Old Sailor on a mission

Dear Bloggers, 

The Old Sailor has become a man on a mission. Since his little girl was diagnosed with a behavior disorder at 8 years of age, together with his wife he has worked tirelessly to get our daughter the best possible intervention. Today we are getting help from some professionals.

You are making a difference just remember this: You are a parent, not a doctor or a scientist.

But, when it comes to your child, you are an expert. You know that little face and whether it lights up when you walk into a room. You know your child's babbling voice and would be the first to notice if it suddenly fell silent. You know how she behaves when she sees a new toy, meets a new child, goes to a birthday party, or visits a shopping mall. You know what makes her cry and what makes her laugh. You've seen children playing in parks and squabbling at family dinners. You've seen her as a baby playing peek-a-boo and playing house. And you wouldn't be a parent if you had not compared your child with other children.

Of course, not every difference is a disorder. Far from it. But if your instincts are telling you something is wrong, that something about your child is quite different from other children or that something essential about your child has changed or become increasingly troubling, your instincts are probably right.You know when something is wrong. Children with anger outburts have parents who are persistently worried about them. So, if you are worried about how your child is reacting and behaving, you should take your worry seriously. It could be a warning sign.Parents have been diagnosing their children from early on. They know it, they feel it. They say it all the time, "I just know something's just not right . . . the way she does this or the way she does that . . ." And they're right, usually.

Some parents whose children are eventually diagnosed with a disorder realize that their children were different as babies. A few notice specific, clear-cut problems; many others have nagging, vague concerns that are harder to express.Other parents see signs accumulate over time or appear suddenly. When doctors ask the right questions, worried parents almost always speak up. And, once their child is diagnosed with a problem, even those parents who do not express their worries at first usually say that they knew "something was wrong." Often they "just burst into tears" when their fears are confirmed.

Still, you may believe that what you know about your child pales in comparison to what seasoned pediatricians, family physicians, and nurse practitioners know about the science of development. If you've taken your child to every routine checkup and gotten a clean bill of health, you may feel that's reassurance enough. Unfortunately, that's not the case. While most health professionals do a good job of assessing physical development and try to measure cognitive growth, far too few know how to assess social and emotional development or how to interpret the early behavioral signs of disorders like for example autism. Some well-meaning doctors ask about these topics, but use the wrong questions. Others rely on their own, too-brief observations. And, unfortunately, far too few children with developmental delays and disorders get the early, intensive help that could put them on a healthier path.

The good news is that you can do something about this. You already know a lot about your child. You are about to learn a lot more about how to assess your child's social and emotional development and how to get prompt help if it's needed. 

The pediatricians take seriously their responsibility to follow a child's development. They are not annoyed or put on the defensive when parents, often armed with questions gleaned from a stack of books or the internet, want to talk about their children's social and emotional development. We were advised to see a specialized group pediatricians and caretakers that are taking tests in a playful way with your child and try to diagnose what the problem might be.
 
We eventually found this more knowledgeable pediatrician. And so can you. Ask other parents and your family physician for recommendations. When you hear of a good prospect, schedule a time to go in and talk with him or her, preferably without your child along. If you choose a practice and later become dissatisfied, try again. This process can be time-consuming, but will be well worthwhile, especially if your child has a problem with behavior. Ideally, you will find a pediatric practice where:

*developmental screening and observation are a routine part of every well-child visit.
*doctors get to know the children under their care. That means that your child usually sees the same physician or nurse practitioner, whether for sick or well visits.
*other staff members are accessible and helpful. Believe me, one helpful receptionist or nurse can make a huge difference should your child need complicated care.

It  all comes down to you. The truth remains that no matter how good your pediatrician is, you are your child's best observer and greatest champion. You are the gatekeeper, the person who stands between your child and the rest of the world, deciding which experiences and people to invite in and which to try to keep out. For parents of typically developing children, being a gatekeeper means choosing the best preschool or the most nurturing nanny. It might mean banning certain TV shows or toys. If that's your situation, you may have to work especially hard to get what your child needs.

For parents whose children turn out to have challenges, being a gatekeeper means all that and much more. It means choosing the people who can best help you and your child to navigate an often uncertain path toward the best possible outcome. It means working with those people to decide what is best for your child, but often making the final decisions yourself. It means becoming a true advocate.
Never forget, you are uniquely qualified. You know more, and care more, about your child than anyone else. All you require is a little more information and a few more skills. So, learn more about why it's so important to act on your concerns and then take action.
Your child is depending on you. 

The Old Sailor,

For what?

Dear Bloggers,

Today I will write about so called senseless violence, it is one of the items that kept my family busy after the horrible news from Norway on 22th of July. We wandered what happens to person that can get so violent without any regrets killing a large amount of people. The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York came out of nothing and without any pre warnings. Several years ago Meindert Tjoelker was kicked to death by a group of drunk guys only because he was telling them that heir behavior was inappropriate. There might be more cases but for me these are stuck in my memories as matters of senseless violence.

One of the problems with any reflection on absurd forms of violence in society is that these thoughts can never be, from a scientific point of view, truly interesting and technical. Before we know it, moral and political considerations and emotions sneak in and objective thought will be overruled by, for example, the indignation over the nature and amount of that violence. For if you start to think about violence, you will soon feel highly involved and at the same time completely powerless. Even if we should be inclined to choose violence in certain cases, when it comes from ourselves, when it is not the raw violence of nature and looks like reasonable action, it always turns out to be bigger and stronger in its consequences and its emotional implications than the one who unleashes violence or approves of it. Merely by thinking about it it is taken out of our own hands.

No matter what we think or how passionately we want to denounce violence as vulgar, immoral or inefficient, it will still occur time after time and we are never neutral bystanders, like when observing the behavior of chickens on a lawn or dogs in the street. Our words are filled with emotions and prejudices. Therefore, I want to restrict my reflection on to a couple of words, with which we appear to try and make sense of an occurrence on which we apparently, despite all of our pretenses, have as little influence as on the weather, but which fascinates us, either annoyingly or amusingly, in a much higher degree.



The quite recent combination of words “senseless violence” mostly seems to relate to something that we, if it did not sound as cynical, could call recreational violence, eventhough it happens in small groups that will kill an innocent guy by kicking him to death as he would try to stop them from demolishing a bicycle, or a large group called supporters which appears predominately around soccer-fields, in amusement halls with violent war games and in so-called action movies, hence on the fringes of social life. But how large, how infectious and how determining of our culture is the contribution of this type of violence as a spectacle in television shows and other forms of relaxation on which we spend a large part of our free time? (My wife is a big fan of these what I call “Murder and manslaughter tv series”.) Do I have an excorsist in the house?



The combination of words “senseless violence” seems to have been specifically invented to qualify this pointless violence as a derailment or at least a singular occurrence, in order to not too suddenly and quite radically, exclude the possibility of a human violence that might be called “sensible”. That not senseless, but efficiently and prudently used violence would be in our control from beginning to end, and a predictable and positive outcome could be expected: order, security, and peace.

Seen from this perspective, the expression “senseless violence” has to create a space for the belief that another, perhaps efficient, meaningful and permissible unleashing of violence might be possible. Taking the soccer game as an example again. There are complaints that some parents being so fanatic that they scare their own children as their fanatism will end up into an escalation of violence as an exercise in power by the lower less responsible persons and that can prevent that by slogans like “soccer is war” a spiral of spectacular, but meaningless recreational violence will start.



Along with more power, the means not only have to be greater in number, but also more effective, and they have to appear less like the force of an aimless explosion, the raw violence of a hurricane or the unrestrained behavior of a rowdy crowd. A government that does not have these available, is not superior and has no more say than any random club.

The result of violence is always characterized by a hail of unintended, incalculable and destructive side-effects sensible, unless of course we read the word “goal” as something military and war-like, “hit” as the destruction of this goal and “use” as the unleashing of every random force that we do not control. In this way, the guillotine could be regarded as an effective mean for relieving headaches, or pulling all teeth as an adequate means against biting nails. (there is a dark sense of humor needed here.)

Seeing a proof of superiority in this seems a bit shortsighted to me: it is rather a manifestation of impotence or inability to link adequate and carefully dosed means. At best we can say that in certain circumstances in a somewhat ritual way we have reserved the authority to exert this impotence or the threat thereof and necessitated ourselves to leave out the, in this context painful, qualification senseless. But the question is wether this is more than a mere verbal and ritual exercise that does not change a thing about the situation itself.

There seem to be at least two reasons why we speak in such hidden terms about all kinds of violence, including that of the government. One is that a start of violence or a display of superiority can cause a shock that may bring people to their senses. (Just think about what happened in Oslo and on Utoya or less recent the 9-11 attacks.)



If you, for example, want to quiet a boisterous crowd, you sometimes have to quickly produce a higher volume of sound than the bothersome murmur you intend to override. This will increase the total disorder, but still the expectation can be that silence will be its effect. There are reasons to believe in temporary violence and in the logic of something like a warning shot.

A second reason not to radically rule out every form of violence as a means has to lie in the fact that to this form of active performing there seems to be but one alternative, i.e. standing by powerlessly. But that alternative has to be rejected more forcefully according the measure in which the organization that would decline from performing it is ascribed greater power or authority.

And if you are supposed to have all capabilities, you will always be guilty when you stand by powerlessly. In an activist culture, one that for the greater part is a culture of violence disguised as sport, as expression, as display of power or as spectacle rather than a culture of peaceful technique and of adequate and subtle means, standing by powerlessly or even the acceptance of powerlessness is always regarded as reprehensible. In the phraseology of that culture it is always better to do something than to do nothing at all or, in military terms less familiar to me: it is better to miss or even obliterate the goal than not to shoot at all. This will inevitably lead to absurd situations.



Even if peace would be no more than the absence of war and violence (but how will we ever know?) and even if it has to be maintained by a power that keeps itself in the background, it would still be preferable as a form of civilization to the outbursts of barbaric violence which we have to witness, happening to our shame, time and time again and on all fronts.

I wish that there would be no more victims of senseless violence but this probably an impossible dream.

The Old Sailor,