Show Nots
Didn’t know if anyone could direct me to the show notes so I can share some links with family and friends thank you
So many people move here for the mountains… which approximates more active lifestyles and thus less obesity… just a guess.
Here’s a start. The article that Chris shared today.
https://newint.org/columns/essays/2016/04/01/psycho-spiritual-crisis
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I literally just learned about the 1909/1910 “The Harvard Classics”… a 50 book set of important classics, documents, poems and speeches… looks really amazing, I’ll probably buy a set. Maybe worth looking into if you are going to home school? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics
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Now added to text in post above…
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Thank you,
Don’t give up. You are building your children’s future. I never considered homeschooling until I discovered that my eldest child was dyslexic. She could not learn to read in first grade. I imagined her whole school experience filled with being labelled and put in special programs. I took her out of school and bought a set of those old 1950’s early readers with the beautiful watercolor illustrations. She was reading within two weeks. Our homeschooling experience was so sucessful that I continued for my other two daughters. In the mornings we concentrated on math/reading/writing. But after lunch, the world was filled with adventures. PE was ballet, ice skating, swimming and hiking. Joining 4H allowed them to learn science, and life skills. History was road trips and American Girls ( before it was sold out to Mattel.) All three girls graduated from college and are pursuing ( or have completed) post graduate studies. Homeschooling is an incredible way to bring your family closer together and give your children a way to socialize and explore the world outside of the classroom. It was the best decision that I made as a parent.
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The 3 Es Was Your Demoralization Process Chris…
The Crash Course was your demoralization process, so any further “crises” will not demoralize you further as you have already gone through the center of the black hole.
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Also not bitter cold, and not soooo hot. This prevents an extended “indoor season” and therefore better levels of Melatonin (body produces it when exposed to Infrared light, i.e. the sun) and Vitamin D.
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People’s Pharmacy Program Tomorrow 7am Edst On Us Teenager Mental Health
This week on our nationally syndicated radio show, we talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Matt Richtel. His latest series for The New York Times takes a long look at the mental health crisis affecting American teenagers. This is not a tale of COVID disruption, although COVID has made it worse. This is a story of a generation, starting around age 10 and continuing through college graduation at least a decade older.
https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/show-1303-the-mental-health-crisis-affecting-american-teenagers
The podcast of this program will be available Monday, June 6, 2022, after broadcast on June 4. You can stream the show from this site and download the podcast for free.
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Nervous System Perspective Of Children’s Issues
Chris, I wonder if you are aware of Dr Stephen Porges’ work in this area? E.g.
From: Stephen W. Porges: The Polyvagal Theory, Somatic Perspectives November 2011)
“Educational processes are working very hard to dismiss the body’s responses to environmental features. If we observe children in a classroom, we note a variety of behavioral features that illustrate that some children are safe and can sit comfortably in the same environment that triggers, in other children, the hypervigilant behaviors characterizing a lack safety.”
“Moreover, the children who are chronically monitoring the classroom for danger cues are the same children who have difficulties in learning, while those with the features of feeling safe can attend to the teacher and learn efficiently.”
“Unfortunately, the traditional classroom model for education assumes that if some children can perform well in a classroom, every child should. Thus, our society treats the behaviors of individuals, who are behaviorally or viscerally reactive to slight changes in stimulation, as bad. Society assumes that these children should be able to voluntarily turn these behaviors off.”
“Rather than investigating and understanding that there is a neural substrate underlying the observed range of individual differences, we basically convey to these children that the behaviors are bad even if the behaviors are involuntary.”
“Alternatively, the educational process could celebrate some of the unique sensitivities that people have. However, this seldom occurs and leads into the world of trauma. In this world, people’s bodies respond. In some cases, the behavioral pattern and neural regulation changes dramatically following trauma. These changes can be so great that the behavioral features may appear to represent a totally different person, who no longer can relate to others or interact in the same world. Since the behaviors of the traumatized individual do not conform to the expectations of typical social interactions, the traumatized individual often feels that they are inadequate or can do things correctly. These feelings of inadequacy may be driven by societal interactions”
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Masking Children…
I was thinking the masking of children is adding on a thick layer of impersonalism to an already impersonal life. In first quarter of 2020, I listened to a prof from a western European country discussing alarming findings regarding the cell phone generation(s). Their sentence word count was a whopping 3 words and most words were grossly abbreviated, on average this group has 9 sexual encounters by an early age, the group was not only promiscuous but sexually dysfunctional, the members of this group had no close or cohesive relationships, outside of school a very few read books… the dysfunction was pervasive.
These kids have been under severe and constant conditioning. The good news? They can be reconditioned like the rest of us. The Remnant will give shelter and offer knowledge and skill mastery to those kids that make it through the Turning. School was a completely different experience pre WWII in Europe. They crammed everything into 8 years including the study of languages and just about every single child received religious training, some much more than others, but all got some including in public schools.
After 7th or 8th grade, the poor or not so academic kids went on to trade school and the academically gifted went on to a type of dual enrollment and then to university. Some still went to work in family businesses. The trade schools produced journeymen tradesmen/women by the age of 18-19.
Recreation included sports, music, reading, and different kinds of clubs - some civic/social and many political. For many, those clubs were a great source of social life and of course sports clubs were a big favorite. it was a completely different way of life, where family was central and a lot was expected from the children.
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I love this. It rings true to what I have learned.
I have a friend who is a teacher (was) and she teaches using trauma informed practice. The aim is to reduce anxiety, enhance focus and concentration and enhance self-control. Taking cues from children rather than delivering demands to them which are out of their capacity to cope with while they are in a heightened state of anxiety.
Setting rules and boundaries that all children need, with firm kindness.
I also did a lot of researching after my son was born premature and the incidence of neurological disorder in premmies is much higher than in full term children. Things like sensory processing disorder, ADHD, etc.
Our psychologist friend has also told me a lot of ADHD diagnoses are actually mis-diagnoses, and are traumatised children who are dysregulated, but unrecognised as such.
These children are additionally traumatised (and disengage) by their experiences in classrooms.
Imagine being anxious, overwhelmed with stimuli, and then yelled at, or punished, for being unable to focus.
Could an increase in survived premature births be contributing to some of our increase in ‘neurologically’ different/damaged teens.
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Good Perspective
This episode really resonated with me! It truly explains a collective mental well-being and its development over the past few years. Humans are profoundly proactive and innovative beings. When you no longer identify with or better yet out right reject the current state of our systems, then you inherently refuse to invest your energy into its maintenance. This leads to energetic individuals being forced to stay idle. Several years ago, when I finally awoke to all this, I kept telling myself and my wife, that we just live in two different worlds. There is the world we function in and then the world we believe in. It is just a matter of time until we are able bring those two back together. The demoralizing part appears when the current system refuses to give up. You don’t believe in it, but you must function in it. It is like sitting on the line with a call center and listening to elevator music. How long will it last??
In the past few months, I lost sight of that realization and goal, constantly being dragged down by negative news and events.
What helped me in this episode:
1. It is not me, it is the system!
2. I am not depressed or cynical, just irritated by how long the transition to the next system is taking.
3. I am completely ready to invest all my energy into building the new system. That simple realization really brightened my spirit. It was like flipping a switch in my mental thought pattern…
Luckily, living in Germany, there is no real medication culture. What did they drill into our heads in high school: “just say no to drugs!”. Seems applicable.
Demoralisation
Really good to differentiate between depression and demoralisation. I have been struggling a lot, especially in the last 7 months since losing my 30 year allied health career due to vaccine mandates in Western Australia. I knew I wasn’t depressed, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it! I realize now that the correct label is probably demoralisation.
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This Is Frightening Reality
The more I listen to you Chris the more I am frightened of what is really happening in US. Unfortunately I see my country and people are also headed into this direction. This is similar to what you have been saying about lack of bees in your garden I have them buzzing like crazy in mine, but I realize it is not that obvious this is the norm I can take for granted. Very interesting. Greetings.
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Sorry, it is real. There are other actual “symptoms” than being energetic and bored. Usually it has to do with motor skills, attention span, impulse control, the ability to remember things and pick up new skills or automating them. There’s plenty of research showing differences in the brain. So it is a real thing, and it can become a real problem. There are associations with substance abuse later in life, increased rate of suicide, and committing crimes. Now, one could argue that it’s the system. And that’s probably true to a pretty high degree. In a hunter gatherer society people with ADHD would be hunters or explorers, taking lots of risks but finding out new things for their tribe, despite the risks. So yeah, there are evolutionary reasons for ADHD existing, but it probably hasnt been viewed as a disorder until modern days.
We can also argue that in today’s society there’s a tendency to overdiagnose this. I agree with that (despite having a husband with clear ADHD and two sons with ADHD). Society forces a conformity that just doesn’t work for some people.
We still can’t argue that ADHD isn’t real. It is. That’s beyond proven.
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Feel Sorry For My Kids
This episode really resonated with me. Put some of the thoughts I’ve had myself in order.
I’m truly demoralized by the prospect of my kids growing up in this system. I can already see that they’re only interested in the newest tech, the newest games, youtube characters and all that. I understand that it’s my fault as a parent, for giving them access to computers and all that, but I’m not sure how else to manage it. All their friends do these things, and leaving them outside of it basically alienates them from their friends.
We’re moving out of the city to a rural area now. Getting some livestock. Hoping to give them another context, and hoping it’s not too late. I hate to say it, but sometimes I hope that the whole of our built up tech and stuff just gets blown to bits. Getting our heads out of our screens and actually living life seems to almost require it, because these things are so addictive.
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Incarceration Statistics
Excellent report as always…I would however be careful citing organizations like the Sentencing Project as a guide to what is really behind incarceration rates in the US. They tend not to tell the whole story regarding ‘the stats behind the stats’…which in my mind is a lie of omission. Here is a link that explores the data a little deeper :
https://www.cjlf.org/publications/OverIncarcerationMyth.pdf
An excerpt :
“So who is in U. S. prisons and why are so many behind bars? U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) figures indicate that inmates in state prisons, which house 87% of all criminals, are there for mostly violent crimes: 54% of inmates are serving sentences for violent crimes, 19% for property crimes, and 16% are drug offenders of which the vast majority are dealers. Almost all inmates, particularly property and drug offenders, received a plea bargain, meaning they agreed to plead guilty to lesser crimes than they actually committed. In federal prisons, which house 13% of U. S. inmates, 30.3% are violent criminals, while 10.8% committed property crimes, 9.1% immigration crimes, and 48.3% drug crimes. Because most violent and property crimes are prosecuted by the states and drug trafficking is both a state and federal crime, the percentage of drug offenders in federal prisons is higher than for state prisons. A study by the Urban Institute found that 99.5% of drug offenders in federal prisons are dealers.”