A conversation

Kolya’s nanny returned back from her end-of-year holidays this week. Today she requested a Conversation. She was very afraid to tell me this.

Had I noticed that she had lost some weight? she asked.

I hadn’t.

Yes, she lost weight. During the holidays she was sick and could not eat well. She went to the doctor. The doctor says she’s pregnant.

Wow, I say, congratulations.

No, she says. This is not good.  She didn’t want more children. She’s not happy about this, she says.

But you want to keep the baby?

If it were only one month, I would get that abortion, she says. But it is too far for that, she says.It’s funny, she says, because she didn’t feel anything, any movement of a baby.

How far along is it? I ask

Five months, she says, looking like she’s asking a question.

So the baby is due in May? I say.

She is not sure, she says. Maybe not so soon. The doctor couldn’t tell boy or girl yet.

Who is the father, I ask. Does he know? Is he happy?

The father is her current boyfriend. He is very happy. It is his first child. But for her, it is her third child. She has two girls. One lives in the Eastern Cape with her ex-husband’s family. The other lives with her. She did not want more children.

You did not want more? You were using contraception?

Yes, she says. She was taking the pills.

Every day?

Yes, every day. But maybe some days she did not take them so early in the morning.

You’re brave, I say. To have unprotected sex in these times.

No! she says. We used condoms every time. Maybe one time the condom burst.

Pills and condoms? I say. Are you sure?

I don’t know how it happened, she says.

The story is not adding up, of course. The sheer piling up of improbabilities, of inconsistencies. It’s not quite holding together. I don’t say that though.

She was so worried to tell me, she says. She was worried to lose her job.

Why would you lose your job?

Some ladies don’t like their nannies to be pregnant, she says. In case they are moody. In case they can’t work properly.

I assure her that her job will be okay, though we’ll need to find someone to help with Kolya when she’s off work to have the baby. It will have to be someone trustworthy.

Yes, she says. You can’t trust anyone. You can come back to work and find you have no job, because they will take your job.

I am not talking about that kind of trustworthiness. I realise we have different things to lose.

What will you do about looking after the baby though?

The family must look after the baby, she says. My boyfriend, his family will do everything. But if it is a boy, I will do everything for that baby, she says. If it is a girl, maybe it must go to the Eastern Cape.

No, I cry, don’t say that. NO! echoes Kolya, restless and tired of our conversation. No no no no no!

I leave the conversation unsettled. How much of this story is written by fear? Fear that if she does not give her boyfriend a child, that he will leave her for someone who will. Fear that only two girls is not enough; surely a woman must produce a son.  Fear that if she does give him a child, she is saddled with an additional responsibility she did not want.  Is she truly so ignorant about conception and contraception? Or is her ignorance scripted rather by fear, fear that a white woman can surely never understand, that a white woman seeks only to blame. Fear that I may be angry about a deliberate pregnancy whereas an accidental one can surely not be her fault. I wonder about the child in her belly. If it is a girl, it will be all but abandoned to relatives in a distant rural place. If it is a boy, then her youngest daughter will be sent away to make way for his privilege. It’s a curiously political drama, archaic, horrific and yet utterly ordinary.

[Via http://relentlessabundance.wordpress.com]

The unexpected parent

“You have to be the parent your child needs you to be,” she told me,  ”not the one you expected to be.”

This piece of advice was offered to me by a veteran parent at the beginning of my odyssey through the children’s mental health system.  I was at a parent support meeting hoping to learn something that I could grab on to.  Most of the professionals in our lives were quick to tell me the things they thought were wrong with my child and the ways they could or couldn’t help him.  But no one told me what I could do that might actually work.  So I turned to other parents to find out what it was they did.

This advice intrigued me.  I could change myself.  (I sure wasn’t having much luck changing my son). I was definately being transformed already by my frequent failures and less frequent successes with a very challenging mental health care system.  I had already discovered that I had to throw out all of society’s ideas of what a “good” parent or a “bad” parent is.  The rules had all changed.  Looked like I would have to change too.  I had become a member of a very elite group of parents and wanted to learn from the other members.

Parenting a child with mental health needs can be difficult and exhausting.  Typical parenting strategies from time outs to rewarding good behavior might get you a different result every time.  Like many families whose children have mental health needs, I tried a system of rewards and consequences only to find that no matter how consistent I was, my son’s reactions were not.   I knew how to parent my other son but often wondered, “How do I parent this child?’

Most of us learn from our own parents and the parents of our friends while growing up and form an idea about what a “good” parent is.  Sooner or later we discover that we need to shift our focus from being a “good” parent to being an “effective” parent and it’s pretty tough to figure out just what that is.  Some weeks it seems that Thomas Edison’s observations about the process of inventing should also apply to parenting.  He remarked,  ”I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. “

In many parent support groups or other groups of parents whose children have mental health needs, I have often observed that two parents with very different parenting styles can face almost identical challenges.  An authoritarian parent and a more laissez-faire parent each find that their middle school child with a mood disorder has intense rages or irritability, for instance.  Although their child’s behavior is not a result of their parenting style, the authoritarian parent is advised to be less rigid, while the lenient parent is told to have a firmer hand.  And other parents might murmur (often in front of them), ”I would never let a child of mine behave like that.”  They, too, are looking for ways to become the parent their child needs.

When parents tell me of their experiences and the many calls they have made, strategies they have tried, hours they have spent and love they have lavished, I often say, “How lucky your child is to have you as his parent.”  And I can’t say it often enough.  Therapists, teachers and treatments may all come and go.  Some solutions might work for a while but then you have to find a new one.  Most parents become advocates, walking encyclopedias and could write a critical review of children’s services for Consumer Reports.  They are the parent who hangs in there, is resourceful and has a sense of humor is.  Maybe that’s the parent we should expect to be.

[Via http://holdonitsnotover.wordpress.com]

Children Show a Love for Video Ads

It’s no surprise that online ads are targeting children, but the extent to which those children respond is startling. Data released from YuMe, a video ad network shows that children 14 and younger are the leaders in click-through rates on video pre-roll ads, the 15- and 30-second ads that run before a video, at 3.7%. That is nearly double the click-through rate of the next highest group, people over 35, at 1.9%. The information appeared in a Mark Walsh article on Online Media Daily.

Coincidentally (or not), just one day earlier, ABCNews.com reported on a study that shows junk food ads are littering websites popular with children. At the same time, a report commissioned by the U.S. Department for Children, Schools and Families shows that children are neither “helpless victims” nor “savvy consumers” as they are often portrayed by members of completing camps: child protectionists and marketers. The report did point out the increasing role of new media, saying rules changes should accommodate the “changing realities of a converged, digital environment, in which marketers increasingly work across multiple platforms.”

The food industry was hit with more criticism in December, this time by the chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Jon Leibowitz, who said the industry needs to improve the way it markets to children to help the overall fight against obesity. Like the DCSF report, Leibowitz says new media will have to be included in guidelines for marketing to children.

So as the use of video spreads further and further across the Internet and content-rich sites directed toward children integrate pre-roll and other video ads into their user experience, marketers will be keenly aware of how closely the federal government and child advocates will be monitoring the situation. Though marketing to children is an important issue, another element of YuMe data raises the question: will these children grow into youth and adults who are also inclined to click-through pre-roll and similar video ads, or is this just a trait found in children? We won’t get that answer for many years to come.

[Via http://viapopuli.wordpress.com]

Do You Know Your Enemy???

So…do you know your enemy?  If not, you better get to know him because he has come to kill, steal and destroy everything good in your life….your marriage, your family, your happiness, your joy, your peace, your hope, your faith and your love.  He wants desperately to steal your soul for eternity,  keep you in spiritual bondage, keep you depressed, oppressed and useless to God. 

So…do you know your enemy? 

My best friend from childhood doesn’t, and his life, his marriage and his family is being destroyed by the enemy.  He’s not a christian and the enemy is keeping his soul dead and condemned, and taking his family with him.  One of my good friends doesn’t, and she’s depressed, full of anxiety, full of guilt, condemnation and fear.  She thinks the enemy is a fairy tale.  She is still a baby in her faith after 20 years.  She’s a Christian but the enemy is the same.  Another person close to me doesn’t know the enemy either.  His life has been full of destrutive addictions, torment and torn relationships.  He professes Christ but he is running from God.  He doesn’t realize it.  That’s how blind the enemy has made him.

So…do you know your enemy? 

The American church tells everyone they do.  But most don’t.  They distort the Gospel, they live by religious rituals and legalistic laws, they cling to false doctrines and dominational cliques, quench the Spirit, allow homosexuals to run their churches, turn a blind eye to the  thousands and thousands of unborn children killed each year, vote for politicians that are hell-bent on removing all traces of God from our society,  cater to their country club congregations at the expense of the world’s lost and hurting, and bow to our government and status quo to protect their money and worldly kingdoms.  I could go on and on but what I really want to know is….

Do they know who their enemy really is?

[Via http://patrickandchristy.wordpress.com]

This Month in the Middle (December 2009)

Each month this entry provides a categorized listing of the posts from the prior month. So, here the final “This Month in the Middle” for 2009 summarizing entries during December! Make sure you check out our Index Page as well.

A Christmas Carol Advent

• December 1 – Christmas With A Capital “C” (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/01/2009]
• December 2 – O Little Town of Bethlehem (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/02/2009]
• December 3- Away In A Manger (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/03/2009]
• December 4 – This Baby (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/04/2009]
• December 5 – Do You Hear What I Hear? (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/05/2009]
• December 6 – God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/06/2009]
• December 7 – Manger Throne (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/07/2009]
• December 8 – We Three Kings (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/08/2009]
• December 9 – While Shepherds Watched (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/09/2009]
• December 10 – O Come All Ye Faithful (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/10/2009]
• December 11 – Joy To The World (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/11/2009]
• December 12 – Angels We Have Heard On High (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/12/2009]
• December 13 – God is With Us (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/13/2009]
• December 14 – O Come O Come Emmanuel (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/14/2009]
• December 15 – Christmas Hymn (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/15/2009]
• December 16 – Go Tell It On the Mountain (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/16/2009]
• December 17 – Babe in The Straw (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/17/2009]
• December 18 – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/18/2009]
• December 19 – Mary’s Song (Breath of Heaven) (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/19/2009]
• December 20 – The First Noel (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/20/2009]
• December 21 – Mary’s Boy Child (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/21/2009]
• December 22 – Come And Worship (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/22/2009]
• December 23 – O Holy Night (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/23/2009]
• December 24 – Silent Night (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/24/2009]
• December 25 – It’s About the Cross (A Christmas Carol Advent) [12/25/2009]

Children’s Ministry / Kid’s Stuff

• Phillipians 4:6-7 (Seeds Family Worship) [12/26/2009]
• Santa Claus and Children’s Ministry (Children’s Ministry Think Tank) [12/29/2009]

Children’s Ministry Moments

• Everybody Needs Jesus (Children’s Ministry Moment #7) [12/28/2009]

This Month in the Middle

• This Month in the Middle (October 2009) [12/27/2009]
• This Month in the Middle (November 2009) [12/31/2009]

Misc.

• Dad in the Middle – The Year in Review [12/30/2009]

Return to the “This Month in the Middle” index page.

[Via http://blog.stocksohio.com]

"Grace Revealed," Part 2

You may be saying, “That’s all fine and good, Sam. But how does that apply to my daily life?” So, let’s explore some ways that serving a grace-filled God impacts our lives. First up: what does it mean to be grace-filled people? As a parent some of my most basic examples of Christian living come from my interactions with my children. And somewhere along the line I learned about what parenting experts call “retreating with dignity.” Children make mistakes all the time.  Some parents choose to put their children on the spot, accusing them of making a mistake. Sometimes that works. Other times, all that does is intimidate the child into lying.

But when you allow a child to “retreat with dignity,” you give them ample opportunities to right their wrongs. You give them the chance to do right thing rather than immediately confronting them. When children feel they can trust the adult, they will open up to them. That’s difficult for parents to do – it requires humility, patience, self-control, and a certain leveraging of authority. Here’s a personal example. Sometimes our children tell us they have brushed their teeth when really, they haven’t been in the bathroom long enough to do so. And, certainly, there was no toothpaste involved. We can react one of two ways. We can say, “I know you didn’t brush your teeth – there wasn’t enough time! Get back in there!” Or we can say, “Wow, that was quick! Do you need another minute to brush some more?” the second one allows a child to retreat with dignity – without shame and condemnation.

Really, as grace-filled people, we have the same options. Do we strong-arm people into confessions of guilt or do we allow the Holy Spirit to convict? Chances are we’ve had plenty of chances to overlook the ingratitude and inappropriate remarks of others during the holidays, right? Listen to some scriptures about being grace-filled people in moments of great annoyance:

A foolish person shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult. (Prov. 12:16)

A person’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense. (Prov. 19:11)

Peter, the disciple known for sticking the proverbial foot in his mouth, echoes Proverbs:

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 4:8-11)

That’s the definition of graciousness – what grace looks like when Christians display it. It’s giving someone the benefit of the doubt, knowing that God will correct them in his timing, not ours.

So, what’s another area where grace can impact practical living? How about our family life? It’s normally our spouses and children that bear the brunt of our graceless words and actions. And that’s part of being a family. But what about a grace-filled family? What would a family centered on grace look like? Well, for families, there’s a simple formula: grace = space. Family members need space to be who they are, to make mistakes, and feel unconditionally loved in the process. And for that to happen, several things have to go out the window.

First, spouses and children have to be free of unspoken expectations about who they must be. All parents have expectations for their children…and spouses have expectations for one another. But when family members are held to a standard they do not know about much less are able to meet, defeat and resentment set in. Second, a grace-filled family is free of control and manipulation. One family member cannot hold the others “hostage” through intimidation, guilt, shame, emotional outbursts, and the like. To do so undercuts the trust and respect that God desires as the foundation of each family.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t have standards of behavior and consequences for our children? I’m not saying that at all. But how we apply those standards makes all the difference in the world. Once again, look at Jesus. He derived the same results as the Pharisees, but did so in a way that promoted love and freedom rather than legalism and fear. Likewise, a grace-filled family has the following qualities. Spouses work as a team rather than assign blame. They don’t drudge up past failures. They defer to each other and are more interested in what’s best for everyone involved. And finally, they allow God to do the correcting, not each other. Do we as parents as spouses have moments where cajoling, threatening, and manipulation occur? Sure. But for families walking in grace towards one another, those can be the exception – not the rule.

[Via http://samnunnally.wordpress.com]

Entire cell phone industry is hiding the FCC-required safety warning from consumers. Here are the facts to prove it!

The FCC requires all cell phone manufacturers to warn consumers to never carry their cell phone in their pocket or they will be exposed to radiation emission that exceeds federal safety guidelines.

The entire cell phone industry knows this dirty little secret  and they are hiding it from consumers!!  Nope, it’s not some wild conspiracy theory – it’s the ugly truth they don’t want you to know about!  Skeptical?!  I don’t blame you…. I couldn’t believe it myself.  But, here are the facts:

I discovered that the BlackBerry cell phone I purchased for my 16 year old daughter had an FCC-required consumer safety warning to never carry the phone closer than 1” from the body or radiation would exceed the FCC safety limit of 1.6 SAR (the measurement of heat absorbed during exposure to cell phone radiation).  She had been carrying it for 8 months in her pocket (as do most children, teens and young adults) receiving thousands of texts and phone calls each month with the phone directly against her body.  Because that particular phone had the highest radiation of any cell phone on the market, the amount of radiation emitted when closer than 1” from the body most certainly exceeded the 1.6 SAR safety limit.  The required safety warning which would have warned her to never carry the phone in her pocket was not in the user guide so we might have seen it; it was located on the CD that came with the phone which we had no hope of seeing as it was located in the bottom of the box; once I heard about the CD and found the silly thing, the safety warning which was supposedly on the CD could not be read on my MAC!  It required a PC to even be read.  Also, the elusive .pdf file which contained the safety warning was not referenced anywhere in the product literature.

FCC requires ALL cell phone manufacturers to warn users that the radiation level can be dangerous if carried in the pocket.  Were you warned?

After a bit of research, I discovered that ALL cell phone manufacturers are required to inform consumers of this warning although few consumers ever see it since the FCC allows this warning to be buried in fine print in an obscure place in the user guide within technical radio frequency emission jargon.  If you check every word of the user manual that came with your cell phone, you might see it.  Get out a magnifying glass, as it will be in incredibly small type font.  And, it will be buried in some FCC “disclosure” stuff about radio frequency emissions or “separation distance”.  Go on, see if you can find it.  Unless you have a BlackBerry, which will NOT have the warning anywhere in the literature that came with your phone.

RIM hides the FCC-required safety warning in a .pdf file on a CD at the bottom of the stuff that comes with the BlackBerry!!

Research in Motion (RIM), the manufacturer of all the BlackBerry devices actually hides this crucial safety warning in a .pdf file which must be downloaded from a CD that ships in the bottom of every BlackBerry cell phone’s box.  The FCC allows their buddies in the cell phone industry to put this warning on a disk or even on a website if a consumer could be reasonably expected to find it (47 CFR 15.21).  There would be no way that a consumer COULD “reasonably” find a safety warning on a CD or website since RIM mentions it nowhere in the product literature.  The FCC does little, if any oversight of cell phone manufacturers, so this industry-wide deception continues without consequence.

Well… even if you did find the safety warning, you might not recognize what it implies.  Manufacturers have become really tricky about wording the warning in a way that makes no sense.  Instead of just writing,

“Don’t carry the phone in your pocket or you’ll be exposed to radiation levels that exceed the FCC-established safety limit,”

they write bizarre, misleading “suggestions”, like, “Always maintain a minimum separation distance of 1″ OR better yet… “Refer to body-worn configuration requirement”.

You are now warned.  Spread the word to children, teens and others who carry cell phones in their pockets!

Don’t let your kids carry cell phones in their pockets.  Be informed.  Find the safety warning for your phone and call your service provider and complain that the FCC-required safety warning needs to be in a prominent location in language a consumer would understand.  Better yet, write to the president of your cell phone service provider or file a formal complaint with the FCC.

Demand that the cell phone industry stop hiding the safety warning!!

Most importantly, purchase cell phones with the lowest SAR level.  But, don’t rely on CNET’s chart to research various cell phone radiation levels  as they only list the SAR level at the head, not at the body when carried in a holster.   This can be misleading as a phone can be rated quite low when held to the head, but emit the highest radiation on the market when carried on the body.  Also, about 50% of the SAR values on the CNET radiation chart are just flat-out wrong when checked against the actual FCC reported values.   The chart at the link below is the best one to reference as it lists the highest SAR value for a particular phone, whether it’s the rating at the head or when carried in a holster.  And it’s updated weekly to fix any errors (Note:  I don’t endorse any of their products as I don’t know if radiation shields are effective):

http://www.sarshield.com/english/radiationchart.htm

That’s all for now,

Lab Rat 4 SAR

PS  I need to give some kudos to Apple.  The tiny, almost unreadable safety warning that appears in the iPhone literature (if you look hard enough), is one of the only warnings to mention, in consumer-friendly language, not to carry the phone in the pocket.  It’s a tiny step in the right direction for consumer safety.  Now, Apple…..just make the dang warning big enough so someone could read it.  And, put it in a place that a user might just happen to see it!!

[Via http://labrat4sar.wordpress.com]