The Problem With Sex Education

In the school where I work, I teach a lot of very factual sex education to teenage boys. In an ideal world, I’d have time to get to know each class and we’d be able to talk honestly about our hopes and fears and feelings. But there isn’t an exam in sex education, so the subject gets squeezed to the edges of the curriculum and, in some schools, squeezed out altogether. In the brief time I have with each class, I talk a bit about the importance of relationships and love but the teenagers sitting there are far more interested in hard information about sex because, without that information, they’re vulnerable. Like Shakespeare’s Romeo and his friends, they joke and tease each other about sex because they’re anxious about sex. The more they know, therefore, the more confident and relaxed they feel and the less inclined they are to take their anxieties out on other people.

Reducing unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections are important governmental aims but the more important reason for providing good, factual sex education is to reduce anxieties about sex which cause unhappiness. Without information, young people mock the ignorance of others to hide their own ignorance; they project their own anxieties about sexual experience and performance onto others and attack it.

Sitting there, waiting for me to begin, the boys don’t laugh and don’t snigger. For me to suggest that they don’t already know everything there is to know about sex would be a mistake, so I begin by saying that I’m quite sure they know most of this stuff already but that there may be the odd bit of information that’s new and that it’ll therefore be worth paying attention. Reassured, they listen, not because I’m a famous disciplinarian or a particular authority on sex but because they’re desperate to pick up anything they don’t already know. I’m frank which surprises them but is also, evidently, a relief. Sometimes they ask questions but more often are too embarrassed to ask and it’s my job to anticipate the questions they would ask if only it wasn’t so embarrassing. Sometimes I get them to write down questions in private. “Does the foreskin have to be pulled back before sex?” they ask. “Do girls pee out of their vaginas? Does sex hurt? What if the penis is too small? In anal sex, what happens to the shit? How do you know if someone wants to have sex? What’s the point of ribbed condoms?”

We talk about the difference between pornographic bodies and real bodies, pornographic sex and real sex. Most of them have watched porn in secret and I find myself wondering…. Of course, one of their purposes in watching will be for arousal – that never changes - but I suspect that they also watch porn for information. Internet pornography begins where sex education for young people ends. When there are questions about sex that adults daren’t or won’t answer, young people search the internet. The trouble is that the answers they get back from pornography may be grossly distorted. It stands to reason, therefore, that with better, earlier and more explicit sex education, with questions answered rather than fudged and with opportunities for educators to describe sex in the context of love, young people might need to watch porn rather less urgently.

Nick Luxmoore is a counselor at King Alfred's College, in the UK.

Love,

Abby

The Danger with “Boys Will Be Boys”: Why this phrase should be banned from our vocabulary

Elizabeth Meyer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.

I’ve had a couple different conversations with the teachers at my child’s preschool about some of the aggressive behaviors a few of the children have been exhibiting. It has been most alarming to wake up in the morning and have my three-year-old say to me, “I am a robot, I’m going to eat your brain and peel off your skin.” I was also concerned to learn that when a child brought in a Ninjago book, the teachers read the book to the children even though Common Sense media reports that this series is best for children 7 and over and has 0/5 educational value, 2/5 for violence and 5/5 for consumerism. When I have expressed my concerns about some of these issues, every conversation has ended the same, with the teacher saying, “Oh you know, boys will be boys.”

That statement effectively has ended the conversation because it has left me too stunned and flabbergasted to respond. I bite my tongue each time because I don’t want to be THAT parent who is viewed as oversensitive and disengaged from reality. I also want to have a productive dialogue that will allow the preschool to hear my concerns in a way that may allow them to shift their thinking about how they address these issues. This blog is my attempt to organize my thoughts and gather some relevant research in order to help other parents and teachers who may find themselves perplexed by the same situation. So why is “boys will be boys” dangerous?

1. It prompts students to construct gender stereotypes. A recent Psychology Today blog post discussed the impacts of gendered language in elementary schools and how teachers who simply said things like “good morning boys and girls” vs. teachers who said “good morning children” led students to engage in more gender stereotypical thinking such as “only women can be kind, gentle and take care of children” or “only men should be a doctor or construction worker.” These gender stereotypes are limiting for everyone. One of the most damaging impacts is a phenomenon called “stereotype threat.” This is the impact of internalizing stereotypes about your group and having that impact your academic performance that has been documented in the research of Steele & Aronson (1995) and Aronson & Williams (2004). Aronson explains “when social conditions threaten basic motives—our sense of competence, our feelings of belonging, our feelings of control—this can dramatically influence our intellectual capacities.” He goes on to say, “These studies shed considerable light on how stereotypes suppress the performance, motivation and learning of students who have to contend with them and they suggest what educators can do to help.” For example, students of color underperformed in similar measures when students were asked to mark their gender or their race on their test paper, and in cases where students were not "reminded" of this group membership and as a result, the associated stereotypes, students performed much better. Another study confirmed that girls performed better in math assessments where stereotype threat was reduced (Quinn & Spencer 2001). Another Psychology Today blogger wrote eloquently about research showing how this impacted children as early as 1^st grade and their attitudes toward math and language arts.
 

2. Gender stereotypes allow unconscious biases to form and proliferate. Unconscious bias is a term that describes internalized attitudes about a particular group of people that then can shape our interactions with that group. In Jean Moule’s 2009 article, Understanding unconscious bias and unintentional racism, she calls this "blink of the eye racism," which in this case would be "blink of the eye sexism." These sorts of unexamined and deeply embedded beliefs are powerful in shaping how we make decisions in hundreds of everyday interactions, which can impact students’ educational opportunities. David Sadker outlines many examples of how this impacts students in his 2002 article, An Educator’s Primer to the Gender War. He explains that teachers give more attention to the "more active" boys and less academic contact to the "quieter" girls, and although more girls are identified for gifted programs in elementary schools, by high school fewer girls remain in gifted programs—particularly African American and Latina girls. These stereotypes also reinforce the myth of the gender binary and "sex differences" which I discuss more in point four below.
 

3. It is misinformed thinking and oversimplifies the problem. This expression attempts to explain away aggressive behaviors that a small number of children exhibit by linking it with "natural" or "biological" impulses without examining other reasons for the aggression. By linking aggressive behaviors with a child’s sex assigned at birth it ignores all the other environmental (family, media influences, messages at school, etc.) and individual factors (personality, nutrition, body chemistry, etc.) that might be influencing behaviors. It creates an easy excuse to fall back on so adults don’t have to examine other reasons for such aggressive behaviors. It is also often used to justify schoolyard bullying—often very extreme cases that are violent and homophobic in nature—and causes many adults to accept negative behaviors as "natural." The principal in the famous Nabozny v. Podlesny case where a student was hospitalized after being beaten up for being gay justified the assault using such terms. This phrase allows harmful behaviors to persist unchecked and possibly worsen over time. It also reduces the likelihood of adults intervening in interactions that can be really harmful.
4. It limits the full expression of children. By saying “boys will be boys” it teaches children that certain behaviors are endemic to masculinity and exclusive to boys only. This form of thinking reinforces rigid binaries that cause us to develop more engrained “either/or” attitudes that allow our culture to ignore the true spectrum and variety of behaviors that individuals can exhibit. Janet Hyde from the University of Wisconsin, Madison has carefully critiqued the “science of sex differences” research by doing an extensive analysis of studies of sex differences. This meta-analysis of hundreds of studies showed that most reported differences between sexes are quite small. As a result she has developed the gender similarities hypothesis that humans are more alike on most factors than "common sense" would have you believe. The Psychology Today editors wrote about this study in a blog post in 2008 that summarizes the study quite concisely. Other books have been published that try to perpetuate this belief that males and females are very different, and the media are ready to repeat these stories because they are comforting and familiar to their audience. However, they are not supported by the majority of research and we need to be able to talk about children’s behavior in more complex and nuanced ways that don’t confine them to socially constructed pink and blue scripts.

I want my child to grow up in a world that allows him to explore his strengths and express his personality in ways that are true to him, not ways that society believes boys are supposed to behave. I hope by sharing some of this research here, other parents and teachers may be able to work more actively to combat this misinformed approach to working with children and allow our kids to explore and express themselves in ways that are authentic and healthy for them. This will hopefully minimize some of the academic gaps reported on here, as well as reduce some of the violence that many young men engage in, and allow gender-creative and transgender youth to be affirmed and supported in their home and school environments.

This post is a response to The Way We Talk About Gender Can Make a Big Difference by Christia S. Brown, Ph.D.

Love,

Abby

Parenting Adolescents and the Dance of Detachment

In an earlier blog, “A Detachment Theory of Parenting Adolescents,” (12/9/13), Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D. talked about the challenge of moving from Attachment Parenting with a child (focused on Holding On to create a secure trust in parents) to Detachment Parenting with an adolescent (focused on Letting Go to foster the young person’s secure reliance on self.) With a child, parents teach rules for social conduct; with an adolescent, they emphasize increased self-management.

I think of detachment parenting with an adolescent as a process through which a young person “takes on” the more grown up world in two ways that empower independence.

One way is through parents releasing freedom for the young person to act older. Here they allow and encourage the teenager to “take on” more grown up life responsibilities that contribute to greater independence. This release can feel scary for parents who fear risks of new freedom may be discounted or ignored –like when starting to drive or to attend parties, for example.

A second way is through parents respecting resistance to their influence. Here the teenager asserts power to “take on” parental authority for more independent control of personal decision making, social association, and self-definition. This resistance can feel offensive to parents who consider speaking up in disagreement a form of talking back – like when questioning or arguing with what they say, for example.

Both ways in combination comprise a very complicated and challenging “dance,” the “Detachment Two-step” you could call it, that parents must try to lead and follow during adolescence as the teenager’s push for independence grows. The dance is a more reluctant partnership than in childhood and more awkward when parent and adolescent tread on each other’s toes and collide, as they frequently do, often inclined to blame the other when collisions occur.

By the young person’s early to mid-twenties, the dance is mostly over. With a free standing separation between them, there is no further release of freedom for the parent to give, and no further resistance to parental authority for the adolescent to mount. Functional independence has brought the dance of detachment to a close.

Now, consider the two steps of detachment in a little more detail, first releasing freedom, and then respecting resistance.

RELEASING FREEDOM

There are freedoms that adolescents request, freedoms that adolescents take without asking, and freedoms that parents assign, each kind providing more room for responsibility to grow.

Freedom requested and freedoms taken put adolescents at the mercy of their own decision-making which is why from here on the choice/consequence connection must be honored. Now, after-the-fact education and learning from hard experience counts for at least as much as before-the-fact education and formal preparation. Thus any costs for parking tickets, moving violations, or fender benders, for example, are the young driver’s to pay. “You must face the outcomes of your decisions – crediting the good, confronting the bad, learning more responsibility from both.”

Freedom assigned fulfills the parental agenda for adult preparation, training the young person in assuming more self-management responsibility. Thus during the 48 short months of high school, parents are training and turning over more life management functions so that upon graduation and moving off, the young person is equipped with necessary knowledge, skills, and experience (budgeting, banking, and bill paying, for example) to support the demands that come with living more on one’s own. “You will have to depend on your own organization, motivation, and self-discipline when you leave our care.”

RESPECTING RESISTANCE

Resistance against what parents want, are used to, or can easily accept is part of adolescent growth. Consider three engines of growth for independence that tend to cause the most strain. There is opposition and actively and passively pushing against parental authority to operate more on one’s own terms. There is separation and pulling away for more social distance from family and more affiliation with friends. And there is individuation and playing with an increased variety of interests and images to develop a fitting personal identity. In each case, the young person asserts more independence, causing conflict when what the adolescent wants to do, who the adolescent wants to be with, or how the adolescent wants to be defined departs from the parental agenda or exceeds their tolerances.

These kinds of resistance should be seriously respected by parents because at stake is going up against the most powerful people in the adolescent’s world to assert independence of them. Therefore, do not discount these efforts or in any way diminish the adolescent for making them. Independence of the resistant kind takes more adolescent courage than most parents usually appreciate. “I hate getting on my parents’ wrong side, but sometimes that’s what I have to do!” So set expectations for your willingness to deal with resistance. For example, you might declare something like this. “When we disagree with what you want, or you disagree with what we want, please know that we stand ready to hear everything you have to say. That done, will be firm where we feel we have to and explain why this is so. And we will be flexible where we feel we can, willing to work out what you want.”

Parents must accept and anticipate the reality that to some degree, in service of detachment, they will have to release more freedom and encounter more resistance to help their adolescent gather more power of independence.

So, one formula for detachment parenting is this: DETACHMENT = RELEASE + RESISTANCE. Parents must allow themselves to release more freedom to their adolescent and they must encounter more resistance to their authority. In consequence, parents can’t detach without undergoing more anxiety from letting go control when they release, and experiencing more frustration in conflict when they encounter resistance by resisting back. This is why parenting adolescents can be stressful for parents.

This is also why steadfast parenting adolescents is crucial as well. Through constant communication, caring, and cooperation they must stay connected with their teenager while this dance of detachment is growing them apart.

;)

Abby

Adolescence and Internet Information

Just as it was for parents, so with their adolescent: the older one grows, the more information one must acquire and manage to cope with life’s increasing complexity.

However, there is a powerful generational difference between back then and now. Today, there is a greater amount of worldly knowledge possessed by adolescents at a much younger age. And the source for this difference is the Internet – that “wild west” frontier of unregulated free speech where everyone, from the responsible to the outlaw, is empowered to publically represent themselves and pretty much post whatever they want to say.

While parents grew up only in an offline world, their adolescent grows up in that plus a vast online world as well. While parents may have had to cope with ignorance from less worldly information than they wanted, their teenager has to cope with excessive Internet exposure to all the knowledge she or he desires. What was very difficult for parents to discover is now very easy for their teenager to find out. While parents may have had no go-to person for their embarrassing or forbidden questions, their adolescent can ask the Internet for whatever intelligence she or he wants, enter it on an ever-obliging  search engine, and with the click of a key immediately be given access to a host of sites that speak to what the young person wants to know. When it comes to the adolescent acquiring information about any aspect of life experience, the Internet is a completely permissive, constantly available, and apparently universally knowledgeable resource.

As for patrolling and restricting their adolescent’s Internet access, it’s not enough for parents to strictly manage use of the family computer (what access to sites and interactions are allowed) since that is only one of many portals to the Internet that are available to their teenager. For example, what may be forbidden at home is available independently of parental oversight on the home computers, personal laptops, pads, and smart phones of their teenager’s friends. Just because visiting hate sites, gambling sites, dating sites, recreational drug sites, pornographic sites, quick money sites, social violence sites, and other sites of the parents’ choosing are prohibited at home does not mean they are not accessed elsewhere.

At an age when curiosity seems to have no bounds, the Internet offers information without limits. An adolescent often has more worldly exposure than their parents could wish, and at a younger age. In consequence, when they find out an older Internet exposure has occurred, they have to talk about certain sensitive issues with their son or daughter earlier than they like. Not out to control the teenager’s beliefs (because they know they can’t do that) they are trying to inform those beliefs. Thus they have a responsibility to weigh in with their more mature knowledge and point of view while the young person is in process of making up her or his mind about what to think.

So when parents find out their shy high school freshman has registered herself on an online dating site, perhaps they say something like this. “Of course you think about dating. You want to find ways for comfortably meeting people to make that happen. But posting information about yourself on an adult Internet dating site can put you at risk of predatory attention from unknown older responders who may be out to do you no good. So let’s talk about dating possibilities within your circle of friends at school, in social circles outside of school, about safe and enjoyable ways that you might start the process, even ways we can be of social help.”

Or consider what they might say when, as commonly happens in Early Adolescence (Ages 9 – 13), a time when many older interest awaken, a 6th grader entering puberty has his first exposure to Internet pornography that parents alert to because of the sudden surge of sex site invitations that suddenly flood their home computer.

Perhaps, after listening to the young person describe what he was curious about, what he saw, and what he learned, they begin by putting the experience into matter of fact communication. Of course every parent has their personal values and individual perspective to offer. However, as a possible example, they might (or might not) want to say something like this.

“It’s normal that you become more interested in the sexual part of yourself and relationships as you get older. However, compelling as it may feel to watch, pornography can give you some wrong ideas for managing your sexual feelings and activity as you grow. For starters, pornography makes it seem like everything you see these couples do in a sexual relationship is what you should want to do. It makes relationships seem all about having impersonal sex, with no other interest or emotional connection. It makes casual sex look free of serious harm, with no dangers to beware, with no sexual protection necessary. Pornography gives you a lot of fantasy without much reality. It’s made for entertainment, not education. It’s not a good instructor. So we want to offer what we think is really important for you to consider when it comes to sex, answer any questions you have now, and give our commitment to talk with you about sexual matters that develop, as they will. For example, if you like we can share what we were curious to know at your age and what we believed we knew that wasn't so. You have only to ask."

It seems to me that there are two new information management jobs for parents of adolescents in the Internet Age. The first, as suggested above, is being ready to help your teenager deal with an Internet exposure to older information about the world at a younger age than you anticipated or may have wanted. You cannot stop this exposure. You can only try to keep up with it by talking about it and by trying to place it in what you believe is a healthy perspective.

The second job is educating their adolescent in how to intelligently process this readily available universe of online information. For example, parents might suggest to their adolescent three filtering questions to keep in mind when accessing and assessing this endless trove of information, filtering the good sense from the bad ideas it may have to offer.

There is the Purpose Question (and the matter of Agenda), the Trust Question (and the matter of Truth), and the Application Question (and the matter of Use.)

The PURPOSE QUESTION is: Why is this data posted? 

All data on the Internet is posted for a purpose, hung out there like bait to hook visitor interest. So whatever site you are viewing, ask yourself: What is the agenda? Is it to entertain me, to educate me, to locate me, to motivate me, to profit off me? Ask yourself: “Why would someone want me to be interested in this?”

The TRUST QUESTION is: Should this information be treated as valid?

Is it worth considering, crediting, and given convincing value? How can you tell if the reporting, examples, opinions, testimonies, promises, pictures, offers or claims are to be believed and trusted? You don’t want to admit into your core of working knowledge what is mistaken, misleading, or false like short cuts, quick fixes, illusions, and magic solutions. Ask yourself: “On balance, is this too unlikely, too simple, too seductive, too sensational, or too good to be true?”

The APPLICATION QUESTION is: Should I act on, interact with, or put this information to personal use? 

Assuming the agenda seems legitimate and the content valid, do you want to place personal welfare on it by utilizing whatever the information is supposed to be good for, be it for education, guidance, membership, or for purchase? Because the outcome is always to some degree a gamble, encourage the young person to take Predictive Responsibility by asking themselves what could possibly go wrong if they used this information, and what plan do they have in mind should this eventuality occur. Ask yourself: “Does the use justify the risk?”

The Internet is a fabulous human invention, and the traffic of endless data is a wonder to behold. In response, the new parental job is to provide perspective when Internet exposures give adolescents worldly knowledge at a much younger age, and to help them learn to sort the huge amount of information that now comes their way for what is valuable and safe, and what is not.

With the Internet adolescents have access to much more information today. 

Love,

Abby

The Lost Airliner and Our Fear of Flying

As the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was being discussed on the SOAR message board and Facebook page, I didn't initially realize why it was causing so much distress.

It is about the total and absolute disconnect. Avoid a void that allows nothing. I didn't get it until someone asked about a data link that—if it is done by satellite—provides connection no matter where the plane is. Suddenly I realized that what is bothering so many people is that there is nothing, no explanation, no clues, no radio transmission, no sign of the plane's crash site, nothing. There is just a complete void of connection. Even an explanation would be a sort of connection with the people who are lost. Since there is no scenario of how they met their end, it is as if they stopped existing in a more non-existent way than if we knew how it happened. This total and absolute disconnect is troubling, and I believe it is troubling because it resonates with the disconnect we felt as little kids.

Strictly speaking, fear is about something specific, and anxiety is about the unknown. The unknown is so hard to tolerate that we try to transform it into something "known." If we have a definable target we can do something about it. Doing something is one of the ways we relieve anxiety. We can avoid it, fight it, or escape from it. Otherwise, there is nothing we can do; we can't avoid, fight, or escape the unknown.

In most crashes, the news tells us what happened and in a day or so, unless the crash involved someone we knew, the event becomes old news. This case is different: A plane disappeared. We think, This can't happen. A plane can't just disappear. We can't accept the complete disconnect caused by the information void. Why is it so disturbing? It resonates with times as a child when something went terribly wrong and there was a complete disconnect between us and the people we needed and depended upon.

For a child, a complete disconnect is too awful to endure, so he or she shuts down. James Masterson, called this abandonment depression. We are born to connect. At birth, there is an urge to connect with the breast, and to feel the connection of being held. This expands to an urge to connect psychologically, to be recognized as a real person, and to be responded to by others.

Since self-to-self interaction is so basic to our feelings of security, we build within the mind replicas of those who are vital to us. Then, when they are not present physically, they can still be present inside us psychologically. These internal replicas allow us to maintain a sense of connection—and thus security—even when they are away. But when a child tries to rely upon people who are unpredictable, it is impossible to build internal replicas adequate to prevent distress when the person is away. The child cannot feel secure when alone.

Fast forward to the present: Here we are, as adults, still needing to avoid feelings of disconnection. But without adequate internal replicas, distress is triggered by the disconnection of this disappearance. This creates a demand for so-called experts who we call upon to spin theories in thin air. What is the harm? Speculation about how Air France Flight 447 from Rio to Paris was lost in 2009 led to the formation of a myth about what happened to the plane that was every fearful flier's worst nightmare: A plane far out over the ocean, away from any land, hit terrible unexpected turbulence, and "fell out of the sky" at night, into the ocean.

That's not what happened, we've since learned, but I still get emails and calls from people who tell me that the loss of the Air France flight is the cause of their fear of flying. We can thank the media for that. The speculation offered some sense of connection, but if it fit a person's worst fears, then the cure the media offered to deal with the unknown was worse than the disease.

The Boeing 777 has flown 18 years with no fatalities, other than a 2013 crash landing in San Francisco which was determined to be caused by crew (and management) incompetence, not an issue with the plane. One crash in 18 years of flying is a great safety record. Rationally, such a record should be reassuring. But it isn't. Cognitively, we require absolute safety to get rid of our anxiety. Since absolute safety does not exist, cognition cannot solve the problem. Fortunately, relationship can. We need to establish suitable internal replicas.

Love,

Abby

Words Hurt: Are we labeling children when we call them a bully? by Raychelle Cassada Lohmann, M.S., L.P.C.

A few weeks ago I was asked to write an article on bullying. Something kept jumping off the page as I attempted to write the piece…the word "Bully.” The more I tried to finish the article, I just couldn't. Something was eating away at me as I tried to write. I felt like I was labeling a child by putting a stereotyping name on a person as opposed to a behavior, albeit a very serious and concerning behavior. I was taken back to my Junior High School English class when we were reading The Scarlet Letter. I remember reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's deeply written book thinking,“that's not fair, that's not right, people shouldn’t do that to her (Hester).” That same feeling that was stirred in High School found its way back to me today. "What am I doing?" I asked myself. I have labeled a child "Bully" and yet, I know that bullying is a behavior not a person. Many of these kids come from broken homes, they cry out for acceptance, they lack social skills, they need anger management, but most of all they need love…

With this relevation I placed the shoe on the other foot and stepped into the world of the child who bullies…I tore the label off of the child and wrote an article from a child's perspective, a hurt child. Although the current piece does not duplicate the article that I wrote, you can access it at the link below.

"What About Those Doing the Bullying? They Deserve Our Help Too: A Child's Plea" at http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/what-about-those-doing-bullying-t...

Why we need to be careful not to label a child

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children with mental health disorders are three times more likely to be identified as children who bully. 

Did you know that children who bully are at risk of:

• suicide
• academic problems
• substance abuse
• mental health issues
• family violence

Children who bully are more likely than peers who do not bully to live in single parent households and to live with extended family members or with foster parents. Children who bully are also at an increased risk of criminal involvement. In a study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence approximately half of the men sampled reported they bullied other children during their teen years engaged in some form of criminal activity (i.e., theft, burglary and assault) when they were adults. Early intervention may help deter these children from going down the wrong path in adulthood.

Skills children who bully often lack include:

• how to appropriately communicate with one another
• how to express their feelings without belittling or putting someone down
• how to make good decisions and learn how bad choices result in negative consequences
• how to work through anger effectively
• how to cope with frustrating and stressful situations
• how to be empathetic to others
• how to care for self and others

Not only does it take a village to raise a child, but it will take a village to change how children treat one another. Bullying is a very real problem plaguing our youth and it is all inclusive from those children who have been targeted, to those who have watched it happen, to those who have initiated it. No child is unaffected by the grasp of bullying.

Bullying is a learned behavior and behaviors can be changed. So rather than using the word “bully” to describe a child perhaps a more appropriate way to phrase it would be, "the child who bullies.” Hopefully, we can collectively agree that our words have power. And as many anti-bullying campaigns point out…"words hurt."

Disclaimer —Since writing the article I have worked hard to not use the word "bully" to describe a child. Some may claim it as an attempt to be "PC," but there is no "PC" it's simply the right thing to do…

by Raychelle Cassada Lohmann, M.S., L.P.C., the author of The Anger Workbook for Teens.

;) Abby

It’s Time to Address the Marijuana Issue by Robert A. Berezin, MD

It’s time to address the marijuana issue. To put it simply, “What are we thinking?” The substance abuse epidemic is so incredibly destructive to the well-being of our society – to our children, our adolescents, as well as adults. It is problematic enough to deal with the hard drugs – heroin, cocaine, etc.; prescription drug abuse – the opiates, amphetamines; never mind the psychiatric pharmaceuticals- the antidepressants, benzodiazepines, sleeping pills, etc.; and of course alcoholism. While we are going to great lengths to curtail cigarettes and nicotine, we are legalizing marijuana which is far more destructive. We in the psychiatric, psychological, and social work professions need to be active and clear in addressing this pressing issue.

I am limiting my focus to marijuana itself - THC and other cannabinoids, not to the social issues. Marijuana is a psychoactive drug. It is a mild to moderate hallucinogen. While not physically addictive it is powerfully habituating. And the marijuana of today is not your father’s marijuana. It is far, far stronger.

As a psychiatrist I have treated all of the addictions. And marijuana usage has gotten a pass. It has slid under the radar and is somehow considered a junior drug, so it doesn’t count. In fact, because of its psychotropic effects it is very distorting and destructive to the personality. Habitual marijuana use affects the brain. It affects the processing of experience by our consciousness. The altered top-down processing affects the play of consciousness itself. In order for psychotherapy to proceed, a patient has to be marijuana free. I will give an example of the marijuana issue in psychotherapy from my book about my patient, Eddie.

“Eddie said that for some time, smoking pot had made him “paranoid.” This was actually a marijuana anxiety state. Even though it no longer worked and despite the amplification of anxiety, Eddie had kept right on smoking, trying to recapture his earlier positive experiences. Since he was such a veteran smoker, he also felt ashamed of the marijuana anxiety itself.

Eddie turned to marijuana to fortify himself, to fill his emptiness and loneliness, and to inflate his ego. Cigarettes worked up to a point. Always a smoker, Eddie increased his smoking to over a pack a day. The process of smoking, filling the lungs, coincides with the physical location in the body for the feeling of emptiness. It is felt in the chest. Eddie filled his emptiness with a drug. Nicotine also has the drug effect of constricting the arterioles all over the body. This physical shutdown at every capillary mimicked a physical holding, which fortified and fed his emotional shutdown. Marijuana worked even better— a psychotropic, also inhaled. His lungs, full of THC smoke, was a full-filling experience. He felt that it stimulated his creativity. He believed it made him a deeper and creative thinker, the very attributes he felt were missing in himself. Marijuana fostered his specialness, which had already become the criteria for his value as a person. And he quickly became dependent on it to inflate his burgeoning and false sense of superiority. Marijuana also amplified his sensations, which gave him a false feeling of participation and engagement in life. He often smoked before social situations to undo being exposed as lacking and worthless, and to diminish his social anxiety. Eddie had no access to an inner voice saying, “Wait a minute— what am I doing?” He went the other way: “This stuff is great.” He was actively seeking a drug to enhance his sense of specialness. Marijuana fortified his decision to harden himself emotionally, by numbing himself from human feeling. I feel good. I feel great. I don’t need anybody. I’m superior.

Marijuana has a characteristic effect on consciousness itself. It promotes a disjunction between thinking and feeling. It distanced Eddie from participation in his feelings, which he was wont to do in the first place. His thinking, ungrounded in feeling, was free to roam, untethered. In its early phases, this promoted a sense of creativity, due to the liberated ability of his mind to roam free and unanchored. It also fostered obsessional and intellectualized “insights.” Marijuana intellectualization was disconnected from feeling. And as we know, feeling is the anchor of the characterological play. This became an organizing feature of the neuronal loops of his experience and warped the workings of his consciousness. Through habitual usage, this “marijuana mind,” was established in him, whether he was smoking or not.

Eddie took for granted that therapy was about intellectualized insights. (This is a common assumption, which is unfortunately all too frequently shared by many therapists.) This decidedly is not the case. Eddie’s pride in his intellectualized insights was problematic for the therapy because it interfered with real engagement. Eddie valued his insights as special and impressive. His compensatory identity as superior was attached to being a user of not only marijuana but the other hallucinogens as well. And finally, marijuana served to heighten his senses. As a result, Eddie felt super-participatory in sensory experience. This was compensatory for Eddie’s sense of removal as the observer/outsider he normally felt himself to be.

As is typical, in order for Eddie’s brain to work right again, it took him a full year to recover from habitual marijuana usage. This was not about detoxing it out of his system—that took place fairly quickly. Likewise, it was not a physiological dependence. The issue was marijuana’s effects on his consciousness and a psychological dependence on this valued cast of mind which I call marijuana brain.”

Now it is certainly true that not every smoker gets marijuana anxiety, but it is very common. And even more important, this psychotropic drug effects the brain of every smoker. With the legalization of marijuana we are sanctioning this destructive alteration of consciousness, which makes users passive, removed, intellectualized, falsely special, and not equipped to take on the challenges of life with our full and unadulterated where-with-all. This is especially so in the developing brain and consciousness of teenagers, never mind the altered brains of adults. As a society we are supposed to foster the full and best development of our children into capable, responsible, caring adults. We need to oppose the use of marijuana, not foster it.

Robert A. Berezin, MD is the author of "Psychotherapy of Character, the Play of Consciousness in the Theater of the Brain”

www.robertberezin.com

;)

Abby

Joko Widodo for Indonesian President 2014

Five reasons for Joko Widodo’s popularity in Indonesia

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Joko Widodo, governor of Jakarta and Indonesia’s most popular politician, has been selected the presidential candidate for Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Democratic Party of Indonesia-Struggle (PDI-P) for the presidential election in July.

Mr Widodo, a political outsider until he was elected governor of the capital two years ago, has become wildly popular across the world’s third biggest democracy because of his down-to-earth manner, focus on delivery and pro-poor policies such as free healthcare and education.

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● Down-to-earth style Some outsiders have compared Mr Widodo’s rapid rise from obscurity to that of Barack Obama, US president. But, as one of his political rivals puts it, he is more like an Indonesian Ronald Reagan or George W Bush. “People like him because he looks and sounds like the ordinary Joe,” he says. “He’s the sort of guy they feel they can eat noodles with at a street stall.” That contrasts sharply with rivals such as former general Prabowo Subianto and tycoon Aburizal Bakrie and even his party boss, former president Ms Megawati, who maintains an aloof presence.

● Focus on delivery After the fall of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998, Indonesia became one of the world’s most decentralised countries. But many Indonesians have been disappointed with the quality of their elected local leaders. As mayor of Solo, a small city in central Java, and then governor of Jakarta from 2012, Mr Widodo has focused on delivering real, if gradual, improvements, from relocating street vendors in Solo to new markets to bringing in free health and education for the poor in Jakarta.

● Good deputy Mr Widodo’s success in Jakarta has been due in large part to his vice-governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who plays bad cop to the governor’s good cop. While Mr Widodo spends his days doing spot inspections, receiving guests and guiding the administration, Mr Purnama is running the show in city hall.

● Canny media management Mr Widodo has shown himself to be a smart communicator. His decision to wear a cheap checked red and blue shirt throughout his campaign for the Jakarta governorship was a well considered attempt to encapsulate his down-to-earth political brand. His trademark spot inspections are designed to ensure that he generates constant attention from Indonesia’s plethora of 24-hour news channels and websites as well as newspapers.

● The lack of alternatives Indonesia is a fast-growing, youthful country and between 10 and 20 per cent of the 190m electorate will be voting for the first time this year. But Southeast Asia’s biggest economy suffers from a distinct lack of fresh leaders. Most of the other contenders for the presidency, including Mr Subianto and Mr Bakrie, are controversial figures from the past who have tried and failed to attain high office before. Mr Widodo is one of a handful of promising, younger leaders who have emerged in the past few years.

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Joko Widodo to run for presidency in Indonesia

Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s most popular politician by far, has ended months of speculation by announcing he will run as a candidate for the country’s presidency in the July election.
The will-he-or-won’t he speculation about the Jakarta governor made the late Friday announcement the most anticipated in Indonesian politics.

It signals that the leader of the the PDI-P party, Megawati Sukarnoputri, has finally renounced her own ambition to run again for president, and has given her blessing to the man universally known as Jokowi.

Ms Megawati’s daughter, Puan Maharani, made the announcement. Mr Joko responded: “I have received the mandate from the chairwoman of [political party] PDI-P to be a presidential candidate. By saying bismillah [in the name of God], I am ready to do it”.

Mr Joko then kissed the red and white Indonesian flag.

The endorsement comes at the end of the week when Ms Megawati hosted Mr Joko on a trip to Blitar, East Java, to pay respects at her party’s sacred site, the grave of her father, Sukarno, who was Indonesia’s first post-independence president and is still a political icon in the largely Muslim nation of 240 million.

Mr Joko is newcomer on the national stage. He has served just 18 months as the governor of Indonesia’s unruly capital city, Jakarta, and before that he was a businessman manufacturing furniture and then mayor of regional Javanese city of Solo.

But his runaway popularity on the national stage has swept all before it, shocking the incumbents of Indonesia’s cliquey, Suharto-era political elite and eclipsing all other candidates for president, even before Friday’s announcement.

The biggest victim will be the Gerindra party’s candidate, former army general Prabowo Subianto, who, in the absence of Mr Joko’s candidacy, was the favourite to replace Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Dr Yudhoyono is not eligible to contest again, having served the constitutional maximum of two five-year terms.

The presidential election will be held in July, with a run-off in September if no candidate wins an absolute majority. Mr Joko, who is already riding high in the polls, may even be popular enough to win in the first round.  

His new style of “can do” politics has given him an almost gravitational pull over the country’s millions of poor and middle class voters. 

From North Sumatra to West Papua, people are looking to this narrow-shouldered, toothy-grinned Central Javanese man to break the mould of Indonesian politics and begin unwinding the patronage, corruption and indecision that mar it.

The timing of the PDI-P announcement on Friday appears to have been determined by the fact that, on April 9, less than a month away, Indonesia will elect its 560-seat parliament. That poll acts as a kind of primary for the later presidential election because, without at least 20 per cent support in the parliament, a presidential candidate cannot run.

To not have declared Jokowi before then, according to Jakarta-based political consultant Paul Rowland, would have been a “massive own goal” for Ms Megawati and her party.

Newspaper Koran Tempo on Thursday ran a graph depicting the “Jokowi effect” on voting intention in the parliamentary election.

“Without Jokowi” as a presidential candidate, PDI-P was heading for between 16 and 22 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary election, depending on the poll — which still would make it the largest single party. But “With Jokowi,” PDI-P’s vote jumps to 29 or 31 per cent.

In an electorate of 175 million people, that’s somewhere up to 23 million people changing their vote because Mr Joko is a candidate for the party in a subsequent election. His name sucks support from all over the political spectrum, not just from the nationalist-protectionist parties that make up the secular mainstream, but from the Islamic parties as well.

Even individual politicians from other parties are attracted to his orbit. Stories this week suggest two former presidential candidates for rival party Golkar — Jusuf Kalla and Akbar Tanjung — are prepared to leave their sinking political ship to climb aboard Jokowi’s, and are touting themselves as potential vice-presidents. 

It’s not surprising. Even before he announced his candidacy, Jokowi routinely polled 30 to 40 per cent in a large field of presidential pretenders, while Golkar’s candidate, controversial businessman Aburizal Bakrie struggles to top 10 per cent. 

Mr Joko’s nearest rival, Mr Prabowo, is a former head of the army special forces Kopassus who is banned from travel to the United States and has serious questions hanging over him from his former activities in East Timor and elsewhere. His past has always been difficult for him to explain, and now Mr Joko’s candidacy will make it even more difficult for him to win.

As for Jokowi, according to Rowland, he must now for the first time start answering tough questions on areas of policy where he is a complete unknown — such as foreign policy, economic policy and trade and protectionism.

The world will be watching attentively.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/joko-widodo-to-run-for-presidency-in-indonesia-20140314-34sc9.html#ixzz2vzIDz9Mx

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Official: Joko Widodo Named 2014 Presidential Candidate by Megawati

 

Jakarta. Will Indonesia look back on Friday, March 14 as the day the 2014 presidential election was decided?

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) nominated the wildly popular Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo as its presidential candidate on Friday, putting to an end months of speculation as to whether party chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri was readying her fourth bid for the highest office in the world’s fourth-largest country.

The governor took a break from an impromptu visit to subsidized housing in Marunda, North Jakarta to welcome the news on Friday. He told a crowd of reporters and local residents that he was prepared to mount a campaign for the July election.

“I have been given the blessing of PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri to be a presidential candidate,” Joko said before touching his head to the Indonesian flag in a show of respect. “Bismillahirrahmanirahim, I am ready.”

The PDI-P made the official announcement on Friday afternoon as Megawati read from a handwritten note at the party’s headquarters in Lenteng Agung, South Jakarta. The one-time president made a direct appeal to Indonesian voters, asking them to support Joko in the coming presidential campaign.
“My command is, as the PDI-P chairwoman, to the people of Indonesia who have consciousness for justice and honesty wherever you are: support Bapak Joko Widodo as PDI-P presidential candidate,” Megawati read.

She also urged voters to keep a watchful eye for election fraud during this April’s hugely important legislative elections. Political observers expect the PDI-P, the country’s main opposition party, to receive a boost in the legislative race amid growing discontent with members of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s ruling coalition.

The PDI-P received 14 percent of the popular vote in the 2009 election, securing enough seats to control 19.69 percent of the House of Representatives. But the opposition party will have to convince a sizable percentage of new voters to mount a presidential campaign alone. Political parties need 25 percent of the vote or 20 percent of the House to nominate a presidential candidate without forming a coalition.

Yudhoyono tightened his grip on the House after the 2009 election, forming a six-party coalition that stands opposite the PDI-P. But  a series of high-profile graft cases have all but destroyed the Democratic Party’s upper echelons and the president has struggled to keep the more unruly members, like the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), in check.

The outcome of April’s legislative race will set the tone for the coming election, narrowing the crowded playing field to a few candidates and kick off the official campaign season. With Joko’s presidential bid at least partially on the line, Megawati asked her supporters to do whatever they could to ensure a clean election.

“Protect and guard the 2014 legislative elections, especially at polling booths and during tallying of the votes, from any fraud and intimidation,” Megawati said. “Strengthen your heart in guarding the democracy in our beloved Republic of Indonesia.”

The timing of the announcement, which came after months of silence from both Joko and Megawati, will likely bode well for PDI-P candidates in the legislative elections. The official legislative campaign season begins on Sunday, March 16 — giving voters a weekend to digest the news of Joko’s run before the PDI-P takes to the streets.

“Making the announcement before the legislative elections will make the PDI-P’s electability the highest among all the parties,” said Wawan Ichwanudin, a political science lecturer at the University of Indonesia. “But there is still a possibility that Jokowi will lose the race.

“There are still undecided voters and other candidates. To date, Jokowi’s electability hasn’t surpassed 50 percent, so there is still a chance for any other candidate.”

If Joko fails to break the 50 percent threshold in the July election, the race will be decided with a run-off vote between the two most popular candidates. The governor was able to secure his position in Jakarta with a run-off, trouncing incumbent Fauzi Bowo, but a presidential race is an entirely different beast, Wawan warned.

“With less than 50 percent, there would have to be a second round of the election,” he explained. 

“This will give another chance for other candidates to team up against Jokowi and gather their votes. The possibility that this other team might win the race is still a reality.”

Poll position

Joko routinely tops electability polls, but contenders like the Great Indonesia Movement Party’s (Gerindra) Prabowo Subianto and the Golkar Party’s Aburizal Bakrie are still at his heels. Both men announced their candidacy early in the game and have been making the rounds to drum up support ahead of the campaign season.

Aburizal, a mining and property tycoon, is pushing for a protectionist stance on Indonesia’s natural resources and is banking on the emergence of New Order nostalgia to provide a push for the Golkar Party — the one-time election machine of Indonesian strongman Suharto.

He has repeatedly gone on the record to say that Joko’s candidacy is a non-issue as far as he is concerned. The only real threats, Aburizal said, were Megawati and Prabowo.

Prabowo, the former leader of the nation’s feared Kopassus Special Forces, has taken great pains to recast himself as populist leader with a firm grip. His Gerindra party has embarked on an aggressive social media campaign illustrating the party’s commitment to anti-corruption and nationalism ahead of the election.

But allegations of human rights offenses, including kidnapping and killings during the chaos that capped off Suharto’s reign, could prove to be a substantial hurdle for Prabowo’s popularity among the nation’s emerging middle class.

Gerindra supported Joko and his running mate Basuki Tjahaja Purnama in the Jakarta gubernatorial race. But while Basuki has remained loyal to the Gerindra party, Joko was always with the PDI-P. The pre-election rumor mill has swirled with suggestions of a Joko-Prabowo joint ticket, peaking after Basuki made a Chinese New Year visit to Prabowo’s mountain-side compound, but so far any mention of a coalition remain speculation.

One Gerindra official said the party was not concerned with Joko’s emergence as a contender in the race.

“We have no problem at all,” said Habiburohman, the head of advocacy at Gerindra. “We are ready to compete with anyone. Prabowo has his own qualities, so we’re welcome to any contenders.”

Deserting the Durian?

Joko will have to answer for attempting to leave behind his post as the head of Indonesia’s chaotic capital less than halfway through his term, Habiburohman said. The governor rode into office on a reform ticket and promised to clean up Jakarta’s glacial bureaucracy.

Plans to expand the capital’s public transportation system, including the much-delayed construction of a monorail and mass-rapid transit line, have begun in earnest but it will be years before Jakarta residents feel the impact on their daily lives. The governor has, in the past, promised that his attentions were on the capital, not Merdeka Palace, but Friday’s announcement has cemented Joko’s ambitions for higher office.

“How people see it, his unfinished responsibility in Jakarta and his commitment will be a question that Jokowi has to eventually answer,” Habiburohman said. “It’s his business, not ours.”

Jakarta’s deputy governor suggested Joko take a leave of absence during the campaign season instead of vacating his office. There was still a mountain of work to be done in the capital that needed Joko’s attention, Basuki said.

“All this time, the Governor has trusted me to lead meetings,” Basuki said. “I can make decisions. Or if there is anything Pak Jokowi wants to say, he can always call me during meetings.”

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/jakarta-governor-joko-widodo-pegged-pdi-p-presidential-race/

;)

God bless you, Mr. Joko Widodo

Love,

Abby