Don Katz has a vision for the kids of America: He wants to take the technology that brings the Jonas Brothers to their ears and use it to deliver the Brothers Grimm.

Nearly a third of children ages 6 to 10 are regular users of digital audio players, according to market research firm the NPD Group. And thanks to entrepreneurs like Katz, they now can use them to listen to bedtime stories.

In March, the Audible.com founder launched AudibleKids.com, where children can download books directly onto their digital audio players.

“I hear lots of people talking, saying that when they put their kids to bed, they put them down with an audiobook,” said Audio Publishers Association president Michele Cobb.

Kids’ and teens’ books accounted for 13 percent of national audiobook sales in 2007, according to the Audio Publishers Association. That’s a relatively small number, but it’s nearly double the 7 percent that was estimated by the group in 2004.

AudibleKids, which offers books for preschoolers on up, aims to stoke their interest further by offering a social networking community where they can talk about books with each other and with parents, teachers and even authors such as R.L. Stine of Goosebumps fame.

Random House’s Listening Library has been producing audiobooks for kids for more than 50 years. What’s new is the digital technology — companies such as Fisher-Price and Disney now sell kid-friendly digital audio players for children as young as 2.

Katz believes that reaching kids through digital media may inspire them to have a lifelong love of books — even the old-fashioned printed kind.

“The world of reluctant readers is huge,” he said. For many children, Katz said, “reading outcomes tend to fall apart around third grade,” which is often the same time that parents stop reading to their kids.

Digital audiobooks, especially those narrated by talented artists, can “extend the pleasure of being read to by your parents into fifth, sixth, seventh grades,” he said. And talented artists are lining up to narrate — Macmillan Audio launched a children’s list this spring with narrations by Gwyneth Paltrow and Tony Shaloub.

“Listening is a powerful method to retain the meaning of the story and to turn people on to the concept of well-chosen words,” Katz said. “The interpretation of the reader, that adds layers to it. If you ever enjoyed Charlotte’s Web , to hear Edmund Wilson read it is a transcendent experience.”

For some moms and dads, the idea of kids chatting online about Holden Caulfield instead of Hannah Montana is pretty compelling. But for those who spent their own childhood summers reveling in the crisp pages of paperbacks, there are real concerns about what may be lost if their offspring tackle a summer reading list via MP3.

Even among today’s multitasking teens, listening instead of reading might cause them to lose focus as they half-listen while attempting to reach the next level of Halo 3 and text messaging a friend.

Katz said he isn’t aiming to discourage parents from reading to their children. But with kids so fully embracing the digital age, he believes it’s the best way to reach them.

Source: The Courier News, IL
http://tinyurl.com/6ko9qj

Be it the growing power of rights over duties, feminism over traditionalism, or simply a society that makes it economically feasible to parent as a never-married woman, there is hope that the trend is turning around

It was a symposium on same-sex marriage that cold January day in Vermont, but on the subject of marriage generally, Patrick Fagan’s power-point presentation went much further. There, on a large screen, a bar graph demonstrated how for psychological health, wealth and other optimal outcomes for children, a biological mom and a dad in an intact marriage did the best job.

At the opposite, bottom end of the graph, well past the married stepfamilies, the divorced single parents and the co-habiting couples, was the never-married single mother, whose grim prospects included grinding poverty, little hope of a future marriage and children with behavioural problems that too often led to a life of crime and yet more unwed pregnancy.

The debate among top American academics is over, the distinguished psychologist, one-time presidential appointee on the family and now a Senior Fellow at the Family Research Council in Washington, later told me in a telephone conversation. Though if any doubt remains about the importance of an intact family in a child’s development, a study undertaken by Swedish social scientists and published by Acta Paediatrica in March buries it once and for all. Their systematic review of fathers’ involvement with children from the time they are newborn to the time they are young adults spanned 24 papers from 16 different longitudinal studies from a variety of countries. It concludes that “father engagement reduces the frequency of behavioural problems in boys and psychological problems in young women; it also enhances cognitive development while decreasing criminality and economic disadvantage in low (socio-economic status) families.”

If the United States more generally represents the traditional family and Sweden less-traditional families, the debate about the arrangement that best meets the needs of children would indeed appear to be over: kids need both mothers and fathers. But can the developments of the past half-century be reversed? In that time, the never-married single mother has been Canada’s fastest-rising parenting demographic. And why did these developments occur in the first place?

There was a time when an unwed pregnancy meant a shotgun wedding. It wasn’t the best start to a marriage, but it secured social and other obligations for the child from his parents. It also provided him with a sense of his genetic and social origins — that is, a sense of his identity — and clear role models upon which to build his future behaviour.

The existence of shotgun weddings didn’t preclude what sociologists and Statistics Canada now call lone-parent or one-parent families. These have been an established feature of Canadian familyhood for some time and have included widows, the divorced or separated, as well as never-married mothers. In 1951, for instance, 13.9 per cent of families were lone parents, a figure not far removed from 2006 figures at 15.6 per cent, although, significantly, they fell to 8 per cent between 1951 and 1966.

The difference between then and now is the altered composition of the lone-parent cohort. In 1951, only 1.5 per cent of lone parents were never-married, whereas 30 per cent were divorced or separated and 66.5 per cent were widowed. By 2006, and despite the availability of birth control, abortion and adoption services, the proportion of never-married, at 29.5 per cent, and divorced or separated, at 49.5 per cent, had increased dramatically.

Why?

Conventional wisdom says poverty is the primary cause of never-married mothering, but increasingly evidence suggests both poverty and never-married mothering are symptoms of a deeper problem.

“Although there are many exceptions,” writes Anne-Marie Ambert in a 2006 paper on one-parent families for The Vanier Institute of the Family, “over half of women who bear children alone not only create poverty … but come from poverty.”

The professor emeritus of sociology at York University adds that, in any case, “less than 50 years ago, the poor were not so likely to produce as many one-parent families as is now the case.” And even today, the poor do not uniformly inhabit one-parent families, while the rich do produce one-parent families via divorce and occasionally through intentional single motherhood.

Values, beliefs and morality are also factors, she says, beginning with an ethos of individualism that emphasizes rights rather than duties. This, coupled with an ideology of gratification, particularly sexual and psychological, meant procreation became increasingly separated from marriage even as women, often conspicuously unprepared for motherhood, were encouraged to keep and to bond with their newborns as a “right.”

Add impoverishment, and such adolescents may feel they have little to lose and even something to gain by engaging in unprotected sex.

In 1999, similar views were expressed by Maggie Gallagher, an American author and president of the Institute of Marriage and Public Policy. “What has changed most in recent decades is not who gets pregnant, but who gets married,” she wrote in The Age of Unwed Mothers. If a good marriage is unlikely and if marriage isn’t an essential support to motherhood anyway, she argues, it is hardly surprising adolescent girls decide to become pregnant. “If it is not marriage that confers special meaning to the sexual act, then perhaps it is her giving the gift of unprotected sex, or making a baby.”

British journalist Melanie Phillips agrees that the collapse of marriage is behind today’s changing family fortunes, but she blames “gender” feminism as its primary cause. By viewing marriage as the principle instrument of oppression by males of females, she says, gender feminism marginalized men from their roles as husbands and fathers while its radical agenda has become the stuff of public policy. Meanwhile, fear of appearing judgmental about its consequences has led to moral paralysis on the subject.

Her book, The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male, argues that any explanation based on economics — for instance, that a lack of jobs makes young men unmarriageable or that too much welfare makes it too easy for young women to be single mothers — is only a small part of the puzzle. The missing piece is the change in girls’ sexual behaviour and the collapse of social stigma. “The legalizing of abortion and the availability of contraception, along with the changes in social attitudes, brought about the end of ’shot-gun’ marriages by which unmarried sexual incontinence had previously been regulated,” Phillips says.

Fewer men wanted to marry women who, they felt, brought their pregnancy on themselves, while women who did want to marry and have children “found their bargaining position had been undermined since men could go elsewhere for sex without responsibility.” And while men seek sexual favours, it is women who — unless they are being coerced — have the power of selection.

To be sure, mistakes are a factor — but abortion and adoption services exist to address these. Coercion is also a factor in very disadvantaged groups, as is a hyper-sexualized media and celebrity culture that feeds peer pressure and promotes sexual activity.

If women were engaging in more-adventurous sexual behaviours, does that mean men were feckless cads? Not entirely, says Phillips. “All societies struggle with the problem of attaching men to their children,” she writes. “This is almost always solved through marriage and legitimacy, which is very important in establishing paternal certainty, the most important precondition for paternal investment.” Moreover, she says, family life socializes young men, who must get jobs and settle down. It also contributes to the development of kinship, the primary structure that supports individuals.

But now, “marriage has been weakened, divorce has got easier and no stigma is any longer attached to children born outside of wedlock. The result has been a snapping of the bonds that have tied men into family life.”

In Canada, as elsewhere, liberalized divorce laws were adopted by the end of the 1960s. In Britain, says Phillips, they turned marriage into an institution of contempt and “just a piece of paper.” Divorce produced “damaged children (who) grew up into embittered adults incapable of lasting attachments and deeply mistrustful of the institution whose failure had let them down so badly.” The non-existent or low-commitment requirements of lone parenting or co-habitation became a better option than a perceived “bad” marriage while “no-fault” divorce laws that also gave women custody of the children and most of the family assets bestowed “the seal of social approval upon families constructed around the absence of the father.”

In a recent blog item on The Spectator’s website, Phillips discusses the murder of a 15-year-old and the life of her mother and others with several children by several men. An affluent, complacent and materialistic Britain has created an underclass, she writes, “where successive generations of women have never known what it is to be loved and cherished by both their parents … How can such women know how to parent their own children?”

Similarly, and in the U.S., where 37 per cent of pregnancies are those of unwed, mostly black and Hispanic mothers, commentators describe a de facto caste system based on the marriage gap. In Canada, the proportion of Aboriginal single mother families is twice as high as other Canadian families.

Yet reasons for hope persist. According to “Crime, Drugs, Welfare — And Other Good News,” published in last December’s edition of Commentary magazine, American college graduates are marrying and staying married for the sake of the children, while the number of Canadian fathers who have joint custody of theirs now rivals the never-married mother as Canada’s fastest rising parenting demographic. Abortion and fertility rates among the young are declining.

Many lessons, too, are emerging from the trials and triumphs of the sexual revolution, among them that if feminism’s biggest mistake was the marginalization of men, so, too, has it given women greater control of their sexuality. And that means tremendous power to re-order their lives, the lives of their families and to turn the situation around.

Source: Canada.com, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/5uo7oe

Targets for “toddler technology” skills laid down by the Government, which will require children to master basic computer skills by the age of 4 and understand how to use a television remote control, pose serious risks to child development, experts have said.

Aric Sigman, a psychologist and author of Remotely Controlled, said that the Government’s new early years curriculum, which requires underfives to be taught on computers, risked creating a generation of screen addicts.

Exposure to screen technology during key stages of child development may have counter-productive effects on cognitive processes and learning, particularly language development and competency in reading and maths, Dr Sigman said.

“Legally requiring the introduction of screen technology to 20 to 60-month-old children is likely to lead to even higher levels of daily screen viewing. Early introduction to ICT [information and communications technology] is likely to lead to a greater lifetime dependency on screens,” he said.

The Government’s new early years curriculum, known as the EFYS (Early Years Foundation Stage), will become statutory in all nurseries and childcare settings in England from September. It sets out specific computer-related tasks for underfives.

From the age of 22 months children should “show an interest in ICT. Seek to acquire basic skills in turning on and operating some ICT equipment.” From 30 months schools should “draw young children’s attention to pieces of ICT apparatus they see or they use with adult supervision”.

From 40 months children should “Complete a simple program on a computer. Use ICT to perform simple functions such as selecting a channel on the TV remote control. Use a mouse and keyboard to interact with age-appropriate computer software.”

These goals are set against a background of growing use of IT in state schools at all ages. Dr Sigman said that there was increasing evidence to suggest that this approach carried substantial risks. Supposedly educational DVDs and computer programs were very often nothing of the sort, he said.

He cited a recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics, which found that the use of such software produced no positive effects on children under 2 and might retard language development.

He observed the emergence of a “video deficit” phenomenon whereby young children who have no trouble understanding a task demonstrated in real life often stumble when the same task is shown on screen.Exposure to television and computer games over a long period might also have long-term consequences on children’s ability to concentrate.

Richard House, senior lecturer in psychotherapy and counselling at Roehampton University, said that there was no compelling evidence to support the Government’s view that screen-based learning was good for very young children.

“One would think the Government must have had convincing evidence for incorporating computer and screen technology into legislation that is legally binding for all nursery or child care settings, but none exists,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Families and Schools said it was not mandatory for children to achieve all the learning goals. “The EYFS says that most – though not all – children should have the chance to find out about everyday technology through their play,” she said.

What little surfers will have to know

The Government’s computer literacy goals for children aged 22-36 months
— Acquire basic skills in turning on and operating some ICT equipment
— Talk with carer about what it does, what they can do with it and how to use it safely
— Use the photocopier to copy their own pictures and other equipment such as karaoke machines

Children aged 30-50 months
— Know how to operate simple equipment

Children aged 40-60 months
— Complete a simple computer program
— Use ICT to perform simple functions, such as selecting a channel on TV remote control
— Use a mouse and keyboard to interact with age-appropriate computer software
— Find out about and identify the uses of everyday information and communication technology and use it together with programmable toys to support learning. Click on icons to cause things to happen in a computer program

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3864656.ece

For generations, scholars have debated whether language constrains the ways we think. Now, neuroscientists studying reading disorders have begun to wonder whether the actual character of the text itself may shape the brain.

Studies of schoolchildren who read in varying alphabets and characters suggest that those who are dyslexic in one language, say Chinese or English, may not be in another, such as Italian.

Among children raised to read and write Chinese, the demands of reading draw on parts of the brain untouched by the English alphabet, new neuroimaging studies reveal. It’s the same with dyslexia, psychologist Li Hai Tan at Hong Kong Research University and his colleagues reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The problems occur in areas not involved in reading other alphabets.

Using two brain-imaging techniques, they identified striking differences in neural anatomy and brain activity between children able to read and write Chinese easily and classmates struggling to keep pace. Both were at odds with patterns of brain activity among readers of the English alphabet.

Even when readers in both languages looked at the same written characters, the brain activity was different, other researchers found. Arabic numerals of standard arithmetic — used by readers of Chinese and English alike — activate different brain regions depending on which of the two languages people had first learned to read, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China’s Dalian University of Technology reported in 2006.

“In this sense, we may regard dyslexia in Chinese and English as two different brain disorders,” Dr. Tan said, “because completely different brain regions are disrupted. It’s very likely that a person who is dyslexic in Chinese would not be dyslexic in English.”

By any measure, reading is a complex and peculiar task. At the speed of thought, readers of English turn letters they see into sounds, sounds into words, and words into meaning. Fluency is measured in milliseconds. Spelling variations are speed bumps in the brain.

Until recently, researchers who study reading abilities focused mostly on Western alphabets. English and 218 other languages, from Alsatian to Zulu, share variations of the same Latin character set. But that set is only one of 60 writing systems used among the world’s remaining 6,912 spoken languages. Even so, those studies convinced many scientists and educators that the brain’s response to the written word, regardless of the language, is universal.

The new research suggests they’re wrong. The schooling required to read English or Chinese may fine-tune neural circuits in distinctive ways.

“We have to recognize that the writing system in China is different, the demands on the brain are different and the characteristics of dyslexia are different,” said Georgetown University pediatric learning specialist Guinevere Eden, who is incoming president of the International Dyslexia Association.

To document the effects on brain development, Dr. Eden and her colleagues are launching a five-year study in Beijing and Washington to compare the neural changes in 60 schoolchildren learning to read either Chinese or English. “Nobody has ever done this across two writing systems,” Dr. Eden said.

In ways that ancient scribes never imagined, text has transformed us. Every brain shaped by reading, whether it is schooled in Chinese or English text, measurably differs — in terms of patterns of energy use and brain structure — from one that has never mastered the written word, comparative brain-imaging studies show. “There are real differences that emerge because of literacy,” Dr. Wolf said.

Some social psychologists speculate that the brain changes caused by literacy could be involved in cultural differences in memory, attention and visual perception. In January’s Psychological Science, MIT researchers reported that European-Americans and students from several East Asian cultures, for example, showed different patterns of brain activation when making snap judgments about visual patterns.

No one knows which came first: habits of thought or the writing system that gave them tangible form. A writing system could be drawn from the archaeology of the mind, perpetuating aspects of mental life conceived at the dawn of civilization.

“Once you have different writing systems in place,” said University of Michigan social psychologist Richard Nisbett. “They may reinforce the perceptual and cognitive trends that preceded the invention of writing. They may go hand in glove.”

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://tinyurl.com/6c4gax

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

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

Psychologist explores how our ability to function in adult relationships is directly connected to our mother factor legacy

Clinical Psychologist Stephan B. Poulter demonstrates in THE MOTHER FACTOR: HOW YOUR MOTHER’S EMOTIONAL LEGACY IMPACTS YOUR LIFE (Prometheus Books) that most of us will never understand the complex legacy imparted by our mothers or its far-reaching impact on our lives. The initial bond formed at birth becomes the foundation from which our emotional development, communication style, and personality type evolve through adulthood. No other relationship in our lives has the potential to shape us like the one we share with our mothers, and the more we understand the emotional components of it, the more choices and opportunities for relationship change and personal growth will be available to us.

Poulter defines the mother factor as our emotional development, functioning, and ability to form meaningful relationships in family life, in social life, and with intimate partners. It is an emotional template started with the mother-child relationship that influences our feelings of frustration, love, fear, and hope; our mothers’ style of parenting as the template for our emotional disposition and our core sense of who and what we are in the world; our emotional functioning as consciously and unconsciously shaped by our mothers.

The mother factor can work for or against us. Poulter shows that in order for it to work for us, we must understand the pervasive influence of our mothers. By focusing on our mother factor from many different angles and perspectives, Poulter strives to give us a more complete view of our own legacy. Once we have these new and crucial insights, we will have the personal power to make different choices, to let go of old self-defeating patterns, to take new and positive action, and to have a deeper sense of fulfillment.

“This entire investigation into your mother factor is for the sole purpose of gaining new, valuable insight and clarity, which will open more options to your life,” Poulter explains.

He also explores how our emotional connections in adult relationships are based on the “style” of our mothers. Poulter defines the five styles of mothering as:

* The Perfectionist Mother- whose family must look perfect in every way

* The Unpredictable Mother- whose ups and downs can create lifelong anxiety and depression in her son or daughter

* The “Me First” Mother- whose children come second or last

* The “Best Friend” Mother- who’s now in vogue but can wreak havoc

* The Complete Mother- who provides guidance and shows compassion to her child

THE MOTHER FACTOR makes clear that no matter what type of mother we have— and most mothers are a combination of the above—her style of mothering affects our lives in ways that should not be ignored. Through an investigation of the strengths, insights, and liabilities that derive from each mothering style, Poulter seeks to help us transcend the mysterious anger, anxiety, depression, and shame that we feel and achieve the kind of relationships we deserve. Dr. Poulter demonstrates how the internalized “rulebook” we inherit from our mothers is a very powerful force, as well. These unspoken rules govern our work, relationships, emotions, separation, and independence. Unless we become aware of the rules that guide our behavior, thoughts, and beliefs, we won’t have the ability to make our own choices.

Dani Levine, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and President of The S.T.E.P. Group (School Placement and Educational Placement), says THE MOTHER FACTOR “brilliantly captured the reality that although we are products of our mothers’ legacy, we are not prisoners. Dr. Poulter not only offers insight, but also provides the tools to escape the fate of falling into maladaptive patterns. I would recommend this book to the masses, as we are all in relationships today that have been influenced by our mothers.”

###

Stephen B. Poulter, PhD (Los Angeles, CA), is the author of three previously published books including THE FATHER FACTOR, which was praised by NEWSWEEK and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, among other publications, and received widespread attention with author appearances in ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel FOX & FRIENDS. He has practiced as a clinical psychologist specializing in family relationships for twenty-four years.

Source: EurekAlert, DC
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/pb-hym042308.php

A friend of mine e-mailed me recently and said her brother is going to become a father soon, and could I recommend any good books on parenting for fathers? Now, when I was pregnant I remember my husband looking for the same thing, and even attempting to read a couple of popular titles. He ended up throwing most of them down in disgust. “This one assumes the only thing you care about is how soon you are gonna get laid after the baby is born and how hard it will be to stop going to strip clubs,” he complained (knowing this wouldn’t be a problem since we planned to raise our child in the back room of “Eve’s Playground”.)

A couple other books trotted out the irritating stereotype of the inept father, struggling to adjust to his new role while smiling sheepishly and remaining just hopeless when it comes to diapers. You know, that wacky dad, he may be good at watching football but he sure doesn’t know how to give a bottle. Ick. And many of the books for parents turned out to be more for moms, with a couple lines about dads not getting in the way, or exhorting fathers to be involved while implying it’s the last thing they want to do.

Now, it seems to me that the stereotype of the idiot, reluctant father is one that’s alive and well. Many dads I know get asked if they are “giving mom a break” when they go out in public with the kids, even though some of them are actually the primary caretakers. And even when dads demonstrate they are involved parents, there’s folks who encourage them to get back in their place. When our baby was about a week old, her dad and I went to the local birth-stuff store (hideous nursing pajamas, Boppys, birth amulets, that kind of thing) to buy a breast pump. The terrifying woman working showed us a few milking machines, and then my husband made the grand mistake of telling her we’d be using bottles as well as nursing soon because he also wanted to bond with the baby.

This woman went off on a tirade about nipple confusion and urged my husband to be, and I quote, “less selfish.” “This is mommy’s time with the baby,” she said. Um, yeah, no thanks, I like to share. Is it so hard to imagine that we might prioritize equal baby time? (By the way, no nipple confusion, unless you mean the phenomenon I experienced when I tried to latch my kid on in the dark, missed the target, and got a nasty hickey.)

Anyhow, the point of my rant is not to reopen old wounds and necessitate a best Men at Work best song post, but to ask if there are any good books for dads out there, books that don’t assume it’ll be a miracle if dad keeps the baby alive for three hours without maternal intervention.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, USA
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?&entry_id=25837

Motherhood is a legitimate and valuable business, but there’s a twist. It has all of the makings of a real job - expectations, deadlines, periodic reviews of performance (self-inflicted and from friends and family), success and failure, management and supervision, unpredictable hours, demanding clients, and on and on. Like a businessperson, mothers are expected to be dedicated, high achievers day and night. We’re constantly juggling multiple tasks that all seem to be time-sensitive priorities, with clients (kids, husbands) demanding our physical, intellectual and emotional skills, sometimes all at once!

However - and this is the “twist” part - you’re working day and night at a job that people and society sometimes don’t recognize as having value. How many times have you heard the phrase “just a mom”? Nonetheless, you’re expected to do a great job, so what’s the secret to success? Treat the mechanics of the job like a business with systems, organization and method. And, like a professional, once you strip the emotion out of the equation while you’re managing the tactics, you have a much higher likelihood of laser focus and ultimate success.

This isn’t to say you need to wear high heels in the playroom, dictate chores via Power Point presentations, or be a robot when interacting with your kids. Give lots of hugs and kisses; relish precious moments; and create and spend as much quality time as is humanly possible. However, when it comes to running the business side (schedules, carpools, to-do lists), look for tips and tactics from the business world to guide the way. A business approach to motherhood increases productivity, efficiency and overall job satisfaction.

Motherhood is tough. It’s misunderstood and under-appreciated. Once you accept that it is indeed a business, you will not only see it increase in value and legitimacy, but you will be ready to make it the most successful operation you have ever managed in your life!

There are lots of great ways to get and stay organized:

-Create lists on paper or electronically by category to stay on task.

-Use post-bedtime minutes or hours to prepare for the next day.

-Don’t reinvent the wheel - brainstorm solutions with other parents. Share your best practices, and start the dialogue to get creative ideas from friends.

-Use teamwork to get the job done. Engage your kids in chores; reduce your workload while teaching them valuable life lessons.

-Strip the emotion out of the equation. Like I said earlier, it’s virtually impossible to do a good job with anything when you’re stressed or upset. Take a few deep breaths, find a quiet place and do your planning in a peaceful setting.

-Revisit your plan on a regular basis.

Most importantly, tell yourself you can do it all, and you will! Remember the childhood classic, The Little Engine That Could, by Watty Piper and Loren Long. A little attitude got that train chugging along. How many parents have read that to their little ones to urge positive attitudes? Be the great mom that can and will, and you’ll do it in stride.

Amy Kossoff Smith, Founder of The Business of Motherhood, is a nationally recognized Mompreneur who owns a Web site, www.BusinessofMotherhood.com, and blog, www.MomTiniLounge.com. Available 24/7, just like Moms, the Web sites offer parenting tips, resources, and a host of ways to manage the job of motherhood.

Source: MiamiHerald.com, FL
http://www.miamiherald.com/360/story/505156.html

There’s nothing like a conversation with a behaviour specialist to make a you second-guess how to discipline your children.

The way Ronald Morrish sees it, parents should be second-guessing.

The author of Secrets of Discipline and With All Due Respect says the parents of today need to give their heads a shake. Our discipline methods are turning our children into manipulative, defiant monsters. The trouble, he says, is that we have adopted a parenting culture of rewards and consequences.

“I think it’s a world full of shortcuts. People don’t want to supervise their children, they don’t want to train their children,” Morrish says during a recent phone interview from his home in Ontario’s Niagara region.

“It always comes back to the basics of putting in the time.”

He says today’s popular discipline puts choice in the hands of children. Parents should be guiding their children to do the right thing, he argues, not punishing them for doing the wrong thing.

I like his message, though I may not agree with everything he says. It’s a commonsense approach that speaks to me as a parent. I have had my share of difficult parenting moments that left me feeling infuriated and helpless. I struggle with different approaches to discipline. And I often rely on rewards and consequences. But they don’t always work and I am willing to try something that will.

Judging from Morrish’s packed schedule of speaking engagements across North America every year, many parents are craving a new approach.

“It might surprise you, but the first step is to change your view from thinking discipline is what you do when children do things wrong to what you do so children do things right.”

He says many parents and educators approach discipline negatively, reacting when a child misbehaves instead of assuring that they behave properly.

One thing parents can do, he says, is to limit the child’s choices to the ones that are appropriate.

He says “If” - “then” statements are tricky: “If you do that again, you’re going to your room.” That statement tells the child that they can continue the bad behaviour if they don’t mind going to their room. It gives them a choice they shouldn’t have. A better approach, he says, is to say: “We don’t speak that way in our home, now start over.”

The idea is to correct the child so he does it right, not give him consequences for doing it wrong.

Much of what Morrish talks about requires parents to change the language they use. I can’t count how many times I have used “If”¦ then” statements with poor results. You really have to pay attention to what you say and how you say it. Morrish is a believer in using firm, authoritative language that leaves no room for debate, an approach some critics find harsh or even old-fashioned.

The father of two adults and two teenagers, Morrish, 59, wrote Secrets of Discipline 10 years ago because he thought society had moved away from practical parenting. One symptom, he says, are parents who pay their children to do chores. Children are supposed to help from their heart, not because there’s money in it for them.

“That’s one of the lowest levels of moral development of human beings, where the only reason you do something is because it’s advantageous, not because it’s right. And that’s really pathetic.”

Stop taking shortcuts and start doing the real work, he says. When children are misbehaving, don’t just sit and yell at them and expect results.

“In this business you don’t move your voice, you move your feet,” he says. “You go where your children are and you lower your voice and become firm.”

“Bedtime as an event is half an hour to an hour. Bedtime as a routine is five to 10 minutes with no arguing.”

Morrish acknowledges that parents and teachers face tough challenges and lots of questions. He jokes that he will never be out of work. He hears from many parents who are desperate for answers about how to raise their children. The challenges start early.

“You’re a servant the first year and a half of a child’s life,” he says. “And when you shift to being a parent, you flip the child’s world upside down from where we do what the child demands to where they have to learn to do what we demand. And they spend the next year and a half trying to put the world back the way it was.”

When you listen to what Morrish says, you hear a mix of frustration and hope in his voice. He keeps travelling (something he hates) and working with teachers and parents (something he loves) because he sees the difference it makes. And he knows the last thing parents want are manipulative and defiant children.

“You can always count on parents to love their children and want great children.”

Source: Telegraph-Journal, Canada
http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/magazine/article/271332