http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h60r2HPsiuM

The healthy family …

1. Communicates and listens
2. Affirms and supports one another
3. Teaches respect for others (parents and children)
4. Develops a sense of trust
5. Has a sense of play and humor
6. Exhibits a sense of shared responsibility
7. Teaches a sense of right and wrong
8. Has a strong sense of family in which rituals and traditions abound
9. Has a balance of interaction among members
10. Has shared religious core
11. Respects the privacy of one another
12. Values service to others
13. Fosters table time and conversation
14. Shares leisure time
15. Admits to and seeks help with problems

By Dolores Curran

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4326838/Don%27t_Compare

Perhaps the most widespread peril children face isn’t guns, swimming pools or speeding cars. Rather, scientists are suggesting that it may be “toxic stress” early in life, or even before birth.

This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics is issuing a landmark warning that this toxic stress can harm children for life. I’m as skeptical as anyone of headlines from new medical studies (Coffee is good for you! Coffee is bad for you!), but that’s not what this is.

Rather, this is a “policy statement” from the premier association of pediatricians, based on two decades of scientific research. This has revolutionary implications for medicine and for how we can more effectively chip away at poverty and crime.

Toxic stress might arise from parental abuse of alcohol or drugs. It could occur in a home where children are threatened and beaten. It might derive from chronic neglect — a child cries without being cuddled. Affection seems to defuse toxic stress — keep those hugs and lullabies coming! — suggesting that the stress emerges when a child senses persistent threats but no protector.

Cues of a hostile or indifferent environment flood an infant, or even a fetus, with stress hormones like cortisol in ways that can disrupt the body’s metabolism or the architecture of the brain.

The upshot is that children are sometimes permanently undermined. Even many years later, as adults, they are more likely to suffer heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other physical ailments. They are also more likely to struggle in school, have short tempers and tangle with the law.

The crucial period seems to be from conception through early childhood. After that, the brain is less pliable and has trouble being remolded.

“You can modify behavior later, but you can’t rewire disrupted brain circuits,” notes Jack P. Shonkoff, a Harvard pediatrician who has been a leader in this field. “We’re beginning to get a pretty compelling biological model of why kids who have experienced adversity have trouble learning.”

This new research addresses an uncomfortable truth: Poverty is difficult to overcome partly because of self-destructive behaviors. Children from poor homes often shine, but others may skip school, abuse narcotics, break the law, and have trouble settling down in a marriage and a job. Then their children may replicate this pattern.

Liberals sometimes ignore these self-destructive pathologies. Conservatives sometimes rely on them to blame poverty on the poor.

The research suggests that the roots of impairment and underachievement are biologically embedded, but preventable. “This is the biology of social class disparities,” Shonkoff said. “Early experiences are literally built into our bodies.”

The implication is that the most cost-effective window to bring about change isn’t high school or even kindergarten —although much greater efforts are needed in schools as well — but in the early years of life, or even before birth.

“Protecting young children from adversity is a promising, science-based strategy to address many of the most persistent and costly problems facing contemporary society, including limited educational achievement, diminished economic productivity, criminality, and disparities in health,” the pediatrics academy said in its policy statement.

One successful example of early intervention is home visitation by childcare experts, like those from the Nurse-Family Partnership. This organization sends nurses to visit poor, vulnerable women who are pregnant for the first time. The nurse warns against smoking and alcohol and drug abuse, and later encourages breast-feeding and good nutrition, while coaxing mothers to cuddle their children and read to them. This program continues until the child is 2.

At age 6, studies have found, these children are only one-third as likely to have behavioral or intellectual problems as others who weren’t enrolled. At age 15, the children are less than half as likely to have been arrested.

Evidence of the importance of early experiences has been mounting like snowflakes in a blizzard. For example, several studies examined Dutch men and women who had been in utero during a brief famine at the end of World War II. Decades later, those “famine babies” had more trouble concentrating and more heart disease than those born before or after.

Other scholars examined children who had been badly neglected in Romanian orphanages. Those who spent more time in the orphanages had shorter telomeres, a change in chromosomes that’s a marker of accelerated aging. Their brain scans also looked different.

The science is still accumulating. But a compelling message from biology is that if we want to chip away at poverty and improve educational and health outcomes, we have to start earlier. For many children, damage has been suffered before the first day of school.

As Frederick Douglass noted, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times.

It all began while I was thinking that I have no idea what normal is.

You see I grew up in a lot of trauma. My best description of my mom was she was a “rage a- holic.” The irony of being a trauma survivor is that in coping I learned a set of skills that I believe benefit me today.

What a balancing act it was to try to control the environment so as to not set off momma. As a child in order to avoid land mines from going off all around me I became hyper-vigilant. My eyes ran to and fro like a giant search light while my ears were attuned to noises that I knew would not be acceptable It was a hard way to grow up. But eventually I did and started a life of my on.

Married with three children and now three grandchildren I am doing a lot of reflecting. Looking back, one of my assets was that I seem to have always worked well with others. The huge hurt of my childhood carved out a big place in my heart for compassion. My hyper-vigilance translated into the ability to read people and sense what they might need. My keen ears grew to learn to really listen to people. I guess you could say I had learned emotional intelligence. This was an invaluable tool since I negotiated for a living.

All in all life was hard growing up but I do see God’s faithfulness in using the bad for good and while giving me tools that helped.

Hilda Harthcock

True Surrender – “God, I want what You want.  I accept that life is difficult, but I sincerely believe that, You have my back.  You are always watching out for me.  I am ok with not knowing everything.  I’m ok with not having to figure everything and everyone out.”

False Surrender – “God, I say I trust You, but deep inside I hang onto my demands, desires, and expectations of what I believe life should look like.  I resist You by stealth when Your plans don’t match mine.  I fake acceptance resulting in total lack of peace in my life.

By: Murphy Toerner

“Marriage counselor’s can make people aware that…

• Marriage relationships change over time.  Relationships go through many stages and there are different levels of relationship satisfaction.
• All marriages experience periods of low relationship satisfaction.  Low relationship satisfaction is not necessarily a predictor of future happiness and people can learn to improve the relationship.
• Certain circumstances are associated with relationship difficulties. Here are some examples:

-Transition to parenthood

-Financial problems

-Unemployment

-Illness

-The unwanted influence of friends and in-laws

-Sexual difficulties

Knowing that couples are likely to experience marital distress during these times will help them address the issues and seek additional support, prior to the problems escalating to a point at which the relationship becomes irretrievable.

• It is useful to understand your partner’s behavior.  Having a greater understanding of the reasons behind a partner’s behavior helps reduce relationship difficulties.
• Conflict and confrontation are normal in relationships.   How people deal with conflict (constructively rather than destructively) is more important than the conflict itself.

Coleman, Lester. “Improving Relationship Satisfaction-Qualitative Insights Derived from Individuals Currently Within a Couple Relationship” (pg. 377). The Family Journal. Volume 19 Number 4 October 2011.

Mark 1:22-25 –  ”They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. (23) Just then there was a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, (24) saying, ‘what business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who You are — the Holy One of God! (25) And Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘be quiet, (literally … be muzzled) and come out of him!’”

When you were a kid, did you mom ever call you by your entire name, especially when you were in trouble? You know … the proverbial, “Nancy Murphy Geer, get in this house!” When someone uses one’s full name, they are exercising authority over that person.

Of course, no person, angel, or demon has greater power or authority than Jesus Christ, God incarnate.

1 John 4:4b –  “… greater is He (Jesus) who is in you than he (Satan) who is in the world.”

The demon in the Mark passage could not control Jesus.  He had no power or authority over Jesus even when using Jesus’ full name. The demon knew Jesus was but he had no love for or allegiance to Jesus. He belonged to another, Satan.

Every evil spirit knows who Jesus is: the Son of God, but intellectual assent does not equal worship or allegiance.

As children of God (John 1:12), we love, adore, and worship Him.  Our belief is not just intellectual assent.  Our belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the kind of belief that impacts our thoughts, words, and actions.

Intellectual assent/belief is based on facts and knowledge.   Being a child of God is the result of believing there is a God and asking Him to be the most important person in our lives.  Through faith (trust) we receive the free gift of eternal life.

Do you know Jesus intellectually; the same way one believes the sun will rise in the east or the ocean is wide?  Do you know Jesus as the Son of God?

Have you asked Jesus to come into your life?  Have you asked Him to be the most significant Person in your life?  There is a difference between intellectual assent and entrusting God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit with your life.