News

New study: lack of secure attachment during early childhood harms children

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This is from the leftist Brookings Institute, a respected think tank I usually disagree with.

They write about a new study:

Attachment theory is founded on the idea that an infant’s early relationship with their caregiver is crucial for social and emotional development. It is an old theory, born during the 1950s. But it can bring fresh light on issues of opportunity and equality today, as a three-decade longitudinal study of low-income children from Alan Sroufe, Byron Egeland, Elizabeth Carlson, and W. A. Collins, all University of Minnesota psychologists, demonstrates.

[…]Small infants are heavily dependent on caregivers, who must respond to their needs. But counter-intuitively, the infants who have a reliable caregiver are also most likely to become self-efficacious later.

Infants (aged 9 to 18 months) with responsive parents learn how their own behavior can impact their environment. This “call and response” process builds the infant’s sense of self-efficacy— one reason parents should pick up the sippy cup, especially for the hundredth time! But this virtuous learning cycle breaks down if the caregiver fails to respond adequately.

Here are the definitions:

  • Secure attachment: When the caregiver (mom, in this study) is present, the infant explores the room and interacts with the experimenter, occasionally returning to the caregiver for support. When the caregiver leaves, the child becomes sad and hesitates to interact with the experimenter, but upon their return, is visibly excited.
  • Anxious/resistant attachment: Regardless of the caregiver’s presence, the infant shows fear of the experimenter and novel situations—these infants cry more and explore the room less. They become upset when the caregiver leaves, and while they approach upon return often resist physical contact, as a form of “punishment”.
  • Anxious/avoidant attachment: No preference is shown between a caregiver and a stranger— infants play normally in the presence of the experimenter and show no sign of distress or interest when their caregiver leaves and returns. The experimenter and the caregiver can comfort the infant equally well.

And here the results:

The Minnesota study found that attachment makes a difference later in life. Without knowing students’ attachment history, preschool teachers judged those who had secure attachments to have higher self-esteem, to be more self-reliant, to be better at managing impulses, and to recover more easily from upsetting events. When teachers were asked which students, among those with serious struggles in class, nonetheless had “a core of inner self-worth, an indication that… maybe they could get better,” they picked students that had secure attachments as infants.

In contrast, children with anxious/resistant attachments:

  • tended to hover near teachers
  • became easily frustrated
  • were more likely to be seen as “dependent” by blinded observers
  • were less competent and patient with puzzles and other cognitive challenges

Children with anxious/avoidant attachments:

  • tended to be apathetic towards other children
  • failed to ask for adult help when stressed
  • were “often self-isolating”

Both groups had higher rates of anxiety and depression as teenagers.

So again, we are seeing that when it comes to parenting, you have to think about what you are doing. That doesn’t mean that you have to be slaves to your kids, or spoil them or hover over them. It means that what you are doing with your kids matters. It means that you need to make a plan to have enough time and money to be able to care for them. I think that the right time to talk about such things is during the courtship.

Also, one more point. If you meet people with some of these short comings, (I had most of the anxious/avoidant ones growing up), then try not to draw lines in the sand where you reject them over these shortcomings. Instead, do what I do. Recognize that these people have value and that if you take responsibility to care for them and supply for their needs, you might be able to guide them to do some pretty amazing things. Don’t be so self-centered that you expect people to be perfect so they don’t need anything from you. Nobody is perfect. Everybody has a story. If you want to be like Jesus, why not start by recognizing the effects of a disrupted childhood through study, and then make a plan to grow people – even difficult ones like me.

News

Left uses stories and peer-pressure to indoctrinate children to support same-sex marriage

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National Education Association
National Education Association

This is a striking story from Life Site News. It talks about how the school system gets pro-same-sex-marriage speakers to teach the children to support same-sex-marriage.

It says:

A primary grade lesbian teacher from an Ontario public school revealed in a workshop at a homosexual activist conference for teachers earlier this month how she uses her classroom to convince children as young as four to accept homosexual relationships.

“And I started in Kindergarten. What a great place to start. It was where I was teaching. So, I was the most comfortable there,” Pam Strong said at the conference, attended by LifeSiteNews.

The conference, hosted by the homosexual activist organization Jer’s Vision, now called the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, focused on the implementation of Bill 13 in Ontario classrooms. Bill 13, called by critics the ‘homosexual bill of rights,’ passed in June 2012 and gave students the right to form pro-gay clubs in their school, including Catholic ones, using the name Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).

Strong, who is in an open relationship with another woman and who has been a teacher for about five years, focused her workshop on what she called the “power of conversation” for promoting LGBTQ issues in an elementary classroom. She began her talk by relating how she reacted the first time one of her students called another student ‘gay’ as a putdown.

“With [the principal’s] encouragement, we decided that I would go from class to class and talk about what ‘gay’ means, what does ‘LGBTQ’ mean, what do ‘I’ mean,” she told about 40 attendees, all educators, at her workshop.

There are some examples of how she manipulates the children, but I want to focus on one in particular:

Strong related an incident that happened last fall involving a new boy who had recently entered her grade 5 classroom. The new boy had not yet been made aware of Strong’s sexual preference for other women.

“All my class is very used to who I am. My family picture is very proudly in my room now. On Mondays they quite often will say, ‘What did you do with your wife?’ It’s normal in my classroom.”

Strong said that a conversation between herself and the students came up one day where it was mentioned that she was a lesbian. The new boy put his hands over his mouth and said, according to Strong: “Oh, my God, I think I’m going to puke.”

“As I took the abuse — personally, as an individual – of those words, I also saw half of my class look at me with incredible concern. One student who was right in front of me already had tears in her eyes. And I noticed several other students who were looking at him. They were just very, very upset with this kid,” she related.

Strong said the boy instantly became aware that “something he had said had just created this unbelievable tension in the room.” She related how she addressed the boy, telling him: “I think that what you might not be aware of is that I am gay, and I am married to a woman, and my family has two moms.’”

“His eyes just started darting around, and he was incredibly uncomfortable,” she related.

“I looked at the other kids and I said: ‘Ok guys, what I want to ask you is: Am I upset with him?’ And the one little girl in my class put up her hand — that doesn’t usually get into these conversations very much in my classroom — and she said, ‘Mrs Strong, I know you’re not upset with him, because he hasn’t had the benefit of our conversations.”

“And I looked at my little friend, my ‘new’ friend, and I said: ‘But, we’re going to have one now,’” she related.

Strong said that she then directed her class to the board and asked them to write everything she had told them related to LGBTQ.

“And my class all of a sudden popped up. ‘LGBTQ’ was on the board, ‘lesbian,’ and all the different words coming out there. And I sat back and said, ‘Let’s review.’ So, the last year and a half of ‘inclusive’ education came alive in my classroom.”

Strong told her workshop attendees that her “new little friend” is now a devoted champion of diversity. She boasted how he was the one in her class to count down the days to the pro-homosexual Day of Pink that took place earlier this month. When Strong took a photo of all the children wearing pink shirts in her classroom, she said the boy requested to be in the front.

She isn’t interested in presenting both sides of the argument, or persuading grown adults like Dr. Ryan T. Anderson. She wants to go after children with stories that make her side look a certain way, stories that cannot be challenged or refuted by children. And with no opt-out or notification for parents, because parents have to be kept in the dark. Parents just get to pay to feed and clothe and shelter the children – but what they think is decided by teachers with an agenda. This indoctrination against the values of parents is taxpayer-funded. With no opt-out.  This is the “big government” that so many young evangelicals support.

This is why I am concerned about finding a wife who understands these things and takes them seriously enough to make a plan to deal with it. I have had Christian women who responded to this challenge from the schools by telling me that they intended to entrust the children to daycare and secular schools so they could focus on careers, travel, buying bling, etc. I try to show them studies showing how children are affected by daycare, homeschooling, etc. Usually, it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. It’s almost as if they have to  get their way on these things even though they have not studied these things themselves. They have to find a way to escape from any responsibilities to others so they can be free to do what feels good to them. But I need a partner who will take these concerns seriously and think of our children, not of her own happiness.

Keep in mind that even if you homeschool or private-school your kids, that they have live next door to the brainwashed kids. The brainwashed kids are taught to hold to their views at a brittle, non-rational, emotional level. This is why children who are indoctrinated by the secular left are so offended by “triggering” behaviors that they have to take refuge in “safe spaces” free of opposing views. Our kids (raised by us) might agree with us, but they are not free of the influence from a much larger group of brainwashed kids. Our kids have to work for them. Our kids have to go to school with them. Our kids have to live under the laws that these other kids will pass, as they are shuffled through the best schools because they have the “right” views. The brainwashed kids vote and we will have to live under the laws they pass. Do you have a plan to deal with this? It seems to me that if women want to get married and have kids “some day”, then they should have thought about this some and be willing to talk about what to do about it, and be open to the fact that they may have to make some adjustments to prepare for it.

UPDATE: Life Site News is now threatened with a lawsuit after breaking this story.

Videos

Paul Gould at the University of Toronto: Does Jesus answer life’s biggest questions?

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(72 minutes)

A friend of mine sent me a link to this lecture, and he says the Q&A is dynamite.

Here’s the description:

What is the meaning of my life? What is my purpose? What happens after I die? How do I know what is true? How should I live? Why? What does Jesus have to do with my everyday life? Does he answer life’s biggest questions? If he does is there evidence for this?

On Feb 12, 2015 at the University of Toronto, Dr. Paul Gould gave a compelling case for why Jesus answers life’s biggest questions and he also answered a number of tough and interesting questions in the Question and Answer Period.

This lecture is part of a series called “God + Reason: A Christian Perspective” (http://www.bitly.com/godandreasonpt1).

In this series professors, thinkers, academics, or graduate students give reasons why they trust in God and address objections to trusting in God.

SPEAKER’S BIO:

Dr. Paul Gould is a philosopher, a scholar, a teacher, a husband, a father, and a follower of Jesus Christ. He believes that Jesus is humanity’s greatest need and our highest good. As C.S. Lewis, puts it:

“God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces.”

So, God wills our good–and our good is to love Him–and to love Him is to know Him. His passion in life is to present to the world Jesus–in all his brilliance and beauty.

He received his MA in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University and a PhD in Philosophy from Purdue University.

Dr. Paul Gould is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Christian Apologetics at Southwestern Theological Seminary.

He is married to Ethel and has four wonderful children.

EMCEE’S BIO:

Mark Sutherland received his BEng in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and is currently a masters student in Applied Science (Computer Engineering) at the University of Toronto.

My friend also noted that Dr. Gould has an article up on his web site on the same topic as the lecture that lays out all the questions he covered in the lecture.

It says:

Is there a God? Yes, and he loves and pursues you.

What is the nature of Reality? It is enchanted, a world of rich physical, aesthetic and moral beauty.

What is the purpose of the universe? For God to spread his joy and delight and love and you to find happiness in creaturely response.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Because God created me.

Does prayer work? Yes, God is ever present and involved in your life, even when you don’t know it.

Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Yes, you are essentially a soul that has a body, you will live forever.

Is there free will? Yes, we are self-determiners of our action and our character.

What happens when we die? We enter into eternal life, either with God in heaven or without God in hell.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is objective morality, the right is what God commands and the wrong is what God prohibits; the good is that which God has created, the bad that which sin has corrupted.

Why should I be moral? Because it is good in itself and for what it brings (as Plato puts it in the Republic).

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? There is a moral law, not everything is permissible, nor is everything forbidden.

What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the one thing that can never hurt anyone, although it may cost dearly.

Does history have any meaning or purpose? Yes, there is meaning and purpose to everything.

Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Yes, and we’d be wise to listen to them.

Paul Gould is one of my favorite Christian scholars – he comes from a business background and has a real heart for evangelism. We also agree that the “top-down” approach to having an influence is the correct approach, and therefore we both see impacting young people when they are at the university as absolutely vital. There are a lot of things that are worthwhile for Christians to do, but the university is the place that creates the next generation of influential people. We have to make our stand there, whether we like it or not. Whether it feels good or not.