Aaron Hanscom
“The idea of juggling responsibilities leads me to the other extreme: parents who play too great a role in their children’s lives. Piano lessons, tutoring, art classes and vacations to Europe can all be very enriching. But they become nothing more than highlights on a resume when they are forced upon a child whose life is completely controlled and scheduled.”
From the picture on his blog Mr. Hanscom looks like he is about 23.
I would like to encourage this young snippet of a writer to delay writing on parenting issues for, oh about, twenty five years. Find a nice young woman, get married, and then welcome a few screaming balls of fury into your life, and after those children have hit 18, please, share with us your views on how to properly parent the well adjusted child. That is, share your views when your own children prove to be well adjusted and are well mannered in public. A few distasteful anecdotes of your observations of supposedly poor parenting do not a well written essay make.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping children, especially teens, busy and occupied with worthwhile activities. I know, I’m living the lifestyle. How much better to have children out playing sports, participating in music and theatre, and busy with scouts and church activities than so bored and laden with free time that they spend precious youth getting into trouble and making mischief.
And there is nothing wrong with parents wanting children to have great success academically and get accepted or even a scholarship to a top university. We “helicopter” parents understand that life in America is a deadly proposition for young people. It sometimes feels like a sexual predator is waiting behind every door and a sexually transmited disease is lurking in the shadows of every relationship. We understand the risks involved in raising a child, but we also know the great joy of watching a child overcome a weakness, then make it a strength as they grow toward adulthood.
For a teacher to stereotype us as Hyper Parents, well perhaps this teacher feels more comfortable NOT being accountable to parents, actually likes being in control of all those young minds without being held accountable for failure to perform as a teacher. Parents who want the best for their children will NOT allow a teacher to slack off and just get by, and this may pose a threat to the teacher who does not want to do the work he or she was hired to do in making lesson plans and then teaching the children a set curriculum of knowledge and information.
Hyper Parenting or Thoughtful Stewardship of our little ones?
In my experience the most protective parents are the ones who are doing a superb job of raising well mannered, smart, and talented children. The mothers who are completely focused on helping their children to be well launched into adult life, who have sacrificed everything to wear the mantle of homemaker, are enjoying wonderful fruits after a lifetime of labor. I regularly watch the adult children of my friends happily marry, and start their own adult lives with grandchildren appearing soon, and young husbands and wives doing the work of providing for and raising their little ones.
Don’t judge something that you obviously don’t understand Mr. Hanscom. Protecting our children from the pitfalls of life is one of the main jobs of good parents. Because we live in a society whose pitfalls seem to be increasing at an alarming rate, if we seem Hyper, it is because we live in a Hyper world.
Jenny Hatch
UPDATE:
I had an email from Aaron this morning, this is what he wrote:
Dear Jenny,
Thanks for your comments on my piece. You make some great points.
However, since you write that I stereotype parents based on some random
encounters I’ve had, I must bring up some points in your post. You make
plenty of assumptions about me from my blog photo. I’m actually 30 years old
and married. While I don’t have children of my own, I have a younger brother
who is 15 years younger than me. I think that information counters the image
you seem to depict of a single guy in his young 20’s.
I just wanted to make that point. Thanks again though for reading. I’ll
check out your site in the future.
Regards,
Aaron
And my response:
Thanks for writing Aaron, I’ll share that information with my readers. I checked out your blog and it looks like you are a fellow conservative.
Parenting is one of the most difficult tasks my husband and I have taken on, and sometimes it feels like the harder we try, the more we get dumped on by various people who are childless and have no clue the many sacrifices and challenges we have had to face. Just yesterday I wanted to pull my hair out because my thirteen year old was on a rampage against his younger brother, saying he never helped to clean their room….etc…I don’t have all the answers, but I try so hard every day to teach our children well, and I know for a fact that some people in my day to day life think of me as one of those infamous helicopter parents.
Whirling off to make breakfast and get my family up and ready for school.
Jenny

WSJ: Propaganda Redux

August 20, 2007Jenny Marie Hatch

Propaganda Redux by ION MIHAI PACEPA

“During last week’s two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged “the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism” and vowed to follow Winston Churchill’s lead and make Britain’s ties with America even stronger.

Mr. Brown’s statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush’s domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania–with two death sentences on his head–in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a “liar,” a “deceiver” and a “fraud.””

“…My American citizenship has given me a feeling of pride, hope and security that is surpassed only by the joy of simply being alive. There are millions of other immigrants who are equally proud that they restarted their lives from scratch in order to be in this magnanimous country. I appeal to them to help keep our beloved America united and honorable. We may not be able to change the habits of our current political representatives, but we may be able to introduce healthy new blood into the U.S. Congress.

For once, the communists got it right. It is America’s leader that counts. Let’s return to the traditions of presidents who accepted nothing short of unconditional surrender from our deadly enemies. Let’s vote next year for people who believe in America’s future, not for the ones who live in the Cold War past.

Lt. Gen. Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc.”
Mr. Pacepa has written some powerful essays and books that help to expose the links between the international communist movement and terrorism. Please read some of his work to get a feel for the powerful forces united to defeat the cause of Freedom in our world. He helps to expose the propaganda, tactics, and Marxist lies that have befuddled our society since the McCarthy era in America.
Jenny Hatch

THE ELECTRIC SHOCKS MACHINE MANUFACTURER WAS A PSYCHIATRY PROFESSOR

August 20, 2007Jenny Marie Hatch

THE ELECTRIC SHOCKS MACHINE MANUFACTURER WAS A PSYCHIATRY PROFESSOR

“When medical students learn about shock therapy, they turn to the only textbook on the subject: Electroconvulsive Therapy, published by Oxford University Press. Richard Abrams, a professor of psychiatry at the Chicago Medical School, writes that shock therapy is proven safe and effective for depression and other problems, even in children and the elderly.

He advises that shock should be considered as the first treatment given, not as the last resort. He concludes with an attack on doctors who criticize shock treatment and attaches a form to have patients sign when they consent to shock therapy.

But Abrams doesn’t tell the medical students one thing: He owns Somatics Inc., one of the nation’s two shock machine manufacturers.

He didn’t tell his publisher, either.

“Wow,” says Joan Bossert, executive editor of Oxford University Press. “I did not know that.” She would have had him disclose that in the book’s preface, she says. “I really wish he’d told us, but it doesn’t take away from his expertise,” she says. Neither did Abrams disclose his financial interest in the academic journal Psychiatric Clinics in September 1994, when he wrote an upbeat article on shock titled, “The Treatment That Will Not Die.”

In some recent articles, Abrams disclosed that he’s a “director” of Somatics. But readers weren’t told that he is also president and owns the company with shock researcher Conrad Swartz, a University of South Carolina psychiatry professor.

Abrams says it’s ridiculous to think his ownership of a shock machine company may create a conflict of interest.”

Conflict of Interest

TESTIMONY OF JOHN M. FRIEDBERG, M.D., NEUROLOGIST, BEFORE THE MENTAL HEALTH COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY

August 20, 2007Jenny Marie Hatch

TESTIMONY OF JOHN M. FRIEDBERG, M.D., NEUROLOGIST, BEFORE THE MENTAL HEALTH COMMITTEE OF THE NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY
“My name is John Friedberg. I am a board certified neurologist practicing in Berkeley, California.

I was born in Far Rockaway (NYC) in 1942, graduated Lawrence High School, Yale University and the University of Rochester School of Medicine and for the past twenty years I’ve been seeing patients with every conceivable neurologic problem, from headaches to Huntington’s, in my office and in hospitals.

I am in good standing with my hospitals, professional societies and licensing boards and I’m proud to say I’ve never been successfully sued.

In 1975 I published my book “Shock Treatment Is Not Good For Your Brain” and in 1979 “Shock Treatment, Brain Damage and Memory Loss,” a peer reviewed article in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

I do not believe in mental illness. Depression is no more “the same as diabetes” than heartbreak is the same as a heart attack.

I do not believe in hypothetical diseases of the mind but there is no mistaking damage to the brain. Psychiatric drugs and electroshock inflict real injury in the name of treating fictive maladies. Paul Henri Thomas has Tardive Dyskinesia and heptatitis from psychiatric drugs and amnesia from the ECT.

…..ECT isn’t back – it never went away. It’s more common than appendectomy.
What has happened is that it’s advocates have grown more arrogant and the number of patients forced to undergo ECT against their will is increasing.

This was brought to public attention by Paul Henri Thomas fighting for his life and his mind at Pilgrim State Hospital on Long Island. Over the past two years he has been subjected to 60 shocks and a judge just ordered up 40 more. The newspapers state the Mr. Thomas was born in Haiti, emigrated from oppression and was granted American citizenship.

To be held down, drugged and forcibly administered convulsive dose after convulsive dose of electroshock to the head: can anyone think of a greater assault on a human being’s rights – short of death – in the whole world? And it’s happening here in the land of the free. That’s not acceptable.

We have had 60 years of poignant testimony from eloquent victims of electroshock. Ernest Hemingway complained it ruined his memory and put him out of business. He killed himself within weeks of concluding a second course of ECT. George Orwell ends 1984 with his protagonist being forced to love Big Brother on an electroshock table.

I urge you to declare a moratorium on electroconvulsive therapy until it can be proven safe by evidence, not proclamation.