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

Study: Parents on Smartphones Often Ignore Kids

For smartphone users, the outside world fades away as they tap and swipe. A new study in the journal Pediatrics shows that when parents are on their mobile devices, their kids also fade into the background.

Boston Medical Center researchers went undercover spy-style at fast food restaurants observing parent-child interactions while parents were on their smartphones or mobile tablets.

Of the 55 families observed, 40 of them were engrossed in their mobile devices, according to the study. Close to a third of parents used their devices during the entire meal. Close to three quarters used their device at least once during the meal.

Some of the children in the study sat and ate silently, but the majority of kids were restless or acted up to pull their parents attention away from the mobile device. Some kids sang songs like “Jingle bells, Batman smells.” One child tried to lift his mother’s head up from the device, only to have his hands shoved away.

The essence of the study is that when on a smartphone or tablet, parents are ignoring their kids and having negative interactions with them.

So what should parents do? Give up mobile devices? Of course not, we don’t go back. The technology is useful, entertaining, alluring, and addictive.

At any given moment it might seem like a juicy tweet, a work email, or a Facebook friend is more interesting at mealtime than hearing about homework complaints or a new Dora the Explorer episode from your kids. However, when you piece it all together, a life spent bonding with a smartphone is going to be a lot emptier than a life spent bonding with children.

During meals if you feel like you must check the smartphone, let your kids know that you’re going to be doing this before and after the meal. Then put the device down.

Children grow up fast. When they do, parents will have more time to spend with their technological devices. If the bond parents formed with their children is weak and interrupted because of technology, they are going to be seeing a lot more of their smartphones as the connection with their kids will fade into the background.

;) Abby

Wishing to be another gender: Links to ADHD, autism spectrum disorders

Children and teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder or those who have attention deficit and hyperactivity problems are much more likely to wish to be another gender. So says John Strang of the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, USA, leader of the first study to compare the occurrence of such gender identity issues among children and adolescents with and without specific neurodevelopmental disorders.

The paper is published in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Children between 6 and 18 years old were part of the study. They either had no neurodevelopmental disorder, or they were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a medical neurodevelopmental disorder such as epilepsy, or neurofibromatosis. The wish to be the other gender, known as gender variance, was assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist, one of the most commonly used behavioral report inventories for children and adolescents.

Compared to the control group, gender variance was found to be 7.59 times more common in participants with ASD. It was also found 6.64 times more often in participants with ADHD. No difference was noted between the control group and participants in the other two neurodevelopmental groups.

Participants who wished to be another gender had elevated rates of anxiety and depression symptoms. However, these were lower among participants with autism spectrum disorders. This is possibly due to their impaired social reasoning which makes them unaware of the societal pressures against gender nonconformity.

Strang and his co-workers' study is the first to report on the overlap between ADHD diagnosis and coinciding gender variance. It supports previous studies that have shown increased levels of behavioral problems and/or disruptive disorders among young people with gender variance.

Navigating a child's gender variance is often complex for children and families. The presence of neurodevelopmental disorders makes diagnostics, coping, and adaptation even more challenging.

"In ADHD, difficulties inhibiting impulses are central to the disorder and could result in difficulty keeping gender impulses 'under wraps' in spite of internal and external pressures against cross-gender expression," says Strang, who suggests that the coincidence of gender variance with ADHD and ASD could be related to the underlying symptoms of these neurodevelopmental disorders.

Strang continued, "Children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders may be less aware of the social restrictions against expressions of gender variance and therefore less likely to avoid expressing these inclinations. It could also be theorized that excessively rigid or 'black and white' thinking could result in such a child's rigidly interpreting mild or moderate gender nonconforming inclinations as more intense or absolute."

March 12, 2014

Source

Springer Science+Business Media

Summary

Children and teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder or those who have attention deficit and hyperactivity problems are much more likely to wish to be another gender. This is the conclusion of the first study to compare the occurrence of such gender identity issues among children and adolescents with and without specific neurodevelopmental disorders. Participant children were between 6 and 18 years old. They either had no neurodevelopmental disorder, or they were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a medical neurodevelopmental disorder such as epilepsy, or neurofibromatosis.