does see with today’s students is their lack of class attendance.

“I have some classes where I have a hard time getting my students to come to class,” she said. “Certainly, we have a problem with work ethic and it is reflected in student absences.”

The gap in education has been attributed to parents who interfere with teachers’ curriculums because they feel that the course work is too difficult and that kids need time to be kids. Thus, they set low expectation for their children said a fifth grade teacher in a letter to Friedman.

Parental involvement not only exists in grade school, but has also extended into students’ time in college.

Wall noted a difference in parental involvement in students’ lives today as she described her personal experience with her own parents.

“The parental unit that I grew up with and parents then tend to be hands-off,” she said. “The authority of schools and teachers were respected.”

The calls that Wall has received from parents are at time in the best interest of the child, but sometimes it’s not.

“They [parents] are trying to pave the way for their child instead of letting them handle it on their own,” she said. “A lot of the time they are trying to affect a change somehow in the decisions that their child is making or will be making.”

The appropriate time for parents to become involved is when the student is becoming dysfunctional, Wall said. Otherwise, she takes the student’s needs and concerns into account over the opinions of the parents.

Diaz-Granados has also received calls from parents on a couple of occasions. Helicopter parents hold their children back by leaving them in a state of protracted adolescence, he said.

“Their independence is put off for a while, and the degree of independence, of self-reliance or accountability then is being delay or put off,” Diaz-Granados said.

Source: Baylor University The Lariat Online, TX
http://www.baylor.edu/lariat/news.php?action=story&story=50768

Coming of age in the wired world is entirely different from what you knew

Sexual experimentation has always been a part of adolescence, but in previous years it was confided to games of Spin the Bottle or Seven Minutes in Heaven. However, thanks to the Internet and the development of recent technology like camera phones, a new generation of teens are experimenting with sexuality in a whole new way.

Their first forays into sexuality no longer occur on a small scale within a circle of peers, but on a very large one, such as on MySpace and Facebook. From racy pictures posted on these online social networks to sexy photos being sent on camera phones, teens are making their first sexual decisions with an audience of thousands.

Even Disney star Miley Cyrus has received a barrage of press lately for photos that have surfaced on the web which feature her in flirtatious poses. (…) How can parents monitor this new wave of sexual experimentation and keep their kids safe from online predators or other serious consequences?

Talk to your teens

What seems like innocent fun to your teenager is actually potentially dangerous. Not only do online predators surf the web for vulnerable teens, but racy photos can serve to harm your teenager’s reputation. Many teenage girls see sexy photos as something harmless and totally innocent — after all, most of them have no intention of carrying out sexual acts with anyone in the audience. However, by displaying pictures such as these they are opening themselves up for attack and potentially putting themselves at risk, not just from strangers, but from people in their own peer groups who might not understand the pictures are just for show.

Realize there truly is a generation gap

Teenagers develop much more quickly from a physical standpoint than they do from a mental standpoint. In fact, the frontal cortex (which is the part of the brain responsible for judgment and decision-making) doesn’t completely develop until after adolescence. Therefore, teenagers are awash with burgeoning hormones and newly developed bodies, but they do not yet have all of the mental tools that adults have to regulate decision making.

This isn’t to say that teenagers are not smart and capable beings, but they do not have the life experience and brain development that adults have. This makes them more likely to make impulsive or rash decisions. But in the past, these decisions weren’t on display on the Internet for thousands to access. However, now that the Internet is part of almost every American teenager’s life, we need to find ways to address this new trend of adolescent sexual experience. The Internet is not going away any time soon, and neither is MySpace or the iPhone, so adults have to find ways to bridge this generation gap and warn teens about the dangers and responsibilities associated with this new technology.

Acknowledge their maturity

One of the biggest mistakes parents can make is not letting their teenagers have some form of freedom and right to self-expression. Although they are not adults yet, they still need some room to grow and make their own mistakes. It can be extremely helpful for parents to talk about this issue with their teens and play out the potential consequences. Acknowledge how much fun it is to flirt and how exciting it feels to realize others find you attractive. But if you send off a sexy picture to a friend, what would happen if they send it on to 30 others? What would be the reaction? How would he or she feel? Help guide them through the decision making process and lend them your own frontal lobe function without the judgement.

We can monitor our teens’ behavior to make sure they are behaving safely, but after a certain point, they still need a little bit of breathing room. By keeping the communication lines open and letting them know that they can always come to you with questions and concerns, you can help your teen safely monitor the new trend of growing up online.

Even though the platform is new, teenagers still face many of the same battles and life lessons that we did during our own teenage years. From questions about sex, body image and self-expression, teenagers today are still looking for the same acceptance that we were. Let’s help guide them through this process with patience and a watchful eye.

Source: MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24356473/

America’s increased focus on standardized test scores has meant more widespread use of drugs for ADHD—whether kids need ’em or not

Over the past few weeks, many thousands of Georgia elementary and middle school students sharpened their No. 2 pencils and waited for the teacher’s signal to turn over their answer sheets and hunker down to business on the Georgia Criterion Reference Test. Most did so without being under the influence of drugs, but some had been “juiced” for the test well in advance, perhaps even months or years in advance, through the use of drugs prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD).

Jennifer Fox, author of Your Child’s Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them, has seen the phenomenon herself. Fox, who is president of The Purnell School, a boarding school in New Jersey, describes a student she calls “Kate” (not her real name) who was extremely effervescent. She smiled a lot. She laughed a lot. She played a lot, even in class. Teachers complained that she wasn’t focused, so her parents had her put on a drug that was supposed to treat ADHD, and she lost that bubbly personality. It was as if the life “had been sucked out of her.”

“Kids are rushed to get diagnosed as learning-disabled so they can get extra time on tests and they can get put on drugs to perform better on tests,” says Fox, who is scheduled to sign her book at Wordsmiths in Decatur on Wednesday, April 30. “What we have in this country is a system that puts kids on drugs and gets them hooked on drugs for the rest of their lives.”

Though Fox acknowledges that there are children who definitely need medication, the problem, as she sees it, is an unhealthy focus on standardized test scores—a focus that parents often share with teachers, one that puts performance ahead of a child’s health and well-being.

“The schools are failing. The standardized tests are failing. And we are putting kids on drugs to try to overcome that,” she says. “That, to me, is like child abuse in a way.”

Fox points out that “Kate” had a strong suit—that bubbly personality that the drug erased. She says that she envisioned Kate someday working in a profession that required that kind of energy and vivaciousness. But since that strength was drugged out of her, who knows if Kate will ever make the most of the gift that she naturally had? Though Fox admits that there are kids who need medication to treat ADHD and other disorders, she adds, “I believe that it may be that these drugs are getting rid of the very thing that is best about these kids, something unique that the world needs.”

“Before You Take That Pill”

In his book Before You Take That Pill: Why The Drug Industry May Be Bad For Your Health, which hit bookstores in March, J. Douglas Bremner, a professor of psychiatry at the Emory University School of Medicine, explains that although its exact causes are not known, some scientists think that ADHD is related to alterations in the brain chemical dopamine, which modulates attention. Nonetheless, he views with skepticism the popularity of a plethora of stimulants used to treat ADHD, including Ritalin, Adderall and, a slow-release version of Ritalin, Concerta.

In his book, Bremner writes: “An entire generation of kids who cannot pay attention is being diagnosed more and more frequently (and sometimes inaccurately) with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. It seems strange that it has been increasing so dramatically over the past few years. Certainly in the last generation many children with concentration problems were simply labeled unintelligent or ‘problem kids.’ However, with current competition for children to excel in school having reached such a fever pitch, it is no longer acceptable to let children fall behind. The elimination of recess, the lengthening of the school year, and the insistence that children remain rigidly fixed in their chairs without making a peep flies in the face of the realities of normal childhood.”

Bremner cites a three-fold increase in Ritalin prescriptions in the four years between 1991—which just happens to be the year that the U.S. Congress agreed that an ADHD diagnosis should qualify children for extra time on tests—and 1994. He goes on to point out that fully 10 percent of boys in America are prescribed some kind of stimulant for ADHD or other mental conditions.

On a recent weekday morning, Bremner, a soft-spoken man with a reserved demeanor, balances a laptop across his knees at a coffee shop, accepts an offered cheese cracker and explains his skepticism: “Do all of the kids who are taking Ritalin meet the requirements for ADHD? Probably not.”

There are reasons, not necessarily medical, that children might be prescribed a drug for ADHD, Bremner says. It may be that their parents want them to perform better in school, and those parents can pressure a doctor who is already pressured by pharmaceutical sales reps to write the prescription. It may also be the case that the child’s tendency to, well, be a child, is a problem.

“What we do know about these drugs and playfulness,” he says, “is that they tend to decrease playfulness.”

But how and why the drugs get prescribed isn’t the concern of the drug companies. The job of drug companies, he says, is not to make people well, but to sell drugs, and it’s a job that they do very, very well. Children, in particular, can provide a business boon, because once they’re on a drug, at what point is it OK to take them off? “Before You Take That Pill,” explores the risks of a wide range of drugs—not just those prescribed to children—and begins with the startling revelation that “Now, more than half of all Americans are taking a prescription drugs.”

All of the amphetamine-like stimulants used to treat ADHD, writes Bremner, act as appetite suppressants, and therefore may impede a child’s growth. They also “have been linked to approximately a doubling of heart-related deaths in children.” Such deaths are still rare, however. What he would like to see, Bremner says, is a little more skepticism on the part of Americans toward the extremely profitable drug companies.

Watching cartoons and drug commercials

Don’t count on the current crop of kids to be the ones to develop that skepticism. Rick McDevitt, executive director of the Georgia Advocacy for Children, says that drug use to solve problems has become an assumed part of American life, beginning when children are plopped in front of a television, where they view one pharmaceutical commercial after another. At school, he says, they are given to understand that if they do not do well on standardized tests, there might be something wrong with them that a drug can fix. Teachers tell parents their child isn’t focused and that they should seek help, and “help” turns out to be “take these pills.”

“The drugging of kids has become commonplace, the drug is a means of social control and the schools have become agents of that social control,” McDevitt says. “It’s about the test scores, it’s not about solving the problems at the source. The kids take the drugs, the test scores are better, and everyone says ‘They’re doing better.’ They’re not doing better. They are on drugs.”

Local child psychologist Sunaina Jain was listening to the radio recently when she happened upon a on a show on which people were talking about “our child-obsessed society.”

“I thought ‘What child-obsessed society?’ We don’t even like children in this society,” she says. “We do everything we can to make them become adults quickly.”

Jain, who has been in practice since before Ritalin hit the market in the late 1980s, says that the enormous use of drugs to treat ADHD is one more symptom of the need to make children become grown-ups. Although such drugs have helped many children, she says there is little doubt that they are over-prescribed. ADHD, she explains, affects about one boy in15 and girl in 25, but the number of prescriptions would seem to suggest that ADHD is epidemic in the United States.

“Part of the problem is parents who are looking for a way to improve their children’s test scores,” says Jain. “For these parents, these are ‘showcase’ children—their children’s success reflects on them. They want success, they want good grades, and if that can be obtained by popping a pill, that is what they do. There are also kids whose parents just don’t have time to pick them up from school and help them with their homework.”

The tendency to resort to drugs, she says, cuts through all economic classes. Like Fox, Bremner, and McDevitt, she points to a culture that makes it tough to be a kid. It’s a problem that affects the poor and the rich, though in different ways.

“If you have nanny-raised kids, you have the same problem that you have with poor, disadvantaged kids. With a nanny, they are not getting what they would from parents—they don’t learn how to connect with people,” Jain says. “Our strongest need is to connect with other human beings, and if you don’t learn how to do that, that’s a problem.”

The complaint she hears most from parents and teachers goes a long way in explaining what’s going on: “I don’t have time for this.”

The view of childhood as a time when competition makes or breaks one, as a screening process for winners and losers that needs to be gotten out of the way in time to join the adult world, is a view that distorts the children. Jain says the situation of children in America has steadily deteriorated since the 1980s. She believes that as a country, we have shifted away from seeing childhood as “practice” for adulthood and more as the game itself.

“But you know, you need practice to be good at the game,” she says. “A kid needs a coach, someone to say, ‘this is how you hold the bat.’ Then, after thousands of practices, one day they’re ready to go out into the world, to the game. A drug can’t tell them how to hold the bat.”

Source: Sunday Paper, GA
http://tinyurl.com/3o777x

Science has finally caught up with what mothers have been saying for years: they are super-women with super-powers thanks to an influx of hormones during pregnancy and labour to enable them to cope with the demands of child rearing.

Neuroscientists have discovered that women’s brains are rewired during that period, making them faster, more robust and less stressed than before.

Professor Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, Virginia, found the lifelong transformation is caused by an influx of hormones, including estrogen and oxytocin, to the brain.

The revolutionary findings could lead to a new world of chemical therapies to transform “bad” mothers or those who are not maternal into “super mums”.

Professor Kinsley said, if females with a deficit of the brain chemical oxytocin can be identified, then “when they are first interacting with the baby you can give them a boost of oxytocin at a critical time”.

Sydney career woman Kim McGee supports the study results.

She said she was never “overly maternal” and had no burning desire to have children. However, two babies later, she has surprised herself at how much more efficient and smarter she has become.

“Even my husband says: `You’re very different’,” Ms McGee said.

“In a way you have more energy as you have two other people who are solely relying on you.”

Ms McGee said caring for two young children was hectic but she had learned to juggle it with full-time work in the finance industry.

“I think that the more women have to do, and the bigger the challenge, the more successful they are at it,” she said.

Professor Kinsley’s research was inspired by his wife’s ability to automatically tackle new tasks with the birth of their daughter. His wife went from being “ambivalent” about children to becoming a “super mum”.

“It was some biological change,” he said.

Laboratory tests on rats showed that the “reservoir of hormones” released enhance a mother’s ability to care for and protect her offspring.

These improvements in behaviour last a lifetime until a woman is in her 80s, he said.

“Our work is showing that, when a female becomes pregnant, her brain is changing dramatically. This is an important developmental period in her life.”

In the experiments, young mother rats showed better maze negotiation skills and memory, and decreased levels of stress and fear.

Professor Kinsley said it suggests the power of motherhood, of how it makes the brain more plastic and flexible, enabling it to respond to the demands of survival.

Dr Karleen Gribble, of the University of Western Sydney, said the influx of oxytocin during labour decreased a woman’s stress levels, making her more responsive to the baby.

“Mothering changes your brain, and part of the way it is changing is via the impact of a hormone like oxytocin,” she said.

Dr Sarah Buckley, who has researched the impact of oxytocin on mothers, said the hormone “reorganised the structure of the brain”.

“A lot of things women do in early parenting such as breastfeeding and holding the baby helps to keep oxytocin being released in a mother’s brains,” Dr Buckley said.

Source: NEWS.com.au, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,26278,23603717-5007185,00.html

When you’re trying to convince people not to hit their kids, it’s sometimes best to use a gentle hand, or even some crayons.

That was the philosophy behind the No Spank Day Family Event on the weekend at Devonshire Mall.

The Windsor Essex Children’s Aid Society put it on in the lead up to International No Spank Day on April 30.

“We’re finding that if we do a parenting event, and talk to parents about positive discipline and discourage the use of corporal punishment, that they’re more open and willing to listen to us than if we were out picketing against spanking,” said Tina Gatt, CAS manager of Public Relations and Prevention.

International No Spank Day began a decade ago. The idea is to get caregivers who use corporal punishment to refrain hitting children on that day, and seek alternative discipline methods from there on.

The CAS child abuse prevention committee put on the weekend event with face painting and crafts for the kids, and information for the parents.

The CAS also had on display the winning entries of the third annual Kent Billinghurst Positive Parenting Award, named after the late advocate and educator.

The contest, in which kids nominate their parents, allows children to focus on the good things their moms and dads are doing. There were more than 200 entries.

The winner was Livia Tipping, 9, a Grade 4 Lakeshore Discovery student, who sent in a drawing of her family and an explanation of why her parents are great.

“My parents are good role models because they don’t swear, hit or yell,” she wrote. “They encourage me by cheering me on and congratulating me. They are positive and don’t give up. They teach me to go for my dreams.”

Gatt said that’s an example of the positive effects parents can have by not spanking.

“Even if it doesn’t leave physical injuries on children, it does create an impairment in the relationship,” she said. “What kids end up saying is my mom or my dad doesn’t like me, I’m bad. It’s really taking the focus away from the behaviour.”

She said parents should instead instead focus on the consequences of actions. Removal of privileges might be an answer, she said.

Katrina Brunelle, 20, said her approach is talking to her two-year-old twins Caden and Damon.

“If they don’t understand what they did wrong, guide them in the other direction,” she said.

Chris and Melissa Etches try to be positive with their children, two-and-a-half year old Chelsea and two-month old Hannah.

“There are other ways of getting discipline,” said Chris. “We try to stay with positive reinforcement. Tell her what she does right, other than what she does wrong.”

Gatt said they still got a lot of resistance from some people. But that’s OK.

“It gives us opportunity to really engage people that are still resistant, that still have very outdated beliefs around parenting,” she said. “We feel like we’re making more impact when we’re not just preaching to the converted.” (…)

Seventeen countries have outlawed corporal punishment. Canada isn’t one of them. Sweden was the first in 1979. The most recent was Spain in 2007.

Source: Windsor Star, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/43jcvb

We all know the story of a man named Brady and the group that somehow formed a family. But if the iconic ’70s sitcom about a “blended” family reflected reality, the Brady Bunch likely would have been dealing with much more than silly sibling squabbles.

Here’s the real story: On average, adolescents living with half- or stepsiblings have lower grades and more school-related behavior problems, and these problems may not improve over time, according to Florida State University Assistant Professor of Sociology Kathryn Harker Tillman.

“These findings imply that family formation patterns that bring together children who have different sets of biological parents may not be in the best interests of the children involved,” Tillman said. “Yet one-half of all American stepfamilies include children from previous relationships of both partners, and the majority of parents in stepfamilies go on to have additional children together.”

Many studies have focused on the structure of parent-child relations in connection to academic achievement, but Tillman’s study is unique in that it focuses on the composition of the entire family unit. Tillman studied data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative study of more than 11,000 adolescents in grades 7 through 12 in the United States. Her study is published in the journal Social Science Research.

All stepfamilies are not equal — at least in terms of their impact on children’s academic performance. Surprisingly, teens who live in the most seemingly complicated family arrangement of all — those with both half- and stepsiblings fare better than those who live with only stepsiblings or only half-siblings. Tillman theorized that perhaps the decision of the parents in these families to have a biological child together reflects a stable relationship or one in which child rearing is especially important. Only 1 percent of youth in Tillman’s study lived in this so-called complex blended sibling composition, however.

Boys living with half- or stepsiblings appear to have the hardest time coping, with average GPAs one-quarter of a letter grade lower than boys who live with only full siblings. Girls with half- or stepsiblings also had lower GPAs than those living with only full siblings, but the difference was much smaller. Boys and girls in these types of families also had more school behavioral problems, such as trouble paying attention, getting homework done and getting along with teachers and other students.

Tillman looked at how long children had been living with their half- or stepsiblings and found that it didn’t really matter. Things did not tend to improve with time.

“We cannot assume that over time, children will naturally ‘adjust’ to the new roles and relationships that arise when families are blended,” she said. “This research indicates that the effects of new stepsiblings or half siblings may actually become more negative over time or, at the least, remain consistently negative.”

Part of what makes stepfamily life difficult for young people is the complexity, ambiguity and stress that come with having nontraditional siblings living in the same home, she said. Stepsiblings who are living together may also engage in, or at least perceive, more competition for parental time, attention and resources than full siblings.

“Lower social and financial investments may signal to children a lack of parental interest and lower expectations for academic achievement and college attendance,” she said. “In turn, youth in stepfamilies may be less likely to get academic assistance when needed, less likely to work for higher grades and more likely to act out at school.”

Source: Medical News Today, UK
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/105069.php