The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting

The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting

From TIME CNN – Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

By Nancy Gibbs

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old’s “pencil-holding deficiency,” hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — “helicopter parents,” teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and “Kinderkords” (also known as leashes; they allow “three full feet of freedom for both you and your child”) and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don’t come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

We were so obsessed with our kids’ success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it’s never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as “crispies,” who arrived at college already burned out, and “teacups,” who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress. (See pictures of the college dorm’s evolution.)

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they’ll fly higher. We’re often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids’ extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people’s relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they’d gotten worse. “This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs,” says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carousing, the lights go on, and you realize you’re a mess. “That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there’s another way.” (See the 25 best back-to-school gadgets.)

How We Got Here
Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur’s mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label “Remove Child Before Folding.” Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to ‘97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child’s Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby’s Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing “Hi, Mom!” webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating “parent packs” for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.

Once obsessing about kids’ safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who to this day, when you Google “America’s Worst Mom,” fills the first few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global firestorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. (“Malta! An island!” she marvels. “Who’s stalking the kids there? Pirates?”) Skenazy decided to fight back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, “hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers.”

Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons’ school once held a pre-field-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being “at least part Sikorsky,” hiring a football coach for a son’s birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, “Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?” (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

From that day and the food fight that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, “10 is the new 2. We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It’s the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with “How can you let him go to the store alone?,” she suggests countering with “How can you let him visit your relatives?” (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) “I’m not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn’t be prepared,” she says. “But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources.” Besides, she says with a smile, “a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It’s nowhere you’d want to be.” (See pictures of eighth-graders being recruited for college basketball.)

Dispatches from the Front Lines
Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. “Our whole culture,” says Contey, 38, “is geared around ‘Is your kid making the benchmarks?’ There’s this fear of ‘Is my kid’s head the right size?’ People think there’s some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren’t living up to and that it’s hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that.”

The parents seem relieved to hear it. Matt, a textbook editor, reports that he and his wife quit a book club because it caused too much stress on book-club nights, and stopped fussing about how the house looks, which brings nods all around the room: let go of perfectionism in all its tyranny. Margaret, a publishing executive, tells her own near-miss story of how she stepped back from the brink of insanity. On her son’s fourth birthday, she says, “I’m like ‘Oh, my God, he’s eligible for Suzuki!’ I literally got on the phone and called 12 Suzuki teachers,” she says, before realizing the nightmare she was creating for herself and her child. Shutting down your inner helicopter isn’t easy. “This is not a shift in perspective that occurs overnight,” Matt admits after class. “And it’s not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better.”

Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader’s race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he’s headed off to college.

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to marry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously. Helicopter parents can be found across all income levels, all races and ethnicities, says Patricia Somers of the University of Texas at Austin, who spent more than a year studying the species at the college level. “There are even helicopter grandparents,” she notes, who turn up with their elementary-school grandchildren for college-information sessions aimed at juniors and seniors. (See pictures of Barack Obama’s college years.)

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ZIP codes where every Volvo wagon just has to have a University of Chicago sticker on it. “I’m having exactly the same conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, counselors, whether I’m in Wichita or northern Canada or South America,” says Honoré. His own revelation came while listening to the feedback about his son in kindergarten. It was fine, but nothing stellar — until he got to the art room and the teacher began raving about how creative his son was, pointing out his sketches that she’d displayed as models for other students. Then, Honoré recalls, “she dropped the G-bomb: ‘He’s a gifted artist,’ she told us, and it was one of those moments when you don’t hear anything else. I just saw the word gifted in neon with my son’s name …” So he hurried home and Googled the names of art tutors and eagerly told his son all about the special person who would help him draw even better. “He looks at me like I’m from outer space,” Honoré says. “‘I just wanna draw,’ he tells me. ‘Why do grownups have to take over everything?’ “

“That was a searing epiphany,” Honoré concludes. “I didn’t like what I saw.” He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. “With children,” he argues, “they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise … and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It’s a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by.” (See pictures of college mascots.)

Other studies reinforce the importance of play as an essential protein in a child’s emotional diet; were it not, argue some scientists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, flexibility, resilience — even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his office — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they’d taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants’ play backgrounds into interviews. “If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being” in life, Brown has argued, “play is as fundamental as any other aspect.” The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: “For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression.” Not to mention the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play.

Remember, Mistakes Are Good
Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It’s a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents’ engagement in a child’s education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones. The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing a line.

Every teacher can tell the story of a student who needed to fail in order to be reassured that the world wouldn’t come to an end. Yet teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students’ homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a “no rescue” policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter’s coordinated outfit. “I’m lucky — I deal with intelligent parents here,” Faucher says. “But you saw very intelligent parents doing very stupid things. It was almost like a virus. The parents knew that was not what they intended to do, but they couldn’t help themselves.” A guidance counselor at a Washington prep school urges parents to find a mentor of a certain disposition. “Make friends with parents,” she advises, “who don’t think their kids are perfect.” Or with parents who are willing to exert some peer pressure of their own: when schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that’s a trade-off worth making.

Read “To Help the Kids, Parents Go Back to School.”

See pictures of teens and how they would vote.

A certain amount of hovering is understandable when it comes to young children, but many educators are concerned when it persists through middle school and high school. Some teachers talk of “Stealth Fighter Parents,” who no longer hover constantly but can be counted on for a surgical strike just when the high school musical is being cast or the starting lineup chosen. And senior year is the witching hour: “I think for a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent,” observes Madeleine Rhyneer, dean of students at Willamette University in Oregon. Many colleges have had to invent a “director of parent programs” to run regional groups so moms and dads can meet fellow college parents or attend special classes where they can learn all the school cheers. The Ithaca College website offers a checklist of advice: “Visit (but not too often)”; “Communicate (but not too often)”; “Don’t worry (too much)”; “Expect change”; “Trust them.”

Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent the youngest of her three daughters to college. “They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they’re requesting classes. That’s their job.” She’s come to appreciate the please-back-off vibe she’s encountered. “I hope that we’re getting away from the helicopter parenting,” Meyer says. “Our philosophy is ‘Give ‘em the morals, give ‘em the right start, but you’ve got to let them go.’ They deserve to live their own lives.” (See the 10 best iPhone apps for dads.)

What You Can Do
Among the most powerful weapons in the war against the helicopter brigade is the explosion of websites where parents can confide, confess and affirm their sense that lowering expectations is not the same as letting your children down. So you gave up trying to keep your 2-year-old from eating the dog’s food? You banged your son’s head on the doorway while giving him a piggyback ride? Your daughter hates school and is so scared of failure she won’t even try to ride a bike? “I just want to throw in the towel and give up on her,” one mom posts on Truuconfessions.com. “This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for.” Honestbaby.com sells baby T-shirts that say “I’ll walk when I’m good and ready.” Given how many books and websites drove a generation of parents mad with anxiety, a certain balance is restored to the universe when it becomes conventional for people to brag about what bad parents they are.

The revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads. “People feel there’s somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we’ll find it, and all will be O.K.,” Honoré observes. “Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so different, every family is different? Parents need to block out the sound and fury from the media and other parents, find that formula that fits your family best.”

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids’ stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn’t know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. “We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them,” Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. “When you cut the toys and clothes back … the kids really like it.” He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child’s imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys. (See how to plan for retirement at any age.)

Finally, there is the gift of humility, which parents need to offer one another. We can fuss and fret and shuttle and shelter, but in the end, what we do may not matter as much as we think. Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. “Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store,” they argued in USA Today. “By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it’s too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children.”

If you embrace this rather humbling reality, it will be easier to follow the advice D.H. Lawrence offered back in 1918: “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.”

Of course, that was easy for him to say. He had no kids.

— With reporting by Karen Ball / Kansas City, Mo.; Alexandra Silver / New York City; and Elizabeth Dias and Sophia Yan / Washington

Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395,00.html

IF you are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a free trial session. Visit her websites:  www.themommyblues.com or www.kimarichardson.com orEmail:KimARichardson@aol.com to contact her.

This article appeared on Time CNN on Nov 20, 2009. It has been reposted by Kim Richardson, Certified Professional Mother’s Coach and  experienced Clinical Psychologist and Counselor. She offers life coaching to Mothers by telephone and Skype, and training, workshops and seminars to mental health professionals and consultants who wish to add coaching to their professional repertoire.

30 holiday cookie recipes in one!

It’s not like me at all to get excited over  baking or cooking. I am incredibly fortunate (as are my children) to be married to someone who loves cooking. In fact, truth be told, preparing food is the thing that I least like doing in the world. But this caught my eye and I thought I would put it on the blog!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the USA. I, for one, am grateful for my inkling of interest in a food recipe. And I’m going to bake them with my young children and take them to my step-daughter’s Thanksgiving – for her adorable children.

Enjoy!!! I know your children will!
(PS. We need a gluten free option here too! Anyone?)

30 cookie recipes all in one

A Month of Cookies

One basic cookies dough makes the building blocks for 30 different kinds of cookies — just in time for the holidays. Grab the kids and get rolling.

by Sandy Gluck / Photo by Getty RF

Inspired to bake? Make cookies for a cause. Visit glad.com/gladtogive to see how some lovin’ from your oven can help out Cookies for Kids’ Cancer.

Basic Cookie Dough
Makes about 3 1/2 dozen cookies

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1-cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.

2. With the mixer on low speed, beat in the flour mixture until just combined. Tear off 2 sheets of waxed paper, each about 12-inches. Spoon half the dough lengthwise down the center of each sheet of paper forming a strip about 8 inches long.  With your hands, roll each strip into a log about 2 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. Wrap the logs up in the paper.

3. Freeze several hours until firm or freeze up to 3 months

4. To bake: preheat oven to 400. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Unwrap frozen dough and with a sharp knife, slice 1/4-inch thick. Bake until golden around the edges, rotating baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back. With a wide, thin metal spatula, remove from baking sheets to wire rack to cool completely.

1. Ginger Cookies: Add 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger and 1/8 teaspoon dry mustard powder to flour mixture. Beat 2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger in to mixture when adding egg.

2. Peanut Cookies: Grind enough peanuts to make 1/3 cup finely ground. Reduce flour to 1 1/3 cups and stir ground peanuts into remaining flour mixture. Add 2 tablespoons finely chopped peanuts when adding egg.

3. Espresso-Almond Cookies: Add 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder to flour mixture. Reduce sugar to 2/3 cup and add 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar. Add 1/8 teaspoon almond extract when adding vanilla. Fold in 1/3 cup sliced almonds after adding flour.

4. Molasses Cookies: Increase flour to 1 3/4 cups, swap in 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar for 1/4 cup granulated, and add 3 tablespoons molasses when beating butter and sugar.

5. Citrus Cookies: Beat 2 tablespoons grated lemon, lime or a combo into mixture when adding egg.

6. Malted Milk Cookies: Add 2 tablespoons malted milk powder to flour mixture. Add 1/4 cup crushed malted milk balls when adding egg.

7. Cornmeal-Currant Cookies: Replace 1/3 cup of flour with 1/3 cup finely ground cornmeal. Stir 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest and 1/3 cup currants into mixture after adding flour.

8. Red-Hot Cookies: Finely crush 1/3 cup of red-hot candies and fold in when adding flour mixture.

9. Spice Cookies: Add 1 teaspoon ground cardamom, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/8 teaspoon allspice to flour mixture.

10. Peanut Butter Chips: Reduce butter to 6 tablespoons. Add 2 tablespoons peanut butter. Fold in 3 tablespoons peanut butter chips when adding flour mixture.

11. Brown Butter: Melt butter over low heat until lightly browned and fragrant (do this in a pan that isn’t dark so you can see the change in color). Chill butter until firm then proceed with recipe as directed.

12. Toasted Coconut: Toast 1 cup of angel-flake coconut (the sweetened kind you get in the supermarket in bags) until golden brown. Grind a little more than half to get 1/3 cup ground and replace 1/3 cup of the flour with the ground coconut. Fold the remaining coconut in when adding the egg.

13. Chocolate-Chile Cookies: Remove 3 tablespoons of flour and replace with 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Add 3/4 teaspoon ancho or chipotle chile powder, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon to flour mixture.

14. Granola Cookies: Coarsely shop 1/2 cup of your favorite granola and stir in when adding flour mixture.

15. Orange-Cranberry: Fold 1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest and 1/4 cup finely chopped dried cranberries into dough after adding flour mixture.

16. Black Forest: Beat 2 ounces of melted and cooled semisweet chocolate into dough after adding egg. Fold in ¼ cup finely chopped dried cherries after adding flour mixture.

17. White and Dark Chocolate: Remove 3 tablespoons of flour and replace with 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Reduce granulated sugar to 3/4 cup and add 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar. Fold in 1/3 cup chopped white chocolate after adding flour.

18. Double Chocolate: Remove 3 tablespoons of flour and replace with 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder. Fold in 1/3-cup mini chocolate chips after folding in flour.

19. Rocky Road: Beat 1/3-cup marshmallow fluff when beating butter and sugar. Increase vanilla to 1 teaspoon. Fold in 3 tablespoons mini chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons finely chopped pecans after folding in flour.

20. Carrot Cookies: Beat 1/2 cup of finely grated carrot into the mixture when adding egg. Swap in 1/3 cup maple sugar for 1/3 cup of regular sugar.

21. Pine Nut Cookies: Fold 1/4 cup of pine nuts into dough after adding flour mixture. Add 1/8 teaspoon almond extract along with vanilla.

22. Crispy Rice Cookies: Stir 2/3 cup of crisp puffed rice cereal into mixture when beating in flour mixture.

23. Sesame Cookies: Beat 2 teaspoons dark sesame oil and 3 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds into mixture when adding egg.

24. Apricot-Anise Cookies: Fold in 1 1/2 teaspoons anise seed and 1/4 cup finely chopped dried apricots after adding flour.

25. Cashew Cookies: Reduce butter to 6 tablespoons and add 2 tablespoons cashew butter. Add 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg to flour mixture. Fold in 1/3 cup finely chopped salted cashews after adding flour.

26. Sunflower Seed Cookies: Reduce butter to 6 tablespoons and add 2 tablespoons sunflower seed butter. Fold 2 tablespoons toasted hulled sunflower seeds and 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest to mixture after adding flour mixture.

27. Whole-Wheat Cinnamon Sugar Cookies: Replace 2/3 cup of flour with 2/3-cup whole-wheat pastry flour. Add 1-teaspoon ground cinnamon to flour mixture. Add 2 tablespoons brown sugar to sugar and butter mixture.

28. Toasted Oatmeal Cookies: Toast 1 1/2 cups rolled or quick cooking oats until fragrant and golden brown. Grind 1 cup of the oats and once ground measure and substitute for an equal amount of flour. Reduce sugar to 3/4 cup and add 1/4 cup light brown sugar. Fold remaining 1/2 cup oats into dough after adding flour.

29. Butterscotch Cookies: Reduce sugar to 1/2 cup and add 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar. Fold in 1/2 cup butterscotch morsels after adding flour.

30. Tropical Cookies: Fold 1/3 cup finely chopped dried pineapple, 1/4 cup finely chopped dried banana chips, and 2 teaspoons grated lime zest after adding flour.

Sandy Gluck hosts Martha Stewart Radio’s Everyday Food weekdays at 11 a.m. EST on on Sirius XM.

IF you are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a free trial session. Visit her websites:  www.themommyblues.com or www.kimarichardson.com or Email:KimARichardson@aol.com t o contact her.

This blog entry  was posted by Kim Richardson, Certified Professional Mother’s Coach and  experienced Clinical Psychologist and Counselor. She offers life coaching to Mothers by telephone and Skype, and training, workshops and seminars to mental health professionals and consultants who wish to add coaching to their professional repertoire.

What exactly is a Mother’s Coach?

By now most people have heard of life coaching. In fact, it seems that every other person has become a Life Coach. Life Coaches usually specialize in an area of life coaching – a niche. My niche is coaching mothers. I chose this area because, as a psychotherapist, my specialty is working with pregnancy, fertility, adoption, mothering (parenting) and postpartum issues.

Perhaps you are reading this blog because at some point you may have wondered what it’s like to have your own mother’s coach. What exactly is a mother’s coach, you may have asked yourself?

In this article, I am going to show you how useful and effective a mother’s coach can be by describing a scenario and showing you how it would be handled by a coach vs. a consultant, a mentor or a counselor / psychotherapist.

Can a Mother's Coach help me get my baby to sleep? "Yes!" says Kim Richardson founder of www.TheMommyBlues.com

SCENARIO : Kathy is a first-time mom who is having trouble getting her baby to fall asleep. She is exhausted from nursing him to sleep but cannot stand to put him down and listen to him crying, as she leaves the room.

Her first call for help is to a baby sleep consultant who assesses the situation and advises Kathy to use a technique in which she is to put the baby down and leave the room for progressively longer periods. The consultant reassures her that the baby will not suffer from this, and that he should be falling asleep easily after 3-7 nights.

Kathy tries this technique but is unable to follow through. Her baby’s cries upset her to the point of tears and she is unable to tolerate any crying.  Even though the baby may not be suffering, Kathy is!

Next Kathy talks to her psychotherapist.  Together they explore her feelings. She describes terrible guilt when he cries and says that she feels as if she is abandoning him when she does not respond to his cries. Talking about her feelings reminds her of the time her mother was hospitalized for 7 weeks when Kathy was 5 years old. She recalls crying herself to sleep at night, and missing her mother. She feared that her mother was gone forever. Kathy realizes that her son’s crying evokes this painful memory that was, until now, forgotten. This is a helpful insight for Kathy, though it does not immediately change her actions with her son.

A few days later, still exhausted, she makes a call to her birth instructor, Mary. A woman in her 40s with 5 children in adolescence and older, To Kathy, Mary appears to know everything there is to know about birth, babies and parenting. Mary seems to be the epitome of the kind of mother Kathy would like to become – calm, wise and clear about her ideas. She arranges for Mary to visit her the next week.

Kathy is excited to show Mary her baby and hopefully talk about her difficulties with sleep. She feels sure that wonderful Mary, with all her knowledge and experience can help her. Without thinking about it, Kathy has reached out to someone from whom she wants to learn about mothering, someone who will function as a mentor to her.

The following day, surfing the web, still looking for sleep solutions, Kathy stumbles upon the site of a Life Coach who specializes in working with mothers – a Mother’s Coach. The coach offers a free trial session and Kathy decides to give her a call and set up a session.

During this trial session the coach invites Kathy to talk about an important issue she would like to solve. Kathy says she would like to be able to get her son to fall asleep without having to nurse or rock him for 1-3 hours. The coach asks Kathy what she has tried so far and how it has worked for her. Kathy describes the last few months and the coach listens without interruption. After clarifying a few things and asking some more questions which get Kathy to really think deeply about her values, her strengths and her vision for herself as a mother, the coach asks Kathy what she feels would be the right thing for her and her son.

Kathy is quiet for a moment, and then reaching from somewhere inside her, she realizes very clearly what it is that she wants to do.
“I am prepared to decrease the time I spend nursing him to sleep, but I do not want to leave the room if he is crying for me, she says. It might work for others, but it’s just not for me. I can’t do it. I realize why I cannot from my psychotherapy, and maybe I could do this one day, but not now. Not with this baby. I am clear about that.  So, perhaps, what I will do is..”

In the following sessions, the Mother’s Coach and Kathy put together a plan of action and some supportive structures that will help Kathy towards her goal of getting her son to sleep more easily. As they work together, they discover other areas in Kathy’s life that she is neglecting and would like to work on changing. They work as a team, helping Kathy fulfill her potential in all the different areas of her life.

Their work together does not interfere with Kathy’s work with her psychotherapist. Unlike psychotherapy, coaching is practical, future-looking, goal-based, and action-oriented.

As a result she feels less helpless and chaotic in her mothering and can set time aside for other areas that are important to her, such as friendships, her health and her marriage. She has a plan for going back to work and feels calmer and clearer about it.

IF you are curious about how a Mother’s Coach can enhance your life in all areas, please contact Kim Richardson to schedule a free trial session. Visit her websites:  www.themommyblues.com or www.kimarichardson.com or Email:KimARichardson@aol.com to contact her.

This post was written by Kim Richardson, Certified Professional Mother’s Coach and  experienced Clinical Psychologist and Counselor. She offers life coaching to Mothers by telephone and Skype, and training, workshops and seminars to mental health professionals and consultants who wish to add coaching to their professional repertoire.

Telemedicine? the way of the future?

Psychotherapists, counselors and psychoanalysts have used the telephone for psychotherapy treatment for many years. Talk therapy is certainly possible and effective using the telephone and made even more effective with the lowered costs of video equipment and Skype.

In my counseling practice I have offered telephone therapy to clients who move away from my location. And in most coaching practices in the USA, the use of the telephone is standard (less so in Australia and the Netherlands).

Video skype is a great option for new clients that I cannot see face-to-face. I have a colleague who uses Skype for couples therapy. On my website, clients can download a collection of writings about the effectiveness of telephone treatment

Here is a report on telemedicine and the increasing use of the internet in the medical field:

Healthcare reform needs better choices: report

Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:16pm EDT

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

a WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Telemedicine, workplace clinics and finding ways to help people stay healthier may be more important for reforming the U.S. healthcare system than insuring everyone, according to a report to be released on Tuesday.

Incentives will be needed to encourage people to change their ways before they develop heart disease, diabetes and other so-called lifestyle diseases that now eat up so many medical resources, consultant Pricewaterhouse Coopers said in the report.

“Cranking up supply to increase access is likely not the answer. The United States now spends more than any nation on healthcare and has a record number of clinicians in the workforce,” the company said in a statement.

“Instead, solutions will lie in new models of care and in using technology, incentives and behavior change to unclog the jammed access points.”

Congress is working on legislation that would set up a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, provide coverage to many of the 46 million uninsured and try to stem runaway medical costs.

President Barack Obama, trying to rally support for reform efforts, said on Monday lawmakers must overcome their differences and enact reform now because spiraling healthcare costs were weighing on American families.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute team conducted 37 in-depth interviews with officials at healthcare providers, the Veterans’ Administration, community health centers and other groups, read other studies and commissioned an online survey in April of 1,000 consumers.

They found half of those surveyed would be likely to seek healthcare online. “In Hawaii, more than 1,000 health plan members have engaged in an online consultation with physicians since the service was launched in 2009,” the report reads.

The Veterans Health Administration has said it has reduced use of its system by 30 percent over six years using telemedicine — remote consultation, diagnosis and sometimes even treatment using video or online links.

HEALTHCARE AT WORK

“Ten percent of employers surveyed by PwC in 2009 said that they’re providing worksite clinics, up from 1 percent in 2008,” the report adds. “Of consumers surveyed by PwC, 37 percent said they’d be likely to use a worksite clinic, and 36 percent said they’d be likely to use a retail clinic.”

One frequently cited problem is the overuse of expensive emergency departments. Half of those surveyed said they had visited an emergency room for a need other than an emergency during the last 12 months. “Medicaid patients use hospital emergency departments twice as much as the uninsured,” the report reads.

The use of emergency departments rises with the ratio of people with insurance. States with the most people lacking health insurance had lower rates of emergency department use — a finding that challenges the common wisdom that uninsured people and illegal immigrants are clogging hospital emergency rooms.

Hospitals often encourage this behavior, the report found. “Many hospitals are marketing and expanding their EDs as a way to increase admissions,” the report reads. “About one-third of patients who go to EDs were admitted for an inpatient stay.”

“It’s clear that access to insurance coverage does not translate into access to care,” Dr. David Chin, leader of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute said in a statement.

The study also said people will have to be encouraged to lose weight, eat healthier foods and exercise more — behaviors linked to diabetes, heart disease and fully one-third of all cancers.

Email Marketing Dos and Don’ts

As a mother with three young children, I find working as a coach and therapist to be a real gift. I can be at home when my children are home and I can schedule my working hours around their school hours. I am so grateful not having a company or boss dictate my working hours. Of course, this comes with many disadvantages too. I do not get any benefits, or paid holidays. And I have to do all my own marketing (greatly helped by Mike Litman of Total Coach).

I am posting this helpful newsletter from Paul Gillin, social media expert, about email marketing:

Timely Advice and Strategy
For Business Marketers and Executives

by Paul Gillin, October 8, 2009

As I write this essay, the founder of Email Data Source is telling the audience at the Inbound Marketing Summit, that email marketing has a return on investment of 44:1. I believe that, and Bill McCloskey’s words remind me that it’s been a while since I sang the praises of this venerable but highly useful marketing tool.

E-mail should be central to your online marketing plan.  It’s how you turn casual passersby into steady customers. It gives you permission on a regular basis to contact your constituents. It’s your best tool for driving website traffic and business results.

As a practitioner of e-mail marketing going back nearly a decade, I’ve learned a few simple do’s and don’ts. Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of rules. The most important ones are to be useful and to respect the access that your subscribers have granted you.

Do give visitors to your websites every chance to subscribe to your e-mails. Put a signup form on every page. If you can manage it, squeeze a promo into your e-mail signature. Remember, a Web contact is casual but an e-mail subscription is a relationship.

Do give your subscribers special treatment. Offer them exclusive offers and discounts. Some software companies now give newsletter publishers free promotional licenses to products that are one release out of date. Look for these offers and ask if you can adapt them for your subscribers.

Do use an e-mail service provider. I use iContact, but there are many others, including Constant Contact,Benchmark Email and Lyris. There are even free options. For a nominal cost, you’ll get reporting, tracking and list management you’d never be able to duplicate yourself.

Don’t deceive your subscribers. If you tell them they’re signing up for a newsletter, don’t send them promotional messages. If you say you won’t contact them more than once a month, then don’t do that. Monitor your unsubscribes. If a lot of people are leaving, they’re trying to tell you something.

Do provide a Web version of your newsletter. Mine is here. This makes it easy for people to share your content on social bookmarking sites, Twitter and Facebook. It also makes you discoverable by search engines.  Finally, it’s a way for people to respond to you.

Which reminds me: do invite response to that Web version you just created. Email is boring when it’s one way. Start a discussion.

Do sweat the subject line. Make it provocative or intriguing. However, don’t mislead people into opening the newsletter if you can’t deliver the goods.

Do keep messages brief and varied. Provide several “points of entry” to engage your audience’s different interests. Have fun. The most well-read item in my newsletter is the short “Just for Fun” blurb at the end. Do you think I don’t know that?

Do provide alternative delivery in text format. All service providers support this option. Not all subscribers prefer HTML and they shouldn’t have it forced on them.

Don’t add subscribers without their permission. There’s nothing wrong with renting an opt-in list, but scraping addresses off websites or borrowing other people’s lists can get you in legal trouble.

Don’t underestimate the value of e-mail marketing. This newsletter consumes three to four hours of my time every week. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it was important.

To subscribe to Paul Gillin’s newsletter, go to www.gillin.com

3 Steps to understanding and managing angry feelings

I think one of the biggest challenges we face as mothers is managing feelings of anger.

These feelings can range from mild irritation and frustration through crankiness and sarcasm to outright rage and snapping into violence. Of course violence can range from smacking the table hard with the fist and yelling something that would go “beep” on TV to losing all control and shaking a baby.

Mothering young children is so stressful and requires so much self-control. Some days it feels manageable and some days it feels downright impossible.

Here is one little tip that can make a huge difference.

1. Describe your anger!

How do you know you are angry? Often we blurt out horrid things before we even realize we are angry.

Write down your levels of anger from 1 – 5. 1 is your mildest manifestation of anger and 5 is your personal worst expression of anger – your most destructive acting out of your anger.

Here are some examples of different levels: feeling completely overwhelmed and frustrated by dropping things, being aggressive in traffic, storming out of the room / house, yelling, being sarcastic and mean, pinching, smacking, pushing, and being rough.

The plan is to name and identify your anger when it’s at the 1 or 2 levels. Before you do and say things that you regret.

2. Identify what you need!

Usually we feel frustration and anger because we are not getting something we need. It might be more sleep, more time alone, more nutritious food, fresh air, a walk, a good cry with a friend, or simply telling one’s partner what is bothering you.

Think deeply about what it is you need. Name it and acknowledge it. Be in touch with yourself.

Create the awareness that you have needs that are valid and that YOU need to be responsible for getting them met by voicing them clearly.

The important people in your life are not mind readers! You alone are responsible for identifying what you need and asking for it (from yourself or someone else).

3. Get what you need or work at shifting your perspective.

Either go and get what you need as soon as you can, or make a plan to get what you need at some point.

If what you need is not possible to obtain (such a more money, a bigger house, hired help etc), then do all you can to shift your perspective.

It is helpful to distinguish between the things you do have control over and those you don’t. Very often, when we are angry, it is because we are focusing on trying to control the things we do not have control over and ignoring the things we do have control over. It is true that we have some control over our perspective, or attitude.

And even around the things we feel out of control over, we have some control.
If you feel like a single parent because your partner travels so much, then acknowledge that you have no control over his or her traveling, but you can increase your feeling of being part of a community of mothers. Think of the things you can do to change that, rather than dwelling on the bitterness you feel about being alone much of the time.

Above all, be kind to yourself and forgive yourself for slipping out of awareness and being angry. Just learn from it and resolve to improve your management of your own anger!

Kim Richardson is an experienced Postpartum Depression Counselor, Certified Professional Coach, and psychotherapist. She works by telephone and skype – counseling, coaching and supporting mothers who are struggling. Visit:www.themommyblues.com or Email: Kim@TheMommyBlues.com to contact her.

More thoughts about swine flu

I have received Dr. Mercola’s weely ezine for about 8 or more years now. I was also a patient of his and was completely healed from graves disease and graves eye disease by following a whole concoction of his various treatment protocols.  I did not radiate my thyroid and nor do I take medication for it. My graves is in remission.  Secondly, his suggestion to add primrose oil to my daughter’s diet whenever she broke out in eczema has worked every time and now, at 8, she rarely has it. I share this only as background for why I value his ezine, and will usually consider his suggestions carefully.

Like many parents, I am worried about swine flu, but I am also worried about the safety of the vaccine.

Here is Mercola’s opinion and health advice.

Do NOT Let Your Child Get Flu Vaccine — 9 Reasons Why

Posted by: Dr. Mercola

October 06 2009 | 66,219 views (by 10am october 6, 2009)

This year it is more important that you protect your children and loved ones from the flu vaccines than influenza itself. This article on Lew Rockwell discusses how:

1. The swine flu is simply another flu. It is not unusually deadly.
2. This is the first time both seasonal and pandemic flu vaccines will be administered. Both seasonal flu and swine flu vaccines will require two inoculations. This is because single inoculations have failed to produce sufficient antibodies. This is an admission that prior flu vaccines were virtually useless. Can you trust them this time?
3. Adjuvants are added to vaccines to boost production of antibodies but may trigger autoimmune reactions. Some adjuvants are mercury (thimerosal), aluminum and squalene. Why would you sign a consent form for your children to be injected with mercury, which is even more brain-toxic than lead?
4. This is the first year mock vaccines have been used to gain FDA approval. The vaccines that have been tested are not the same vaccines your children will be given.
5. Over-vaccination is a common practice now in America. American children are subjected to 29 vaccines by the age of two. Meanwhile, veterinarians have backed off of repeat vaccination in dogs because of observed side effects.
6. Modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among Amish children who go unvaccinated.
7. Researchers are warning that over-use of the flu vaccine and anti-flu drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza can apply genetic pressure on flu viruses and then they are more likely to mutate into a more deadly strain.
8. Most seasonal influenza A (H1N1) virus strains tested from the United States and other countries are now resistant to Tamiflu (oseltamivir). Tamiflu has become a nearly worthless drug against seasonal flu.
9. Public health officials are irresponsible in their omission of any ways to strengthen immunity against the flu. No options outside of problematic vaccines and anti-flu drugs are offered, despite the fact there is strong evidence that vitamins C and D activate the immune system and the trace mineral selenium prevents the worst form of the disease.

For even more reasons, please review the full article on LewRockwell.com.

Sources:

LewRockwell.com September 16, 2009

Living Wisdom E-Newsletter, September 2009

New York Times September 18, 2009

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

According to a recent New York Times article, more than three million doses of swine flu vaccine will be available in the U.S. by this week.  I just returned from the 4th International Vaccine Conference with NVIC in Washington D.C. this past weekend and many people there told me that they were already administering the vaccine in their state. I hope to provide important updates from that conference in the upcoming weeks, as there were some outstanding speakers.

Rest assured that there’s plenty of confusion and misdirection when it comes to flu vaccinations this year. And, as you can tell from the list above, you have every reason to question the validity of the information you’re given by government health authorities about the swine flu vaccine.

Fortunately, even conventional doctors and infectious disease experts are starting to speak out and take a stand against the current recommendations. In the video above, infectious disease expert Dr. Kent Holtorf goes on the record stating that neither he nor his children will take the swine flu shot, because the health risks are simply too high.

Confusion and Irrational Conclusions Reign

First of all, nearly all of the swine flu vaccines that will be made available in October will be a nasal spray type that contains live virus’, which is not recommended for pregnant women, people over 50, or those with asthma, heart disease or several other health problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The nasal spray causes a much greater immune reaction, and since it contains live virus’ they may multiply too quickly if your immune system is already compromised.

The injectable vaccine will supposedly contain only killed and fragmented virus components, but in order to “make it more effective” it also contains adjuvants; ingredients designed to cause a greater immune reaction by lowering your immune function.

Some of these adjuvants, such as thimerosal and squalene, have already been shown to carry considerable health risks.

While I’m glad the CDC offers some warning about the FluMist vaccine, what about the fact that none of the coming vaccines have undergone any form of safety testing? Some media reports have stated vaccines will be approved following a five-day safety review. What safety data could possibly be gleaned in a matter of five days?

And what about the possibility that people who have received seasonal flu vaccines may be twice as susceptible to contracting the swine flu?

Health officials everywhere are now recommending each man, woman and child get as many as four flu shots this season; two doses for the swine flu, and one or two doses for the seasonal flu, depending on whether you’ve ever had a flu shot before.

Is it really prudent to mass-administer an untested swine flu vaccine along with a seasonal flu vaccine that may increase your chances of contracting the swine flu?

And, last but certainly not least, while the number of swine flu cases is increasing, the severity of the flu is decreasing, with many doctors and health experts stating it’s actually turning out to be a much MILDER version than your average seasonal flu.

So where is the logic in this season’s vaccine campaign?

Evidence-Based Science Swept Under the Rug

The fact of the matter is that there are mountains of peer-reviewed papers demonstrating that the very basis of vaccine theory is wrong — and provably so.

Evidence-based science shows, again and again, that when it comes to preventing infectious diseases, antibodies on their own cannot, and do not, equal immunity.

For example, years of scientific research, assembled by researcher Judy Wilyman, have demonstrated how ineffective the whooping cough vaccination really is, and why it is nothing short of madness to continue to claim that whooping cough vaccination will lead to a decline in this disease.

Another example is the PhD thesis of a researcher from Tasmania named Arlette Mercae. Her thesis is an in-depth look at the way in which assumptions made about vaccine-induced immunity have led to a vaccination policy that is not based in science, ignores research that disagrees with the accepted premise that vaccines induce immunity, and, by pushing ahead with more and more vaccines, may be doing untold damage to the human race.

In a world where science-based evidence supposedly rules the roost, the vaccine industry has managed to turn scientific evidence on its ear and indoctrinated the entire health care system, and the general public, into believing a lie based on flawed assumptions.

It’s time to wake up from our advertisement-induced collective slumber and begin to review the folklore of conventional vaccine recommendations with a more critical eye.

And, we need to do it fast, because even though the swine flu vaccine is still optional, there are disturbing indications that a mandatory vaccination policy is brewing.

As reported in the Living Wisdom newsletter, some of the recent events that point toward the possibility of mandated vaccinations include:

1. The State of Massachusetts had passed legislation that would fine citizens $1,000 a day, or up to 30 days in jail for each day they refuse to take the swine flu vaccine if the swine flu is deemed a public health emergency. (However, that law changed when they allowed a philosophical exemption – so now all they have to do is say they don’t want it.)
2. France may be introducing compulsory vaccination against swine flu after the 28th of September, and secure vaccination facilities are being set up in every region to be used as vaccination centers with no exemptions available.
3. Greece has announced that it is considering the introduction of compulsory vaccination for the swine flu vaccine.

Why Did Baxter Patent Hybrid Flu Vaccine a Year Ahead of Outbreak?

Interestingly, despite the fact that health authorities around the world were “shocked” at the emergence of this never-before-seen hybrid flu strain, Baxter had patented a flu vaccine covering these now infamous strains on August 28, 2008.

Baxter’s patent # US20090060950A1 includes “more than one antigen… such as influenza A and influenza B in particular selected from of one or more of the human H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H1N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes, or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 subtypes.”

As you may recall, the first swine flu case in Mexico didn’t emerge until mid-March, 2009, and the mixture of human-avian-swine viruses was considered to be quite an anomaly and not likely to occur through natural mutation…

Three months later, Austrian investigative journalist Jane Burgermeister filed criminal charges against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing and releasing live bird flu virus’, alleging it was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.

She also filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials, charging them with bioterrorism and attempts to commit genocide.

For the latest updates on her legal action, you can read her personal blog or look at her most recent video.

Reminder: How to Protect Yourself without Dangerous Drugs and Vaccinations

There will always be threats of flu pandemics, real or created, and potentially toxic vaccines will continue to be peddled as the solution until enough people realize there’s a better, safer, saner way.

You can break free of the drug-solution trap right now by following these natural health principles. I have not caught a flu in over two decades, and you can avoid it too, without getting vaccinated, by following these simple guidelines, which will keep your immune system in optimal working order so that you’re far less likely to acquire the infection to begin with.

• Optimize your vitamin D levels. As I’ve previously reported, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding infections of ALL kinds, and vitamin D deficiency is likely the TRUE culprit behind the seasonality of the flu — not the flu virus itself.This is probably the single most important and least expensive action you can take.

  I would STRONGLY urge you to have your vitamin D level monitored to confirm your levels are at a therapeutic level, which is between 50-65 ng/ml. I also recommend using a reliable vitamin D lab like Lab Corp, if you’re in the U.S. Sometime this fall, we hope to launch a vitamin D testing service through Lab Corp that will allow you to have your vitamin D levels checked at your local blood drawing facility, and relatively inexpensively.

  If you are coming down with flu like symptoms and have not been on vitamin D you can take doses of 50,000 units a day for three days to treat the acute infection. Some researchers like Dr. Cannell, believe the dose could even be as high as 1,000 units per pound of body weight for three days.

  However, most of Dr. Cannell’s work was with seasonal and not pandemic flu. If your body has never been exposed to the antigens there is chance that the vitamin D might not work. However the best bet is to maintain healthy levels of vitamin D around 60 ng/ml.

• Avoid sugar and processed foods. Sugar decreases the function of your immune system almost immediately, and as you likely know, a strong immune system is key to fighting off viruses and other illness. Be aware that sugar is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice.
• Get enough rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you’re tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.
• Have effective tools to address your stress. We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness.If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an energy psychology tool such as Meridian Tapping Techniques, which is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of events, from work to family to trauma.
• Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads. You can review my exercise guidelines for some great tips on how to get started.
• Take a good source of animal based omega-3 fats like krill oil. Increase your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also vitally important to avoid damaged omega-6 oils like trans fats found in most processed foods, as it will seriously damage your immune response.
• Wash your hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don’t use antibacterial soap for this — antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.
• Eat garlic regularly. Garlic works like a broad-spectrum antibiotic against bacteria, virus, and protozoa in the body. And unlike with antibiotics, no resistance can be built up so it is an absolutely safe product to use. However, if you are allergic or don’t enjoy garlic it would be best to avoid as it will likely cause more harm than good.
• Avoid hospitals and vaccines. In this particular case, I’d also recommend you stay away from hospitals unless you’re having an emergency, as hospitals are prime breeding grounds for infections of all kinds, and could be one of the likeliest places you could be exposed to flu bugs of all kinds.As a side note, please beware that 21 different pediatric Tylenol products have been recently recalled due to the possibility of bacterial contamination. So, if your child comes down with cold or flu symptoms, make sure you do not give him or her a potentially contaminated product.

  Better yet, help your child recover using more traditional cold and flu remedies, such as, hydrogen peroxide solution in the ear, zinc lozenges, high quality raw honey, or a homemade cough syrup. For more information and instructions, please see this previous article: Is Honey More Effective Than Cough Medicine?

Last but not least, if you do end up being coerced to take the swine flu shot, I strongly recommend you review Dr. Blaylock’s recommendations, which may alleviate some of the associated health risks.

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/10/06/Why-You-Should-NOT-Vaccinate-Your-Children-Against-the-Flu-This-Season.aspx

Related Links:

What to do If You Are Forced to Take Swine Flu Shot

Warning: Swine Flu Shot Linked to Killer Nerve Disease

Many Health Workers Won’t Take Swine Flu Vaccine

3 key facts about postpartum depression

3 KEY FACTS ABOUT POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION

Perinatal mood disorders are shrouded in shame, guilt and misunderstanding. When mothers and families are not adequately educated, some first-time mothers are not able to tell the difference between feeling depressed and being an exhausted new mother. In addition, mothers feel they are to blame and that there is something terribly wrong with them. They become expert at hiding how they really feel.

The longer this goes on, the worse the condition gets. Here are three key facts about PPD:

THERE IS HELP

Help does exist. And, with help, mothers can get well. A three-fold combination of counseling, group support and psychiatric medication has been found to be most effective. In addition family and community support is critical.

One of the best places to begin looking for help is on the website of Postpartum Support International which can be found at: http://postpartum.net/local-support/. PSI is an international organization with area coordinators in almost every state in the USA and in many countries throughout the world. They even have coordinators for military families. When you contact your area coordinator, they will let you know where to find local resources.

PSI also offers a Support Warmline in English and Spanish (1-800-944-4PPD).

Remember the PSI position: “Depression or anxiety in pregnancy or postpartum is treatable, no matter how severe the symptoms. Women need to know that they are not alone, they are not to blame, and they can recover with a plan of self-care, healthcare, and support.”

2. A CRISIS CAN BE AVERTED

Even when a mother’s symptoms are severe, a crisis (such a suicide) can be prevented with good support and expert professional care.

When a mother has suffered from PPD in a previous pregnancy, she is more likely to suffer from PPD after subsequent pregnancies. Thus steps can be taken to prevent this. A great book on this subject is: What Am I Thinking? : Having a Baby after Postpartum Depression by Karen Kleiman

Risk factors for PPD have been well-researched. Families, primary care providers, OBGYNs, midwives and pediatricians who are familiar with these risk factors can help prevent the crisis of PPD. Here is a list of risk factors: http://www.themommyblues.com/riskfactorsPPD.html

3. THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SYMPTOMS

There have been cases of women with postpartum psychosis who have hurt their babies and children. This is not the same as postpartum depression. There is a difference between losing touch with reality and hearing voices (psychosis), and being very distressed, but still in touch with reality (depression and anxiety).

In addition, feeling tearful and moody in the first couple of weeks after the birth of a baby is also not postpartum depression.

It is very confusing when people use “postpartum depression” to describe so many different conditions..

Whether a woman is experiencing the “baby blues” or postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis, is best diagnosed by an informed medical professional.

If you or someone you know is having trouble adjusting to a new baby, please contact the PSI (see no.1 above) for guidance on how best to manage the situation!

Perinatal mood disorders can be  shrouded in shame, guilt and misunderstanding. When mothers and families are not adequately educated, some first-time mothers are not able to tell the difference between feeling depressed and being an exhausted new mother. In addition, mothers feel that no-one else could possibly feel like they do.  They feel they must have done something wrong and it is all their fault – “There must be something terribly wrong with me, as a mother.” As a result they become expert at hiding how they really feel, and putting on a coping front.

The longer this goes on, the more isolated the woman with PPD feels and the worse the condition gets.

Here are three key facts about PPD:

1. THERE IS HELP

Help does exist. And, with help, mothers can get well. A three-fold combination of counseling, group support and psychiatric medication has been found to be most effective. In addition family and community support is critical.

One of the best places to begin looking for help is on the resources page of website of Postpartum Support International. PSI is an international organization with area coordinators in almost every state in the USA and in many countries throughout the world. They even have coordinators for military families. When you contact your area coordinator, they will let you know where to find local resources.

PSI also offers a Support Warmline in English and Spanish (1-800-944-4PPD).

The PSI position is: “Depression or anxiety in pregnancy or postpartum is treatable, no matter how severe the symptoms. Women need to know that they are not alone, they are not to blame, and they can recover with a plan of self-care, healthcare, and support.”

2. A CRISIS CAN BE AVERTED

Even when a mother’s symptoms are severe, a crisis (such a suicide) can be prevented with good support and expert professional care.

When a mother has suffered from PPD in a previous pregnancy, she is more likely to suffer from PPD after subsequent pregnancies. Thus steps can be taken to prevent this. A great book on this subject is: What Am I Thinking? : Having a Baby after Postpartum Depression by Karen Kleiman

Risk factors for PPD have been well-researched. Families, primary care providers, OBGYNs, midwives and pediatricians who are familiar with these risk factors can help prevent the crisis of PPD. Here is a list of risk factors: http://www.themommyblues.com/riskfactorsPPD.html

3. THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SYMPTOMS

There have been cases of women with postpartum psychosis who have hurt their babies and children. This is not the same as postpartum depression. There is a difference between losing touch with reality and hearing voices (psychosis), and being very distressed, but still in touch with reality (depression and anxiety).

In addition, feeling tearful and moody in the first couple of weeks after the birth of a baby is also not postpartum depression.

It is very confusing when people use “postpartum depression” to describe so many different conditions..

Whether a woman is experiencing the “baby blues” or postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis, is best diagnosed by an informed medical professional.

If you or someone you know is having trouble adjusting to a new baby, please contact the PSI (see no.1 above) for guidance on how best to manage the situation!

Kim Richardson is an experienced Postpartum Depression Counselor, Certified Professional Coach, and psychotherapist. She works by telephone and skype – counseling, coaching and supporting mothers who are struggling. Visit:www.themommyblues.com or Email: Kim@TheMommyBlues.com to contact her.

Predicting Postpartum Depression May Be Possible

Wed Sep 23, 7:03 pm ET

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23 (HealthDay News) — Spanish researchers report that they’ve developed ways to detect 80 percent of cases of postpartum depression, which is estimated to affect more than one in 10 women who give birth.

“Early diagnosis of postnatal [or, postpartum] depression would make it possible to intervene to prevent it from developing among women at risk,” Salvador Tortajada, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and lead author of a new study on the methodology, said in a news release from the Scientific Information and News Service in Spain.

The researchers examined records on 1,397 Spanish women who gave birth in an 11-month span in seven hospitals. They devised several models that they say can predict whether a woman will develop depression within a few weeks after giving birth.

Their method achieved better accuracy rates than other models, according to the study, published recently in Methods of Information in Medicine. “Now it needs clinical evaluation and for psychiatrists to start to test it directly on patients in order to study the true potential of these tools,” Tortajada said.

The researchers came up with their models by examining risk factors that are linked to postnatal depression, including previous psychiatric problems in the family, the level of social support for the mother and the state of genes connected to the condition.

They also detected two things — older age and working during pregnancy — that reduced the risk of postpartum depression, according to their report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20090923/hl_hsn/predictingpostpartumdepressionmaybepossible

5 Things New Moms Need and seldom ask for!

Do you have a new baby, or do you know someone who is about to adopt or give birth to a new baby?

It is true that in some non-western cultures supportive rituals are provided to ease the mother into her new role. In these cultures, it turns out, there is far less postpartum depression. Even the baby blues is rare!

In western cultures there are many medical “rituals” that take place in the hospital, but once you are home, you might feel pretty much abandoned, overwhelmed and alone!

Here are some ideas for simple acts of caring and kindness that typically make a big difference to the mother of a new baby in her first few months at home.

1. Meals: Preparing meals for the mother or organizing carry-in meals
2. Older siblings: Playing with older siblings, bathing them, reading to them, taking them to and from school
3. Housework: asking the new mother what she needs most in terms of housework, cleaning up after visitors
4. Community: finding new mother groups, mom and baby activities and giving her the information so that she can get out of the house, offering to go for a walk with her, or sit in the park with her.
5. Emotions: Asking her how she is really feeling. Letting her know that it’s normal to feel sad and tearful and overwhelmed. Offer to listen without giving advice.

If you are a new mom, practice asking for what you need from those around you. It is difficult for people to know exactly what you need, and most people, are very willing to help, and are waiting to be asked.

So ASK today!

Kim Richardson is an experienced Postpartum Depression Counselor, Certified Professional Coach, and psychotherapist. She works by telephone and skype – counseling, coaching and supporting mothers who are struggling. Visit:www.themommyblues.com or Email: Kim@TheMommyBlues.com to contact her.