Koy Roberts, Ph.D.

Whatever happened to summer camp being a time for children to develop and cultivate independence and resilience?  This piece by Tina Kelley is astounding because of its absurdity. 
It’s come to this?  Camps are now forced to hire parent liaisons to act like a hotel concierge service in order to keep parents happy.

We can learn an awful lot about how to be a great parent or better yet a better human being from Randy Pausch. He died July 25 at age 47 leaving behind his wife and 3 young children.  Listening to his lecture or reading his book has changed the priorities and the lives of many parents.

Whether you have friends or family touched by this condition or not you will learn what it’s like to live with Bipolar.  These amazing, personal, first-hand accounts can be heard here.

Why is it that some kids grow up to be successful, fulfilled adults in challenging careers and healthy relationships while other kids from similar backgrounds and academic performance struggle mightily as adults?  A family or a school that focuses solely upon an academic education produces children who are ill-equipped for the future.  We must do much more than feed the mind.  An emerging new field called Social and Emotional Learning synthesizes the nature of biology, emotions, and intelligence and their relation to happiness and success.  A child who has been provided with significant social and emotional learning will find that their emotional intelligence (or EQ) is strengthened, giving a child a big advantage in their personal and professional lives according to Robin Stern, Ph.D., writing for the NYU Child Study Center.  Emotional intelligence is not a new concept but only recently have researchers studied social and emotional learning, the process by which one aquires a higher EQ.  Studies show that EQ is the best predictor of a child’s future achievement.  It is a better predictor of success than IQ and technical skills combined.  Daniel Goleman, the leading expert in this field, wrote a landmark book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ, in 1995 which I highly recommend.  His research indicates that “IQ is only a minor predictor of success in life, while emotional and social skills are far better predictors of success and well-being than academic intelligence.”  I am afraid many of us as parents, educators, administrators, and community leaders neglect or are simply unaware of these important findings.  I want to do my part in this community by teaching, training, and equipping kids and teens with these important emotional and social skills Goleman writes about.  Let’s all do a re-boot and focus on what matters most rather than being sucked into the ever-increasing competition of academics where only grades and academic intelligence matter.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that “risky” teen behaviors have reached record lows.  The CDC surveyed 14,000 Ninth to 12th-graders which it does every two years since 1991.  In 2007 smoking tobacco or marijuana, not wearing seat belts, and being sexually active neared or reached record lows.  The numbers were especially encouraging when it comes to sex. For black adolescents the percentage who’d ever had sex dropped from 82% in 1991 to 66% in 2007.  For white teenagers the percentage dropped from 50% in 1991 to 44% in 2007.  For Hispanics the drop was one percentage point from 53% to 52%.  While we consistently get bombarded with all the bad news about adolescence its encouraging to note that many parents, schools, and assorted agencies are making a difference. 

I plan to do a lot more dancing before the clock strikes midnight!  Great song from my favorite singer/songwriter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLYxtuC0oRk

One of the most damaging experiences of adolescence is what psychologists term relational victimization or simply ‘social bullying’.  While most schools profess to have a zero tolerance policy toward physical bullying many are failing to address social bullying.  Granted this type of bullying is considerably more difficult to pinpoint and detect.  With the explosion of technology, high-tech gadgets, instant messaging, text messaging, and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook bullying has evolved into an almost entirely different phenomena than did even a generation ago.  Social Bullying rather than threatening a child with physical violence is intended to target a child’s social status or relationships by shunning them, excluding them from social activities or spreading rumors about them.  In a recently published research study a link between social bullying and clincial anxiety and depression in young adulthood was discovered.  So rather than considering these events of adolescence as normal rites of passage it is important for all of us to recognize that children and teens carry these experiences with them into adulthood.  Right now there are few intervention or prevention programs established to address this so it is up to all of us to recognize this serious problem and prevent it from happening to the children and teens in our lives.

Rumored to be more widely prescribed in Europe than Prozac, SAMe is a dietary supplement marketed for improving mood, relieving arthritis and even helping some types of liver disease.  S-Adenosyl-L-Methionine occurs naturally in the body.  It is made from the amino acid, methionine, and is believed to be involved in many important biochemical processes in the body.  Scientists say its an antioxidant, an anti-inflammatory and even helps in the production of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.  A review published in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found evidence that supported the use of SAMe for depression, arthritis, and liver disease.  Evidently there are several other smaller published studies that have also provided evidence for SAMe.  In fact, a 30-patient study, from Harvard Medical School, found SAMe helped some severely depressed patients who did not respond to traditional medications.  I have observed SAMe to be effective in improving mood and milder cases of depression in several adults that I have recommended it to.  Some people continue to have mental roadblocks or feel a stigma about using prescription anti-depressants.  For those folks and for those looking for a ‘natural’ supplement to improve mood this could be an effective alternative.  SAMe can be purchased at most local drugstores but can be somewhat expensive and not generally covered by insurance. 

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow, but in disbelief.

I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.

Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling
rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education – all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations – what they taught me, was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay.

No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent, this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.

Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been en shrined in the ‘Remember-When-Mom-Did’ Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language – mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came
barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?” (She insisted I include that here.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what w e ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed.
I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

Wonderful, interesting, fascinating kids yet they struggle mightily to connect successfully with others (especially peers).  Usually perceived as odd or peculiar yet brilliant!  It’s at the mild end of what we call the Autistic Spectrum.  I love to work with these children.  Great story in the Dallas Morning News. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/jfloyd/stories/122507dnmetfloyd.4a44278a.html
These children do not possess strong social skills but are unusually creative, intelligent, and gifted.  Asperger’s kids in my practice have trouble with what I call emotional and social reciprocity.  They do not possess the innate drive to connect intimately with others that one might expect.  Developing friendships or relationships is not a priority so motivating them to work on their social and interpersonal skills can be unusually difficult.  However, the earlier a parent can seek a diagnosis and intervene their overall prognosis and social success is exponentially better!  Thankfully, Asperger’s Syndrome has received a great deal more attention over the past several years and school districts and health providers have done a better job of identifying at risk youngsters.  I am amazed at the progress these kids have made in counseling in developing these important life skills.  Their intellect and single-minded determination can be a big plus once they are convinced of the value of cultivating strong emotional and social intelligence. Check out a great online resource that’s been around since 1996. http://www.aspergers.com/