Best. Book. Ever.

I've been reading this book, Instead of Medicating and Punishing: Healing the Causes of Our Children's Acting-Out Behavior by Parenting and Educating the Way Nature Intended by Laurie A. Couture, and it's absolutely wonderful! I don't even know where to start. It has such great information. Here's an excerpt.

Chapter 10: Does Your Child Have a Brain Disorder or Is Our Culture Disordered?

The mental health, psychiatirc and pharmaceutical industries have capitalized on human suffering for years, marketing everything from macabre experiemnts in gothic "asylums" in centuries past, to the simplistic self-help books, charismatic "inner child" workshops, trendy therapies and mood-numbing chemicals of modern times. It should be of no surprise that the mental health and pharmaceutical institutions eventually turned from a focus on adult "pathology" to the financial goldmine of the suffering of society's most vulnerable and most captive subjects...children.

Are our children really as brain disordered as the experts wish for us to believe or are their behaviors and extreme emotions natural reactions to a toxic cultural environment? Do our children really require powerful mind-altering chemicals every day just to function or are our children screaming out for something deeper than a pill? Does it really make us feel better as parents when the "experts" and authors assure us that "it's not our fault", the child has a "chemical imbalance" or "the child's brain doesn't have any brakes"? Do we believe that deep down? The multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry hopes that we do!

What did we learn from the last nine chapters about what children need in order to function optimally physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, sexually, morally and spiritually? To sum up briefly, we learned that for our children to develop optimally in all areas:

- Children require secure parent-child attachment

- Children's basic physical and emotional needs must be consistently met as soon as possible, especially in infancy, but also all throughout childhood

- Children require that mothers hold or "wear" them continuously on the skin for the first 12 months of life

- Children require that their mothers breastfeed them as often as needed, for no less than 2.5 years and optimally more

- Children need a physically and emotionally safe, stable, loving and nurturing home environment

- Children need to be loved, treasured, cherished and respected for who they are as individuals

- Children need continuous physical affection at all ages

- Young children naturally feel safest, most attached and most comforted by cosleeping with their parents

- Children need guidance and discipline that is physically and emotionally nonviolent and based on strong family and community modeling

- Children need to be with their parents, friends and communities during the day

- Children do best in mixed-age groups of peers

- Children need freedom, exploration and play in order to learn and keep the desire to learn

- Children ideally need to be able to imitate and join parents and adults in their community doing work that children find interesting

- Children need constant, regular, high-energy physical activity all through out the day

- Children need to direct their play, learning and exploration

- Children need their developmental pace and abilities respected

- Children need to learn according to their learning styles

- Children need to learn primarily through unique intelligences that they posses and need to have their intelligences treated as valid

- Children need to have their parent's time, affection and playfulness - Substitutes won't do!

- Children need entertainment and cultural modeling that is developmentally appropriate, fun, enriching, fulfilling and active

We can expect natural alarm signals from children whose needs are not being met. We can expect natural emotional and behavioral instability to result when children's needs aren't met. That being the case, when children give us alarm signals and emotionally and behaviorally show us their distress, are they telling us that there is something wrong with their brains? Or are they telling us that they are suffering distress from disrupted attachment, unmet physical and emotional needs, trauma or unnatural learning conditions?

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"You have the power to give up yelling, hitting, rough handling and punishing your children. You have the power to give up our culture's cold beliefs that babies belong in cribs, fed by bottles. You have the power to challenge harmful trends, including the belief that the sarcastic cartoons on TV are "fine" for your children to watch.

You have the "mother-bear" power to challenge our culture's apathetic notions that children belong in school and that your children "learn more" at school than at home. You have the parental power to tell your children's teachers that you will not be allowing homework in your home. You have the power to connect with the unschooling or homeschooling groups in your area to find out how easy and freeing it can be to allow your children to learn at home and out in the community. You have the power to search for a school for your children that you would have loved as a child; a school that will allow your children to keep their natural love for learning; a school that your children would find true joy in.

You have the instinctual, loving power to cuddle and nurture your children daily and re-parent their earlier unmet needs. You have the courageous power to deeply listen to your children and find out what they need, instead of what you believe. You have the healing power to not blame yourself, to not blame others, to not blame brain disorders and to not blame your children for the way things are now. You have the power to get the help you need in order to help your children."

"You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result." - Gandhi



I will be posting more on this book later. She has a whole chapter dedicated to re-attaching to your children. It's fabulous.