A concerned mother responds...

On Saturday, May 9, the day before Mother's Day, I received the following personal email in response to my Friday post on Mothering and mental health... I responded immediately and the writer gave me permission to publish it anonymously. 

It's been on my mind ever since. The links, by the way, are mine.

Hi Sandy,

Thank you for your article today. Certainly you raise the red flag for children who are funnelled through the mental health system, but what do we do with highly anxious children who simply cannot fit into a mainstream environment?

Increasingly there is reduced emphasis on play in childhood. The Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten environment both my children are in right now focuses on benchmarks of school readiness, even when my five-year-old daughter (already labelled with ADHD and a severe anxiety disorder) is clearly in need of play and relationship skills.

For our part we are lucky enough to have the financial resources so that my daughter will switch from the current system into a private Montessori school. But what of the other families? And what of families like us, who despite having the financial and educational resources lack the emotional ones?

For example, while university educated and from a middle class background, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 37 after a lifetime of failures at school and career, which brought on depression after depression. My coping skills are substandard to say the least, and I know now that I lack the higher level processing required to keep myself organized and calm without lots of self-prompting built into my day.

I openly admit that my difficulties related to my child might well be a contributor to her current behaviour. I learned TOO LATE of the role that interactive play and engaged relationships have in healthy brain development – she's only five-and-a-half!

Evidence supports the growing school of thought that stressors in a child's environment – be they inadequate relationship support, inadequate nutrition, inadequate stimulation – before the age of six (or even three) create an overdeveloped limbic centre in the brain and thus literally create a "stressed" brain which is then much less responsive to cognitive interventions.

Is there any way we can create a formalized network of wellness and relationship-based initiatives based in play, sport, the arts and nutrition which might support healthy brains by identifying the science and getting this info out to the community?

I'm game to support this as a parent and as an employee in the childcare system. Any chance you could write a blog as an informal tool to gauge public interest? I know many academics in Canada including child and adolescent psychiatrist Jean Clinton of The Offord Centre – and the mother of five children –and her colleagues (associated with McMaster University and McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario) might be willing to support an application to get this kind of network going in communities across Canada.

Looking forward to seeing your thoughts in blog format or by reply to this email. 

What an intriguing synthesis of neuroscience sounding a call to turn back the clock for the sake of our youngest children.

And talk about red flags! This email raised dozens for me. Alarms went off. Bells started ringing. Whistles began blowing. Mind-blowing sounds.

I had hoped the comments to this blog would erupt with these concerns, but alas, this didn't happen, proving my point. Young children do not and cannot speak up for themselves. They desperately need advocates who can listen to them actively and empathetically – listen with their eyes, their ears and their hearts.

Especially very young children, most vulnerable to their emotional and physical environments – their relationships, their mental, emotional and physical stimulation, their nutrition – as their young minds and brains, as well as their bodies, are rapidly growing, developing and changing. 

I just watched Dr. Jean Clinton's PowerPoint presentation. Have a look. It's based on a broad variety of sources – medical, scientific and other researched-based programs that will give you a quick overview of the complexities of the developing brain – from conception to age 12. Yes, the pre-natal brain/mind. It includes the ground-breaking work of Toronto-based children's advocate Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, a program with which I am most familiar. 

There is a great deal of "evidence" suggesting many things in our information-driven technological age. But what do we really know for sure about the workings of the brain, especially the childhood brain? 

Terms like neuroscience and neuroplasticity are transforming our understanding of how the brain works, but for young children upon whom studies are never performed, the first three to six years of life are and should be sacrosanct. 

That's why I think "gauging public interest" across Canada about the level of concern for the mental health of our very young, even unborn children, as this young mother suggests, is so crucial. Why not mounting a movement to reclaim play in childhood, especially in junior and senior kindergarten.

Why are we rushing childhood? Why tamper with kindergarten? Very young children are not mentally and emotionally equipped to learn numbers and the alphabet at the ages of three or four or five. It's too stressful for them. 

When I was in kindergarten, in the early 1950s, all we did, was play. Socialize. Eat snacks of cookies and milk. Rest on mats. Cut paper and paste it (with that icky flour and water kind of paste) and play – with wooden blocks, in sand boxes. Simple toys. We learned to share. We ran around outside or we sat in circles and sang sweet simple funny songs with rhymes and riddles. We did all kinds of art like finger-painting and water colours on big easels. Kindergarten was engaging and playful. Our minds were free to explore and develop. It was creative. We learned to relate to other little kids. That's what it was all about.

Building relationships.

I'm sure there was more to it than that, but I know we never had to learn to the alphabet or count. Homework? You must be kidding. That wouldn't have been healthy for our little developing brains. That was for the big kids in Grade One.

Sometimes, old traditions stand up better than all the new fangled ideas. Kindergarten was created in 1840 in Germany so children could learn to communicate, play and interact appropriately with each other. 

Today, kids learn to interact more through technology, computers, television, in a virtual world. How can these cool media be healthy for developing brains? 

Consider The Mothercraft Movement. 

It was started 1907 by a New Zealand doctor Truby King who pioneered a system of early childhood care for new mothers in a bid to combat high infant mortality rates. He published a Mothercraft Manual and mothercraft nurses, specially trained in his methods, were dispatched all over the country to teach new mothers.

King prescribed "Twelve Essentials" for the raising of healthy infants. At that time, they were considered revolutionary, but they're still relevant today and worth revisiting: air and sunshine, water, food, clothing, bathing, muscular exercise and sensory stimulation, warmth, regularity, cleanliness, mothering, management and, rest and sleep.

How many of you fit all 12 "essentials" into your daily routine – especially "muscular exercise" and "rest and sleep" with "regularity"? I know I don't!

By 1923, New Zealand had the world's lowest infant mortality rate, and two years later, Dr. Truby King was knighted for his vision of standardized "mothercraft" care and the way it was universally administered. His methods were adopted throughout the British Commonwealth.

One mothercraft nurse, Barbara Mackenzie, moved to Toronto in 1931 and married Irving Robinson, the president of the board of the Hospital for Sick Children. Together, they founded the Canadian Mothercraft Society.

There have been other experts. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the renown pediatrician and psychoanalyst published his landmark book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care in 1946. It's still in print today.

I'm hoping my HealthZone.ca editor Brandie Weikle, who also edits and blogs at ParentCentral.ca along with Ann Douglas who writes The Mother of All Parenting Blogs will have a look at this email and consider raising these concerns with their online communities.

Perhaps all three of us can raise these questions and help to create a groundswell of interest in a proposed pan-Canadian "network" of individuals and childcare experts with a variety of resources to consider the issues raised so passionately by this young mother.

Healthy children have a much better chance of growing into healthy adults. Isn't health the best legacy you can give your child?

What do you think? How do you feel about this? We were all children. I'm inviting you to share your ideas, your memories of your childhood. How were you mothered? Schooled? Raised? How has it affected you? What are your concerns about your children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, friends' children? How do these questions resonate with you?

Let us put our heads together. We may not all be "mothers" or "fathers" but we're all sons and daughters. Let's empathize with today's children and help them reclaim their childhood.

Don't you think they deserve it?

 

Comments

[Tammy MacKenzie]

Excellent post Sandy, and many thanks to the mother who wrote you!
I have been concerned about the constant work, amount of work (and homework), and advancement of work, versus play, physical activity, art, music, etc. that my child receives at school since she began. Never mind the constant barrage from so many other sources to hurry up and grow up (especially for girls).
I chose to be a stay-at-home Mom until my child started school, took her to playgroups and parks, explored outdoors and had playdates, made crafts, took swimming classes...
But I saw others with little ones who never took them outside to play, never took them to spend time with other little ones, parked them in front of the TV most of the day instead of playing and learning with them.

Now that my child is 10, she plays several sports, spends a lot time with friends, and is outside pretty much every day - we moved to the country so she could beathe fresh air, ride her bike, get dirty, wet, bumped, bruised, cold, amazed, invigorated and tuckered out enough to sleep soundly at night.
And has a regular routine, and chores.
Just like I did when I was a child.

She is a healthy, happy, socially active and balanced little person. But we've had our times, and I am very concerned at the lack of resources to help young people, whether it is counselling, mental health advocacy, or family assistance.
The government loves to advertise about the first 6 years being so important, but does little about it.
And the sad fact is, that once a child hits 7, there is practically nothing at all! 7 to 12 is like a dead zone for programs and resources for children and their families.

I am so glad this came up, and completely agree that the issues of child development and mental/emotional health needs a LOT more attention, education and available resources.

[Sonia]

Dear Sandy,

I will comment on the following questions from your current post, presented in 6 numbered sections.

1. What do you think? How do you feel about this?

The "society" in which we live in Canada is hard on children; we are hard on each other as women, often overly critical of each other. Grassroots efforts help a few, urban centres of research often focus on "mainstream" and "average" people, leaving the "Others" (philosophy of Others, Derrida and Irigaray) to fend for ourselves.

2.I'm inviting you to share your ideas, your memories of your childhood.

Abuse, neglect, rejection. That describes my childhood in my parents' house - we never had a "home" to trust.

Kindness, patience, tolerance, acceptance. That describes my childhood spent in the company of "non-family"; sometimes neighbours, sometimes strangers, always with an offer to provide that moment of peace, the space in which to do homework, the freedom to watch cartoons without guilt, etc.

3. How were you mothered? Schooled? Raised?

I learned from my mother what not to do. I learned from some teachers what not to do. I learned not to believe in / trust men (incest has far-reaching consequences). I also learned from a few very good teachers how to be a person, how to laugh, be content, question the world around me.

4. How has it affected you?
It wasn't until after my late 20s that I began to trust myself, let alone others. The path from rage to peace of mind is rough, unique, and healing.

The mixture of good-bad moments in childhood also spurred me to explore the learning-teaching environment. I knew how I had wanted to learn, and worked to develop a healthy mindset with which to approach learning. My professional life is based on this healthy mindset.

5. What are your concerns about your children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, friends' children?

I am saddened to see "self-control" and "self-respect" low on the list of priorities, even though we have zero tolerance policies about bullying at school (as though that were the only place bullies bully, or as though only children bully others).

When in a learning-teaching environment, I begin with self-respect. This confuses many people. The distinction between "me-me-me" and "I respect me, my world, my ideas, my body, my heart, my family, my friends, my teachers, my classmates, my toys, my books, my ... etc." is subtle, yet important. When I convey this subtle difference to young children (ages 5-10), they smile knowingly, and agree with me that this is a more fun way of growing up. If we all felt this way, and behaved this way, there would be less room for "negative / disruptive / bullying" behaviour in the learning space. Also, the learning space would spill from home to all else, rather than limit itself to "school" as a space-time event.

6. How do these questions resonate with you?

As an educator, I am happy to see the question addressed in a public forum such as this.

Sonia

[Sandy Naiman]

Tammy,

Thank you for your excellent comment.

I am childless. Thus far, I've neglected this area of my advocacy completely but thanks to this concerned mother, now, I'm going to include childhood and infant and pre-natal mental health on my radar. What are we allowing our children to experience? No wonder kids are being diagnosed with ADHD or worse, Bipolar Disorder.

This is not only absurd, it's criminal. Big Pharma is driving this and their greed. Even my psychiatrist Dr. Bob agreed the other day that the American Psychiatric Association that publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses, which creates so many diagnoses for children and adults, has some major cleaning up to do in its ranks. Too many of its members who are currently revamping the DSM-V are on the payroll of drug companies. This has been documented well in the mainstream press as well as in the blogosphere. It's frightening.

This is entirely unethical. Criminal.
Have a look at this. It's just one of many stories from The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Joseph%20Biederman&st=cse

My intention is to start doing more research into mental health issues in very young children and their mothers-to-be. The effects of stressors on the unborn child. I reached Dr. Jean Clinton but this week, she is away at conferences with no email access. I'll be back to her. She is a perfect place to start, as is Sick Kids Hospital. Years ago, I remember interviewing an infant psychiatrist. Can you imagine?

Believe me, this is just the beginning.

Thank you, Tammy. Your remarks are very encouraging and as always, wise and courageous.

What I can recommend for you and your pre-adolescent daughter is a very provocative National Film Board Film called "Sexy, Inc.– Our Children Under The Influence – A critical look at the phenomenon of the Hypersexualization."

http://www3.nfb.ca/webextension/sexy-inc/film.php

I show it in my Women's Studies classes. Have a look. It will give you lots to think about and raise some very important questions for you. Perhaps provide some answers. It's an excellent documentary by a well-known and respected Quebec documentarist, Sophie Bissonnette.

I highly recommend it. And stay vigilant. Keep commenting on this issue. My editor is going to link to the http://www.parentcentral website.

We can use our voices for the youngest in our midst who haven't voices loud enough to be heard. Or are speaking to "deaf" ears.

We must. Investigate Roots of Empathy at http://www.rootsofempathy.org/

This is a Canadian program now international.

Have a look at this story I wrote called "Lessons from a Baby" in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of Greater Good magazine about Roots of Empathy. (This magazine is published by the University of California in Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. It's devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds and altruistic behaviour.

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/archive/2005springsummer/SpringSummer05_Naiman.pdf

Roots of Empathy is community driven. For children from kindergarten to grade eight and with the new young Seeds of Empathy program for Early Childhood settings, to foster social and emotional health and well-being in children three to five years of age. Helping childhood educators as well.

http://www.seedsofempathy.org/

I linked to the story I wrote about Roots of Empathy for Greater Good magazine in my post. It will give you a sense of Mary Gordon and her remarkable quest to change the world "classroom by classroom."

Her organization is a non-profit organization. She started it in the late 1990s and was originally trained as a kindergarten teacher, born in Newfoundland.

Her book tells the whole story.

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/roots_of_empathy.html

Here's a link to a video:

http://www.rootsofempathy.org/roots_new_site/Video.html

Tammy, continue doing what you're doing. Raising the flags for our children. Sounding the alarms.

Let's give this issue the attention it deserves.

Take good care. I am so grateful for your comment and your concern.
xox
sln

[Sophie H.]

Hi Sandy,

Thanks for posting my letter and for writing this blog. You have asked me repeatedly to comment publicly -- here I am.

I tried posting this in one comment, but it wasn't accepted. I'm breaking it down over several.

Part I

I would like to emphasize one point in this discussion. Yes, let’s turn back the clock on the value of play in childhood. In doing so, however, we must acknowledge the impossible situation parents currently face sandwiched as they are between providing the basic material supports children need and the lack of time available to them to build the relationships required for optimal child development.

By way of a solution our society has determined a need for licensed child care organizations which are committed to providing the best care available for our young children. Currently we expect employees of these centres, aka neuroplasticians (as you and Dr. Jean Clinton would call them) to mind our children for the majority of the day. In our agency we provide care from 7:00am – 6:00pm. Many children are there for the entire 11 hours. This is NOT due to parental neglect but to the realities of an economic climate which is hostile to young families.

Our agency, while providing excellent programming could always do more to enhance the experiences of children in our care, but with what? Child care providers are the worst paid employees in our education system despite advanced certificates in Early Childhood Education and degrees in Education and Psychology. Unionized school custodians are paid more. Often child care providers earn as little as employees in the fast food sector. Salaries are low because the burden for paying for child care services rests largely on the shoulders of parents who either cannot pay higher fees, or balk at fee increases. In the alternative taxpayers whinge at paying higher taxes to support the subsidies and infrastructure needed for at-risk families with children under the age of six.

[Sophie H.]

Part II

The government suggests they are doing what they can to help. A scan of Ontario Budget 2009 shows the current child tax benefit is now $1,100 per child (an increase from $600 per child over 2008). This subsidizes a whopping $2,200 in my middle income family with two kids. The average cost for childcare in my house per annum is $18,300. How exactly will this tax benefit support my children or my child care provider? Is my child care provider paid more than $18,000 per annum? Does this child tax benefit provide professional development opportunities for my provider, or parenting workshops for me? Does it provide me with alternatives to my current care arrangement? Will it impact the quality of services with better equipment or facilities? Does it support the supplemental assistance required for my daughter with special needs? The answer to all these questions is a resounding NO. (BTW, you will likely have posters who will want to educate me on financial supports available, but not for my daughter as she is not sufficiently disabled, and not for me because I fall into that awkward middle income bracket so I pay for all extra supports.)

In addition, when I review this same budget there are three references to early education (0-6yrs) with no allocation of funds and no review of programming or resources, as follows:

“The government awaits Dr. Charles Pascal's report on full-day learning for four- and five-year-olds, an important initiative to build a stronger workforce, starting in the early years of education.”

and

“Students in junior kindergarten to Grade 3 are receiving more individual attention from their teachers. The government's goal to reduce the size of primary classes has been achieved:
-90 per cent now have 20 or fewer students this year compared to 31 per cent in 2003-04
-100 per cent now have 23 or fewer students this year compared to 64 per cent in 2003-04.”

On this last point, as a society we now wish to incorporate children with special needs into the mainstream classroom, representing a further draw on the teacher’s time and the school’s resources. Last year my daughter’s class had 4 special needs children out of 18. In this case, optimal class sizes must now drop to eight-to-one to truly maximize the participation of all students.

and

“About 20 additional Parenting and Family Literacy Centres will be opened to help students in high-needs neighbourhoods prepare for kindergarten.”

From these Budget 2009 excerpts there is no question that an emphasis on school readiness is a priority for provincial governments. But the result of this shift away from early childhood relationships and guided play toward literacy is NOT meeting with success. Increasingly Canadian children have higher rates of anxiety, ADHD and learning disability. The greater children’s failures academically and socially, the more isolated they become putting them at risk for mental illness like depression, addiction and other co-morbidities associated with ADHD and anxiety.

[Sophie H.]

Part III

Herewith more surprising and frightening data: 18 out of 21 and 15 out of 21. These numbers refer to Canada’s placement out of 21 developed countries on indicators of Family and Peer Relationships and measures of Subjective Well Being. This data was drawn from the UNICEF Report Card for 2007 and is evidence of the low priority of preschool aged programming interventions in Canada. Sweden places first in this same study across almost all measures. Sweden does not promote school readiness as defined by literacy and numeracy skills. Rather it focuses its early childhood curriculum on guided, directed and responsive play. Many children in Sweden do not read before the age of six. As a country they demonstrate lower rates of isolation, depression, ADHD, and greater academic success as measured by high school, technical school and university graduation rates. Perhaps the money they save on mental health interventions are reinvested in the early years? What a concept!

It is unrealistic for us to turn back the clock to a time gone by when we retreat to the warm embrace of a caregiver grandparent (not unless they have custody of the grandkids) or choose to abandon urban for rural (unless we lose the family home or opt out of the mainstream). The current economy does not support these lifestyle choices for the majority of young families in Canada.

This brings us back to the question of money! With what money do child care providers enhance or supplement their programs when they have barely enough to pay their employees a living wage? The vast majority of not for profit AND for profit child care agencies must cobble together funds with limited professional resources at hand. For supplemental requirements extensive corporate partnerships and sponsorship are increasingly a must which, for obvious reasons, risks compromising the integrity and quality of education we wish to promote. Do we like the idea of polluting infant spaces with Coca Cola vending machines? What about Colgate Toothpaste logos reinforcing messages of quality dental hygiene in toddler bathrooms? This brightly painted play room brought to you by Glidden and furnished by La-Z-Boy? Or – gasp – this subsidized lunch of chicken nuggets (now with white meat) brought to you by McDonald’s?

The time to act is now, to recognize the crisis that exists for child care and early childhood education. What seems simple is a deceptively complicated dilemma. As Carl Sagan wrote “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”

Thanks for your blog. Be well Sandy!

[Sandy Naiman]

Hi Sonia and Sophie,

Do you realize how providential your comments are. Sonia, you are an educator. Sophie, a mother concerned about the way young children are cared for by their professional care givers. Early childhood education.

Thank you for posting. For sharing. In my next post, I am going to urge people to read the comments to this blog post. They are very important, very relevant, very enlightening.

You speak from personal and professional experiences. Powerful voices.

I will do everything I can to ensure that your voices are heard.

Take care and keep talking. Keep informing. Keep advocating for the children who desperately need your voices. Your passion. And for their parents. This is such an urgent cause and for too long it has been shuffled under the carpet or onto a back burner.

No more! From now on children's mental health and well-being are going to be on my radar screen.

Just a note of caution.

Be wary of doctors prescribing drugs, especially anti-psychotics, anti-depressants and other powerful neuroleptics tested and used primarily for adults. Children's brains are not the same. Such drugs do not behave in children the same way as they do in adults and increasingly, even in adults, many of these drugs are being proven either dangerous or ineffective.

This, I know for sure.

There is no quick fix, despite what the drug companies say or what overburdened doctors tell you.

Children need good, chemical free nutrition. No processed or fast foods. Exercise. All the ingredients in Truby King's "Twelve Essentials" they, their parents – all of us – need.

PLUS support from our governments. This is just the beginning. Let us run with this if we can.

Now, thanks to you, I am more cognizant of this issue. I'll be watching.

sln

[©lark Kennedy]

As someone who has lived alone with "illness" for twenty years, I can't relay enough how much I appreciate your guiding words and mentorship with respect to understanding your perspectives on health. I love the curly quotes you attach to some of these concepts. "Survivor" / "Mental illness" etc...Specifically, you write in a certain style to describe labels and the processes of diagnosis in a manner most respectful of the needs of those who cope and not those of the medical profession.

As for the labels given the child above, I am going to play devils advocate for a moment. If you live life without insight, life is very difficult to live. Imagine for a moment if the words that this parent is recognizing for the first time - "ADHD and a severe anxiety disorder" - were not available to her. As a child of the 70s/80s, perhaps if a medical professional had intervened and helped those raising me with those same words, I'd be better off.

So now that she has a diagnosis, can't this parent in question craft and form an outcome-based solution? For myself, by acknowledging, admitting and researching the label I have received, I have discovered that I'm actually beating that label every day. Now Parent X has a range of treatment options and a world of resources at her fingertips. How can that be a problem?

Wouldn't you rather have her within the circle of our understanding rather than outside of it?

[Sandy Naiman]

Hi ©Lark

Last June, I wrote a post called "Shall We Dance" which was about Sir Ken Robinson, a world-renown educator. I discovered him on http://www.ted.com

TED is an acronym for Technology, Education and Design.

Sadly my "Shall We Dance" post is no longer available in the archives of this site, though I have access to it privately. I urge you to have a look at what Robinson is saying in his speech, titled "Schools Kill Creativity"...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

And consider this. Science is only one lens through which to view the world. I am not a scientist. I am curious about everything.

When it comes to health, emotional and physical and mental and spiritual – body, mind, spirit – you cannot have one without the other.

Personally, I think our current societal values are dangerously infected by a virus that spreads though technology, mass media, advertising and the profit-motive – greed.

Bigger is Better. More stuff. Not enough stuff. No one wants you to be happy with enough stuff. Enough is the enemy of a healthy economy. Shopping and buying stuff is a good thing. I'm sorry, but I just cannot buy that.

Anyway, ©lark, this is a huge subject. I have always lived on the margins – sometimes outside, sometimes inside. Sometimes teetering on the line. I like to move around. I celebrate difference, too. Eccentricity. Here in North America, eccentricity is feared. In Britain, it's cherished.

I don't believe I have an illness. I think I'm just fine, exactly the way I am. A lot of people do. I don't fight anything. I live, ©lark. One day at a time. Makes life relatively simple. One foot ahead of the other. But then, I'm a cockeyed optimist. It works for me.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
sln

[Sophie H.]

Hi @larke,

As the mum who wrote the letter to Sandy I can assure you that, yes indeed, a diagnosis has supported our interventions for our daughter. And yes, had the same diagnosis been available for me I too would have learned coping strategies and techniques from a young age and likely would have fared better in the highly regulated "adult" world.

We still need to be mindful that ADHD is STILL identified largely as a label for boys. Acting out, hyperactivity are still the hallmark symptoms of the disorder and girls who slip under the radar (impulsive type daydreamers) are not as easily identified. Girls with severe ADHD (like my daughter) are often originally labelled as suffereing from PDD-NOS (an autism spectrum disorder). Their behaviours may manifest as spinning, dancing, twirling as they try to self-soothe when the environmental stimulus overwhelms. Typically they manifest with reduced social and communication skills -- girls who might not quite fit in.

There are virtually NO diagnostic tools for children under the age of three, and only a handful of diagnostic tools are available for children under the age of six. The majority of children are identified by grade three or four and by that time they've already experienced five years of formal education - years fraught with the stressors of frustration, failure and negative reinforcement. Damage is tough (not impossible) to undo by that point.

I saw this first hand when we investigated school alternatives for my daughter. The increased enrollment for children at the grade 3 and 4 level in alternative (private) schools is twice that of children ages 4-7.

Thanks for your comment. It is truly helpful and insightful. Let's keep this discussion going!

[Tammy MacKenzie]

Sandy, thanks for all those links, I will check them out when I can get to the library (slow country dial-up doesn't allow for videos and such...).
I totaly agree with you regarding drugs for kids - too much, too often, too fast, too risky, too easy!

As for the issue of hypersexualization of childen, especially girls, I could write pages on my thoughts and views. I will say this: it is rampant, disgusting, discouraging and very damaging. Beauty pageants for little girls, under-wire bras and thong underwear for pre-adolescents, and the constant barrage of media imaging aimed at pre-teens promoting certain body-images, status through clothing and accessories, and "sexy" clothing, posing, language and attitudes.
It's gross!

There is too much lip-service to teaching children self-awareness, self-esteem, self-respect, self-value, and very little to actualize it. With so much focus on conformity, fitting in and being "contributing members of society" (which starts in earnest when a childs enters the education system), it amazes me how people find it so hard to understand the pressure of peer conformity and media influencing young people, especially when they are so vulnerable in the adolscent years of physical and emotional turmoil.

The family unit has become an inconvenience to our modern western society, and despite all that we have learned, and say about being mindful of raising healthy children to be healthy adults, they seem to be regarded as second-class citizens.
Why?
They can't vote, and they have no money.
As you said, they have no voice.
And too often, those who try to speak for them, are disregarded as "emotional", "reactive", "troublemakers", and so on.

Maybe more people should remember that the emotional/mental health of our children, and overall well-being, will have an impact on the quality of our life and well-being when we are vulnerable, aging people, considered in our society to be of the same status as children: non-contributors, therefore of little value, and at the mercy of our caretakers.

[Sandy Naiman]

Here is an excerpt from my June 27, 2008 "Coming Out Crazy" post titled "Shall We Dance" – which, I think is very relevant to this discussion.

Sir Kenneth Robinson is a visionary cultural leader. He led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

His latest book, "The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything", a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.

Here goes:

In 2006, in his riveting 19 minute and 29 second chat on
http://www.TED.com Sir Kenneth Robinson discussed how our global approach to education leaches the inherent creativity out of impressionable, audacious, often gifted young people.

Witty, potent, enchanting, with an uncanny resemblance to Michael Caine, Robinson speaks intimately, as if he’s sitting at your kitchen table over a cup of tea.

"Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects,” he says. “At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities and at the bottom are the arts. In every system, too, there’s a hierarchy within the arts – art and music are given a higher status in schools than drama and dance."

Robinson is fascinated by how people discover their talents and he's writing a book called Epiphany, inspired by a woman named Gillian Lynne, who choreographed many musicals and ballets including “CATS” and “Phantom of the Opera.”

How did she become a dancer?

"When Gillian was at school, she was really hopeless,” Robinson said. "Her teachers thought she had a learning disorder. She couldn’t concentrate. She was fidgety.

"I think now, they’d say she had ADHD, but this was in the 1930s and ADHD hadn’t been invented. It wasn’t an available condition. People weren’t aware they could have that.”

At the age of eight, Gillian’s mother took her to a specialist. For 20 minutes, she sat on her hands while her mother talked to this man about all the problems her daughter was having at school.

Finally, the doctor wanted to speak to her mother privately. He told Gillian to wait in his office and turned on the radio. After they left the office, the doctor said to her mother, “Just stand there and watch her.”

Gillian was on her feet moving to the music.

“Mrs. Lynne,” the doctor said. “Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.”

That’s what happened.

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it was,” Lynne told Robinson over lunch. “I walked into this room and it was filled with people like me. People who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.” They did ballet, jazz, tap, modern, contemporary.

Eventually, she auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, became a soloist, had a wonderful career, graduated and founded her own school. Met Andrew Lloyd Webber and has been responsible for some of the greatest musical theatre in history. She’s given pleasure to millions and she’s a multimillionaire.

“Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”

Today.