Kindred magazine Vol 25

SUSTAINABILITY

•

CONNECTION PARENTING

•

INTELLIGENT LIVING

Kindred o n e f a m i l y, o n e w o r l d

Community

NOW! How to create your own community / school garden

Fluoride: Poisoning our kids?

When someone you love dies

MANY HANDS creating the support you need AUSTRALIA $8.95 25 / Mar - May 2008

The Northern Territory Intervention

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Behind the Scenes Photography

Photography

Michael Rose enjoys capturing those magical unguarded moments where a child is in full flight, utterly absorbed and alive to the moment. Such pictures celebrate the mysterious force that runs through us when tension melts away. Michael also teaches Tai Chi in the Byron Shire. taodesigns@gmail.com

Greg Dries and the amazing team at Moods Photography specialise in producing stunning images of children. The innocence and energy of children is honest and electric; it is capturing these elements that makes Greg’s work so recognisable and in demand.

Visit moods at www.moodsphotography.com

Photography My name is Hailey Bartholomew and with my husband Andrew run a small company called ‘You can’t be serious!’. We do lots of photography, produce short films, design and write, all with the hope to inspire people to love humanity and life!

US Contributing Editor

Editorial Assistant Jesse Atkinson has been dedicated to magazines since her early teens and came to Kindred with a desire to learn all aspects of magazine publishing. She is currently halfway through an Arts degree and will probably stay at halfway for a while... She lives wherever she’s allowed to, with her dogs, Hound and Henry.

Lisa Reagan is the president and co-founder of Families for Natural Living, a 501c3 nonprofit organisation that facilitates a (US) national network of self-directed community groups and learning programs for parents. She is the parent representative on the board of directors for the Holistic Paediatric Association and lives with her family on their organic farm in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Editorial Assistant Michele Dennis has been dedicated to supporting families since she started volunteering with young children as a teenager. She has a degree in philosophy and is constantly learning new things about family life and a parent’s role in society. Michele lives on the far north coast of NSW with her husband and two sons.

Astrology Anthony Finocchiaro uses astrology as a tool to assist people to embrace life and live it to its fullest potential. With a passion for creating a more beautiful world, Anthony channels much of his energy into helping parents and children get in touch with who they really are.

Visit www.totalawareness.com.au

Asia Correspondent Anna Jahns is a freelance writer who has been actively involved in homeschooling since the birth of her daughter Tara, and in learning, her whole life! She is involved in creating learning communities wherever she and her family are living, which is currently Goa (India).

Health & Wellbeing Jacinta McEwen and Elvian Drysdale have a wealth of experience in all aspects of conception, pregnancy, birthing and childhood health. Jacinta is a naturopath, nurse, herbalist and yoga teacher and is currently studying Ayurvedic medicine.

Elvian is trained as a naturopath, herbalist and homoeopath and is a core group facilitator of ‘Pathways to Manhood’.

Sustenance – sponsored by Santos, a Kindred partner In the guise of providing organic, locally sourced, GMO free, low-packaged, ethically grown food to our local community, Santos, the natural food company, explores issues such as ‘What does an ethical sustainable business look like and how do we do that?’, ‘What works in natural healthcare?’, and ’How do we assist in enhancing community?’ in supporting and encouraging local sustainable agriculture – vibrant. www.santostrading.com.au - your online organic food store.

This magazine is Climate Friendly Find out how your home or business can offset its carbon emissions.

Go to www.climatefriendly.com Kindred is a sustainable magazine business; here’s why: • We use soy-based inks • We use Australian forest-friendly paper • We supply a digital (paper-free) version of our magazine

Kindred 2

• We operate from a small home office – no commute costs • We have an energy efficient office • We use public and low impact transport where possible • We use local designers and printers • We source, whenever possible, all our products and services locally • We regularly donate time, product and money to educational and community organisations • We offset our carbon emissions • We reuse and recycle our waste • We are learning how to become more sustainable

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Our printer recycles tonnes of paper every year from trims from magazines and many other printed products. It is made into cartons (which do not need to be bleached like white paper) so nothing is wasted.

Contents

Kindred

w w w. k i n d r e d m a g a z i n e . c o m . a u

www.kindredmagazine.com.au Editor / Publisher Kali Wendorf Publisher / General Manager Mark Alok O’Brien Contributing Writers Jacinta McEwen Elvian Drysdale Anna Jahns Lisa Reagan Jesse Atkinson Kindred Partners Santos Layout and Design Kali Wendorf & Alok O’Brien Copy Editing Jesse Atkinson John W Travis, MD Photography Michael Rose Moods Photography Hailey Bartholomew Advertising Sales Ph: (61) 02 6684 4353 admin@kindredmagazine.com.au Subscription orders and general enquiries Ph: (61) 02 6684 4353 admin@kindredmagazine.com.au Printer: Fergies Printers Distributed in Australia by Gordon & Gotch Distributed outside of Australia by Pansing See our website for details of local distributors Kindred is published four times a year (Mar/ June/Sept/Dec) by Byron Publications Pty Ltd. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written consent of the publisher.

All rights reserved. Kindred is a registered publication of Byron Publications Pty.Ltd. Copyright 2008.

ISSN 1447-3569 Kindred welcomes unsolicited manuscripts and personal photographs.

Please email any material.

Content within this magazine is information only and not necessarily the views of the editor. It is not meant to be a substitute for professional medical advice.

Please consult your healthcare provider if you are in any doubt regarding any of this information.

Wherever possible permission has been sought from subjects for use of their photographs in this publication.

All enquiries should be directed to the photographer concerned.

Published by Byron Publications Pty. Ltd. PO Box 971 Mullumbimby 2482 NSW Australia ABN: 68 097 298 103 Chairman and Executive Director Mark Alok O’Brien Co-chairperson and Editorial Director Kali Wendorf

Vo l 2 5 , M a r c h - M ay 2 0 0 8

How we treat the child, the child will treat the world Pam Leo, author of ‘Connection Parenting’

Editor’s Page 4 • Initiation

Health & Wellbeing 46 • The Fluoride Debate: Are We Poisoning Our Children?

By Kali Wendorf

By Stacey Erbacher

Feature Articles Special Feature

First Peoples 50 • The Northern Territory Intervention:

12 When Someone You Love Dies

Voices from the centre of the fringe

A special Kindred feature

By Alex Brown and Ngiare J Brown

14 • Death Through the Eyes of a Child

By Maggie Dent

22 • The Natural Birth/Natural

Connection Parenting* 56 • Many Hands Creating Parental Support

Death Connection

By Robin Grille

By Nicolette Smith

26 • Still Born

62 • The Journey of the Mother Who Adopts Older Children

By Sue and Ric Davies

Sustenance

By Laurie A. Couture * Connection Parenting: parenting practices that honour children’s dignity and meet children’s emotional need for a strong parent / child bond.

34 • Growing a Community

By Russ Grayson

38 • Passion for the School Kitchen Garden

By Juneen Shulz

40 • When Woolworth’s Moves to Town Contributed by Santos, a Kindred partner

Departments 8 Letters & Opinions 31 Kindred Books 45 Great Stuff 32 Kindred News 44 Health & Wellbeing 54 Astrology 67 Community Market

On the cover When someone you love dies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Community Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fluoride: Poisoning our kids? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Northern Territory Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Many Hands: Creating the support you need . . . . . . . . . . .

Our cover photo was taken by Moods Photography

12 34 40 46 56

Editorial

Initiation

H

e rounds the bend in matching cycle gear, looking streamlined under his metallic red helmet and wrap-around Bollé sunglasses, decidedly intent on the path in front of him.

Behind, a shrill voice calls, ‘Be careful!

Not too fast!’ It’s no wonder—he’s cruising well over 1.5 kilometres an hour—on his tricycle. Phew! Thank God for the helmet and protective eye gear.

It’s one of those Alice-inWonderland moments for me—and there seems to be more and more of those moments by the way—where ‘normal’ life begins to look slightly absurd.

I remember the first time I had that kind of moment. I was around 12-years old visiting my grandmother in England. We were in a department store when I saw it—a child attached to his mother with a dog leash. At first I thought they were playing some sort of petshop game together. Then I realised—no, this mum was serious.

Fortunately leashes have not caught on like the miniature metallic wraparound Bollés, but the fear for our children’s wellbeing certainly has. Riskaverse, hyper-concerned, controlling, and over-involved, the new breed of parent lurks anxiously near every jungle gym, over every page of homework, alongside every playground argument.

It seems there is not a bruise we can’t prevent, a heartbreak we can’t fend off,

Kindred 4

or an inconvenience we everywhere, from the can’t deter. Armed with padded playgrounds, to a can-do spirit, the likes the amassment of afterof which would bring school activities, to the our own mothers to their near sell-out attendance knees, we have somehow of every swimming learned to protect our carnival. children from almost And the pressure to every discomfort known conform is immense.

Kali Wendorf, Editor to mankind—from My son takes every chores, to scraped knees, opportunity to remind to sunburns. me that he is the only one in his class Present company included, of who has to do house or garden work. course.

And I’m the only mother who doesn’t While walking with my 12-year-old watch every single soccer game. I used son to soccer sign-on this morning, I to think that he was just kidding, then I had an epiphany: I am definitely one discovered he was right. He was the only of those parents—well, at least some one, and I was the only one, save for of the time. It came to me as I realised one or two others.

I had organised the entire occasion for So I started to check things out for him. I had found out what day and myself. Was this just my own personal time the sign-on was, I had filled out bad movie, or was something really the paperwork, arranged to arrive at happening out there? I started in my the right time, stood in line and even local neighbourhood, on weekend carried his new soccer shirt home and mornings when the lawn mowers begin put it away neatly in his drawer. Sheesh! their a.m. drone. Surely there I would I think this habit on my part is the spillfind young teenage boys doing some over from my old attachment parenting yard work. Nope, not one. In fact I days, when I carried, breastfed and cowas curious to see that nearly every slept with my children. But the needs mower was followed by someone over of a two-year-old are very different from 60. Remember the days when a boy the needs of a twelve-year-old. was seen in nearly every yard, raking, It’s not just that, though. There’s mowing, or weeding? I certainly noticed a whole culture of cottonwooling and it as a teenage girl, those guys who grew parental hyper-extension out there. The tanned and strong over summer, who invitation—or shall I say the dictates— wore their shirt on their head like some to over-function as parents (and allow kind of young urban pharaoh. our children to under-function) is Then I went to the playground,

where there were as many adults on the slide as there were children. Some clustered at the top to make sure takeoff was safe, others at the bottom to oversee soft landings. And even some in the middle, assuring a smooth journey—a veritable flight crew for each person under one-metre tall. I remember these playgrounds when my own children were very young. I used to love spreading out a blanket, and diving into the novel I had spent the last 11 months trying to finish. But then I began to feel the looks. You know, those looks you get which imply you are nothing less than a monster. I had let the flight crew down.

Then there were those painful early primary years at my children’s Steiner school. Not only did I make the mistake of wearing black way too often, but I was absolutely hopeless at helping my children finish their armloads of weaving, braiding, knitting, sewing and basket making. ‘Can’t I just do this in Photoshop?’ I cracked to my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. She didn’t smile.

At open day she got her revenge—there on every wall, in every display were the gorgeous works of, well, not really the children, but their parents. It was a poignant moment for me, a moment when the pressure to do all, be all, for my children came down hard.

I remember how my daughter was one of the first to take the bus to school, while many other mums drove their children, parked their cars, walked their children inside (carrying their children’s backpacks) and even sat down with them for the first part of the lesson. The message to me was that I was ‘apparently too busy for my child.’

My daughter got the same message.

‘Mummy, why don’t you drive me to school like all the other mums?’ How do I tell her that part of the way I love her is not only to be there for her, but also, when appropriate, to not be there for her? She has her very own life, and it is not for me to live it. In fact to deny her that right, is to deny her everything.

‘Behold the sanitised childhood,’ writes Hara Estroff Marano in Psychology Today. ‘With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge

Kindred Continuum of Principle and Manifesto Kindred magazine supports and gives voice to the powerful movement towards conscious parenting and conscious living. It is in honour of that evolutionary movement everywhere that Kindred courageously addresses issues ahead of mainstream media.

Its staff, contributors, photographers and contributing editors are drawn from an internationally diverse team of professionals on the front lines of their fields, exploring issues that impact our children, families and planet, ranging from education, optimal child development, medicine, psychology, healing, spirituality, politics, relationships, family dynamics and global and environmental issues.

• Children depend upon their caregivers to

Kindred recognises the call of humankind’s biological imperative that we evolve and transform into our greatest potential. For our children, that potential is best supported by the practices of secure bonding and attachment.

• Community plays a vital role in raising chil-

The content of Kindred therefore, is selected upon its reflection of the following principles: • Children are the mantle upon which the future of our planet rests. Investing in their wellbeing is the ultimate sustainable and political act.

• Every child is wanted and welcomed.

• Pregnancy is a natural event (not a medical condition) and the importance of the mother’s emotional, mental and physical wellbeing is recognised and supported.

• A natural birth affords significant benefits to mother, baby, father and family; therefore both the potential benefits and risks of any intervention warrant careful consideration.

• Parents have the right and responsibility to be fully informed about pregnancy, birthing, health and education choices.

• Optimal development for infants and children is fostered by full-term breastfeeding (two years and beyond), baby-wearing, co-sleeping, maintaining genital integrity (no circumcision), and plenty of skin-to-skin contact.

• Children are by nature social beings, born with the drive to love and be loved, to learn about their world through spontaneous play, exploration, and participation/inclusion in the activities of their elders, to cooperate with others, and to contribute to their world. They are most able to develop their full potential when treated with care and respect.

• Children are born with inherent physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs.

protect them from violence, abuse, being left to ‘cry it out’, shaming, toxic food and toxic environments.

• Children depend on their parents to demonstrate and model to them appropriate ways of setting safe, respectful boundaries and limits to inappropriate behaviour.

• The role of the father and mother is profound and not to be underestimated. Also important are the multiple attachments outside the immediate family.

• Optimal development includes supporting children’s growth towards healthy sexual maturity across the physical, emotional, social and ethical dimensions of sexual wellbeing.

• Family-friendly political, economic, educational and social structures enhance parents’ opportunities and ability to nurture and sustain a secure bond with their children. dren, both as a support system for this secure bonding and also as a source for secondary attachments.

• Parenting our children means also reparenting ourselves. Self-discovery plays a major factor in the art of effective parenting.

• Imperfection is the lesson in how to be perfectly human. Allowing ourselves as parents to make mistakes, be transparently ourselves and emotionally alive in relating to our children, enables them to individuate and find their own separate and unique self. After bonding comes healthy separation, facilitated by our perfectly human inability to be everything to our children.

Understanding that there are immense and complex forces impacting our lives and shaping the choices we each make at any point in time, Kindred recognises that there is no single formula for meeting each person’s individual challenges, and respects parents’ innate ability to know and intuit what is right for their child.

Kindred explores the realms of parenthood that reach beyond the bounds of sentimentality and cliché and into the arena of an ever deepening conscious understanding and appreciation of our relationship with life, each other, ourselves, our children and the world in which we live.

Kindred is an independent publication and is neither controlled by nor beholden to any organisation — business, political, religious or institutional.

Kali Wendorf Publisher/Editor The Kindred Manifesto and Continuum of Principle has been adapted in part from the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children (aTLC)’s Blueprint of Principles and Actions. www.aTLC.org

Kindred 5

Editorial

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their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they’re robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness.’

It seems to me we are afraid. We clamber up the slide not only because we fear their fall, but we fear to miss a minute of their time. We’re afraid the kids might grow up to resent us, to tell us what we probably told our own parents, ‘You weren’t there for me.’ Or worse, maybe they will grow up not even liking us. We fear losing the friendship and losing control.

We’re scared of school buses, schools, teachers, babysitters, and even grandmas and grandpas who might not parent in exactly the way we would. We’re scared of adversity, risk, danger, and the unknown.

Hovered over and cheered across every finish line, our children, ironically, are getting less support than they need, through our over-support.

Andrew Fuller, a clinical psychologist who specialises in the wellbeing of young people, echoes these sentiments. ‘We’re having this double-whammy effect,’ he said in the Sydney Morning Herald recently. ‘We’re cosseting our children, but at the same time we’re not spending enough time with them to teach them what to trust and what not to trust.

There is going to be a massive divide in the society between kids who have had life experiences and have been able to set goals, persist, struggle and sometimes come a cropper and sometimes succeed

and then kids who have basically had their whole life fed to them through the electronic media.’

In protecting them from failure, we deny them the opportunity to learn persistence. In protecting them from risk, we deny them courage. In protecting them from hard work, we deny them strength. In protecting them from aloneness, we deny them independence. And in protecting them from heartbreak, we deny them resilience.

Gever Tulley is founder of the Tinkering School, a weeklong camp in the United States where primary-schoolaged kids learn how to build, solve problems, use new materials, and hack old ones for new purposes. ‘I put power tools in the hands of second graders,’ he says. ‘People seem to think that any item sharper than a golf ball is too sharp for children under the age of ten. So when does this trend stop?’ When we round every corner and eliminate every sharp, pokey bit in the world, children hurt themselves, he says. ‘We cut off opportunities for children to learn about the world around them.’

He gives an excellent short talk on the TED Talks website (see tinyurl.com/ 2ggjzm) about five dangerous things you should encourage your kid do. Play with fire, own a pocketknife and—gasp— drive a car, are among them. Yes, drive a car—you know, like we used to do on our uncle’s farm, when we either sat on Dad’s lap, or, if we were big enough to reach the pedals, we could drive the whole family around the paddock.

A couple of years ago, my son played on the worst soccer team in the town.

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Each and every weekend, they were completely and utterly thrashed. At the end of every defeat, a crowd of wellmeaning parents (again, myself included) rushed anxiously around the down-cast boys. ‘It’s OK,’ we pressed hurriedly, before a single emotion could be felt.

‘It’s how you play the game that counts.’

And anyway, being good Rainbow Region parents, we never wanted to impose ‘competitiveness’ into their game.

Like monks we chanted the mantra after each and every game, week after week after week, until finally the boys began to join in on the chorus. ‘It’s OK, mum, 76 to zero is OK. It’s how we played the game that counts.’ Then one day I felt a pang. Something wasn’t right. I mean, yes, it’s great that the kids learned to swallow defeat, be good sports, and know that we loved them even though they lost. But something important was missing. They never had a chance to feel disappointment. To feel rage, sadness, frustration, or even feel miffed at their fellow team mates for spacing out during half the game. In the soft, safe, cosy warm environment of our emotional protection, they lost more than a game, they lost initiative. And so, the remainder of their season became defined by that loss of initiative. It was worse than losing 76 to zero. It became void of learning, of self-responsibility, and self-reflection.

Initiative is the ability to act and make decisions without the help or advice of other people. With so much of our children’s lives navigated for them, they are missing out on learning initiative.

A teacher-friend recently told me

about a frustrating moment when he had listed the day’s homework on the board. He accidentally wrote the wrong page that corresponded to the lesson number. The lesson number was on the left hand page, not the right as he had written. With books open, virtually all of the students remarked that the lesson number was not on the right hand page.

‘Where is it?’ they all chimed. ‘They simply did not have the ability to look over on the opposite page. They wanted, and indeed were used to, being told exactly how to solve their dilemma,’ he said.

The word initiative is related to initiation, which seems to be what is increasingly missing in post-modern childhood. Every day, in hundreds of small, and not so small ways, an important initiation is lost. Except sometimes, in rare moments when reality cracks open, and by some grace, a child is left to fall free into his own journey.

One of those moments happened today. My nine-year-old daughter and her friend rode her pony down to the river. It was her first time to ride without adult supervision. I told her, when she could bridle alone, she could ride alone.

That being the same guideline I myself was given when I was a young rider.

Several hours later, I decided to check on them. There in the soft shady forest, were two laughing girls and a pony—wet from swimming and blissfully absorbed in their own company. An initiation had occurred.

And it was without me.

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Kindred 7

Letters

Letters and Opinions Tandem breastfeeding I have just discovered (happily!) that I am pregnant with our second child. I am currently breastfeeding my toddler about five times per day and am really looking forward to the adventure of breastfeeding throughout pregnancy and possibly even tandem feeding (unless he self-weans in the next 8 months).

Before becoming a mother, I would never have dreamt that I’d breastfeed an 18month-old child, and certainly not breastfeed while pregnant, but here I am! I am really glad that I have been able to ‘go with the flow’ and not have to think about it.

I am confident that I can continue breastfeeding my son for as long as he likes, but am now really curious about how the composition of my milk will change throughout this year, and how it will affect my toddler as well as how my baby will be affected by sharing with a toddler. I am also interested in how other mothers have

Kindred 8

dealt with breastfeeding through pregnancy (with sensitive nipples, morning sickness and a growing tummy) and how they have managed to feed a baby and a toddler.

Could you please do an article on this topic?

Janet deLaurence Email

A great resource A few months ago, every day with my three-year-old felt like a constant struggle.

I started telling my friends that I was just overwhelmed and had decided to just give up and let my child do whatever he wanted because nothing I was doing ‘worked’ anyway. One of them mentioned a book her attachment parenting group had recommended. She let me borrow it and after reading a couple of pages I decided I needed a copy of my own.

The book is Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves by Naomi Aldort. I read the book and started putting Naomi’s advice to work.

It has completely transformed our family. I now enjoy our days together and I see our interactions as a chance for me to evolve as a person. After the success we had with the information in the book I felt like I had to hear everything I could from Naomi. I read all of the articles she has available on her website, NaomiAldort.com, and even had some phone counselling sessions with her.

One of the best ways to hear Naomi’s ideas on specific issues is through her monthly teleclass. She answers questions that parents submit to her. Every month I come away from the class with new ideas and insights. I bought Naomi’s CDs for my

husband to listen to. As a result our son has finally bonded with his father. My husband used to come home from work and our son would not have any response at all.

Now, our son cheers ‘Yay! Daddy’s home!’

Everyone is happier.

It has been such a dramatic change I feel compelled to spread the word the best I can. My hope is that every child be raised with the level of respect, trust, and love that is the cornerstone of Naomi’s approach. I am forever grateful to Naomi for her work that has given me the courage to trust life and be the Mother that I always wanted to be (at least most of the time).

Sarah S. Email

A new life without television I found your magazine in a pile at the chiropractors, having to go there quite often after the ‘birth’ of my daughter (I use the term loosely); the damage the stirrups did to my pelvis and lower back, but that’s another letter. I searched high and low to find a copy to buy but had to keep my appointments to get my fix.

I read the articles about the evils of TV; it didn’t really sink in until the latest mag and it mentions the dulling effect. So off it has gone, and I can’t believe how peaceful our house has become, no horrible ad noise, no bright flashing lights. We spend our time talking, laughing and eating together.

It has really changed all our relationships and the way we relate to each other. How wonderful and how easy .... Thanks.

Lisa Email

Nurture your child’s LPDJLQDWLRQ DW 'UDJRQÁ\ Oh I wish I had read your article on ultrasounds (Kindred, issue 24 Dec 07–Feb 08) before I had my 20-week scan.

It was such a horrible experience. All I wanted was to know what the sex was. I wasn’t worried about the routine scan but the sonographer ignored my wishes and said I HAD to have the full scan.

I felt very uncomfortable throughout the scan and my baby moved constantly. I had the feeling he wasn’t very happy about the whole thing.

As soon as I walked out of the room I realised I was in quite a lot of pain. I started having contractions that ended up lasting for 24hrs. My baby was still moving so I just monitored the pain for a week.

When the pain didn’t subside I visited my doctor who diagnosed me with strained ligaments in my lower abdomen due to the rough handling of the sonographer.

It’s now been three weeks since my scan and the pain is only now slowly easing. I’m on restrictions and have been told not to carry my 19-month-old boy around which is impossible as he practically lives on my hips.

I now wish that I had never had that scan.

There was no real need for it, I just wanted to know the sex of my child so that I could prepare. Now I wish I had left it for a wonderful surprise at the birth.

Christina Email

I found your article in regard to ultrasound very interesting. It was something I struggled with during my pregnancy, but knowing I have such an irregular cycle (varying 28-68 days) and my pregnancy was a blessing (aka surprise), I had a scan when according to my cycle I was approx 11 weeks.

The scan actually showed I was three weeks behind and only eight weeks pregnant.

Thanks to the scan, my baby was able to come when he was ready. Even though I had 100 per cent midwife care, it would have been difficult to push for an extra three and a half weeks without intervention and mentally to cope with that would have been a trying time.

We were able to use calm birth to deliver a 10lb bub, with no intervention, no pain relief or stitches and because he came when he was ready he has been the most relaxed little soul I’ve ever known. Many thanks for your great work, I’ve really enjoyed my last 12mths of subscription and am looking forward to the next 12 months of great and challenging reading.

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Love letters Kali, what a beautiful piece your editorial was for me to read [To Belong, Vol 23, Sept – Nov 2007]. Your personal insights and childhood story moved me and spoke to a part of my soul that has been waiting to be recognised by others. I find your perspective inspiring and refreshing.

I feel a sense of homecoming to our humanness when I read your editorials. The one you wrote on The Secret once again helped me understand what I believe in ways that have not yet been articulated until I connect with your words. So thank you for your willingness to speak your mind in such a meaningful, thoughtful and clear manner.

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Letters the risk you have taken of confronting your readership with the potential dangers these products pose to our health and the planet’s.

Not many parents have the time to do the research themselves and in sharing these facts, code names etc, you have really done us a great service.

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The Future of Food

filled grocery store shelves for the past decade.

The health implications, government policies and push towards globalisation are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of the world — a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

The Future of Food examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat. A must-see film for anyone interested in food, health and the future choices of humanity.

The Future of Food offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabelled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly

The Power of Community How Cuba Survived Peak Oil This film tells the inspiring story of the Cuban people’s hardship, ingenuity and triumph over adversity through cooperation, conservation and community, told in their own words.

DVD: $40 plus $6 p&h

Cuba, with 80% of its agriculture now organic, provides a valuable example of how to successfully address the challenge of reducing our energy use, improve our food and life quality and at the same time revive our communities.

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What Babies Want is an award winning documentary film that explores the profoundly important and sacred opportunity we have in bringing children into the world.

Research shows us that our society is a product of how we welcome and raise our children. When babies are welcomed with love and warmth and given the immediate opportunity to

Blowin’ in the Wind by award winning filmmaker David Bradbury and co-producer Peter Scott is a wake-up film that exposes the genocidal catastrophe of the use of depleted uranium in weapons.

From Iraq to Kosovo, the legacy of cancer, birth deformities and contamination projects itself for another

bond with parents, they develop minds that are coherent and flexible, ready in turn to make compassionate and meaningful connections with others as they grow.

This film is a must-see for anyone contemplating having a baby and for everyone involved in the birth process and in the birth industry in general.

DVD: $35 plus $6 p&h

4.5 billion years. As Leuren Moret, geoscientist and one of the leading voices in the DU debate, says, ‘They have altered the genome for the entire planet forever with this DU’. See Legacy of Treason by Alok O’Brien on the Kindred website for further information on this subject.

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Hard Rain David Bradbury’s latest film is about nuclear power.

worldwide. As with most films or articles done on this subject that are not sponsored by vested interests, this film will get you involved and appalled.

In particular the uranium mining industry and the consequences for our planet of the current headlong rush to nuclear power as a panacea to all of society’s ills.

Bradbury takes a hard look at the entire nuclear cycle

How to Save The World tells the inspiring and affirming story of the rapid spread of Biodynamic farming and the resulting restoration of communities in India through the teachings of a visionary New Zealander.

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envisioned by Rudolph Steiner. It shows how this farming technique enriches the lives of farmers and empowers local communities.

This film is a great demonstration of Biodynamic farming as originally

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Fed Up studies the effects of food additives and chemicals on children’s behaviour.

Sue Dengate’s famous presentation about the effects of food on children’s health, learning and behaviour together with entertaining and insightful interviews, support and information, released May 2006.

Families from Cairns to Melbourne, from young children to grandmothers, were interviewed about their surprises, pitfalls, horror stories, cute kids, laughs, determination and triumph through tears in finding which foods affect their children.

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Interested in creating your own public screenings of topical films and foster discussion on these and other important issues in your local community or school?

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When someone you love dies

Death—as with birth—in our culture is medicalised and mystified. Frozen in cliché, silenced by stigma and confined by convention, we are robbed of its gifts, and its pathway to transformation.

Could it be—as with birth—in interfering in the natural death process, we risk undermining our journey onwards?

Kindred presents four courageous writers who wade into death’s depths and illuminate pathways of healing and sovereignty.

Death Through the Eyes of a Child

By Maggie Dent

Natural Death

By Nicolette Smith

Still Born

By Sue and Ric Davies

Photo by Hailey Bartholomew

Special Feature

D

Death through the eyes of a child

By Maggie Dent

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge That myth is more potent than history.

I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts That hope always triumphs over experience That laughter is the only cure for grief And I believe that love is stronger than death.

Robert Fulghum

Kindred 14

eath hurts. When we lose someone or something we love, every level of us hurts and is affected.

There is nothing that can prepare us for exactly what happens when a sudden loss occurs because every single person responds differently. There is simply no one right way to respond. What happens for children when a death occurs? How can you support them through the anguish and confusion? What can you do to prepare them in some way for this experience well before it happens? One thing you cannot do, no matter how much you wish you could, is take their pain away.

Little Sara was only four and a half when she found her daddy just minutes after he had shot himself in their kitchen. This massive trauma changed her life forever. Sara allowed me to share her journey of grief and healing over a few years. She was able to find the sparkle of innocence and happiness of childhood again, and her journey helped me more than any textbook on death and dying or any course or conference I had attended to understand death and the pain of loss through the eyes of a child.

She came to see me for the first time about a month after her father’s suicide.

The most important thing I needed to be was safe for her. I had to ensure that she could not sense sympathy, or any rapport based on her being a ‘poor thing’. This is very difficult for those who are unfamiliar with death and grief. My prior experience in a hospice helping people, including children, to make the transition from this world, and my years working in a funeral home before I became a transpersonal therapist were essential in my work with children. However, to support her, I needed to provide a strong, open ground that allowed her to hold her emotional world in her own hands without it being contaminated or influenced by any of my personal attitudes. Sara’s journey with me took place over a couple of years

and she was given permission to call the shots.

It was up to her when she came to see me. It was daily for a short time, then it was weekly on the same day.

Then as time went by it was occasionally.

Sometimes she just wanted to hear my voice to reassure her and remind her that she had things she could do herself to ease her emotional turmoil. Her mum would often chat on the phone to get the same reassurance that what was happening was normal—because whatever happens must be seen as normal, no matter how strange it may seem at the time. This is especially important in the first 12 months.

Usually I began our sessions by taking Sara’s hand gently while still chatting to her mum outside my office.

This gave her a chance to connect to me in her own way. The touch was simply gentle and safe. My intention was always one of respect, kindness, and compassion, rather than one of intellectual or emotional adult superiority. Sometimes she just hung onto my leg and gripped me very tightly. It was important that I was very consistent and reliable because the rest of her world was full of chaos and confusion so I always responded the same way as much as possible so that I was a safe harbour for her to moor her troubled little boat whenever she needed it.

The initial sessions always began with drawing—large pieces of paper, large choice of coloured felt-tipped pens or crayons and me on the floor beside her. I found it useful to use calming essences to create an atmosphere that was different to her home atmosphere, and I would often have simple nature sounds playing quietly in the background.

These sensory stimuli create soothing pathways for the brain, and in time Sara came to choose which ones she liked the most. She also asked to have the same essential oils for her bedroom and music and sound became a large part of her healing. These soothing stimuli allow

Unexpressed emotions stay hidden in our nervous system. Over the last 20 years, innovative energy and integrative therapies have appeared that help enormously to release intense emotion fast and effectively. There is no reason why people need to stay crushed by grief and deep sadness for the rest of their lives.

With emotional freedom techniques (EFT), very specific emotions can be targeted and released. EFT is fabulous with children. We call it ‘magic tapping’ and once taught to families, they can then have the ability to manage their own emotionally challenging times without needing a professional. There is an excellent book called Rose and The Night Monsters written by two Western Australian psychologists that shows how to do EFT with children.

The theory is that tapping on the endpoints of meridians releases emotions. Thought Field Therapy (TFT), Be Set Free Fast (BSFF), Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and creative visualisations all hold a very valid therapeutic place in helping children with emotional overwhelm.

Another enormous support I have used extensively is Australian Bush Flower Essences. These are simply essences that contain the vibrational energy of certain Australian flowers and plants. They work in a similar way to Bach flower remedies that originated in England. The emergency essence is helpful for everyone in the family, as it supports the body on all levels when there is trauma or intense emotional chaos. Each different flower has a different way of helping the body adapt to crises.

With children I choose the essences for the initial consultation, then I allow the child to choose their own from a set of coloured pictures of all the plants and flowers. This allows the child’s own higher self or inner guidance to choose what is best at that point. This is a respectful way of honouring the innate wisdom that exists within every one of us. I have been astounded at times with the

Photo by Hailey Bartholomew

Integrative Therapies to Help Heal shifts that have occurred with these simple gentle essences.

I am very unhappy seeing griefstricken people (adults or children) medicated during the grieving process.

The brain and the mind are working very hard to process, to support, and to accept that part of their world has been destroyed. Medication will delay these essential mental processes and also weaken their connection to their authentic self. This is a time when the mask has been ripped off. The clarity it offers to learn enormously about life, love, and consciousness is a rare glimpse at the true mystery of creation.

There is plenty of time to sleep and recover after the funeral. It is healthy to walk around at night, with thoughts and ideas cascading over you. It is normal to lose yourself in photo albums and old letters and to have endless cups of tea, to cry lots, and to have moments of absolute terror of how you are going to cope.

This is the ‘allowing’ of everything— instead of squashing down, suppressing, denying or numbing.

Many indigenous women allow their feelings deep expression through loud

wailing and howling for days. This is incredibly healthy and will allow them to move through the early stages of intense grief more quickly especially when done in the company of others. Too much grieving in the Western world is done silently and behind closed doors.

Turning again to children, play is another way to help diffuse grief and sadness. This play is best if childdirected. Quiet play allows a child’s brain to rest and renew itself from the intensity of grieving. Vigorous play allows emotional energy to be discharged from the nervous system much like the energy techniques that I have already mentioned. Play is what children do best—never underestimate its healing power and potential.

I believe in the power of prayer, especially children’s prayers. Prayer can comfort and give children a sense that they are not powerless and voiceless. Simple heartfelt prayers bring people together in times of crisis. Praying can let children feel that they are doing something to help. It can give them a sense of staying connected to a lost loved one.

However, prayer works best with children who already have it as a part of their life. Prayers of gratitude are very helpful in healing from a loss, because they focus the mind on hope and optimism rather than sadness and pain. This will influence the chemicals in the brain, and improve moods and emotional states.

Finally, children who are processing a major loss need lots of sleep and rest, and good nutrition. I recommend supplementation with Omega 3 fish oil, and a good quality multi-vitamin because many children struggle to eat when in the early stages of grief.

Once again the immature brain is under enormous stress and the usual things that support the brain are critical for them to recover. Grieving is exhausting, like much like physical activity, and tiredness is common for quite some time.

—Maggie Dent

Kindred 15

The sudden death of her daddy destroyed her perceived world. This means not only how she saw her world at the moment, but also how she saw it in the future.

This is a key reason why grief takes time because the mind has to rebuild a foundation for a new life, with a key person no longer in it.

Kindred 16

the brain to release the chemicals or neurotransmitters that produce relaxing moods. Supporting Sara in feeling safe and connected in a similar way each time, brought a sense of predictability and unconscious comfort to her world.

Drawing, painting, clay play, and sand sculptures give children a voice and an outlet for their grief.

Early on she just drew in black and her pictures were small and had sharp angles and pointy lines. While she drew during the first session, I asked her to share her story about how her daddy died. I avoided platitudes like ‘passing away’ or ‘left our world’ because I wanted to be really honest with her and allow her to know the real words that explained what had happened. She told me quite clearly and with very little emotion, which could have explained that she was still living outside her body.

I asked her if she could easily see the scene of her daddy on the floor. She said that picture kept coming back and she hated seeing all that blood. It was

important to help Sara replace those images in her mind and there are many NLP techniques and other transpersonal strategies that helped with this.

Together we created pattern interruption cues that she could use to distract her brain from latching onto the images that caused her distress. The event only happened once and yet her mind kept revisiting it, and each time it did so, the emotional centres of her brain were activated and the distress chemicals of cortisol and adrenalin flooded her body bringing painful feelings and emotions, making her feel awful again and again. Sara learned how to breathe out sadness (grey), anger (red), and fear (black) on her own. Her colours of feeling loved and safe were pink and yellow. We helped her mum to know that colours could change her moods and emotional states, and that together they could support her in having some influence over the negative feelings that swamped her.

Sara learned that it was safe to share

her feelings and fears no matter how irrational they were. The sudden death of her daddy destroyed her perceived world. This means not only how she saw her world at the moment, but also how she saw it in the future. This is a key reason why grief takes time because the mind has to rebuild a foundation for a new life, with a key person no longer in it. The trauma of the sudden death of a parent or sibling often triggers separation anxiety, even if children have grown past it prior to the trauma. They will often regress in other ways like bedwetting, talking in a baby-like voice and of course be very clingy. They can do the opposite and push everyone away, and become silent. Sara tended to do the latter.

Knowing that her mother was also struggling with the suicide, Sara pulled away and pretended that she was fine so that Mum could concentrate on the younger brother and the coming baby. Many children will assume a place of enormous responsibility to

support a single parent and simply stop being a child. They constantly become peacekeepers, protectors or rescuers. This pattern can create enormous resentment in adolescence and early adulthood when they realise they lost their childhood well before they should have. Sara developed an irrational fear that she would also find her mummy dead one day or that she would get killed in her car. This fear is very common in children and can be recreated by simply watching a TV show or a film that depicts a personal tragedy.

This happens because children, especially under seven, have an under-developed sense of self, and of where their world begins and ends. Many children and teenagers have ended up with serious anxiety disorders because of the effects of external audio-visual trauma, hence concern about the unsupervised use of TV, videos, and games in children’s lives.

When a traumatic event occurs to young children, their immature brains go into emergency survival mode,

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much like it does for anyone of any age. Children’s brains do not have the same degree of emotional maturity as adults, which means that they are unable to reason, rationalise or problemsolve like adults. They are also unable to change their emotional states as well as adults, and they have different comforters than adults. One of the most common responses to a major trauma in childhood is to energetically leave the body because the pain is simply too great. This also allows the body to numb the pain. This escape mechanism is a life-preserving survival process that happens unconsciously. Some adults who suffered trauma as a child often find it hard to experience any emotion—even the ‘good ones’—later in their lives.

Suppressed emotion will come out in some way—most often as anger, rage or inappropriate behaviour that will cause distress to those closest to them. Once again these are unconscious responses that happen without any conscious

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Kindred 17

Special Feature

Photo by Hailey Bartholomew

awareness and they are being activated by the deep human drive to survive before the other drives of being happy, successful or clever!

Sara split from her body for quite a few months. Occasionally during our sessions when we were using a visualisation activity she would return.

However, the innate drive to keep her alive ensured that at the first sense of a threat she took flight from herself.

It is essential with children who have a close death experience, to first build up their comforting and soothing mechanisms. Any baby or child who

Kindred 18

is left in a chronically distressed state over a long period of time may sustain damage to key structures and systems in their developing brain. This can create an oversensitive stress response system that will stay with them for life and will increase their chances of depression, anxiety disorders, stressrelated physical illness, and alcohol abuse later in life. Comforting, soothing and reassuring children activates dopamine, norepinephine, and opioids in their brain, which diminish the feelings of fear and stress. Children need help and / or good modelling to do this normally

so when a crisis has happened they need even more support. So comforting is enormously important.

The difficulty when a death occurs in a family, is that all the key players in a child’s life are all struggling to meet their own needs at a very difficult time.

Therefore, I encourage families to ‘bunk down’ together. By this I mean bring in grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to all come together, with mattresses everywhere and people everywhere for at least two weeks. This ensures that vulnerable children will find someone to hold them, hug them or take them

The difficulty when a death occurs in a family, is that all the key players in a child’s life are all struggling to meet their own needs at a very difficult time.

to the park to give them a break. It can be very chaotic; however, the closeness allows everyone to help each other. Grief is random and influences people differently and with lots of people around who have already been a part of children’s life, they will find someone to meet their needs. For them to feel abandoned at this highly challenging time, on top of losing someone they love, would make their journey of recovery even more difficult.

What other comforters and soothing strategies are helpful?

Continuing with their normal routine and boundaries is important.

Stress is caused by a perception that we have no control over what is happening in our life and so to help children who are grieving, routine brings predictability. It is often good for them to go to their usual daycare or pre-school if they want to.

Children are less able to stay as attached to a traumatic event as older children or adults. They live in the moment and so they can ask a question about what is going to happen to Daddy’s body and then ask ‘can I have some apple?’ Some children show no emotion at all when they are at funerals or at visitations because it is a whole new experience to them and their little brains are busy taking it all in. When their amygdala

(the emotional ‘gatekeeper’ of the brain) develops in adolescence, often there can be a flooding of grief and sadness around that loss. This is often when boys can suddenly become angry or aggressive out of the blue. The suppressed grief needs to be released.

It is often helpful to get a new comfort object like a cuddle blanket, a soft toy or a doll, which becomes a new friend. I would give the children I worked with a beanie bear the same colour as their love and happiness colour. They would see it as a connection to me and a source of comfort. There were many ‘Maggie Bears’ that literally fell apart after a year or so, and that too is perfect. This gave me another way of communicating with the child that provided more anonymity. ‘So how’s Maggie Bear been this week?’ The parents of a child in this position should be very careful never to go anywhere without a few comforters for a child. They seek out this silent comfort and can be extremely distressed if they find themselves unprotected. They may think that their parents are a bit unreliable at this time, so other comforters are even more important. Pets are fantastic—especially dogs. I have seen family pets soothe small children with the wisdom and empathy of an adult human! They have a ‘knowing’ that cannot be underestimated and will be there for their special ones with a rock solid unconditional-ness that we humans would find hard to match!

When we physically comfort a distressed child we are activating portions of their vagus nerve that originates in the brain stem and connects many of the major organs of the body helping to regulate their function. This will re-

balance the digestive system, heart rate, breathing, and the immune system. To activate that wonderful vagus nerve we first need to remove any threat or chaos.

With babies we know that at least four things that calm and soothe are massage, sucking, warmth, and movement. These are a good place to start with children who have been distressed due to a death.

Stroking, holding, carrying, caressing, and hugging are enormously soothing for everyone. And older toddlers, or youngsters who had previously stopped breastfeeding, may request to suckle again. Allowing them to do so can be very healing.

I encourage adults to hold a child’s head with one hand across the forehead and one hand across the base of the head while the child is lying down.

This is the position I use when working with children as it helps to activate emotional releases that are gentle and calming. Children often need small touches like a soft pat on the back, ruffle of the hair, and hands on shoulders without any words being spoken. The silent reassurance is something children respond to well because they are unable to communicate well about their heavy, uncomfortable feelings and yet they still know that you care and are connected.

Adults tend to rely on words more than children can appreciate.

Unmet sucking needs in babies is often replaced by an oral neediness as children and adults. How many adults eat to comfort themselves emotionally?

It is helpful to keep plenty of water easily accessible for children and simple refreshers like frozen fruit ices (without colourings and preservatives), cut up fruits and simple lollies like jelly beans, jelly babies.This may seem a bit strange and maybe unhealthy, however the brain

Kindred 19

Special Feature

Helping children to be resilient In my resilience work with parents, I encourage them to get small pets when they have young children.

Goldfish, guinea pigs and rabbits are especially helpful as they have a much better chance of dying while the child is still young!

This early experience of death prepares a child for later experiences and helps create a template of expectation that will unfold quite naturally. This gives children an opportunity to understand that the pain and distress they feel about their deceased pet does decrease in time. It also allows them to know that a ceremony helps to farewell a loved one, and that it’s healthy to share stories and speak about the dead.

—Maggie Dent

Kindred 20

uses so much energy to process a loss that low glucose levels often contribute to feeling lousy. The whole body is working overtime to overcome this trauma and additional glucose will help maintain better brain functioning as well as soothe the oral needs to comfort.

Being warm is also wired deep into our psyche as being essential for feeling safe and calm. This is partly due to the body’s innate way of managing major organs at the cost of peripheral circulation when a trauma occurs. By being warm or being wrapped in a blanket (or sometimes a jumper that belonged to the deceased) will help blood circulation and allow one to feel soothed.

It helps if a child has had a special blanket—from very early childhood— that can become a very powerful ally for comfort during any trauma in life. I have a special nephew, now 22, who kept a patchwork quilt I made for him as a baby on the end of his bed right through his teen years! He still will not throw it out.

Another soothing activity is rocking or swinging. Sometimes, even with adults, I simply hold them and gently rock them while they process ‘irrational’ feelings that appear around a loss—often with no words at all. I believe that what comforted us as babies will always work no matter how old we are! Avoiding over-stimulation of any kind is also very helpful in soothing and comforting children.

Avoiding talking too much, asking too many questions and ‘doing’ too much and allowing time when they can chill out in their own space are also important.

This is where soothers from earlier in life come into play. Children who have used calming CDs as babies or toddlers find these to be enormously helpful because their brains are already wired to feel comforted by the very first sounds of their favourite tracks. Sometimes they get relief for a time watching a favourite video from childhood like The Lion King, or Finding Nemo. New films will actually add to their stress levels because their brain will have to work harder to find meaning and to follow the plot. A familiar video allows them to disappear without having to use their thinking skills at all.

Children’s imaginations have always been a significant way to protect and insulate them from the adult world.

Never is this more important than when a death occurs. Some of the comforting symbols or metaphors that comfort children are ones that symbolise that a connection to a loved one continues after death. This would include rainbows, wishes, magic balloons, angels, butterflies, and stars.

I still have a vivid image of a funeral I conducted for a pre-school teacher who had been killed in an accident. She had sung ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ many times to her preschoolers prior to her death. A message I was asked to read from her little students mentioned ‘and we will know that when we look up into the night sky, you will be the brightest star shining down on us and smiling, just like you always did…’

After the coffin had been lowered into the ground many of the little students dropped beautifully painted stars in to the grave, and blew kisses to say goodbye. This imaginal influence also helps to create light moments that help people to laugh and is very helpful in releasing sadness and grief. One little lad at a funeral once whispered to me, ‘Maggie, is heaven as far as London?’

Another little lad turned to me and asked if God had M&Ms because his Nan loved them. A little girl asked if there was a phone she could use to talk to her Poppy because they spoke weekly and she wanted to continue.

It is also very helpful to create a special place, real or imagined, or both, where children may go whenever they want to have a chat with their loved one. They can imagine being there and then invite their loved one to play, have an imaginary meal or simply chat with them. The brain can’t distinguish between real or imagined images so it feels real to the child, very real. This can ease the profound sense of loss that accompanies a death. There are many such imaginary journeys from Maureen Garth’s Meditations for Children series of books that can be adapted to help in this way. These imaginary activities soothe and calm the brain just like the previous strategies.

Allowing children to participate in the preparation for a funeral can also be helpful. They can write letters saying the things that may not have been said,

or say them again. Essentially their loved one is about to go on a journey that they will not return from. This ‘last journey’ metaphor gives parents a chance to engage the child. What would they like to accompany Daddy? Some want to include photos of them, special paintings or drawings, small toys or teddies, little cars, favourite chocolates, cans of beer— anything that they knew were a positive part of that person’s life.

My dad had nicknamed my youngest blue-eyed son ‘Gumnut’ and when he died suddenly when James was just six years old, he searched to find a bunch of gum nuts to place in his Pop’s coffin so that Pop would remember him. That felt appropriate to him. Children show incredible insight and thoughtfulness when engaged in this way. Another family I supported had been serious scrabble players and they included a scrabble board with words glued on the board like ‘We will always love you Mum’ and ‘Best Mum ever’. Children are aware that coffins either get burnt or stay

Byron Bay

Writers Festival 25-27 july 2008 workshops from 21 July

buried in cemeteries; however, the mere act of giving special things to help the journey still brings comfort. This is how the imagination insulates and protects children from the harsh reality and pragmatism of the adult world.

Change, loss and death will happen to everyone at some point in life. The ability to cope with and conquer these adversities is what resilience is all about. Children are children, not little adults, and they need to be allowed to experience setbacks as children. Unfortunately the experience of overcoming the crushing effects of a death is the best teacher on how to do it.

Little Sara walked every torrid step of her journey with loving support and lots of the things that help children. She forgave her daddy and she learnt about death, funerals, mental illness, the power of her imagination, and that love continues beyond death.

The tide recedes but leaves behind bright seashells in the sand.

The sun goes down but gentle warmth still

lingers on the land.

The music stops and yet it echoes on in sweet refrains.

For every joy that passes something beautiful remains. —Anon.

■ From a background in education, palliative care, ABC radio, the funeral industry and being a transpersonal therapist, Maggie Dent runs her own business, “Esteem Plus”, promoting the value of personal and professional resilience.

She is a national and international author, publisher and parenting specialist. Maggie is also a grateful Mum to four spunky sons.

Maggie is the author of Saving Our Children from Our Chaotic World, Nurturing Kids’ Hearts and Souls and Black Duck Wisdom. www.maggiedent.com

References • Garth, Maureen, Meditations for Children Series: Starbright (1991), Moonbeam (1993), Earthlight (1997). Sydney, Australia: Harper Collins.

• Weise, Jo and Wells, Steve (2004) Rose and The Night Monsters Inglewood, West Australia: Waterford Press. (www.eftdownunder.com ) • Dent, Maggie (2005) Nurturing Kids’ Hearts and Souls: Building Emotional, Social and Spiritual Competence, Dunsborough, WA: Pennington Publications.

Where Words come in Waves As we ease into the shorter days and cooler nights, thoughts inevitably turn to the Byron Bay Writers Festival 2008. Readers and writers take note: Festival dates this year are 25- 27 July, with workshops beginning 21 July. The Festival once more thanks Kindred Magazine for providing generous sponsorship.

Expect to fall in love with the best and newest Australian writing and this year the Festival is proud to highlight writers at the peak of their careers, as well as those destined to feature on best seller lists in future years. Spirituality and religion will provide signature themes, and at the heart of the program you will encounter extraordinary thinkers including Monash University’s Waleed Aly, La Trobe’s John Carroll, World Vision CEO Tim Costello and Jim Wallis, the charismatic evangelical writer and political activist from Harvard University.

Family is a central concern of the Festival program and Kindred’s editor Kali Wendorf will Chair panels reflecting upon the changing face of family in Australia and the role models put forward to our children today. High profile

writers speaking on this subject are Emily Maguire, Maggie Hamilton, Dr Alan McKee and actor William McInnes. The Festival is also proud to welcome local writer Alan Close, whose new book, Before You Met Me, untangles decades of knotted relationships and gives a poignant insight into the legacy of parenting.

We urge you to purchase your Early Bird discounted 3-Day Passes from 21 March, either online at www.byronbaywritersfestival.com or through Jetset Byron Bay, 02 6685 6262.

And when the full program is released on 30 May, check out the expanded list of Kids’ Day authors. Big names, new names, make sure your name’s on a pass.

Kindred 21

Special Feature

I

The natural birth/ natural death connection

By Nicolette Smith

The circle of life is a continuous one, starting with birth, journeying through life and ending in death, with some believing that we return again in rebirth or reincarnation.

Kindred 22

n life, death is a certainty.

Unfortunately our society has now distanced us from death by taking it out of the home, family, and community and putting it in the hands of professionals.

As the natural birth movement has evolved, so too has the natural death movement. People have chosen to be informed and empowered when birthing and now they are choosing a more natural and empowering approach to dying, death, and how their loved ones’ bodies are handled. People are now starting to reclaim control of the death process, discussing it, educating themselves, and making their personal choices known. Families are increasingly attending to the deceased body in the home, sitting in vigil and creating ceremonies whereby the person’s life is celebrated together with their community. People organise and undertake part, or all of the process themselves with the help of their family and friends rather than by a funeral director or clergy.

Both birth and death are rites of passage that transform us. They are times when we enter the veil and walk between the worlds. We are stripped of all of our masks and re-emerge in a new form. Having our family, friends, and community with us, supporting us through these life-transforming events is beneficial for all involved and enables us to move through the process easier. As author Kathy Kalina suggests, ‘Confusion, dissension, and any form of negativity interfere with birthing and dying, and tend to generate complications. Above all else, fear is the greatest enemy.’ As there are midwives to assist us with birthing, there is also midwifery for souls or death doulas, who have emerged from the hospice movement. Both aim for the same thing: ‘a natural, gentle approach to an intimate and life-changing family event, with careful attention throughout the process to the body, mind, and spirit of the patient as well as the family’.

Personally, I have experienced the deaths and funerals of several family members and all of these have been very different. As an active supporter of natural birth, I birthed all of my five children at home including my twins.

My daughter Leteisha died at home at age eight months. In death, as in birth, I called on our midwives, family, friends, and community. They advocated for us, cooked for us, and cared for us. As a homebirth mother it was especially important for me to have her body come home from the hospital with my husband and me, and my supporters enabled this to happen. I bathed with my baby, oiled her body, combed her hair, cut her nails, and dressed her. This was such an important ritual for me as this allowed her preparation to be a final act of love.

As a family we painted her coffin, placing our handprints all over it and I painted the top, tuning in to her spirit and portraying her uniqueness. This was a very powerful and healing ritual for our family. It allowed us to talk about her, share stories, and remember her life.

With close friends and family we held a small and intimate funeral ceremony and then a week later, a memorial service for our larger community.

All of the rituals and the involvement of our family and friends helped our grieving process. The more public ceremony allowed members of our larger community to express their grief and sorrow. The simple act of bringing a meal allowed people to feel that they were helping and doing something, and this in turn eased their own grief.

People generally want to ‘do’ for others at these times. It was the death of Leteisha, combined with my other grief experiences, which led me to enquire more about the processes of death and dying. Discussions with an elderly friend also fuelled this enquiry, as she wants a more personal and community focused funeral.

My enquiry led me to discover that it is a little-known fact that you can

The birth of the natural death movement In 1988, Nicholas Albery’s [founder of the Natural Death Centre] father died at home. This death triggered in Nicholas a realisation of the need for a natural death movement to parallel the natural childbirth movement, and to spread the tenets of good hospice care to home care for those dying of all causes, not just cancer. As Nicholas put it: ‘Wouldn’t more people, if it were possible, prefer to die at home amongst friends rather than in the anonymity of a big and noisy hospital?

As with birth, could preparation, exercises and rituals help reduce the anxieties that people feel about dying? Could dying at least for a lucky few become as easy and as ecstatic a process as our experience of birth? Granted that no one can be certain what happens after death, could it be that preparation matters, as the Tibetans argue, to enable the soul at the point of death to merge fearlessly with that bright light reported by many who have recovered from near-death experiences? I remembered how a friend’s mother insisted on being given her travelling rug to die with; could the process of dying be the labour pains of the soul, with sometimes the same feeling of expectation and transition as at birth?’

Extracted from The Natural Death Handbook

Books for support

There are plenty of amazing books out there—for adults and children—that prove not only supportive but transformative.

See page 25 for a helpful list.

Doulas for the dying There are similarities between the sensitive care required at birth and approaching death. Using the analogy of companions for women in childbirth, death doulas serve to accompany, comfort and support those who are at the end of their life. When approaching death, people often experience fear, loneliness and isolation. Well-prepared doulas, working with one person at a time, can minimise the sense of isolation, provide emotional comfort, assist with practical concerns and advocate on behalf of people with life limiting illness.

Well-prepared doulas provide: • Emotional, spiritual and social support • Comfort and companionship • Advocacy

Kindred 23

Special Feature

Sustainable cemeteries Australia still does not have a real ‘green’ cemetery. There are a couple of cemeteries with a bushland setting but they still support the traditional burial practices of wooden (particle board) coffins, headstones etc. South Australia is looking into a suitable location for a cemetery where biodegradable coffins and caskets will be used and only native shrubs or trees will be placed over the location of the burial site. According to the head of the inquiry, Bob Such – ‘The great thing about natural burial grounds is that they provide a positive contribution to the environment. They are easy to maintain. They are inexpensive to implement, because the person is buried in a cardboard or a wicker coffin, and a tree is planted above or alongside the cremated remains.

There is a little plaque next to the tree or at the entrance of the natural burial ground, saying that a particular tree represents the place where a particular person was buried or their cremated remains have been placed.’

South Australia will be the first state to introduce natural burial grounds.

With thanks to the Natural Death Centre www.naturaldeath.org.uk

Kindred 24

As a family we painted her coffin, placing our handprints all over it and I painted the top, tuning in to her spirit and portraying her uniqueness. undertake the whole funeral process yourself. It is not illegal to tend to a dead body at home, although common sense and health regulations do apply.

You can make/or supply your own coffin, transport the body yourself, conduct your own ceremonies, all for a reduced cost compared to employing professional people. There are guidelines and permits to be organised so it is best to be advised and prepared.

However, it can easily be done and is becoming more common practice.

The first and most important step is to start discussing death and demystifying it, opening up the discussion within our family and circle of friends and considering the various ways in which we want to attend to death and dying. On a personal level, to ensure your wishes are fulfilled, you need to organise to have someone who supports your choices to be the coordinator of the process; like having a birth plan and support person when giving birth. You need to write your wishes explicitly in your will. Educate yourself around the process and have all of your paperwork together in one place.

With our concerns for the environment there has also been a

surge of interest into eco-friendly alternatives. People wanting to have their bodies dealt with in a more green and natural way, by choosing to not be embalmed, having eco-friendly coffins and to be buried or cremated with little impact on the environment. There is a growing demand for natural burial grounds, which have yet to be created in Australia, although there are moves towards creating them.

When intimately attending to our loved ones, who are in the process of dying and death, we have the opportunity to face our grief and start the healing process. When we are informed and in control of the process, and supported by our loved ones, we are then empowered. With empowerment comes healing. ■ Nicolette Smith is a qualified Social Worker with a Masters in Art Therapy. She is a passionate artist and a homebirth mother of four children. She has experienced grief and loss and has therefore a strong interest in the processes of death and dying. For information in regards to her Funeral Planning and Do-it-yourself Funeral Workshops and other relevant information and resources, refer to her website www.squidoo.com/circleoflife

References Kalina, Kathy. Midwife for Souls: Spiritual Care for the Dying. Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2007.

Resources Books for adults on dying and death • Sacred Dying: Creating Rituals for Embracing the End of Life

By Megory Anderson, Thomas Moore • Dealing Creatively With Death: A Manual of Death Education and Simple Burial

By Ernest Morgan • Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love

By Lisa Carlson

By Nicholas Albery, Gil Elliot, Joseph Elliot • Funeral Rights: what the ‘death care’ industry doesn’t want you to know

By Robert Larkins • A Graceful Farewell: Putting Your Affairs in Order

By Maggie Watson

Children’s books about death • Lifetimes

By Bryan Mellonie • What Is Death

By Etan Boritzer

• Midwife Of Souls

By Kathy Kalina

• The Next Place

By Warren Hanson

• The Pagan Book of Living and Dying: Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations on Crossing Over

By Starhawk, M. Macha Nightmare

• The Mountains of Tibet

By Mordicai Gerstein

• The New Natural Death Handbook

• The Natural Death Centre - UK

Websites

www.naturaldeath.org.uk Provides information on all types of funeral choices, but are especially known for advice and support on family-organised, environmentallyfriendly funerals, and natural burial grounds • The Natural Death Centre - Australia www.naturaldeathcentre.org.au Support, products and information to demystify and reclaim death.

• Circle of Life www.squidoo.com/circleoflife resources, articles, links, book reviews and more • Funeral Rights www.funeralrights.info What the Australian death industry doesn’t want you to know – information, links, blog With thanks to Nicolette Smith and her site; www.squidoo.com/circleoflife

You may be surprised where your super is invested.

Our investments are based on rigorous financial and ethical analysis.

australianethical 1800 021 227 • austethical.com.au

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Australian Ethical® is a registered trademark of AEI.

Kindred 25

Special Feature

T

Still Born

By Sue and Ric Davies

8:04 am, Friday, 26 August 2005. Four days after his due-date and our darling son, Bryn, is stillborn. He is perfect in every way. The shock is sudden, massive, and overwhelming.

Kindred 26

omorrow we will have to choose between a cremation or a burial. Today we will have to deal with layer-uponlayer of bureaucracy to have our baby come home, just for one night, and for us to be a family together before saying goodbye.

You may be feeling uncomfortable reading this article. After all, a baby dying is something we don’t generally talk about. Why on earth would we?

But the painful truth is that some babies don’t make it and, terrible as it is, it is not unique or particularly rare. In fact the chances are that someone you already know has lost a baby, whether it be through miscarriage, stillbirth, or in early infancy. Chances are you also don’t know about it because it is rarely discussed.

The statistics on stillbirth make for sobering reading. According to the Stillbirth Foundation in Sydney, one in every one hundred babies born in Australia is stillborn or dies shortly after birth. In 2005 there were 1411 stillbirths in Australia. Our son was one of them.

Using those statistics, at least three babies will be stillborn in Australia today, and tomorrow, and the day after.

When a child does die, it seems that society deals, or more accurately doesn’t deal, with death in strange ways. On losing Bryn, we were suddenly engulfed in a dark world of social awkwardness and uncomfortable, embarrassed silences.

The reality is that many people don’t know how to, or maybe don’t want to, talk to someone who has lost a child.

So the easiest thing is to simply turn away, maybe send some flowers and hope to God that the person is ‘better’ the next time we bump into them at the supermarket.

It is our hope that this article and our experiences will help break down some of the social stigma of losing a

baby and reveal it for what it is, a tragic but not uncommon event, and one that we can all learn and ultimately benefit from.

‘I’m sorry’ Those two words, and it was as though the world had stopped turning. This can’t be happening, it just,… can’t be happening. Shock, disbelief, horror. Our entire world turned upside down in an instant. Confusion rained down all around us. All reference points are gone.

What is happening?

And yet even in that darkest hour, there was such an underlying feeling of peace and love. Here we are with our baby, in the flesh, and we can hold him, and he is beautiful—the image of his sister. And just like any other parents, we are so happy to meet our new baby for the first time. It was a strange experience to be genuinely proud and utterly devastated at the same time. But that’s how it was, and how it continues to be.

That day was long and hard. It was an experience that no one should have to go through. At last we were able to bring him back home, where he belonged, and we spent the evening together cuddling Bryn and reading stories as a family. Our daughter, then nearly three years old, was wonderful with him, kissing him, holding his hand and saying ‘hello baby Bryn’. He stayed in our room that night, and by the morning we knew his spirit had gone. Any sleep we did get was from exhaustion.

We said goodbye in the morning. It was so calm, sitting with him, holding him. I remember that two kookaburras wouldn’t leave us alone that day, they were everywhere we went, but it didn’t seem particularly strange at the time.

Two days later at the funeral chapel was the last day we would see him. I

Special Feature can’t describe the feeling, it was just so calm and peaceful. I knew then that death is nothing to be afraid of, it really

is so beautifully peaceful. We wrapped him up snug and placed him into the bassinet. We kissed him and told him we were sorry, so very sorry. And we thanked him, our son, our teacher.

He was cremated the next day.

We cried and cried together. It was easy to cry and the crying felt good.

‘He didn’t make it’

We have built up a small rockery garden for Bryn where we have placed a Japanese Mizuko Jizo statue engraved with his name. The word ‘mizu-ko’ literally translated means ‘water’ and ‘baby’ and is a description of those unborn beings who float in a watery world awaiting birth. The Mizuko Jizo is popularly known as the guardian of unborn, aborted, miscarried, and stillborn babies and the little statues get lovingly adorned with baby clothes and toys.

Kindred 28

Telling other people what had happened was difficult. Two days after losing Bryn, we took our daughter to her regular playgroup.

It wouldn’t have been fair to disrupt her routine by keeping her home and, anyway, being with other children was so much better than being with us. I walked in first to a roomful of expectant smiles from all the mums. I shook my head and looked down; ‘we had a boy, he didn’t make it.’

Silence, a long stunned silence and then tears. I will never forget the look on their faces. It was the most terrible thing to have to tell people.

And so the news spread, whether first-hand or by word-of-mouth and those painful, awkward silences started to become a defining feature of our lives.

A week after Bryn’s death it suddenly dawned on us that we were alone on this journey. We had flowers and cards and we appreciated them enormously but it was clear that there weren’t many people who wanted to talk, and I mean really talk, about Bryn and life and death. We felt completely the opposite and our sense of solitude was palpable. From our discussions with other people who have lost a child this sense of isolation sadly seems to be a very common experience.

It would appear that someone who has lost a child is often to be avoided at all costs.

I think that most people were either embarrassed, shocked, or in denial.

Sometimes it felt like it was our role to help other people come to terms with their own grief and help them feel better.

I remember thinking ‘heck, if you’re upset, imagine how I feel.’ But we took on this role, and not begrudgingly, and hopefully we helped some people accept the loss.

It was the denial that hurt us the most, as if there were no baby. That really hurt. There was a baby, in the flesh, and he was held and loved and nurtured just like any other newborn.

He was stillborn but he was still born, it’s not like he wasn’t. I can understand people might not have known what to say, but even to say ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say’ would have been so much better than the denial. To this day there are some people who have never spoken to us about Bryn.

A few people seemed to see beyond the tragedy. Our local homeopath, who miraculously managed to stop Sue’s milk supply coming in, greeted us with a smile and congratulations on the birth of Bryn and encouraged us not to focus on what we had lost but on what we had gained. It was such a welcome and heartfelt gesture. ‘Congratulations!’ was exactly what we needed to hear, because we had still brought a beautiful baby boy into the world.

Surprisingly we also met many people who had lost children too, some of whom are now dear friends. There was the mum at playgroup who lost a child at 22 weeks, the friend at work whose sister’s child was stillborn the year before, the lady in the shop who’d had three late miscarriages, the school friend whose older brother was stillborn, the friend from uni who lost a child at 25 weeks, the mum at school who lost a baby at 24 weeks, another mum from school whose baby was stillborn at 40 weeks, even a nemesis at work who had a stillbirth in the family.

It soon became apparent that our loss was by no means unique or particularly rare and that it affected a broad spectrum of society. It just seemed

that society hadn’t developed an accepted set of rules and norms to apply in this situation. If you lose your parents, you are an orphan, and if you lose your spouse, you are a widow or widower. But the English language has no word for someone who has lost a child. It seems to be too difficult to conceptualise, yet alone put a label to, and so the loss of a child doesn’t get talked about.

Why on earth don’t we talk about death more openly? It is as common and natural as birth and if there is one thing that is certain in this life it is that we will die. It seemed very peculiar to us that part of the reality of our existence should be swept under the carpet like this.

Wake up Those weeks after losing Bryn turned out to be intensely spiritual—an experience that was completely unexpected. All of the fuss and worry of modern living was stripped away, it simply didn’t matter, and there we stood in a seemingly timeless and infinite expanse of simply being. The sense of freedom, peace, and joy—yes, even joy—was extraordinary.

And all kinds of strange and wonderful things started happening. Clocks stopped working at the same time, light bulbs would blow when we walked under them, birds would come and sit with us. Our daughter woke us every night to gently tell us about the friendly white lady standing by her bed ‘like a statue’.

There were ecstatic feelings of no self, no concepts, no reference points whatsoever.

Wave after wave they came, and it soon dawned on us that there was much more to be realised from this. We started to look beyond the loss and realised that there was indeed much to be gained.

Something, or someone, somewhere, seemed to be nudging us and nagging and saying ‘wake up, wake up’. It was connected to Bryn and somehow it was part of Bryn. All of this was incredibly reassuring to us. We accepted the loss of him and we gratefully accepted the gifts and insights he gave us.

A week after Bryn was born, we had a Powa ceremony for him at a Buddhist centre. It was such a comfort and relief.

We were doing the best thing we could for him. We spoke with the nuns about

death, rebirth, and karma and their blunt matter-of-fact-ness was so refreshing.

Do you know the Buddhist story of the mustard seed? It is such a powerful story. A grief-stricken woman goes to Buddha to ask him to return her dead son to her. He says he will if she can find a mustard seed from a house that hasn’t experienced a loss and, of course, she can’t find a single household that hasn’t suffered in this way. So she considers the fate of man, that death is common to all.

And she thinks to herself, ‘How selfish am I in my grief?’ That really struck a chord with us. I’m not saying that it made us feel any better but it certainly allowed a new perspective to open up. I don’t think we will ever get over losing Bryn, but perhaps at that moment we started to begin to get used to it.

We had always understood that life is the seed of death. Now we were starting to wonder if death might also be the seed of life.

Happy birthday 8:04 am, Saturday, 26 August 2006. A year later and we buried Bryn’s placenta under a cherry blossom tree in full bloom by the back door. We shook the tree and blossoms rained down like pink snow whilst our daughter squealed in delight. We had kept his placenta frozen, knowing we would bury it in a special place at a special time, as we had with our daughter’s on her naming day. And today is the day—it feels right.

This is Bryn’s time again and another milestone. Seeing the end of 2005 was surprisingly hard, and we had feared his birthday might be the same, but now

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Special Feature that we’re here, it is quite lovely. That feeling of peace is back and frankly I hope today never ends. We have built up a small rockery garden for Bryn where we have placed a Japanese Mizuko Jizo

Painting made by Bryn’s family on his second birthday statue engraved with his name. The word ‘mizu-ko’ literally translated means ‘water’ and ‘baby’ and is a description of those unborn beings who float in a watery world awaiting birth. The Mizuko Jizo is popularly known as the guardian of unborn, aborted, miscarried, and stillborn babies and the little statues get lovingly adorned with baby clothes and toys. Our daughter loves to bathe Bryn’s statue or dress him up with flowers and crystals and today is no different. ‘I miss Bryn,’ she said, ‘but we can still love him.’ ‘Oh yes, we sure can, sweetheart.’

Dealing with death The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

by Sogyal Rinpoche is an amazingly beautiful book. Everyone should read it I think and preferably before encountering death. In the story of the mustard

Kindred 30

seed, which is detailed in the book, the Buddha said:

The life of mortals in this world is troubled and brief and combined with pain. For there is not any means by which those that have been born can avoid dying; after reaching old age there is death; of such a nature are living beings. As ripe fruits are early in danger of falling, so mortals when born are always in danger of death. As all earthen vessels made by the potter end in being broken, so is the life of mortals. Both young and adult, both those who are fools and those who are wise, all fall into the power of death; all are subject to death.

Of those who, overcome by death, depart from life, a father cannot save his son, nor kinsmen their relations. Mark I, while relatives are looking on and lamenting deeply, one-by-one mortals are carried off, like an ox that is led to the slaughter. So the world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world. In whatever manner people think a thing will come to pass, it is often different when it happens, and great is the disappointment; see, such are the terms of the world.

Not from weeping nor from grieving will anyone obtain peace of mind; on the contrary, his pain will be the greater and his body will suffer. He will make himself sick and pale, yet the dead are not saved by his lamentation. People pass away, and their fate after death will be according to their deeds. If a man live a hundred years, or even more, he will at last

be separated from the company of his relatives, and leave the life of this world. He who seeks peace should draw out the arrow of lamentation, and complaint, and grief. He who has drawn out the arrow and has become composed will obtain peace of mind; he who has overcome all sorrow will become free from sorrow, and be blessed.

Thank you, Bryn 8:04 am, Sunday, 26 August 2007. It’s another year already! I feel really close to Bryn today and it is lovely. The last few weeks have been no fun. The tension rises as we approach Bryn’s birthday, but like last year, the day itself is calm and peaceful. At last we’re here, it’s pouring down outside and we have acrylic paint all over the kitchen. We have decided to paint some pictures for Bryn, nothing in particular, just whatever feels right.

Chaos reigns and now there is paint everywhere, all over our daughter, and even on the baby. Our third child is 9 months old already. The night she was conceived I had a powerful and vivid dream. In it my daughter was holding a baby and looking up at me smiling.

‘It’s my sister,’ she said, ‘and her eyes are open.’

■ Sue and Ric live in the Perth hills of Western Australia and are the proud parents of two beautiful girls here on earth and one beautiful boy in heaven.

They will be travelling around Australia for a year shortly and would love to catch up with any of Kindred’s readers along the way. They can be contacted via squeakcorner@yahoo.com.au

References • Stillbirth Foundation, Inc: www.stillbirthfound tion.org.au/objectives

• Australian Bureau of Statistics, 3303.0 Causes of Death, Australia 2005: www.abs. gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/ 3303.02005?OpenDocument • The Mustard Seed: www.sacred-texts.com/bud/ btg/btg85.htm • Japanese Buddhist Statuary: www.onmarkproductions.com/html/jizo1.shtml#mizuko

Kindred Books Reviews by Michele Dennis All books and CDs are available from our bookshop at www.kindredmagazine.com.au

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids

By Madeline Levine, Ph.D. The Price of Privilege is not about the general bad attitude and decline of morals in our young people today or spoilt, rich kids complaining about their lives.

It is about very serious mental health issues that some children of upper middle class parents are suffering with. Madeline Levine has been practising psychology for 25 years and has a firm grasp on what is happening to the youth of today. Many upper class parents put unrealistic pressure on their children to perform and at the same time are emotionally and physically absent from their children’s lives. This is a difficult topic and Levine uses examples from her practice and the young people she comes into contact with to bring the statistics into a real life context. She then addresses what parents can do to help themselves and their children.

Midwife Wisdom, Mother Love

By Sarah James This book is a wonderful first read for mothers to be. Sarah James, midwife and mother of four, shares with her readers all her insights into pregnancy and birth. It is not an advice book and she writes from the heart.

She discusses all aspects from the emotional roller-coaster ride of pregnancy and childbirth to what to expect during the birth process. The author explains anatomy and physiology we should know to better understand what happens to our bodies in plain English that is easy to understand but not patronising. There are explanations of

the different options for your birth as far as what type of birth you want so an expectant mother can begin to visualise her own birth experience. James holds nothing back and it is refreshing to read about things that even some of the more bold authors shy away from.

The Creative Family; How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections Simple Projects and Activities for You and Your Children

By Amanda Blake Soule In these days of computers and XBox, even those of us who mean to limit screen time can drift and find themselves not sticking to the plan. Give your family an injection of creativity with this inspirational book. It is full of great projects for both young and older children but it’s more than a craft book.

Amanda Blake Soule shares with you ideas on how to nurture the creative spirit that lives within all of us. She stresses the need to get out in nature whether in the bush, beach or garden; finding the place that inspires your child is just the beginning. There are also chapters on gathering materials, rituals, celebrations and play. With an emphasis on natural materials, there are enough projects to keep you busy—and away from the tube—all year.

Farmacist Desk Reference Encyclopedia of Whole Food Medicine

By Don Tolman This two-part reference book, written by whole-foods and wellness pioneer Don Tolman, is a wealth of information.

The first volume is full of interesting facts and opinions on a variety of topics such as what your body is made of, a sure-fire way to quit smoking and the healing power of dreams.

Even if you don’t agree with everything the author says, it is still a fantastic read. The second volume is an amazing reference book with the healing qualities of natural foods individually listed alphabetically alongside just about any ailment you can think of.

Want to find a better way to deal with your toddler’s temper tantrums? It’s there right next to a definition of tempeh and why it is good for you. There are plenty of natural remedies and juicing recipes for things from eye health to liver problems to mood swings.

Available from www.dontolmaninternational.com

Changing the Course of Autism A Scientific Approach for Parents and Physicians

By Bryan Jepson M.D. with Jane Johnson As the title suggests, this book is written from a scientific perspective and much of the content is quite dense. Despite that, it still manages to engage the reader as the author gives the history of the rise of autism in the Western world.

Jepson is a doctor with the ability to explain the medical complexities involved in the diagnosis and treatment of autism that will be much appreciated by the average reader. The book addresses the issues of toxins and heavy metals and also explains what makes a person with autism different physically.

The reader also learns how autism is a medical disease and is treatable if looked at from that perspective. This book will give the people who care for and live with someone with autism more than hope; it will give them the knowledge they need to help improve their lives.

Kindred 31

Kindred News Build self-esteem to curb the ‘gimme’ syndrome Social scientists—and plenty of parents—have labelled today’s tweens and teens ‘the most brand-oriented and materialistic generation in history’.

Researchers who study materialism are now suggesting an antidote: work on raising your child’s self-worth and sense of accomplishment. Low self-esteem can create materialistic tendencies in children, according to a new study that looked at how materialism develops in youngsters.

Experts say to raise a child’s selfesteem, key in on an interest—drawing,

music, sports, fantasy play, debating—interact with him and give him positive, supportive messages. But don’t overdo it, either.

Focusing on family activities rather than material things can also help. Also, give your child the opportunity to serve others in need. Younger children can choose or wrap a gift for a child

while adolescents might help in a food pantry.

It might also help to remember Kasser’s 2002 study in the Journal of Happiness Studies that discovered what really makes for a ‘Merry Christmas’. He found that family and religion were the two factors most closely tied to holiday happiness.

What caused the most dissatisfaction? Spending money and receiving gifts.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Calling all supermarkets to match Foodland’s GM-free stand Independent South Australian supermarket chain Foodland has joined Coles to ensure that their home brand products are free of Genetically Manipulated (GM) soy, corn, canola or cottonseed.

Both supermarkets are responding to strong customer preferences for GM-free.

‘We congratulate both chains on their first steps toward making their shops totally GM-free,’ says Gene Ethics Director, Bob Phelps.

‘The next step for Foodland is to make its many NSW and NT supermarkets GM-free too!’ he said.

‘We call on Woolworths, Aldi and IGA

to join the GMfree trend in their stores.’

It is no surprise that Foodland’s shopper feedback supports their GM-free stance as over 90% of Coles customers also want GM-free.

‘Everyone wants to eat healthy, safe and nutritious foods but scientific evidence shows that some GM foods fail these tests,’ Mr Phelps says.

Food Standards Australia NZ does

GM

not consider the results of animal studies, yet there is growing evidence that the health of laboratory animals and their pups are harmed by GM foods. GM crops and foods will damage human health, the environment and the economy.

Gene Ethics is calling on the Federal government to begin the process of fulfilling its promise to review Food Standard 1.5.2 and require the full labelling of all foods made using Genetic Manipulation technologies and processes.

Gene Ethics, www.geneethics.org

Pre-menstrual cramps helped by alternative medicine New research in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews has found that Chinese herbal medicine provides better pain relief than pharmaceutical drugs, acupuncture and heat compression.

Typically, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin

Kindred 32

and ibuprofen are often recommended for women with cramps, or they are given the oral contraceptive pill to reduce the severity of symptoms. But many women cannot take these drugs, or prefer not to use them.

The new study, led by Dr

Xiaoshu Zhu from the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research at the University of Western Sydney, combined the results of 39 trials involving 3475 women. Chinese herbal medicine—either single herbs or mixtures of herbs—was the most effective at reducing pain and improving overall symptoms, with no evidence of side effects.

The Australian

Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep Phone makers’ own scientists have discovered that bedtime use of mobile phones can lead to headaches, confusion and depression. Radiation from mobile phones delays and reduces sleep, and causes headaches and confusion, according to a new study.

The research, sponsored by the mobile phone companies themselves, shows that using the handsets before bed causes people to take longer to reach the deeper stages of sleep and to spend less time in them, interfering with the body’s ability to repair damage suffered during the day.

The findings are especially alarming for children and teenagers, most of whom,

surveys suggest, use their phones late at night and who especially need sleep. Their failure to get enough can lead to mood and personality changes, ADHDlike symptoms, depression, lack of concentration and poor academic performance.

Published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium and funded by the Mobile

Manufacturers Forum, representing the main handset companies, the study suggests that the radiation may activate the brain’s stress system, ‘making people more alert and more focused, and decreasing their ability to wind down and fall asleep’.

The embarrassed Mobile Manufacturers Forum played down the results, insisting that its ‘results were inconclusive’ and that ‘the researchers did not claim that exposure caused sleep disturbance’.

The Independent UK

What happens in the first hour of drinking a cola?

After 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system, which is 100% of your recommended daily intake. You’d normally vomit from such an intake, but the phosphoric acid cuts the flavour.

After 20 minutes: Your blood sugar

skyrockets. Your liver attempts to maximise insulin production in order to turn high levels of sugar into fat.

After 40 minutes: As your body finishes absorbing the caffeine, your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your liver pumps more sugar into the bloodstream.

After 45 minutes: Your body increases dopamine production, tricking you into feeling pleasure and adding to the addictiveness of the beverage.

After 60 minutes: The sugar crash begins.

Dr. Mercola www.mercola.com

Forget oil, the new global crisis is food A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club’s 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto recently.

‘It’s not a matter of if, but when,’ he warned investors. ‘It’s going to hit this year hard.’

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year—around 22%—will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing

middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

He said that this surge would begin to show in the prices of consumer foods in the next six months. Consumers already paid 6.5% more for food in the past year.

At the centre of the imminent food catastrophe is corn—the main staple of the ethanol industry. The price of corn has risen about 44% over the past 15 months. This not only impacts the price of food products made using grains, but also the price of meat, with feed prices

for livestock also increasing.

The amount of US grain currently stored for following seasons was the lowest on record, relative to consumption. Mr. Coxe said crop yields around the world need to increase to something close to what is achieved in the state of Illinois, which produces over 200 corn bushells an acre compared with an average 30 bushells an acre in the rest of the world.

‘That will be done with more fertiliser, with genetically modified seeds, and with advanced machinery and technology,’ he said.

Financial Post

Kindred 33

Sustenance

Growing a

Community

By Russ Grayson

Kindred 34

Kindred 35

Sustenance

Starting a Community Garden

rom Caloundra to Collingwood, from Brisbane to Bega and over to Adelaide and Perth, community gardens are sprouting in Australia’s cities and towns.

In some, the community gardeners work their own little plot of garden, their allotment. In others, they share whatever work needs doing and, at the end of the day, they divide the herbs and vegetables ready for harvest.

Visit Melbourne’s Veg Out Community Garden at St Kilda, the large community gardens at Collingwood Children’s Farm and Sydney’s Randwick Community Organic Garden and you see the allotment model in use. Go over to Sydney’s Glovers Community Garden in Rozelle or Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm to see shared community gardens in action. Different models of community gardening for sure, but they all work.

F

Community gardens —diverse places Diversity is a feature of community gardening; diversity of plants and diversity of people. The membership of community gardens reflects the people that live in the surrounding area. In Melbourne’s Flemington Community Garden and the Waterloo Estate community gardens in Sydney you find people from Asia, the Middle East, Russia, Europe—and even Australia.

These are gardens on the land of state government housing estates and have been built by organisations like Cultivating Community for the use of the residents of the high-rise blocks that surround them. Some gardens are predominately Anglo in makeup.

Just as diversified as their participants are the plants that community gardeners

Kindred 36

What is a Community Garden?

Very simply, it is any piece of land gardened by a group of people. It can be urban, suburban or rural.

It can grow flowers, vegetables, herbs or community. It can be one community plot or many —at a school, hospital or in a neighbourhood.

Here are a few ideas on how to get started: 1. Form a planning committee 2. Choose a co-ordinator 3. Find a sponsor (to help fund tools, land, etc) 4. Choose a site 5. Prepare and develop the site 6. Organise the garden management 7. Look into insurance 8. Set up an organisation and create bylaws 9. Create simple management guidelines 10. Find ways to include children 11. Have fun For more information visit the American Community Gardening Association www.communitygarden.org

grow. Mostly, it’s vegetables and culinary herbs. There are the common varieties like tomatoes in their surprising range, leafy greens such as lettuce and cabbage, eggplant and capsicum, corn, and cucumber. Look closely and you find less commonly grown vegetables like globe artichoke and Jerusalem artichoke.

Wooloomooloo Community Garden even has a coffee tree from which a local coffee roaster processed the beans for brewing.

Check out the communal garden beds in the Randwick garden and you discover a patch of the native vegetable, New Zealand spinach, reflecting the interest in Australian wild foods among some community gardeners. Fruit shrubs and trees are a feature of larger

community gardens where the varieties you find are determined by climate.

In Collingwood Children’s Garden’s orchard, for instance, and in that at CERES in Brunswick, you find cool climate varieties such as the stone fruits.

Citrus and avocado might be seen in the larger Sydney community gardens and, if subtropical Brisbane is on your travel itinerary, Northey Street City Farm has a wonderful range of warm climate fruits.

It’s not only plants that grow in community gardens. A walk along the fence at Glovers Community Garden or a poke in the back corner at Randwick Community Organic Garden will reveal something else installed by the gardeners—chickens. The chickens at Randwick were donated by Randwick City Council, whose sustainability educator, Fiona Campbell, borrows them and their small mobile pen when she runs workshops on keeping urban poultry.

Management of community garden chooks is by a ‘chook team’. They organise a daily roster so that someone checks that the birds have fresh water and food every day. That lucky person gets to take whatever eggs have been laid. Needless to say, community garden chooks are a popular attraction to community garden children, who like to watch and handle the birds.

Relocalising the food supply Although you find native plants in community gardens, the growing of food is their core business. And this is fortunate because community gardening is a means of returning food production to the city. When the permaculture design system’s David Holmgren and Bill Mollison started to promote that idea almost 30 years ago, it was new and novel. Now it has become a means of reducing the food system’s contribution of greenhouse gases due to the long distance transportation of food (known as ‘food miles’). With oil price hikes— and price increases of anything that uses oil in its production or transport, such as food—likely because of the impending peaking of global oil production—home and community gardening become the means to a more secure and less expensive food supply.

Related to this is the leading role of community gardening in the growing ‘local food’ movement. Here, food grown in community gardens joins food grown in the wider region and sold at farmers’ markets to create a relocalised food supply that has fewer food miles than that obtained from the supermarket.

Why garden?

Of course you cannot grow all of your food needs in a community garden; it is really a means of supplementing what you eat. Nonetheless, the reasons people community garden are as varied as the gardeners. Some seek access to cheaper, fresher, and more nutritious food. Others want to reduce their family’s expenditure on food. For some, it’s a constructive recreation and, for many, the reason for gardening is primarily social—it’s a means of meeting and being with others.

Community gardens are family-friendly places.

If you decide to take up community gardening, there remains one key factor to keep in mind as you lay your mulch and carefully plant your first seedlings.

It is something very important to the community gardening experience and is something you might like to keep in mind all the time. It is this—have fun. ■

• Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens UK www.farmgarden.org.uk • Glovers Community Garden www.communitygarden.org.au/experience/abcorg-gardener/glovers.html • Northey Street City Farm www.northeystreetcityfarm.org.au • Organic Traders and Consumers Network bOCTACnet www.otacnet.com.au • Randwick Community Organic Garden www.rcog.org.au

• Relocalisation www.relocalize.net/about/relocalization www.pacific-edge.info • SEED International www.permaculture.au.com • Seed Savers Network www.seedsavers.net • Slow Food Movement www.slowfood.com • Veg Out Community Garden www.vegout.asn.au

Russ Grayson is media liaison for the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network (www.communitygarden.org.au). A journalist and editor (www.pacific-edge.info), he works with the TerraCircle international development team in the southwest Pacific (www.terracircle.org.au) and is a member of the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance (www. sydneyfoodfairness.org.au). Russ is also involved in sustainability education and is a board member of the Manly Food Coop and Permaculture International.

Resources • The American Community Garden Association www.communitygarden.org • Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network www.comunitygarden.org.au • Australian Community Foods www.communityfoods.org.au • Canada’s office of urban agriculture www.cityfarmer.org • CERES www.ceres.org.au • Collingwood Childrens Farm www.farm.org.au • Cultivating Community www.cultivatingcommunity.org.au

Kindred 37

Sustenance

Passion

for the School Kitchen Garden

By Juneen Shulz

T

he year our youngest child started at Foster Primary School in South Gippsland was my introduction to school kitchen gardens.

I wanted to volunteer some of my time towards the school that our two youngest children were attending. I wasn’t interested in the canteen or reading or maths—my passion was growing and preparing food. So, with

Kindred 38

a little courage and lots of enthusiasm I approached the teachers from grades three and four level.

I can still see the look on their faces as they gave me the go-ahead. I’m sure their thoughts were ‘Oh, no—not another parent with a crazy idea, I wonder how long this will last. Give it only a couple of months.’ Little did they know I was in for the long haul, seven

years and every Friday—rain, hail or shine.

No dig—what’s that?

A site was located, a small fenced area that once was a garden. It had weeds some metres in height and blackberries rampant in one corner.

‘This will be a challenge,’ I thought.

‘Let’s go no-dig,’ I said.

‘No dig?’ they responded, ‘What’s that?’

How do I act confidently when I really have no idea myself? This was all new to me. I had read Esther Dean’s book on the no-dig method so I guess I felt I knew enough to get me by.

We needed resources and a note went into the school newsletter and students went home and coerced their parents. It didn’t take long before old newspapers, manure, old rice hulls, old hay, seeds and compost were being dumped beside the proposed garden.

The day came to make a start in the garden. With a class of students and their teacher, it was a hive of activity.

First, the tall grass was trampled down as there was no way of getting a lawn mower into this very rough, overgrown area. The blackberries were cut and removed. Then lots of newspaper covered everything like a carpet. Manure, mulch, old rice hulls, autumn leaves and compost helped to create the gardens, which were then planted out to veggies.

It was a fun time and the garden grew.

Funding by food hamper In the beginning there was no finance to support the garden, so I thought I would organise a food hamper raffle and raise some funds this way ... if $100 was raised I would be very pleased as a worm farm and some fruit trees were on the wanted list. But over $500 was collected and I was overjoyed. We had more money to spend.

From that time on, the school was able to put away some finance for the continuation of the garden.

Garden to kitchen in the first year That first year, there was lots of broccoli harvested. This was made into creamy broccoli sauce with pasta. It was a great joy to watch children eating vegetables that were created into tasty and fun meals. For the first few years the growing and harvesting of the kitchen garden continued, with the odd day of preparing and eating the food. Some of the produce was preserved—for example, bottled beetroot—which won first prize at the local show.

During that first year of the kitchen garden, the school won the regional garden awards from the Kevin Heinze School Gardens. The gift voucher from the award encouraged the gardeners to continue to expand. Fruit trees were purchased and planted; grapevines now happily climb up a pergola; and feijoas, strawberry guavas, olives and hazelnuts grow in different areas of the school.

An extremely busy year One full year was dedicated to revegetation of a section of a small but significant creek that flows along the boundary of the school. A grant was received for the clearing of noxious and environmental weeds. The area was then planted with indigenous species.

This was an extremely busy year of weed clearing, collecting of seeds, propagating the seeds, planting the seedlings—all achieved by the school children from the prep to grade six. It was a satisfying time for the students as they were able to learn about environmental issues. Because the school so bravely took the first step in making a difference with some of the environmental issues regarding water ways, this has now encouraged the continuation of the clearing and revegetation of the creek by the broader community. Another award was won.

During the year of 1999 I completed a Permaculture Design course. The original veggie patch was now displaced as the land no longer belonged to the school, this then gave me the opportunity to design and create a new garden with permaculture principles.

I was disappointed by the loss of the first garden but then found joy in the prospect of a new site.

community, the teachers were very keen to create another garden. A new site was found and a design produced. With the approval from school staff, this new garden commenced in the year 2000. A change is as good as a holiday, they say.

This was the perfect remodelling for the school kitchen garden.

It took two years to complete by my precious little helpers and myself.

Contractors were hired to build a fence around the garden and to serve as espaliered support for the fruit trees. I conned my husband to help build the pond, the very last item to be completed in the garden.

It doesn’t stop there—more awards were won and more gift vouchers received. The garden continued to grow, even outside the fenced area. There’s almonds, carob trees, a bush food garden, Chilean guavas, artichokes and a mulberry.

My vision was a school garden full of fruiting plants that could be harvested throughout the year. I can picture children wandering around, picking fruit here or a veggie there as they play.

This has been accomplished to some extent—from small beginnings, big things grow. One year when another volunteer could make the time, weekly menus were organised. It has been lots of fun, something I’ve enjoyed that brings a lot of fond memories.

My real career discovered I’ve moved on from this school, these past two years, and have become involved with 10 other schools in the district. During 2003, when I was at Foster Primary, I had a visit from Tim Howard, who works with the Southern Health Services for South Gippsland.

The new garden Knowing how important the kitchen garden had been for the school

Knowing how important the kitchen garden had been for the school community, the teachers were very keen to create another garden.

Kindred 39

Sustenance He liked what he saw. So, with his energy and persistence, he was able to source funding to kick-start 10 schools within the district getting a kitchen garden developed. The schools were found and I travelled to each during the middle of last year to meet with students and staff and to take a look at their grounds.

It was an inspirational time, talking with the kids. We talked about what they would like in their gardens, what food they enjoyed eating and whether they would have fun helping create the gardens.

Each school had a different need and it was interesting to visit the many different sites. Most of the schools already had their sites chosen; this made the work a lot easier. With ideas tossed around and input from the students, the schools were ready to make a commitment.

Education days Tim found some more funding to run an educational day, which volunteers and teachers were invited to come along to. This was well supported by approximately 20 people. The lessons

organised were simple and hands on and the attendees all went away with gifts kindly donated by hardware stores. It was a fun day, with the hope that each school would be inspired.

A competition was also organised through a local nursery and some very amazing garden designs and models were made by the children. Prizes were given to each of the schools that participated.

A further education day was organised for this past autumn to inspire schools with the idea that gardening doesn’t stop because it’s winter. A lecturer from the TAFE College came to encourage schools to think about planting fruit trees in the school grounds. There was much to learn from these educational days; there were ladies who taught mosaics and basket

Kindred Partner

PERSPECTIVE

businesses that regularly donate tens of thousands of dollars to local causes per year. Woolworths also do not advertise in local media unlike its local counterpart.

• Woolworths, by nature of its centralised distribution system, uses food that has travelled great distances, and has been stored for very long periods—far from being the ‘fresh food people’.

When Woolworths Moves to Town Now that Woolworths has made its way into every Australian city and suburb, it is setting its sights on smaller rural communities. This poses serious issues to all who live in or around these townships. There are several reasons to boycott your local Woolworths. Here are just a few: • Grocery corporations are about maximising profits to their shareholders and dominating their market, all at the expense of a local community. Their predatory pricing system puts other local businesses at extreme financial disadvantage, ultimately forcing them to close and slowly disintegrating the community.

• Don’t believe the ‘we provide local jobs’ myth. Price pressure on other local businesses means that Woolworths is responsible for destroying more jobs than it creates (for every 10 created, 17 lost – The Council of Small Business of Australia).

• Woolworths gives minimal financial support to local community groups compared to other locally-owned

Kindred 40

To help your community to be resilient and transition to a post carbon, localised economy that will support its citizens not only to survive, but to thrive, there are a few things you can do: • Shop locally, at locally-owned and operated businesses, such as your local IGA, health food shop and farmers market. Join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme or a local co-op.

• Use cash instead of a credit card, when shopping. Credit cards cost the vendor and the money goes to global banking systems instead of staying in the community.

• And of course, get back into the garden! Help your school to create an edible classroom, grow your own garden or even organise a community garden. Community gardens are yet another way we, the people, can beat the increasingly imposing globalised system and provide other healthier, more lifeaffirming choices than Woolworths (or Coles, Aldi’s or any other grocery corporation) could ever hope to offer.

John Dolman is the managing director of Santos, a Kindred magazine partner, and sponsor of Kindred’s Sustenance feature. Santos 02 6684 2419 www.santostrading.com.au

Books to support your school garden A Children’s Food Forest - An Outdoor Classroom ($15 plus $2.50 p&h) The Food Forest Resource Sheets ($20 plus $3 p&h)

Both books $39 incl p&p Send cheque or money order to Carolyn Nuttall at 16 Rosary Crescent, Highgate Hill, Brisbane, QLD 4101

weaving—all these great art works that can be incorporated into the garden.

I believe most schools would have benefited from the educational days, but then to return to their schools and put this into practice can sometimes take a lot more energy than they had.

a little help to get started. This may be the answer to some of the schools who struggle to find reliable enthusiastic volunteers. There are other schools who are plugging away nicely—they have very supportive parent help. This seems to be the solution.

Practise the focus

Encouraging volunteers

Both Tim and I have now identified that a day spent in the garden getting our hands dirty with staff and students from the individual schools seems to be the next step. This has been put into practice in recent weeks with one of the schools. It worked wonders. There was lots of path-building with bricks, lots of newspaper placed on the existing soil and lucerne hay and mushroom compost to create the garden plots. Seedlings and seeds were planted and watered with much enthusiasm. A fun day was had by all. One little boy was so determined to stay in the garden because he had such a great time that he wasn’t prepared to go back to class.

The reports we have heard from this school are all positive; they just needed

How do we encourage volunteers to support such a great program?

The benefits to the students are unimaginable. The stories shared in the garden are treasured. The knowledge they learn from the garden is forever.

When she listened to their stories from the garden, the principal from Foster Primary School was blown away by the knowledge the children had gained. The fun they had when sharing food or trying new food was always pleasurable to see.

I would like to think that every child has the same opportunity to be part of a kitchen garden where they can grow, care, harvest and eat their own food. ■ Published in Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network Community Harvest 2006.

Nurturing your child’s emotional intelligence from conception to school age Robin Grille’s new book!

Available from ABC Shops, ABC Centres and all good bookstores.

Home delivery phone 1300 360 111 or abcshop.com.au

Kindred 41

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dec 2005 - feb 2006 Real Sexual Healing Teens’ Brains are Different Organic Foods

8

dec 2003 - feb 2004

(Outside Australia: $48 for four, $70 for six, $100 for 10, incl. p&h) Individual back copies, $12 incl p&h (Outside Australia, $16, incl p&h)

18

17

mar - may 2006

june - aug 2006

The GE Future of Food Home Birth Depleted Uranium in Australia

After Attachment, what then...?

Globalisation Explained Miscarriage, an Account

10

11

june - aug 2004

The Return of Fatherhood Spanking: Ending the Violence Supporting Teens in Tough Times

Circumcision Parenting without Punishment Intelligence of the Heart

1

2

sept - nov 2004

Prenatal Testing Fathers of Colour Creating Learning Communities

3

19

Kids and Chemicals Community Issues/Cultural Solutions Bird Flu: how real is it?

12

dec 2004 - feb 2005 Autism: There is Hope!

The Perfect Mother (?)

Anorexia: the Real Story

dec 2007 - feb 2008

dec 2006 - feb 2007 Baby Wearing How food affects your kids The Con of Controlled Crying

13

mar - may 2005 Vaccine Cover-up Childcare? How much..?

Downshifting: Get a life!

Ultimate Nappy Guide Biodynamic Farming Porn and Your Teen

22

march - may 2007

The Homework Myth Nuclear power - is it Green Chores - Great for Kids

june - aug 2007

Chemicals and Cosmetics The Facts About TV How Nature is Essential for Kids

15

14

june - aug 2005

Should I vaccinate my child?

Yelling: Does it work?

Sustainable living

sept - nov 2005

Breastfeeding Parenting Practices & Society Steiner Education

9

6

5

sept - nov 2007

Ulrasound: Worth the risk?

Plastics in the Home Teenagers and Sex: are they ready

21

20

sept - nov 2006

23

4 7 D SOL

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OUT

SOLD OUT!

mar - may 2002 ADHD — Is it real?

Trusting Ourselves Midwifery in Crisis Community Family

june - aug 2002 Child Sexual Abuse Creating a Tribe Homoeopathic Innoculation

sept - nov 2002

Children with Special Needs Life as a Single Mum Yoga for Kids hat is Authority?

mar - may 2003 Ecstatic Birth: our Birthright Toddlers: To Tame or Trust The Origins of Shame

june - aug 2003 Education Conference Healing abortion Sex after Birth

Digital copies available on our website!

&

Kindred Health Wellbeing With Jacinta and Elvian at Mullum Herbals

Morning Sickness We have often been asked for information and advice on morning sickness. I would like to start by honouring the miracle and wonder of conception and pregnancy. It humbles and inspires while reminding us to honour the divine energy that enlivens all things. This time in a family’s life is a particularly potent and sacred one.

Sometimes just simply slowing down, relaxing and nourishing the pregnant woman will reduce morning sickness symptoms. Growing a baby is a huge ‘job’ for the mother so re-focusing on priorities is important.

As a pregnant woman, take time out for you. Use these nine months or so as a chance to nourish yourself more deeply on all levels, while knowing that doing this is benefiting your baby as well as you. Your baby depends on what you eat and drink, breathe and feel for its nourishment and growth. In Ayurvedic understanding, a pregnant woman is honoured and revered. She is supported by her family and community to be more still, and to reduce stress and anxiety in particular. A regular, gentle, warm oil massage is recommended along with nourishing easy-to-digest foods. Be inspired and nurtured, too, by daily practices which nourish the spirit, like meditation, beautiful music, deep breathing, yoga, walking in nature and singing. Find some way to address your fears also, as the things we are ‘sick of ’ can contribute to morning sickness.

Nausea and mild vomiting during the first trimester of pregnancy is quite common and there are many remedies that can help. Most allopathic (synthetic) anti-nausea medicines contain antihistamines, which have been linked with birth defects. The following natural remedies have no known harmful side effects.

Kindred 44

• Maintaining blood sugar levels—there is a strong connection between nausea in early pregnancy and low blood sugar levels, so maintain your blood sugar levels by eating small meals frequently.

Protein rich snacks like avocado, almonds (best soaked) or good quality bread with tahini help maintain your levels, whereas excess high carbohydrate foods send them all over the place— hence, the old wive’s tale of starting the day with a cracker or wholemeal toast.

• The increased hormonal activity of pregnancy can produce chemical byproducts resulting in morning sickness.

Gentle daily exercise like walking, swimming or yoga, will help prevent this, as will drinking plenty of pure water.

• Deficiencies of vitamins and minerals can also be a factor in morning sickness, in particular vitamin B6 and low iron levels. So supplementing these with a good quality brand, specific for pregnancy, can help.

• Avoid greasy, fried foods and over-rich meals. Melted yellow cheese in particular will burden your digestive system and can lead to morning sickness as well as nausea.

All of the above can help prevent the symptoms. If you are already experiencing morning sickness/nausea, then try:

• Slippery Elm (my personal favourite) —as powder mixed with apple juice or water and a little honey. Mix to the consistency you prefer. Or use capsules.

It is totally safe so use as needed.

• Deep breaths in fresh air • The Stress Release Hold—rest your left hand on your forehead and your

right hand on the back of your neck and take deep breaths.

• Fresh ginger as tea (on its own or add to the following herb tea suggestions) or in food or juices.

• Fennel seed tea • Rose Water (pure) in a little water and sip often. Also this can ease symptoms if you lie down with rose water soaked eye pads on your closed eyes for 10 minutes.

• Fresh apple juice, or any of the following teas: peppermint, raspberry or chamomile. You can play with these and mix and match as desired.

• Homoeopathic remedies: Ipecac or Nux Vomica • A liquid herbal blend with Black Horehound as the main ingredient: this mix will soothe and relax while also nourish; however, it needs to be prepared by a trained herbalist. If there are any deficiencies in the pregnant woman, a herbal blend like this will aid by feeding them, while simultaneously relieving the symptoms.

Each pregnant woman is unique, so try the different remedies and find which help ease your particular symptoms.

The health choices you make for your child begin while you are pregnant, so please research and inform yourself well with any remedies you may use. Ask your naturopath or herbalist if unsure and, of course, if anything just really doesn’t feel right for you then trust that and don’t have it … thus, choose wisely.

For further information about Ayurveda or naturopathic and homoeopathic remedies visit www.mullumherbals.com

G e ner ati on Wo n d er - Con n ect in g w it h culture

Great Stuff

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Many designs and styles available. For ages 3 – 8 years. While visiting on-line, have a look at the organic cotton clothing for boys and girls, pencil cases and bags made from recycled materials, story books with lovely global messages, fair-trade toys and dolls, ethically produced wool-felt range and lots more to inspire your little citizens of the world. At Generation Wonder — inspire…admire…enchant…wonder. www.generationwonder.com Ph: 02 8213 9058 Express delivery is standard.

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Vibrant colours, large letters, and easily recognisable animal graphics (that portray the inhabitants of the various biomes) create lively designs but also serve as recognition and learning catalysts for their pint-size wearers. The inverse orientation of the words on the shirts is not a mistake; the animal name is clearly readable from the little one’s vantage point. The bioME 5 toddler t-shirts are also environmentally and socially sensitive. The tagless tees are made with 100% certified, preshrunk, organic cotton and fabricated in sweatshop-free facilities. www.biome5.com

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A delicious wholefood snack, packed with natural nutrition, to take you where you want to go. Containing many different blessings from nature like apricots, beetroot, carob, chickweed, dates, grapes, nettle, pecans, strawberry and more. Made with love and prayer. 100% vegetarian and earthling friendly. 100% Australian owned. Looking for companions (independent distributors) NOW! Let your nature be natural and create a better world.

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Kindred 45

H e a l t h & We l l b e i n g

T H E F L U O R I D E D E B AT E

Are We Poisoning Our Children?

By Stacey Erbacher

D

espite almost 50 years of water fluoridation in Australia, children as young as one are having general anaesthetics to remove teeth riddled with decay.

Our nation is on the brink of a dental crisis due to our love affair with refined carbohydrates and sugars. An increasing number of studies are linking fluoride consumption with toxic side effects, especially amongst children. In some parts of Australia, there is little or no difference in tooth decay between children in fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas.1 So why are we putting our children at risk?

Fluoridated water One of the most common arguments from the Australian Dental Association is ‘fluoridation: nature thought of it first’.2 The fluoride found naturally occurring in water is calcium fluoride. The chemical used in artificial water fluoridation, however, is sodium fluoride: a by-product of the phosphate fertiliser industry that is also used in insecticides and disinfectants.

Sodium fluoride is more easily absorbed by the body than calcium fluoride and greatly increases the risk of side effects.

In their brochure ‘Water Fluoridation Questions and Answers’ Queensland Health admits that the fluoride we drink is collected from the pollution scrubbers of manufacturing industries,3 yet this same organisation is now pushing for Queensland to be 90 per cent fluoridated by 2012.

Kindred 46

In 2006, the National Research Council of America (NRC) published a scientific review of fluoride in drinking water and discovered that ‘infants and children are at a three to four times higher risk of over-exposure to fluoride than adults because of their smaller body size’.4 Fluoridated water isn’t the only concern. Beverages such as soft drinks, juice, and sports drinks may contain much higher levels of fluoride if they are processed in a fluoridated area.

If swallowed, toothpaste can greatly increase fluoride intake.

Infant formula The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) found that infants fed on formula topped up with fluoridated water exceeded the recommended daily intake of fluoride.

And it’s not just infants in fluoridated areas that are at risk. Infants in a low or non-fluoridated area that are fed with a highly fluoridated formula may have increased fluoride intakes.5 Despite Australia having a high rate of breastfeeding mothers, a large number of infants still consume formula. A 1993 Child Fluoride Study discovered the two brands of formula used mostly in Australia had higher fluoride contents than the average.6 With an increase in allergies and sensitivities amongst children, more mothers are turning to soy milk formula. Unfortunately this often has a higher fluoride content than formula made from cow’s milk.

Some of the more serious side effects from over-exposure to fluoride are listed below.

Dental fluorosis Dental fluorosis results in a brown, mottled stain on the surface of teeth and is caused by an excessive intake of fluoride during the formation of the teeth. It can lead to corrosion of the tooth enamel.

Children six months to twelve years of age are most at risk of developing

dental fluorosis. This is when remineralisation of the tooth enamel occurs most rapidly and an abundance of fluoride can disrupt the process. Dental fluorosis affects only children, but can lead to skeletal fluorosis (a crippling bone disease) in later life.

IQ A Chinese study conducted by the Tianjin Medical University in 2000 compared the IQ of children aged 10–12 years in two villages with different levels of fluoride in their drinking water.

Surprisingly, they found the IQ of the children in the high-fluoride area was significantly lower than the IQ of the children in the low-fluoride area, concluding exposure of children to high levels of fluoride may therefore carry the risk of impaired development of IQ.7 Hardy Limeback, a member of the 2006 National Research Council panel on Fluoride Toxicity agrees. ‘Newborn babies have undeveloped brains and exposure to fluoride, a suspected neurotoxin, should be avoided.8

Osteosarcoma Elise Bassin, DDS, conducted a 2001 Harvard doctoral research thesis linking fluoride with bone cancer which was finally published in 2006 after being suppressed for five years.9 The study found a strong link between fluoridated drinking water and osteosarcoma, a rare and often-fatal bone cancer, in boys.10 This study confirms previous studies by the New Jersey Health Department and Dr Perry Cohn who both found higher rates of osteosarcoma among boys in fluoridated areas than those in non-fluoridated areas.

The solutions The amount of fluoride an infant absorbs through breastfeeding is quite minimal due to a protective mechanism within the breast, proving fluoride is not an essential vitamin or mineral. As

Kindred readers well know, the health benefits of breastfeeding are many. It is the safest, most natural form of nutrition for a growing child and minimally should be undertaken for at least the first six to twelve months of a child’s life.

If breastfeeding is not possible, a lowfluoride infant formula, reconstituted with non-fluoridated water is the next best option. The National Health and Medical Research Council recommends parents use rainwater or bottled water for children up to six years of age to limit or prevent dental fluorosis.11 Bottled water in Australia is currently fluoride-free but a recent application by the Australian Beverages Council to add fluoride to these products may soon change this.11 The only way to remove fluoride from water is with a costly reverse osmosis filter, available at health food stores.

Every Australian capital city except Brisbane is currently fluoridated)and formulas manufactured in these areas will most likely contain high levels of fluoride. The Australian and New Zealand Food Standards Code (2.9.1) has issued new labelling regulations for formulas with high fluoride levels to indicate that consumption of these types of formula may cause dental fluorosis.13 Golden Circle products, manufactured in Queensland, do not contain fluoride.

When children are old enough to use toothpaste, select a low or nonfluoridated paste and monitor their brushing habits to ensure they do not swallow any of the toothpaste. Fluoride tablets should be avoided at all costs.

Feeding children a healthy diet rich in natural grains, fruits and vegetables, and low in sugar, plus encouraging regular brushing, will set them up with excellent dental health for life. ■ Stacey Erbacher is a freelance writer who is particularly interested in natural health and the effects of the Western diet on our wellbeing. She has written a documentary about fluoride and is a member of Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation (www.qawf.org).

Kindred 47

H e a l t h & We l l b e i n g References 1. Akers, Harry F., Porter, Suzette A.T. & Wear, Rae, ‘Water Fluoridation in Queensland, Why Not? Timing, Circumstance, and the Nature of The Fluoridation of Public Water Supplies Act,’ History Cooperative, (1963) 2.

2. Australian Dental Association, ‘Fluoride: Nature Thought of it First,’ www.ada.org.au, (2003).

3. Queensland Health, ‘Water Fluoridation Questions and Answers,’ Queensland Government, (2005) 6.

4. National Research Council, ‘Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA’s Standards’ (2006) 3.

5. ‘Review of Water Fluoridation and Fluoride Intake from Discretionary Fluoride Supplements,’ Review for NHMRC, Melbourne (1999) 6, 10, 41, 151, 157.

6. Davies M.J., ‘The Child Fluoride Study: Pattern of Fluoride Exposure.’ Presented at the Consensus Conference on Appropriate Fluoride Exposure for Infants and Children, Perth 2–3 December, (1993). Unpublished.

7. The Department of Environmental Health, ‘Effect of High-Fluoride Water on Intelligence

in Children,’ Tianjin Medical University, China (2000).

8. Limeback, Hardy, ‘New Fluoride Warning for Infants,’ Mothering Magazine, www.mothering. com, November (2006).

9. Gupta, Chris, ‘Fluoride-Cancer Study Cover Up’ www.newmediaexplorer.org/ chris/2005/08/17/fluoridecancer_study_cover_ up.htm 10. Bassin, Dr. E., Wypij, D., Davis, R.B., Mittleman, M.A, ‘Age-specific Fluoride Exposure in Drinking Water and Osteosarcoma,’ Cancer Causes Control 17 (2006) 421-428.

11. National Water Quality Management Strategy, ‘Australian Drinking Water Guidelines 6,’ National Health and Medical Research Council (2004) 382.

12. ‘Move to Put Fluoride in Bottled Water Delayed,’ Courier Mail, 5 May 2007, 7.

13. Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Standard 2.9.1, Infant Formula Products, Issue 60, 9.

For further information, please visit: • International Fluoride Action Network www.fluoridealert.org

• Australian Fluoridation News www.awaywolf.com/fluoridation • Fluoride Free Australia Network www.ccpwa.sitesled.com In QLD: • Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation www.qawf.org In NSW: • Central Coast Pure Water Association www.ccpurewater.org • Fluoridation is Not Democratic (Coffs Harbour) www.esmediaweb.com/find • Hastings Safe Water Association www.fluoridationisforcedmedication.blogspot. com In VIC: • Gippsland Safe Water Alliance www.home.vicnet.net.au/~gswa • Water Quality Australia (Melbourne) www.smile.org.au/fluoride.htm • Fluoride Education Awareness (Wodonga) www.ccpwa.sitesled.com/feat/index.html

US H E A LT H P RO F E S S I O NA L S M A K E D R A M AT I C CALL TO CEASE F L U O R I DAT I O N

fluoridation must testify under oath as to why they are ignoring the powerful evidence of harm in the NRC report,’ he added.

An Assistant NY State Attorney General calls the report ‘the most up-to-date expert authority on the health effects of fluoride exposure’.

In a statement released in August 2007, over 600 professionals are urging US Congress to stop water fluoridation until Congressional hearings are conducted.

They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks.

Signers include a Nobel Prize winner, three members of the prestigious 2006 National Research Council (NRC) panel that reported on fluoride’s toxicology, two officers in the union representing professionals at EPA headquarters, the President of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, and hundreds of medical, dental, academic, scientific and environmental professionals, worldwide.

Signer Dr. Arvid Carlsson, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Medicine, says, ‘Fluoridation is against all principles of modern pharmacology. It’s really obsolete.’

‘The NRC report dramatically changed scientific understanding of fluoride’s health risks,’ says Paul Connett, PhD, Executive Director of the Fluoride Action Network. ‘[US] Government officials who continue to promote

• The CDC’s concession that the predominant benefit of fluoride is topical not systemic.

Kindred 48

The Professionals’ Statement also references: • The new American Dental Association policy recommending infant formula NOT be prepared with fluoridated water.

• CDC data showing that dental fluorosis, caused by fluoride over-exposure, now impacts one third of American children.

• Major research indicating little difference in decay rates between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities.

• A Harvard study indicating a possible link between fluoridation and bone cancer.

• The silicofluoride chemicals used for fluoridation are contaminated industrial waste and have never been FDAapproved for human ingestion.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) revealed that a Harvard professor concealed the fluoridation/bone cancer connection for three years. EWG President Ken Cook states, ‘It is time for the US to recognise that fluoridation has serious risks that far outweigh any minor benefits, and unlike many other environmental issues, it’s as easy to end as turning off a valve at the water plant.’

With thanks to the Fluoride Action Network, www.FluorideAction.Net

QUEENSLAND FORCED TO BITE THE FLUORIDE BULLET Queensland Premier Anna Bligh’s recent decision to introduce fluoride to the state’s water supplies means 80 per cent of Queenslanders could be drinking fluoridated water within two years, growing to more than 90 per cent by 2012.

Ms Bligh said the move would tackle the poor condition of

Christmas, many will be voting on it with little time for proper research.

The government would spend $35 million on capital works to roll out the program.

The three fluoride chemicals that could be added to Queensland water supplies for fluoridation are hydrofluorosilicic acid, sodium silicofluoride or sodium fluoride.

These are the chemicals used in other Australian states’ fluoridation schemes. The two silicofluoride chemicals used are waste products of phosphate fertiliser manufacturing.

They are industrial grade, not pharmaceutical grade products and can contain small residues of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury or lead.

The Queensland Government has said they would pay the setting up costs of fluoridation but will not be paying for any recurrent and ongoing costs. Any fluoride-caused corrosion problems in water treatment plants or water reticulation systems would be to the future cost of Councils and ratepayers. ‘We believe that the only way this might be stopped is through a legal challenge,’ says Macqueen.

is unconscionable. They have a very well-funded program of lies and distortions,’ said Macqueen. ‘They are saying it is safe (no safety studies have ever been done on the fluoridation chemicals); will result in 40-65 per cent reduction in decay (this is distortion and manipulation of old data, which actually show differences in average decay rates of less than half a tooth per For a one-page fluoride fact sheet to individual); is OK for download, photocopy and pass out to baby formula (it is your friends or make available for your not), contradicting local community, go to the Kindred the Australian Dental Association’s own Toolbox at kindredmagazine.com.au recommendation; that water fluoridation has not been banned in Queenslanders’ oral health, though Europe (it has, in most countries) and many citizens think otherwise. the list goes on.’ Macqueen continues, Angus Macqueen, treasurer of ‘They have installed laminated “facts�

Queenslanders Against Water signs listing the above in public toilets Fluoridation, stated to Kindred and other places. It is outright fraud, recently that he estimates more driven by a government that, poorly than 20 per cent of Queenlanders If you would like to contribute to the noadvised and thus in ignorance of the fluoridation campaign in Queensland, go to are strongly opposed to fluoridation real situation, wants to ride roughwww.qawf.org and the proportion would be much shod over public opinion.’ greater if citizens could be properly [See the March 08 Kindred Spirit, Kindred’s While Ms Bligh’s language would free monthly e-newsletter, for stories informed. ‘But many people accept imply the decision is a done deal, breaking as we go to print, including the government’s assurances which the Parliament has yet to vote on apologies from previous health ministers. Visit after all follow the propaganda from kindredmagazine.com.au, click on ‘sign up for the decision. And given that the our newsletter’] the American and Australian Dental decision was announced just prior to Associations for the last 40-50 years,’ he says. ‘And remember the ADA is a political organisation that primarily looks after dentists’ agendas rather than teeth or, indeed, health.’ He pointed out that most dentists in SFBE their training have absorbed a strong WPJDF pro-fluoride message.

"VTUSBMJB T QSFNJFSF NBHB[JOF GPS GBNJMJFT XIP DBSF BCPVU Premier Bligh said the decision OBUVSBM IFBMUI JOTUJODUJWF QBSFOUJOH BOE HPPE OVUSJUJPO was based on scientific evidence and public support based on that 4VCTDSJCF OPX BOE HFU B GSFF QBHF CPPL PO WBDDJOBUJPO EJTFBTF QSFWFOUJPO USFBUNFOU GPS UIF DPTU PG QPTUBHF evidence. But this interpretation of KVTU

the science is being brought into www.avn.org.au 4VCTDSJQUJPOT TUBSU GSPN question by many. ‘The propaganda PS QSPGFTTJPOBM t NFSZM!BWO PSH BV being put out by the Government

Want healthy, happy children?

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Kindred 49

First Peoples Editor’s note: This important article concerning a radical federal government intervention in Aboriginal communities—sparked by national outrage at alleged endemic child sexual abuse—first featured in the Australian Medical Journal in December 07. New Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, now face how to best shape this draconian intervention inherited from the Howard government. In the wake of a landmark national Indigenous apology in February, will the future direction of indigenous policy better respond to the real needs of Australia’s first peoples?

For further reading see www.newmatilda.com/search/node/ NT+intervention

T

here are none among us who would question the sanctity of our children.

Children lie at the core of Aboriginal existence and of our survival.

Furthermore, there are none among us who would not welcome any just measures to protect our children. Child protection and survival remain central to the fight for Aboriginal rights, identity and cultural continuity.

Yet now we bear witness to a moment in time when the very foundational principles on which Aboriginal existence are built— community, culture and collective rights—have been shaken, demonised and exposed to a level of scrutiny unparalleled in recent times. In no place has this been felt more acutely than in Central Australia.

In 2006, revelations offered by the Alice Springs Crown Prosecutor outlining an accumulated dossier of abhorrent cases of child sexual abuse in central Australia were met with immense public horror.1 The response was understandable, but failed to acknowledge that the dossier echoed the voices of Aboriginal communities’ repeated calls for action over the span of several decades—voices that had been ignored.

The response, from public commentary and an increasingly vocal anti-Aboriginal-rights sector, was swift and damning, editorialising the suffering of Aboriginal communities. In many respects, a new (or rekindled) language emerged, the language of ‘Aboriginal deficit’. The media were awash with claims of ‘paedophile rings’, of a culture

Kindred 50

that ‘accepted and protected’ the raping of children, of ‘customary law being used as a shield to protect abusers’.2,3 The inference was that all Aboriginal men are ‘perpetrators’, all Aboriginal children are abused, and that these abuses—fuelled by alcohol, petrol and kava—are compounded by social dysfunction that is largely the consequence of a ‘primitive’ and ‘barbaric’ culture.

Public commentary allowed the seeds of change to be sown, change that ‘required’ a ‘new paternalism’, ‘normalisation’ or ‘mainstreaming’; that called for the closure of ‘unviable remote communities’; that touted the ‘failure of self-determination’; that required an end to ‘political correctness gone mad’ and the ‘pouring billions of dollars down the toilet’.4,5 Unfortunately, such language has been used to justify blatantly discriminatory policy.

In response to public reports, the Northern Territory Government initiated an investigation into the issues of child sexual abuse. These issues were recorded, collated and considered within the Ampe akelyernemane meke mekarle: ‘little children are sacred’ report.6 The ill health and profound disadvantage of Indigenous Australians, particularly of Indigenous children, is well documented, persistent and inadequately addressed. Aboriginal and non-Indigenous professionals and advocates have long called for necessary long-term commitment to and adequate resourcing of health, housing, education, employment and development. Communities have long demanded support for structures for civil society; sustainable environments;

respect for cultural diversity; investment in social and human capital; access to high-quality, appropriate child and adult education; and equality of opportunity in the face of enormous disadvantage.

Reams of recommendations have been listed, skimmed, ignored and filed—any number of which, if put into practice, could have made a sustainable difference on the ground for Indigenous Australians.

The ‘Little children are sacred’ report, irrespective of its integrity and worthiness, joins a disturbingly long list of reports whose recommendations have been largely ignored. In comparison, however, it may well stand out as one of the most blatantly bastardised of all Aboriginal health reports, in that the federal government has ‘delivered’ the NT [Northern Territory] intervention, in rhetoric, as a means of protecting Aboriginal children. Yet, despite claims that the report guided and was the impetus for the federal government’s intervention, surprisingly few of the report’s recommendations have been considered or implemented. In fact, many commentators have suggested that the report has been used as a shield to force the imposition of an existing federal government agenda to dismantle any semblance of collective and individual rights, native title, and self-determination among Australia’s first people.7 The announcement of the NT intervention was met with an almost audible collective sigh of despair across much (but not all) of Aboriginal Australia. In an instant, another weight was placed on Aboriginal communities,

The Northern Territory Intervention: voices from the centre of the fringe

By Alex Brown and Ngiare J Brown

It remains unclear how federal government intervention measures in Indigenous communities in Central Australia will create sustainable, safe and nurturing communities.

Kindred 51

First Peoples spelling a potential end to the progress made in generations of struggle for acknowledgement and recognition of Aboriginal people’s right to have some control over the future of their families and communities.

This is not to suggest that communities are not supportive of an array of intervention targets.

Indigenous communities have long called for improved policing; measures to reduce alcohol-related harm; enhanced educational and vocational opportunities; and improved infrastructure, health services and community safety. In fact, in discussions with communities directly involved in the intervention in the NT, there remains strong support for any just and appropriate measures that deliver these.

Yet there remains enormous confusion and concern over other elements of the intervention that seem unconnected to child health, such as compulsory land acquisition by the federal government; the abolition of entry permits for Indigenous communities and of Community Development Employment Projects programs; the appointment of government business administrators to ‘run’ Indigenous communities; and the potential threat of community asset-stripping. Further, the legislation covering the NT intervention places unparalleled control of Indigenous affairs in the hands of the Minister (or his or her designated delegate), and is largely discretionary and, in critical elements, poorly defined. Unfortunately, we also bear witness to a moment in time when Parliament has allowed the passage of racially discriminatory legislation.

The most fundamental of all questions remains: will the intervention actually make children safer?

Unfortunately, there has been little public or professional debate on this issue. The federal government has largely polarised public discussion, reducing complex issues to narrow, unsophisticated arguments with little recognition of the inherent complexity of the causes and consequences of abuse, in all its forms—particularly in the context of profound disadvantage, marginalisation, trauma, grief and

Kindred 52

already in place in communities. The long fought-for resourcing and community actions required for healing, protecting and nurturing Indigenous children are being defunded and ridiculed. Child health checks are already occurring; vaccination rates are generally high in Central Australia; many communities already have complete bans on alcohol; families voluntarily submit to ‘income management programs’; communities have established their own

Are Aboriginal people simply an echo of a past worth forgetting, a relic of a barbaric and uninformed culture? Are we only good as footballers, athletes or performers in opening ceremonies? What of Aboriginal Australia’s aspirations for its own future, or is this something that a globalised community can ill afford to consider?

The current policy approach rests on a false underlying assumption that all Australians must share the same values and aspirations. loss, and generations of governmental inaction and under-resourcing. Public debate has been dampened. In simplistic terms, the line is that ‘you are either with us or against us’. To fail to support the package in its entirety is to either be a child abuser or to accept and support child abuse. Yet, as professionals and citizens, it is our inherent responsibility to question the how, even if we agree with the why.

In the weeks and months following the announcement of the NT intervention, it has become clear that decisions were made in a policy and strategy vacuum. Activities have been poorly coordinated, poorly planned, and liable to change and backtracking.

This has fuelled confusion and paranoia, and created enormous concern about the squandering of desperately needed resources, which are being used largely to install the bureaucracy rather than provide services.8 Worse still, the current approaches are undermining successful programs

child protection services (because of the failure of government departments), and have progressed towards improved partnerships with police and child protection agencies, who, by their own admission, lack the capacity to adequately respond to reported cases of abuse.

Labelling the intervention as the response to a crisis that could not wait a single day longer to be rectified is a fallacy. The government has had countless offers of guidance to better direct the intervention elements, the child health checks, the necessary followup and long-term health and social needs. Yet these offers have been ignored.

The most worrisome elements of the intervention may lie in the likely and unintended consequences.

Communities remain deeply concerned that there will be direct casualties of the intervention, casualties that communities can ill afford, but that the government considers necessary and acceptable ‘collateral damage’—worsening poverty,

suicide and unemployment (particularly of Aboriginal men); disempowerment; the creation of an atmosphere of fear, in which complaints of abuse are less likely to be reported; and a ‘one size fits all’ approach that frames all Aboriginal communities as dysfunctional, all Aboriginal people as abusers, and all Aboriginal children as abused.

It remains unclear how any of the intervention measures will create sustainable, safe and nurturing communities, or whether they will protect Aboriginal children at all, particularly in the face of decades of under-investment in the basic building blocks of healthy societies.

Despite the likely negative consequences, the intervention may offer opportunities to improve health and social outcomes and promote safer communities, but it remains to be seen whether this potential can be realised.

The opportunity exists to focus our attention on the needs and priorities of our young people, to use best-practice models of health promotion and care for Aboriginal adolescents, and to make their safety and development a national priority. However, without a focus on healing, mental health and support for Indigenous youth, both now and over the long term, the intervention is likely to fail.

As a society, we must ask ourselves whether the current interventions will empower communities and support them appropriately, in a spirit of collaboration and respect, to adequately deal with the causes, triggers and consequences of abuse. Marginalisation, poverty, disempowerment, colonisation and trauma are the upstream contributors to psychological, physical and sexual abuse in the present. Yet the current policy is likely to deliver the very same things, and, as a consequence, risks perpetuating dysfunction and abuse. The government has yet to explain how the removal of Aboriginal people’s right to control or participate in decision making and implementation will promote their survival and protection.

The likely success or failure of the NT intervention may well rest on what mainstream Australia sees as Aboriginal people’s place within contemporary

Australia. Are Aboriginal people simply an echo of a past worth forgetting, a relic of a barbaric and uninformed culture?

Are we only good as footballers, athletes or performers in opening ceremonies?

What of Aboriginal Australia’s aspirations for its own future, or is this something that a globalised community can ill afford to consider? The current policy approach rests on a false underlying assumption that all Australians must share the same values and aspirations.

The success or failure of the intervention may also depend on what we consider that Indigenous people offer contemporary Australia. Strength in diversity, wisdom, connectedness, humility and survival against the greatest of odds ... in any other context these attributes would be regarded as national treasures, as a collective identity worth nurturing, building and embracing. Yet, in 2007, these qualities of our Indigenous people seem to be unrecognised or even disdained.

A nation and its people are judged on how they treat their most vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalised. The significance of our federal government’s [pre November 2008] refusal to ratify the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 9 has not been lost on Aboriginal people and their advocates.10, 11 On the one hand, the government purports to be taking action to protect vulnerable Aboriginal children, yet on the other, it fails to support any national or international requirement or responsibility to recognise and acknowledge native title, cultural integrity, self-determination, and preservation of Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty, as set out in the UN Declaration.12 It is our responsibility, then, as individuals, professionals and as a nation, to ask how our government’s stance on these issues can coexist with the stated aim of protecting our most vulnerable, our children, our future. ■

References 1. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Crown Prosecutor speaks out about abuse in Central Australia [television program transcript]. Lateline 2006; 15 May. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/ s1639127.htm (accessed Nov 2007).

2. ABC News. Break up Indigenous paedophile rings: Brough. 2006; 17 May. http://www.abc. net.au/news/stories/2006/05/17/1640175.htm (accessed Nov 2007).

3. Kearney S, Wilson A. Raping children part of ‘men’s business’. The Australian [Internet] 2007; 4 Nov. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/ story/0,20867,19149874-2702,00.html (accessed Nov 2007).

4. Johns G. Social stability and structural adjustment. Bennelong Society Sixth Annual Conference: Leaving Remote Communities; 2006 Sep 2; Melbourne. http://www.bennelong.com. au/conferences/pdf/ Johns2006.pdf (accessed Nov20 2007).

5. Brough M. Blueprint for action in Indigenous affairs [speech]. National Institute of Governance, Indigenous Affairs Governance Series; 2006 Dec 5; Canberra. http://www.facsia. gov.au/internet/Minister3.nsf/content/ 051206. htm (accessed Nov 2007).

6. Wild R, Anderson P. Ampe akelyernemane meke mekarle: ‘little children are sacred’. Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Darwin: NT Government, 2007. http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/pdf/bipacsa_ final_report.pdf (accessed Nov 2007).

7. Aboriginal alliance says government plan ‘unworkable’. National Indigenous Times [Internet] 2007; 28 Jun. http://www.nit.com.au/ news/ story.aspx?id=11795 (accessed Nov 2007).

8. Four months later and key elements of intervention haven’t been implemented: study.

National Indigenous Times [Internet] 2007; 8 Nov. http://www.nit.com.au/news/story. aspx?id=13257 (accessed Nov 2007).

9. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www. ohchr.org/ english/issues/indigenous/declaration. htm (accessed Nov 2007).

10. McQuire A. Passing of UN Declaration after two decades a “milestone”: Calma. National Indigenous Times [Internet] 2007; 14 Sep. http:// www.nit.com.au/News/story.aspx?id=12694 (accessed Nov 2007).

11. Szoke H. Indigenous rights need to be included in Victorian charter. The Age (Melbourne) [Internet] 2007; 26 Sep. http://www.theage.com. au/ text/articles/2007/09/25/1190486307024.html (accessed Nov 2007).

12. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, loc. cit.

Alex Brown, BMed, MPH, FCSANZ, Director, Centre for Indigenous Vascular and Diabetes Research, Baker Heart Research Institute, Alice Springs, NT. Ngiare J Brown, BMed, MPHTM, FRACGP, Senior Research Fellow, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Humpty Doo, NT.

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Astrology – Uranus in Pisces

By Anthony Finocchiaro On March 10 2003 the planet Uranus entered Pisces. This transit marked the beginning of a seven-year cycle (ending in 2011) and signals the last phase of an eighty-four-year cycle that commenced in 1929.

Uranus is the planet of insight, visions, changes and breakthroughs. It asks us to move out of our comfort zone and step into an undiscovered world that brings about new levels of awareness and development.

Astrologically, Pisces is the twelfth and final zodiac sign and it represents the completion of a cycle before we return to the beginning again, at Aries. Pisces represents intuition, spirit and compassion and as these energies (Uranus and Pisces) fuse together we experience a unique flavour that brings a heightened level of insight and awareness on the physical, mental and spiritual planes.

Since the beginning of 2003 there has been enormous change in our world (highlighted by the Iraq invasion which commenced just ten days after Uranus entered Pisces) and, like many people, I have wondered how these changes and ‘new’ transits will affect our children and our families, particularly those children born during this seven year phase. How does it affect the way we parent them?

Children born during the Uranus in Pisces transit from 2003-2011 are likely to be able to know and understand the thoughts and feelings of others, with the ability to ‘tune in’ and look beneath the physical illusion into one’s soul. Gifted with an innate capacity to ‘read’ the minds of others it would be wasted time spent trying to hide anything from these special souls.

They understand the unity of life and have come into this world with a predetermined mission to help guide us to a place of harmony and enlightenment through awakening compassion and destroying materiality. Uranus in Pisces children are highly intelligent and carry within them the potential for scientific breakthroughs. As they evolve, they will create and develop tools that bridge the gap that currently exists between technology and spirituality.

Although this new cycle (Uranus into Pisces) is generational and affects the children born between 2003-2011, these qualities will not necessarily be expressed or experienced in the same manner by each child. There are many factors that influence a person’s astrological birth chart, and these ‘other’ factors play a fundamental role in how and to what magnitude this generational energy is demonstrated in these children.

These ‘other’ factors will tell of the situation in the child’s physical location and, more specifically, the environment within the child’s home, school and community.

In parenting children from this generation it is important to know that they are drastically different from their predecessors, even from children born only days prior to March 10 2003.

Being highly sensitive they are extremely open to their external environment. They respond more dramatically to

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unsettling circumstances than children of previous generations and negativity can have a major effect on their temperament potentially causing extreme discomfort and, at times, leaving them tired and weak.

With a child of this generation it is advisable to avoid harsh environments. These children are easily unsettled and extremely sensitive to jarring sounds, lights and events. It’s important to create an environment that encourages relaxation and quiet whenever possible; playing relaxation music throughout the house is a great idea. Television (including children’s programs), loud radio or anything too intense can really upset their temperament. Creative activities such as music, dance and arts are powerful mediums for them to reveal their unique nature.

As these children develop they will be highly idealistic and may find it challenging to learn to accept the world as it is.

These children possess a passion to know the truth at a deeply spiritual level and, if required, would sacrifice anything in their quest to attain this truth. It is vital that parents educate such children about the polarities of the world and assist them in understanding the perceived injustices that exist. If they grow up in an idealistic environment they may find it very difficult to adapt to the world as it really is. Never discount their words or actions, no matter how outrageous at times they may seem.

More often than not their words and actions come from another place, one that we, as adults and parents, may not fully understand, and contain much wisdom if we are open to these children teaching us.

When we refer to the Uranus in Pisces generation we refer to a generation of children that have come into this world, at this time, to guide all of us towards another way of being.

This is not generation A X, Y, Z or E … this is Generation Change and as these children develop into our leaders in our new world it will become evident how important their role is and our role, as their parents and teachers, also is.

As parents of children with this placement, and as a society, it is our responsibility to help nurture these children and assist them to be all that they can be. As these children start preparing for school consider carefully your choices and if you are a school teacher be ready for these children because when they arrive they will challenge you, they will test you and possibly push you in ways that no other generation of children has done.

It is the role of every parent, teacher and member of society to remind these children of who they really are so that they may be able to guide us as they mature and take on the responsibility that they have already agreed to….To lead us into the future of our world.

Anthony Finocchiaro lives in northern NSW and uses astrology as a tool to help parents and children fully understand each other. You can contact Anthony on 02 66744098 for a free report or one-on-one consultation.

Astrological Insights into Your Child for March – May 2008 Aries

Leo

March should bring a sense of security and settling down for the Aries child. Things have been a little bit frantic since the beginning of 2008 so the change in March will be a welcome shift. Perhaps a little more emotional than normal, the Aries child, come April/May, is looking specifically to Mum to show the way.

You get the feeling that the past is playing a major role for the little lions at the moment. It’s a long-term transit, one that lasts for a couple of years so it will be an ongoing theme for a while. A journey into the world of imagination in March is followed by a shift to the real and physical in April and May.

Sagittarius March is a great time to connect with the earth by getting involved in nature activities, especially together with Mum. It’s time to get grounded and if the Sagittarius child fails to connect with the earth during this time April and May could be a little more challenging than what it has to be. See the connection with nature in March as an investment for your child.

Capricorn

Making new friends during the next three months helps Virgo children feel better about who they are.

March brings a great opportunity to try new things while April will possibly provide the challenges during this period. May delivers a newfound sense of independence and the potential to tap into a hidden, deep creative part of the self.

Change is in the air. From March through May the Capricorn child will be looking for new and improved ways to invent themselves. Actually this will be a recurring theme throughout the rest of the year that can lead to new and improved ways of being.

So allow them to change, foster it and encourage them to be whatever they choose. No matter how unusual it may seem.

Gemini

Libra

Aquarius

Little Gemini has been a bit fiery lately, especially when it comes to words. The positive of this aspect, however, especially for the younger ones, is that their vocabulary will have increased dramatically during this time. Things return more back to normal in April/May, although those born during late May/early June may feel a bit sluggish, even depressed.

A shift towards a greater awareness and a desire to know more about the world will dominate March. There will be a tendency to want to expand their awareness outside of their own little world. As contradictory as it may seem they will also be very focused towards their own self particularly during April and May.

Do you believe in Fate? Well, whether you do or not is actually irrelevant but one thing you can be sure of is that the Aquarius child is going to be feeling a sense of déjà vu, or fate, at different stages during March. A special connection with the home is likely to emerge, rooted in a deeper urge for security and stability during April and May.

Taurus I am an individual. This is the theme for Taurus children during March.

The rebel will emerge but it may be a short and difficult journey for those that ignore authority and boundaries completely. April is a great time for creativity with the beginning of May facilitating a truly artistic approach.

Virgo

.

Cancer With the tension March brings into the home, it’s a good time for Dad to exercise a little more patience than normal. This shift is going to last until the end of May so it would be wise to just accept that the little Cancerian is undergoing a bit of an identity crisis, one that may cause irritation, brashness and an unusually, blazing temperament.

Scorpio Look out for authorities and try not to get too caught up in the ‘seriousness’ of life right now. This is the message for Scorpio children.

There may be a propensity towards ‘walking the hard road’ during these months and there’s not much parents can do about it. Just be there, offer support and choose to remind them about the joy of being a child.

Pisces March sets the scene for the rest of the year for many Pisces children and if it’s anything to go by it looks like an exciting year ahead. There will be change in April that will lead to a new sense of personal freedom while May brings the possibility of realising long-held dreams as a reality.

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Connection Parenting

Many Hands We were never meant to do it alone, writes Robin Grille in his recently released book, Heart to Heart Parenting.

T

hinking about all the parenting literature that abounds these days, I was recently struck by this question: In most instances, why are only two people mentioned—you and your child? As I read I feel like saying, ‘Hey, where is everyone else? Where is all the help and support? Where are the grandparents? Where are the uncles and aunts? Where are the friends, neighbours, and community? Is it all up to Mum and Dad?’ Most of what we read about parenting has been produced in the past 20 years in industrialised and affluent societies, so it reflects cultural biases—no surprises there. Extended family and community have become so fragmented,

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family life so private, that it doesn’t even occur to us any more to turn around and ask where everyone went. When we get tired, confused or grouchy, we think the problem lies with us as parents, or with the child (‘He needs to learn to behave’).

Is this normal?

When it comes to our perceptions of what parenting is all about, we virtually need to start from scratch because of this remarkable phenomenon: the way we perceive our children changes altogether when we feel emotionally supported.

Did you realise that? Check it out for yourself. When you feel at peace, when you are feeling loved, supported and fulfilled, your vision of your child is transformed; the child you see is very different. When we are stressed, the child

seems irritating and over the top, and the baby seems difficult and strident.

When we feel connected, supported and have time on our hands, the very same child seems playful and exuberant, the same baby seems healthy, deserving, and in need of holding. Our choices and responses are entirely different according to how well supported we are and how fulfilled we are in ourselves. Parenting is a pleasure and our children are more settled and happy when we parents have enough support.

When you get tired, frustrated, exhausted, there should be someone with you who can take over, someone else to play with your child, someone else to hold your baby while you catch forty winks. If you renew and

replenish yourself, your heart opens again. Cooperative parenting is actually Nature’s design for humans; most problems with our children arise when we stray from this design. Cooperative parenting is the natural inoculation against depression, postnatal depression, anxiety, attentional and behavioural disorders, and a broad range of social ills.

Your baby or toddler probably prefers you to anyone else, and if you’re his mother or father, that’s normal and natural. But when you get tired and irritable, and the pleasure goes out of parenting, your baby will be better off spending some time with his second favourite or third favourite person for a while until you can refresh yourself.

We need to weigh up two needs: your baby’s need to be with you and your baby’s need to be with someone who is energised, emotionally available and ready to connect with him. Your child, as soon as he is able to, should be given the opportunity to bond with more than one or two special people who can be responsive and loving. I am also thinking of you here: you deserve your parenting journey to be as enjoyable and pleasurable as it can be.

You might scoff and say this is unrealistic. We all lead lives that are too busy, everyone has their own problems, our own parents live miles away. Besides,

who can afford the extra pair of helping hands? Well, I think it is unrealistic to do it alone, and in our society, most of us have been doing it unrealistically for quite some time. As parents, we have become cut off and deprived of the sustenance that we are meant to receive, so we get exhausted, angry and depressed. For hours each day we hand our babies and toddlers to professional strangers who have little personal investment in our child, with whom our child will never properly bond. At home, we let a television do the job, perhaps for several hours each week, so we can scratch out some time to get things done. Communities are disintegrating.

The need to spend time with relationships is being rapidly replaced by spending money on things. Depression rates are spiralling out of control, a recognised result of the deprioritising of human relationships. This trend is unsustainable, alarming, but it is a trend that you can personally help to put the brakes on, and even put into reverse.

The cost of parenting in the fast lane The more you learn to listen to your heart and your parenting intuition, the more you come to realise how many of today’s parenting strategies are shortcuts

Did you know?

Anthropologists have known for some time that children who are raised in communal parenting groups fare much better. In the nineteenth century (a time of huge child abandonment rates all over Europe) the island of Sardinia enjoyed one of the best infant survival rates, despite being one of the poorest economies. Unlike most European mothers, Sardinian women joined together in supportive, cooperative mothering groups. Mothers who don’t parent alone tend to be much happier.

Postnatal depression (PND) is virtually absent in societies where women band together to raise their children in caring, cooperative groups (among the Kipsigi of Kenya, for instance). In the Western world, mothers spend far too much of their time alone with their babies and children, a recipe for depression and exhaustion. It would take little effort to create a better balance between communal life and the privacy and personal space we enjoy at home. If we pay more respect to our natural needs for community—particularly when raising our children—the rates of PND would be drastically reduced.

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that you can no longer accept, and this can be quite confronting. These shortcuts can hurt you and your child, undermine your relationship and lead to behaviour problems. Shortcuts, like early weaning, sleep training, electronic babysitting (television) and early daycare seem to give you, the parent, freedom and support in the short term, but they can borrow heavily against your child’s long-term emotional health and the quality of your family’s relationships.

All of us collectively inherit the social problems generated by the fast-food, fast-living and fast-parenting trend.

Humans, and especially children, simply cannot do without regular doses of sustained, loving connection—without it we soon break apart. The classroom, the street and the marketplace become the stage on which the emotional wounds of broken attachment and social disconnection are destructively acted out.

So, what do we do to resist the pressures, financial and cultural, that force us away from our children? It’s made more difficult for us in some countries, such as Australia and the USA,

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where parents receive far less financial and social support than in many other democracies. Even less-developed and less-privileged democracies, such as Bulgaria, give a lot more support to parents than we do. Europeans have come to understand and prioritise something that we are yet to come to terms with.

Here, in Australia, if we want support, we have to create it.

It’s time to take our children back Children and parents are spending less and less time together. The average child spends more time bonding with a television than with her own parents.

Increasingly, babies only a few weeks old spend many more hours in daycare centres with well-meaning strangers than they do receiving the vital bonding they need with their parents. Everywhere I hear parents shocked by the massive amounts of homework given to their children today, and their children are often at near breaking point under

Aunties, uncles, grannies ...

Anthropologists have known for a long time that grandparents and alloparents (other significant attachments) are essential for family wellbeing and children’s health.

In only three mammal species the female, through menopause, becomes infertile while still young and strong: pilot whales, elephants, and ... us.

There is a good evolutionary reason for this. In primates, survival rates are much better among groups in which the grandmothers are free to join in the care of the young. Children always seem to do better in societies that surround parents with supportive elders. Isolated nuclear-family parenting is inherently problematic; we are not designed to be able to cope well with it. We have taken a wrong turn and need to re-establish cooperative parenting.

How to create a parent support group that works To help your group get off the ground successfully, try the following steps.

1 Gather like-minded people. It won’t work if there is an essential clash of parenting orientations. This doesn’t mean you need to stick to people that do everything in exactly the same way as you, but you will need some common ground on core principles. When a few core principles are shared, everything seems to flow well.

Here is a simple list of core values that are endorsed by leading-edge child development research:

• We should do our best to respond to babies’ needs, as consistently as possible; their emotional security depends on it.

• Toddlers and children need freedom to express themselves and to play.

• Toddlers and children need clear boundaries, assertively set and without punishment or shaming.

• There are no bad or naughty children; all misbehaviour reflects some way in which the child feels disconnected from others. We can help children by listening empathically and repairing the disconnection.

• Children are not our adversaries, to be controlled; they are to be cherished, and they need to feel connected to us.

parents do their best to give more than they received as children. Don’t ostracise or judge a group member who struggles to meet your parenting criteria, and give them all your support to be as nurturing and emotionally available as they can be. The fact is that, at times, every parent falls short of their own aspirations and we don’t help by shunning someone for breastfeeding less than two years, for occasionally being too lax or too oppressive with boundaries, for not managing to cosleep with their toddler, or whatever. We are all limited beings. The main thing is that we agree with the objectives we are all trying to grow towards, while respecting our own limits.

4

Acknowledge that each of you has parenting difficulties, even if you follow the best guidelines. All parents are learners. Be open with each other about your personal difficulties and ask for support.

Some things you could do together:

• Give each other practical help. Cook and clean together, do shopping for each other. Hold each other’s babies and help each other to catch up on sleep. Get to know each other and allow your babies and toddlers to develop attachments to others.

• Share baby massage sessions on the floor. Massage each other, too.

• Swap children’s clothes, toys and books.

• Be sensitive to each other when making parenting

• Children deserve as much respect as we do.

• Parenting is an ongoing journey that requires us to

suggestions. Remember, many parents are very delicate about receiving advice. Do it in the form of I statements, and own your own needs.

keep learning and growing.

• Share your own childhood memories with each other.

• There are no bad parents, only wounded parents or

You might like to do some of the exercises in Heart to Heart Parenting together, or simply discuss with each other some of what you discover when you do the exercises at home. Share your feelings with each other: your joys, your sorrows and your frustrations. Listen to each other, offer empathy and emotional support.

parents who need a lot more support.

You might like to add some more core values of your own. Not enough stated values and group cohesion will be loose and vague, with an elevated potential for mismatch and discord. Too many values and the group risks becoming legalistic, rule-bound, exclusive and alienating. Try to strike a balance that feels most supportive and remember that you are supposed to have fun together.

2 Share parenting resources with each other, discuss together the books, DVDs, websites and parenting courses that support your approach. You’ll need to be discerning in making sure that your resources reflect up-to-date research. Child health practitioners increasingly understand the implications of the new attachment science, and new developments in brain science, but although this knowledge is now mainstream, it is yet to be adopted by all practitioners.

3 Avoid fundamentalism. Remember that most

• Indulge yourselves in stimulating adult conversation, while your children play around you or near you. Have fun together, laugh, and don’t make it all about your children—remember you are there for yourselves too.

Sing songs together, dance, play music, do art or craft, go on picnics—make it up as you go along!

When there are people around whom you can trust to connect with your baby and child, this can give you and your partner more opportunities to be alone together, to enjoy each other and fulfil your need for intimacy. When your own relationship needs are met, you have more energy and warmth to offer your children.

By Robin Grille

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Connection Parenting the weight. Are we saying goodbye to childhood?

In Australia, parents are working longer hours than ever, we are more affluent than ever and we are more depressed. Government and industry cry ‘Socialist!’ when anyone calls for more time for parents with their children. How many families enjoy nightly dinners with everyone present, sharing conversation, laughter and stories—around a table and not in front of television? If it wasn’t for the fact that Aussie parents bend over backwards to take children to sports games on weekends, and to tennis, ballet or piano lessons etcetera after school, I would say we are hardly watching our children grow up any more. How much time do any of us spend with our children every day, just talking with them and listening to them?

If the pressures of our productivitymad culture are driving a wedge between family members, this is not through necessity, it is by choice. If you ignore for a moment our astronomical levels of debt, we seem very well off financially, but when it comes to relationship, community and time, we are indigent.

It’s time to fight for the staples of daily family life (in all the diverse family styles that exist): the dinner and conversation, the parents rocking the baby, the noise of children playing in the street; it is time to take our children back. It’s time to review our shallow sense of economics and bring relationships into the equation. Our assets and techno goods are wonderful, but they are not more important than our children, not more important than time to ourselves, not more important than our need for loving relationships and time to just hang out together.

Institutions that care for babies will never replace Mum and Dad; they can’t even come within coo-ee of a parent’s love, no matter how high quality they are. As far as your child is concerned, no one can do it like you can. You are your child’s hero. And all heroes need a team.

Creating the support we need It makes a world of difference to not be alone, to have a group of familiar people

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around us. Those of us lucky enough to have an extended and supportive family nearby who we get along with are indeed blessed. But there are many of us who need to think of joining a parent support group or creating a parent support group ourselves in our locality.

Starting your own group If you don’t find a parent support group that you feel comfortable with, why not start your own? Call it whatever you like— ‘parenting support group’ would do fine. Alternatively, you could come up with a name that represents your values It’s time to review our shallow sense as a parent. Mothers’ of economics and bring relationships and fathers’ groups that meet regularly are a into the equation. wonderful new feature of our times, but many friendly world will form a deep bond of people end up joining parenting groups friendship with you. Don’t be surprised by default, based on who happens to be if you make some of your life’s warmest available in the neighbourhood centre, and most enduring friendships through the birthing classes or at the hospital. your parenting community.

They don’t get an opportunity to screen How often should your parenting the other members for compatibility. group meet? As often as you’d like. How Consequently, some of these groups about meeting with at least one other work well, others don’t. parent (if not the whole group) every When participants have fundamental day? For a short while at least? Or almost differences of attitudes and approaches, every day? Can you allow yourself to clashes can occur and people move away envisage never having to be alone? Can from the group. We are in the middle of you imagine only being alone, or alone a societal shift in child-rearing attitudes with your child, when you actually in our times, so it is not unusual to want to be? What if your time of early encounter a clash of values. Your parent childhood parenting can be the best time support group, if it is created around you have had in your life? shared core values, is more likely to be one you look forward to seeing, that A starter kit for gathering nourishes you and that you have fun like-minded parents with.

The first thing to do is to see if you The people with whom you share have existing friends or relatives who a commitment to creating a child-

share your core values about how to raise children and just talk to them about how you might be able to help each other and spend time together in cooperative parenting every so often. It could be that the best people for you are right in your neighbourhood and you might even know them already. Think about your existing circle of friends and acquaintances, your sporting club, church group, yoga class or book club— are there any other parents in those circles whose style might be compatible with yours?

If you don’t have people in your life who share your values, then you may need to reach out and find some.

You could post notices in your local newspaper, on noticeboards in your area, at the community centre, the shopping mall or the family health clinic. People don’t always take the time to read posters, so the more eyecatching and easy to read you make it, the more likely it will be read.

Make your advert friendly, inviting, warm and personal. You might even consider including a photo of yourself.

Some of you may feel turned off by the prospect of fielding calls. What if, for instance, you occasionally have to turn someone away if you feel that you won’t get along with them? If so, you might prefer to team up with at least one other parent you know to begin with and share the work of growing a group. Alternatively, you could look around for an established group that shares your values.

Established groups Starting a parenting group can be very daunting for many of us who have grown accustomed to living privately.

It can, therefore, be helpful to find an already established parenting group. Local councils, community centres and maternity hospitals are increasingly acting as hubs for forming parenting groups. This is a truly positive trend, although groups formed around locality don’t necessarily guarantee a commonality of attitudes.

Thousands of parents around the world have joined support groups that help them to embrace the newer and more natural parenting styles.

These groups have adopted a range of names such as, attachment parenting groups, natural parenting groups and continuum parenting groups. The label matters little; what counts is making supportive connections with others who basically share similar views. There are many ways you can tap into a wider community of parents who share your values. ■ ©Robin Grille, extracted from Heart to Heart Parenting, Nurturing your child’s emotional intelligence from conception to school age by Robin Grille; ABC Books; rrp: $35.00; Available at ABC Shops, ABC Centres and wherever good books are sold or online at abcshop.com.au Robin Grille is a father, psychologist in private practice and a parenting educator. His articles on parenting and child development have been widely published in Australia and overseas. Robin’s articles and books have received international acclaim and led to speaking engagements around Australia, USA and New Zealand. To find out more about Robin Grille’s work: www.our-emotional-health.com

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Connection Parenting

BONDING The journey of the mother who adopts older children

If a child for some reason has missed all those early years of bonding and attachment, is it ever too late, especially for an older adoptive child?

Never, writes Laurie A. Couture

P

arenting a child with one’s heart, soul, and spirit is the most beautiful life journey a person can ever undertake.

When little girls and prospective mothers fantasise about motherhood, many envelope themselves in tender thoughts of cradling an infant, delighting in the innocent sounds, scents, and images of tender breathing, soft skin, and the oneness of the infant’s dependence.

Beginning when I was nine years old, my fantasy was quite different. I envisioned myself as an adult with two beloved nine-year-old children who had not been born to me, but whom I had adopted. I remember when the Cabbage Patch Kid craze hit in the early 1980s, with its emphasis on adoption certificates and older looking dolls, my fantasy was given hope and validation.

At twelve, I devoured the TV sitcom, Diff ’rent Strokes, the story of a Caucasian Park Avenue tycoon who adopted two African American boys from Harlem. In my teens I was fascinated by a magazine article about an exceptional family who had adopted over ten severely disabled children, one of whom was born without

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a cerebrum, arms, or legs. Although I lit up when I held infants, my mothering fantasies throughout my adolescence and twenties revelled in the wonder of parenting older children who had been in need of a loving mother.

As a young adult, I embarked on a journey of working with traumatised children and adolescents in various childcare and professional capacities, also researching and studying the effects of child trauma on physical, emotional and cognitive development and researching and studying attachment parenting, unschooling, child development, and the severe psychological and attachment difficulties of adoptive children.

During that time, my life was blessed with a precious nephew who I cared for regularly. When I turned thirty, my desire to adopt a child was all consuming. I was ready to allow my heart to seek the child whose heart was also searching for mine; the child who would become my son.

I knew from my professional work in the foster care and mental health system that children ages 7-18 are the ones who languish in foster care and group homes

waiting for ‘forever families’. With each passing year as these wards of the state grow older, more depressed, rageful, attachment-deprived and despairing, the less likely it is that adoptive families will choose or commit to them. Boys, teenagers, and African Americans are the children least likely to find loving, permanent adoptive homes. In some cases, state agencies will brand teenage boys ‘unadoptable’ and push them onto the ‘independent living’ track as early as fifteen years old. Keeping in mind that I wanted an adequate generational difference between myself and a child I would adopt, I knew I had the skill and the spiritual desire to adopt a child deemed ‘difficult to adopt’ and my heart sought out a boy between the ages of ten and thirteen. Within two months of serious networking, unexpected turns and uncanny synchronicity, I found him!

Little did I know that this exceptional, creative, resilient ten-year-old boy had decided that year to give up hope if Santa Claus failed to grant his wish upon a star for a forever family that winter.

Is the deep love I feel for every fibre, smile, and giggle of my now fourteen-

year-old son just the private rapture that only passionate adoptive parents of older children understand? Is the joy of him allowing me the honour of savouring the ‘littleness’ and innocence still mingled in with his growing, changing self something only I can appreciate? When I read attachment parenting literature and I reflect on how I cherish every moment, every hug, every snuggle, and every thought and idea from him in the way parents of infants and toddlers cherish their young, I wonder, would anyone else share that sentiment for older children?

When he calls out to me, ‘Mommy!’ excitedly beckoning me to see his latest building creation, would anyone else know there is no greater joy?

Few people, even some adoptive parents, realise that parenting an older adoptive child can bring many of the same joys as attachment parenting

for those who cannot make a lifetime commitment to tenaciously, patiently, and unabashedly nurture such a child.

If a parent knows spiritually that such a journey is their passion, then pursuing and practising the right type of trauma and attachment healing will help any one of these children reciprocate their joy and love in time (please see resources at the end of this article).

When people look at a four- or fiveand-a-half-foot-tall hardened, weathered soul in front of them, they generally see the chronological age of that child and all of the assumptions and stereotypes that go along with contemplating a child at that age. However, deep beneath the growing body, the developing face, the immense size in comparison to the infant, the worldly vocabulary, independent air and challenging behaviour, is a child who is emotionally

The author and Brycen at age 11 an infant or toddler. However, it is important to be brutally realistic before I proceed further: Adopting a child who has suffered neglect, abandonment, physical, psychological and sexual abuse, and multiple foster and group home placements necessitates that parents persevere despite the severe and relentless behavioural and psychological problems that many older adoptive children exhibit. In this regard, the comforts of raising a biological child from utero to adulthood might be the best choice

and spiritually an infant crying out for the same in-arms nurturance as the day he or she was born.

Many adoptive mothers of older children spend years of angst-filled struggle trying to punish, manipulate, or coerce their children into compliant reciprocity. They scaffold this nightmarish dance with years of ‘therapies’ with ‘experts’ who either fail to consider the imperative attachment needs and trauma damage or who go to the extreme of perverting attachment

needs with abusive, controlling and concentration camp-like strategies to force children to ‘attach’ to parents subsequently trained in those tactics.

However, there is an empathic way that can help adoptive mothers connect to the true needs of their older children, and indeed non-adoptive mothers to retrace attachment steps with their own older children who might have missed the early years bonding. The empathic way is the path of looking past their children’s chronological age, transcending the desire to force their children to meet the adult’s emotional needs, and listening to maternal instinct rather than to the experts who are quick to diagnose, drug, and force children to fit into the mould of society’s expectations.

Many mothers can imagine fondly cradling, rocking, and cuddling a tiny infant or innocent-eyed young child. An adoptive mother who lives and breathes natural attachment parenting, who cherishes her child, can look past the long body and cradle her twelve-yearold son or daughter, rocking him in a large chair, stroking her face, whispering beautiful words of mother-baby love to him, holding her tightly, caressing hands through his hair and singing her lullabies. This must be done respectfully, at the child’s own will, when he or she is ready, after the adoptive mother has made it clear to her child that she is open to meeting any early needs the child wishes so that the child can ‘fill in the gaps’ of early development.

In the first moments that I met Brycen, the world around me fell away and this precious, dishevelled, heavyhearted angel before me was illuminated by white light that cast intensely all around us. From the moment his toosmall, too-thin form climbed down the steps from his room at his tenth foster home, our eyes instantly and intensely locked and he walked so fast over to me that I nearly embraced him. Despite his unkempt, neglected appearance, my new son was, to me, the most beautiful wonder my eyes had ever seen.

I instinctually put my hand out and touched his pale cheek. Seven months of waiting to meet, see, and touch my new son swelled in that caress and his little face smiled. I was speaking to him, and

Connection Parenting he was speaking to me, the words were flowing, but I couldn’t fully hear. I was awash with the ecstasy that biological mothers describe after they have given birth and the newborn is at their breast, and they are gazing into those brand new eyes, and feeling rapture. For me, the labour was the long seven months of bureaucratic process and waiting for the day I would meet Brycen in person, beginning our three weeks of visitations before he could come home with me permanently. The birth was walking into the brown, dimly-lit foster home with the social worker, having the foster parent call upstairs to the just-turned 11-year-old boy (who had been told about me the night before), and seeing him rush down the stairs and climb over the baby-gate in his mismatched clothes.

And the rapture, when the oxytocin pours through the veins of the biological mother, was when I saw Brycen’s face, his messy, wispy blond hair, and his eyes magnetised into mine. This ‘newborn at the breast’ state lasted until finally the

social worker spoke after several minutes of Brycen and me gazing and smiling.

I let my him know immediately that I would meet his emotional, physical, and spiritual needs and that part of that would include meeting any early developmental needs he longed to have satiated. As his trust in me began to take root, I offered him, at his pace, more and more gentle physical and emotional affection in addition to fun, structure, and teaching him the early stages of family principles and cooperation. After a few months and lots of behavioural and emotional purging, Brycen was cuddling up to me at bedtime and allowing me to read him stories as I held him, caressed his skin, and hugged him. One night, he requested that I feed him juice or water from a sports bottle. This was one of those few moments in adoptive parenthood when I was reminded that I was not his biological mother. If I had given birth to him, I would have absolutely carried him in-arms in a sling and breastfed him through toddlerhood.

Obviously, however, given his age, the sports bottle was the closest option.

Brycen felt so nurtured by this that he asked to be fed with the sports bottle nightly for nearly a year while I cradled, rocked or held him in arms.

The speed and depth of his healing was awe-inspiring. Almost immediately, he gained weight and began to develop a sense of body awareness. As the months passed, he gained muscle mass, his height caught up, his skin and eyes glowed and the remnants of the fostercare buzz cut disappeared as his hair grew out soft and natural. When he first arrived, he had little sense of his bodily needs, as they had been neglected by the foster and school systems for so long. He didn’t have a healthy sense of awareness of temperature, hunger, thirst, need for elimination, or sleep. His awareness of hygiene, feelings, social cues, body language, and emotional needs were also very disconnected. Over the next year, his development in these areas was rapid and phenomenal.

Some Helpful Resources Natural, nonviolent parenting

Adoptive children

Unschooling

• America’s Lost Dream: ‘Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’: Current research and Historical Background on the Origins of Love and Violence by James W. Prescott www.ttfuture.org/pdf/ members/Prescott_ALD.PDF

• Attachment-Focused Family Therapy by Daniel A. Hughes

• Deschooling Our Lives edited by Matt Hern

• Attachment, Trauma, and Healing: Understanding and Treating Attachment Disorder in Children and Families by Terry M. Levy and Michael Orlans

• Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

• The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost by Jean Liedloff

• Bonding and Attachment in Maltreated Children: Consequences of Emotional Neglect in Childhood by Bruce D. Perry www.childtrauma.org/ CTAMATERIALS/Attach_ca.asp

• Eliminating Corporal Punishment: The Way Forward to Constructive Child Discipline edited by Stuart N. Hart • The Natural Child: Parenting From the Heart by Jan Hunt • The Natural Child Project: www.naturalchild.org Natural Family Living edited by Peggy O’Mara • Organic Parenting: www.primalspirit. com/ps3_1lyn-piluso.htm • Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain by Sue Gerhardt

Kindred 64

• The Exhausted School: Bending the Bars of Traditional Education edited by John Taylor Gatto • The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Education by Steven Harrison.

• Life Learning Magazine www.lifelearningmagazine.com

Childhood trauma and brain development

• The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith

• www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/brain. html

Trauma treatment

• The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Newton

• EMDR www.emdr.org

Nonviolent Communication

• IntroToNeuroTheraPlay: www.theraplay.org

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg

• Neurofeedback: http://directory. eeginfo.com and www.eegspectrum.com/

What about the child adopted at six, eleven, thirteen, or seventeen? Do we just assume that the larger, developing body is evidence that early attachment and developmental needs were magically filled by the neglect, abandonment, and abuse these children suffered? Or that the eye-to-eye, in-arms, skin-to-skin paradise that infants experience with birth parents was somehow replicated by a few good foster homes or the occasional exceptional group home staff person?

When we empathise with the horrors our older adoptive sons and daughters have suffered, we can look past their older exterior, their cryfor-help, challenging behaviours and The author and Brycen hiking, 2006 dishevelled social and emotional presentation and favourite chair. An eighteen-year-old develop a longing to nurture the infant (who has one last shot at being a child if and small child inside them. he or she is fortunate enough to find a When we convey to our older forever family so late) may want to spend daughters and sons that we are open an intense amount of one-to-one time to helping them meet their early with you or cuddle up to you at night on developmental needs without coercion, the couch. shame, distaste, or disrespect of their When older adoptive children are privacy, they will begin to allow our treasured, nurtured, and cherished as nurturing and affectionate gestures and ‘babies’ for a sustained period of time, may learn to reciprocate. When we they emotionally and spiritually begin let them know that having their early to fill up and heal inside. Ironically, this developmental needs met is a basic need allows them to ‘grow up’ and begin to of all children, regardless of age, our approximate the natural development of older adoptive children may even begin their chronological age. As my son once to show small signs of wanting to ‘act explained to me, ‘I need to be respected little’ with us. A seven-year-old may for whatever age I am at the moment.’ want to be carried around on your hip When older adoptees are deprived of during the day. A nine-year-old may attachment and ‘babying’ because of an want to play with infant toys while you adult’s shame, distaste and stereotypes both exchange baby talk. A twelve-yearabout independence, consequently old may want to be bottle-fed as you adoptees remain fixated and crippled at gaze into his eyes and caress his face, earlier developmental periods, despite arms, and hands. A fifteen-year-old may their chronological age. They may likely want to be rocked in your lap in her

Kindred 65

Photo by Brenden Sanborn

When a biological child is raised from utero with the cherishing of natural attachment parenting, a way of life of freedom and joy in learning, children develop naturally and progressively as whole, intact human beings. The parentchild relationship naturally evolves and matures over time. An emotionally intact six-year-old doesn’t need to be carried in-arms in a sling, an emotionally intact twelve-year-old does not need to breastfeed and a similarly intact sixteenyear-old does not need to be rocked inarms on a nightly basis.

When children are harmed by the faddish parenting practices of ‘civilized’ cultures, deprived of in-arms holding, breastfeeding, parental attention, and loving, nurturing nonviolent guidance, they develop holes in their spirit and emotional development. When children are harmed by the imprisoning educational institutions of these cultures, deprived of free time, creative play, exploration, wild physical activity, curiosity, joy, freedom, and enriching socialisation, they develop holes in their lust for learning and in their cognitive development. When those ubiquitous, albeit poor, childhood conditions are compounded by the extremes of sexual abuse, severe neglect, severe physical and psychological abuse, and foster care, the damage done to a child’s spirit, emotional and cognitive development (as well as to society) is deleterious.

Women who adopt children at birth can optimise attachment, and soothe and heal the soul-trauma of being separated from the birth mother by carrying their new daughter or son in-arms or in a sling at all times, breastfeeding through the toddler years (contact the Le Leche League for information), maximising skin-to-skin contact, practising nonviolent child guidance, homeschooling or finding a developmentally appropriate educational environment when her child is older. The natural attachment approach will prevent further trauma from being heaped upon the already harrowing trauma of losing the birth mother. Natural attachmentminded parents understand that children adopted at birth may need many more years of cuddling and in-arms experience to heal birth trauma.

o n n e c t i o n

exhibit their insatiable emptiness with a host of destructive behaviours and patterns directed towards themself or against others.

How precious our older adoptive children can be to mothers who see the innocence, ‘littleness’, and vulnerability that is still visible in even the oldest of them! A tender sleeping face, a smaller hand in ours, their sweet scent, soft skin and hair, innocent thoughts about life, adorable antics, brilliant ideas and cherished conversations—we can delight in our older children’s essence, growth and healing as we delight in the newborn infant.

When Brycen had been with me for six months, my second nephew was born. The birth inspired a lot of birthrelated questions and an opportunity for us to deepen our attachment and his healing. Brycen wanted me to tell him how I would have nurtured him had he been born to me. He curled up in my lap and told me he wanted to ‘be born’ to me. After we discussed with honour the sacredness of the birth bond he will always share with his birth mother, he asked me to drape a thin sheet over him as he remained curled up in my lap.

After a moment, I pulled off the sheet and delighted in the beautiful ‘newborn’ son I ‘just gave birth to’! Brycen adored this game, and he asked for me to repeat it several times that night. As I held him, I told him about how I would have held him in a sling all day long, how I would have nursed him with mother’s milk, kept him secure all through the night at my side and responded to all of his needs. I read him the adoption book, Why I Chose You by Gregory E. Lang as well as the beautiful book On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier.

When I reflect upon the phenomenal emotional and spiritual growth my son has made, I am awestruck. After three years of natural attachment parenting, a child-centred educational environment, and later, unschooling; after participating in the community service work that I do, being an active member of the homeschool community and playing with enriching homeschooled friends, Brycen has developed into an empathic, loving and sensitive human being. He is a humanitarian, a caretaker of trees,

Kindred 66

insects, animals, and plants, a loving family member, a caring friend, a comentor to another child I mentor, and a peacemaker. He is a brilliant and creative connoisseur of the musical arts, theatre, literature, comedy, science, politics, imaginative play, and Bionicle building. Brycen is also a public speaker and started his own business making and selling stuffed animals in two local shops.

Like most traumatised children, he still struggles with cycles of emotional overwhelm after periods of stability. The neurological effects of severe trauma are tenacious and the old terror of loss and pain runs deep. He probably will spend the majority of his youthful years healing and practising the tools he’s learned for emotional stability (such as relaxation breathing, changing irrational thoughts to rational thoughts and expressing his feelings in a safe manner). Traditional mental health models are not effective with children who have experienced severe trauma and attachment disruption.

In addition to attachment parenting and unschooling, my son has been involved with two brain-based trauma treatments, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and neurofeedback. Both of these treatments, although both very different in application, help his brain re-wire from the psychological and neurological damage done in those early years when his brain was in critical stages of developing. Additionally, we have focused on doing our best to eat nutritious, organic foods and seek out alternative forms of healing, including energy work. I have never allowed anyone to give my son psychiatric drugs, nor have I taken him to any therapist who does not believe that parent-child attachment is the primary therapeutic goal. Often, Brycen’s moods reflect my own, so often the best way to help him remain emotionally stable is to be sure that I stay emotionally healthy and stable!

People marvel at his engaging personality, sometimes not knowing that just a few years ago it was hidden deep behind a defensive, disconnected wall. People are impressed with all of the enriching choices he is making in his life, not realising that at his last foster home, he was glued to a TV or video

game screen for upwards of six hours per day after spending just as much time just sitting at a desk in school. I beam with happiness for my son when I hear these compliments, but I know that every child is capable of reaching spectacular potentials if they are honoured with the basic instinctual nurturance and care that is simply the natural and more mammal way of parenting.

Natural attachment parenting and self-directed learning isn’t ‘progressive’; it isn’t a philosophy, a viewpoint, a technique or a lifestyle; it is simply the natural way that mammals thrive, the natural condition that each human is born equipped to respond to and be satiated by. Anything else just simply doesn’t meet the needs of the human mammal. Brycen is thriving not because I am using any techniques or philosophies termed ‘progressive’ or ‘political’, but because I am simply meeting his most basic attachment, physical, emotional, spiritual, and learning needs. It is as simple as that, although fighting against my own childhood damage and our society’s constant anti-life roadblocks causes it to not always be that simple to emulate.

As I contemplate Brycen and the possibility of adopting another older child in the future, I realise that adopting an older child is one of the most challenging yet wonderful ways a woman can express her motherhood. In my heart and spirit, I feel that beholding, salving and cherishing the innocent and the precious inside of an older child may be the most beautiful thing that an adoptive mother could ever imagine. ■ Laurie A. Couture is licensed mental health counsellor of youth in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. A writer, artist, photographer, and voracious reader, she is passionate about human rights, attachment parenting, self-directed learning, animals, and nature. She volunteers her time writing and speaking publicly about children’s rights and needs through her site, www.childadvocate.org. She is the proud mother of a fourteen-year-old son, Brycen, who unschools, aunt to two nephews, ages seven and two, and mentor to a fourteen-year-old boy. Brycen gave his stamp of approval for this article to be published, adding, ‘Every adopted child would give it a stamp of approval.’ Laurie is the author of the upcoming book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children’s Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended.

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